Gentle Giant Chapter 77
“Ugh…”
A groaning sound naturally came from Dain’s mouth. The moment he saw Juho’s face and leaned against him, his tension was released and he felt pain twice as intense as before.
Seeing Dain’s pale face contorted in pain, Juho’s face also turned pale.
From the way it was swelling up instantly, it was clear that it wasn’t just a simple sprain.
The two of them had an examination at a nearby orthopedic clinic and waited for treatment.
“Jung Dain-ssi, please come into the examination room!”
“Yes!”
The previous patient came out of the examination room and Dain’s name was called. Juho carefully held Dain’s hand so it wouldn’t move and supported him.
“You said you fell down the stairs?”
“Y-yes.”
“Hmm.”
The doctor displayed Dain’s X-ray on the monitor and examined it carefully. Then he looked back at Dain and smiled.
“You can clearly see it too, right?”
“Yes…?”
“Here. And here.”
The doctor pointed to two places on the long finger bones with a laser pointer. Dain’s eyes quickly followed the red point.
Juho, standing behind Dain, also looked at where the doctor indicated. A short groan of “urgh” flowed from his mouth.
Dain also had no choice but to nod. The X-ray was clear enough that even Dain, who had no connection to hospitals, could understand.
“It’s a finger fracture. Specifically, a middle phalanx fracture of the fourth and fifth fingers. I guess your fingers got bent when you fell. That must have hurt.”
“A l-little.”
“Haha! It must have been more than a little, right? Are you still a student?”
“Yes, I go to the university right in front here.”
“Oh! You must study well! Still, it’s fortunate – it’s your left hand, so it won’t interfere with your studies!”
“That’s right, yes.”
Dain’s ears turned red at the praise about studying well. The doctor laughed heartily while looking at Dain like that. Dain also followed the doctor’s lead and let out an awkward laugh. Small talk between patient and doctor continued.
However, unlike Dain who had started to smile, Juho’s face, which had been serious from the moment he entered the examination room, showed no signs of relaxing.
“What about the wrist? The wrist is also very swollen.”
“Ah, the wrist. Let me see the wrist. Hmm, fortunately there are no fractures. It’s a simple sprain.”
“It’s swollen this much though? Look carefully, isn’t it swollen as much as the fingers?”
At the words “simple sprain,” Juho pounced like a hawk. The expression that said he wouldn’t let it slide if examined carelessly was a bonus. He felt like an overzealous parent.
At the tone that blatantly treated him like a quack, Dain quickly grabbed the end of Juho’s sleeve. It meant to stop.
However, this time Juho didn’t follow Dain’s wishes. He only added more pressure with chin gestures to look more carefully.
The doctor, annoyed by how fussy he was being, reluctantly examined the X-ray again to see if there was anything he missed. It absolutely wasn’t because he was scared of the top-tier beast-man’s momentum.
“Ahem! Even looking again, there’s no fracture. If you want to know more precisely, it would be better to get a CT scan.”
“Is CT scanning possible here?”
“Ah, no, this is a clinic so we don’t have CT scanning equipment, and sometimes it doesn’t show up even if taken immediately, so you can get it done later if you feel uncomfortable.”
Even with the doctor’s detailed explanation, Juho seemed unsatisfied somehow.
Dain, who had been watching Juho’s expression, quickly asked a question. What Dain was most curious about right now was something else.
“Um, doctor. Do I need surgery for the broken bones?”
Whether he had to suffer more pain or not.
The doctor burst into cheerful laughter once again at Dain’s question and shook his head. At that head shake, Dain’s shoulders, which had been tense with anxiety, relaxed.
“As you can see, the bones broke very cleanly, right? Fortunately, they’re not shattered either. So there’s no need to fix them with pins or surgery.”
“Then…”
“First, we’ll put on a half-cast for now, and when the swelling goes down, we’ll change it to a full cast. It’ll take about 4 to 6 weeks for the bones to heal completely. Um, I’ll prescribe some medicine too. Today and tomorrow it’ll swell a lot and hurt, so when you get home, please apply some ice packs.”
“Yees, thank you.”
“Yes. Please wait in the waiting room and we’ll call you when the treatment is ready.”
Dain bowed his head at the doctor’s detailed explanation. Juho carefully attended to Dain and left the examination room.
“Wow, how fierce.”
The doctor shook his head while entering the prescription. He himself was one of the few wolf beast-men in Korea, but it had been a long time since he met a beast-man much stronger than himself.
By the way, what kind of relationship were those two? Wicked curiosity arose.
A patient who was only gentle despite his rough impression, and a guardian who looked glamorous and elegant but seemed to have a personality inversely proportional to that. Could they be… dating? No way…!
The doctor shook his head once more.
He thought he should ask next time if patient Jung Dain came alone. If he came with the guardian, their relationship would remain an eternal mystery.
Completely unaware that the doctor was having such thoughts after sending them out, Juho was whining to Dain.
“Hyung, let’s go to a big hospital even now. Let’s go get a CT scan and get examined again. Okay?”
