#dl;starters

ohkyvngsoo

The thing with doctors' offices was that it was always stocked with useless magazines such as People, Star Weekly, Teen Bop--magazines that weren't even sold in South Korea, but kept the Koreans intrigued by the world known as America. Sometimes, when Dylan was feeling especially bored and restless in his office, he would wander out to the lobby of the hospital to see if there was anything he could get his hands on to read. Reading was an escape from reality for him; even if it was just useless gossip about who's Kim Kardashian's baby daddy truly was, it gave him a few minutes into someone else's world and away from his own.

He sprawled himself across a few of the chairs, making himself comfortable and habitually ignoring the strange looks of all who passed by him. A doctor, in his full scrubs uniform, was sitting in the middle of the hospital lobby reading a magazine as if he didn't have lives to save. Pathetic. He yawned, his hand digging past US Weekly, Ceci, Vogue, Men's Health, until he finally saw a magazine that caught his eye. Modern Times magazine. The corners of his lips quirked up in what could be a smile as he set it on his lap, his nimble fingers beginning to thumb through the waxed pages.

His eyes set upon the pages of beautiful people, posed in unnatural poses but still looking all too natural. He tilted his head, lifting up the magazine and tilting it the opposite direction of his head to see if he could make sense of exactly what the photographer had told that model to do that had given her that pose as a result. Was it like this? He cocked his head further to the right, but that only ended up giving his neck a crick. Or maybe like this... he lifted his leg, stretching it up to the top of the seat beside him--gaining a stare of incredulousness from the old woman waiting for her appointment a couple of seats away from him. He shot her a look--she probably was waiting for her cardiologist anyway, by the looks of her shaking hand, who will probably refer her to him, so she need to not give dirty looks to a doctor that could be potentially saving her life one day.

erxsus

Dylan loathed these hospital get-togethers because it just allowed a bunch of misogynistic, chauvinistic, hot-shot doctors to become intoxicated together, rag on every nurse in the hospital, and hit on every piece of tail that walks across their table. But he was forced to go to all of them in order to get on their good side--meaning, if he needed the operating room first, he'd get it from all of the drinks he'd buy them wordlessly.

Tonight was no exception. Hoots from around the table were cat-calling the 20-something year old female (young enough to be some of their daughters, but with an ass like that? They would never consider it) as she sashayed towards their table, grinning as she asked if they wanted anymore drinks. The team looked over at Dylan, who sighed heavily and nodded to give them the okay that the next round was on him. More hoots emitted from the overintoxicated doctors as they shouted at her, ordering more shots, more beer towers, more of anything that would get them so inebriated that they wouldn't remember all the lives that had been lost at their finger tips that day. Dylan supposed to was fair that they constantly wanted to get drunk. But he really wished they wouldn't drag him in.

Excusing himself from the rowdiness of his co-workers, he stood up from their table and silently made his way through the crowded bar--too crowded for a Sunday night, but what does he know, he prefers to frequent the bars that included pianos and hired musicians for the weekends--and slid onto a bar stool. He leaned his elbows onto the table as he took the few quiet moments he had away from his "friends" to check his phone--no messages. A sigh of relief echoed from his lips when he wasn't being harassed by the nurse on duty that his critical patients were dying at her hands, and he allowed himself to have on drink for the night.

lokests

There was a quaint bar down the street from the hospital that Dylan had always wanted to visit, but never had the chance to. The one thing that drew him to the bar was the fact that most of the emergency room trips were not emitting from that bar--and any place where ambulances didn't frequent was Dylan's favorite place. He was a cardiothroacic surgeon, not an emergency room doctor yet it seemed that as of late, he's more of the latter than the former. I should have gone into emergency medicine instead, he thought to himself bitterly as he rolled his eyes, pushing his way into the smoky bar.

His lungs inhaled the scent of nicotine and he realized that if anything felt like home, it was the bitter feeling of the tar filling up his lungs. He was still dressed in his work uniform--dark blue scrubs, bright white Nikes--and he could feel the disapproving looks from those around him when he sat down on a bar stool to the side of the bartender's view, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from his front pocket. He sneered at the woman across his view, knowing that she judged him for having the cancer stick in between his fingers when he was clearly a health professional--as if her drinking the alcohol wasn't going to kill her liver too. He fished out his lighter from the pocket of his scrub bottoms, flicking it open and watching the flame ignite to light before touching the tip of the rolled nicotine to induce the flame. He brought the tanned part to his lips, inhaling deeply. His eyes fluttered shut when he felt the smoke fill his longs, knowing that his alveoli would be clogged up by morning but not caring enough to stop. It was habit. It was the only thing left of his father.

exedbaek

"You did what?" The flabbergasted look on Dylan's face was enough to scare anyone into telling the truth--everyone knew that Dr. Dylan Lee didn't make facial expressions. But it also wasn't often that a patient would walk into his office and voluntarily confess into using drugs that weren't exactly FDA-approved. "You took what?" The patient in question began to squirm in fear in his chair, completely caught off-guard from his normally stoic doctor's too excited response. The patient was an older, wealthy man who, more often than not, had pretty young things hanging off of his arms. Golddiggers, Prostitutes. Anything 5'6" and taller with legs as long as the Eiffel tower flocked to this man, and it disgusted Dylan to the point of nausea.

The man reminded him too much of the yakuza lord who had killed off his family, but the Hippocratic Oath kept him from turning the sleaze away. Of course the man had heart problems--no one could endure that much sex, take in that much alcohol, inhale that much nicotine without have some kind of health issues, be it mental or physical. Unluckily for Dylan though, this was purely physical. He released a loud, exasperated sigh as he listened to the patient's woes--"I didn't know it would do this to me", "I'm having too many short of breath episodes", "my blood pressure keeps rising and rising", "am I going to die?", "will I have a heart attack?"--and he leaned back against the worn in leather desk chair.

"Shut up for a second," Dylan growled, reaching into the top drawer of his desk to pull out a small notepad. "I can't ask you to bring it in to me or else I'd be forced to report you to the authorities. Give me the name of the drug and the seller. I'll go check it out for myself since you are absolutely useless." He slid the pad across his mahogany desk, watching the elder man scribble down the necessary information with shaking fingers. "Quit taking the damn thing or else you might actually die. You're almost 68 years old. Any kind of drug, be it recreational or not, could kill you at this point. If you want to live to see your new prostitute graduate high school, then you need to get off the streets and stay inside."

sxnnaevn

Dylan liked to believe that if he hadn't become a doctor, if he wasn't on the run from a Japanese yakuza, he would have been a writer. Or a pianist. Or something completely made for people with hopes and dreams and no desire to live a luxurious, stable life. Alas, Dylan didn't believe in the humanities as much as others did since majoring in English only meant you'd end up as some lowlife professor at some state school. English, music, history didn't put food on the table but science did. The world liked science. The humanities was a dying field. But that didn't stop Dylan from purchasing the local creative writing magazine each week.

At the start of every Monday, he'd walk down to the newsstand on the corner of his street and spend exactly $1.75 to buy a magazine that he'd end up throwing away later. It was a creative writing magazine for creative writers who, most likely, depended on this one booklet to make their ends meet. He almost felt like a good Samaritan buying this magazine each week because he knew that it was helping someone, somewhere. Only almost though, because Dylan knew he wasn't a good person. The burning of the tattoo on his back reminded him so.

He settled himself in the coffee shop that sat behind the newsstand--completely stereotypical and completely cliche, but he wasn't going to complain about it since it allowed him to feel like a male lead in a Korean drama for two seconds--and flipped open the magazine. He skimmed over the table of contents, his eyes searching for a topic that would pique his interest. Something that wasn't about love--because love doesn't exist--something that didn't deal with coming of age--because been there, done that--something that doesn't falsify reality. He didn't need his reality to be falsified any further than it already was. After all, who would believe him if he said he was on the run from a Japanese yakuza in the middle of Seoul, South Korea?

munhwaso

"Dylan." He recognized the voice that had spoken his name--it brought him comfort, a sense of home. It made him miss his father. "Dylan, it's me." He looked up--he was sorting medical supplies in one of the examination rooms, preparing for a patient to come in for a post-operative check up due to her heart surgery three weeks ago. "How did you get in here?" Dylan murmured softly, more to himself than to the older, haggard man that stood in the door way. The man was one of Dylan's father's oldest friends--his best friend, if yakuza members were allowed to have one--and he was one of the only members who was willing to keep Dylan's location a secret.