“No, the doctor said we can get it scanned then if it’s inconvenient during daily life. He said it’s not a fracture on the X-ray either.”
“Still. What if there’s something he couldn’t detect? Looking at it earlier, the X-ray machine seemed kind of old… mmph!”
At Juho’s unrestrained remarks, Dain hastily covered his mouth. The hospital was small and there were no patients, so what Juho was saying might be heard by the nurses. Dain felt unnecessarily self-conscious.
Juho frowned, not knowing what he had done wrong.
A little later, despite Dain’s strong objections, Juho followed him to the treatment room and watched every procedure done to Dain. His momentum was no different from in the examination room, making both the doctor administering the half-cast and the assisting nurse uncomfortable.
In contrast, Dain was so polite in his greetings, answered well, and was so gentle. Opinions were exchanged among the staff that if there were only patients like this, wouldn’t the work environment improve noticeably.
“Jung Dain-ssi. Today’s treatment fee and procedure fee together is 48,600 won.”
“Yees.”
Dain, who responded to the staff member’s words, struggled to take out his wallet. With one arm wrapped up tightly, it was quite inconvenient.
Juho, who had been watching what Dain was doing from the side, quickly held out his card.
The staff member who received Juho’s card in bewilderment returned Dain’s card, which was offered belatedly, back to its owner.
“I was going to pay…!”
“It’s already been processed with mine. If we process it with hyung’s card, we’d have to cancel and get approval again. You must be busy already, so we shouldn’t bother you, hyung.”
“Ah, mm-hmm. Okay.”
“Yes. Hyung, you got the prescription, right?”
“Yeah, here.”
Dain, who agreed with Juho’s words, waved the prescription in his hand.
Juho naturally took the prescription and opened the door. He opened it as wide as possible in case even Dain’s fingertips might bump into the door.
Dain smartly finished both thanking Juho for his consideration and saying goodbye to the staff at the desk before leaving the hospital.
The two people who seemed to match yet didn’t match became the topic of conversation among the staff for quite a while even after leaving the hospital.
* * *
“Hyung, are you sure you don’t need other tests? There’s nowhere else you’re hurt, right?”
“I’m really, really okay! I didn’t fall from a high place either, so getting hurt like this was just bad luck.”
“Meeting that woman today was bad luck.”
Juho answered coldly.
At those words, Dain’s mouth, which had been consoling Juho, snapped shut.
Dain had already forgotten about it, but Juho brought it up immediately as if he had been remembering that female student all along.
“J-Juho. You know that me getting hurt was all something that happened by coincidence, right?”
“I wonder.”
“Really. I coincidentally happened to be nearby and got caught up in it…”
“Hyung coincidentally happened to be nearby?”
“Mm-hmm!”
“At that particular time, at that particular place, next to that Lee Youngju of all people?”
“That, that’s…”
The tip of Dain’s fingernail sticking out from the edge of the cast twitched. When put like that, there was nothing to say.
Seeing Dain’s deflated appearance, Juho roughly ran his fingers through his hair.
“Ha, that woman said she was from the broadcasting club, right? From what I can see, she came today to ask hyung to cooperate with filming again. Of course, hyung definitely refused. So she said don’t be like that and please help just once, and while hurriedly chasing after hyung, she fell down the stairs, and hyung, who was nearby, got hurt instead while trying to help that woman fall – that’s what I think happened. Am I right?”
“Gasp…”
It was a perfect deduction, except that the subject of the filming cooperation wasn’t himself but Juho.
At Dain’s transparent reaction, Juho raised one corner of his mouth.
How should I mess with those broadcasting club bastards?
Even without Juho saying it out loud, Dain seemed to know what he was thinking. Dain urgently approached Juho.
“Juho, it’s not like that, right?”
“What? What do you mean?”
“You look like you’re going to go to the broadcasting club right now and get angry. It’s not like that, right?”
“Ah.”
Juho’s answer was ambiguous. Dain felt cold sweat trickling down his back and shook his head.
Dain thought Juho wouldn’t go that far, but you never knew. They say nice people are scarier when they get angry.
Dain pondered how he could stop Juho and then clutched his injured wrist.
“Ow, it hurts. It really hurts!”
With an awkward tone and stiff expression, Dain kept repeating that it hurt.
Juho knew perfectly well what Dain wanted to say, but just crossed his arms and narrowed his eyes, playing dumb.
“J-Juho. I really hurt.”
“Does it hurt a lot?”
“Yeah! It hurts so much I can’t do anything. Today I’d really like it if you, Juho, didn’t go anywhere and stayed by my side to take care of me.”
“Hmm, all day?”
“Yeah, all day!”
“Of course, hyung is hurt so I should naturally be by your side.”
A bright smile spread across Dain’s face.
At least for today, there would be no chance of Juho going out to get angry. By tomorrow, his anger would probably subside a bit and things would work out nicely.
Looking at Dain who was smiling innocently, thinking he had solved everything, Juho snorted inwardly.
He was planning to take care of this naive cat with utmost devotion until he begged him to please go out.
Author: Hyacinthus B
Hyacinthus