"One of your nurses told me you'd be in here...but I can't stay for long. I told the others that I was here for a quick appointment. I needed to tell you something." Dylan set down the tray of supplies onto the counter, turning to look at the man. A second father to him, the second most prominent male in his life--if being in the yakuza had taught him anything, it was respect. "Dylan, there's another yakuza residing in Korea. I don't know who they are, where they are from, and what they're doing but... be careful. Here's where one of their lord's daughter works. Don't get into any trouble, okay?" The man stepped forward, embracing Dylan affectionately--the only time Dylan was willing to accept any sort of display of affection--before handing him a note with an address scribbled across it. Without another word, the man pressed a kiss to Dylan's forehead goodbye and disappeared within seconds.

sungjongcandyx

The hardest part about being in Korea alone was just that--he was alone. Completely, unexplainably, all alone. Once arriving, he had nothing on him except a suitcase of his clothes, his sister's dog, and his entire's life savings. How could clothing, money, and a dog that barely looks at him be any comforting for someone who was mourning the death of four people? It was a miracle that Dylan himself didn't want to kill himself, but he had to admit there were moments that he did. Weakness, he always told himself, would have let his family die in vain. And Dylan would have rather killed himself for a reason than for his father to die for none.

He set up graves. Side by side, all four of them--father, mother, sister, and fiance. It was in the corner of the graveyard, after begging the keeper of the grounds to let him have space where bodies wouldn't be buried. It was silly in concept to keep visiting graves with no one underneath but it was all Dylan had to keep his sanity. Grief was enough to drive anyone to a point of no return, but he was determined to keep away from that point. These four, faux rocks were all he had.

"Hi." He always visited at the same time--1:15PM on the dot because he was released for his lunch break at 1PM, and it took exactly twelve minutes to take a bus from the graveyard, plus three minutes of walking across the grounds to the spot where he planted the graves--with the same lunch of peanut butter and jelly with a bottle of milk, and a fresh apple for dessert. "I'm back." No response--but what exactly did he expect, for the dead to revive itself just to join him during lunch? "I performed three surgeries today. One on a woman who had a heart attack, and two transplants. It's always a nice day when someone who's been waiting for a heart finally gets one." Silence. He took a seat down in front of the four graves, his dark eyes saddening as he read over each of the engravings on the faux rocks. He set down his paper bag that held his lunch, reaching into the pocket of his white doctor's coat to pull out a small box. He set it down in front of his fiance's grave, his voice softening. "Today would have been our two year anniversary. You wanted to get married today. Happy anniversary, Katherine." He opened the box, revealing the pair of wedding rings he would have exchanged with her had she had been alive, had they had gone through the wedding. He did this every year. This year proved to be no different.

trekhun

When Dylan was in school, his father used to wake up to have breakfast with him before he had to run off to catch the bus. And every day, just as he was tying his shoes and waiting for his mother to hand him his backpack, he would say, "son, if you make something of yourself, you'll make something of me. Have a good day at school." And even though his father was over six foot tall and was covered head to toe in tattoos, he never hesitated to embrace Dylan with an affectionate hug before sending the boy off to school. Even to the day he graduated university, his father had never ended the habit.

He missed school just because of that, which was the reason that he accepted the offer to teach a few science lessons at the local university. Because he missed school, because he missed the routine, because he missed knowing that when the last class let out, he would be able to run home to his mom and tell her about the cute girl in his math class that day.When he stepped onto campus, the first place he headed was not his classroom--he found himself making his way towards the music building, where an overflow of students were walking in and out of with instruments two, three, four times their size. It was just a pit stop before class, he told himself. There were fifteen minutes to kill and Dylan just needed some comfort.

Making his way up to the top floor of the building, he inhaled the familiar scent of pianos. He could smell the wooden smell of the keys, even feeling the smooth exterior of the top of the piano. He could imagine the black and ivory keys contrasting each other, dancing underneath his finger tips. Dylan wasn't good at many things, but the things he was good at--he was really good at. Sometimes, he considered dropping medicine to be a concert pianist. But the thing with concert pianists are: they were in public eye.