Chapter 2: The Garden Footage
The security office was a tomb of dead light and humming machines. Dr. Hwang Yeo-hwan stood behind Security Officer Park, a man whose uniform shirt strained over his shoulders and smelled vaguely of old kimchi and sweat. The air was thick, recycled too many times.
“Lunar convergence, you said?” Park muttered, his thick fingers stabbing at a greasy keyboard. The main monitor, a bulky relic with a persistent horizontal line scrolling through its display, flickered to life. “That’s… poetic. You mean the night of the 14th? Big full moon.”
“The 14th,” Yeo-hwan confirmed, his voice tight. He’d already checked the duty rosters. Nurse Jung Daeun had been off-shift. Scheduled for a family event. Her name on the swap board, initialed and approved.
The black-and-white footage of the West Courtyard bloomed on the screen. The timestamp glowed a toxic green: 21:47. The camera was mounted high on the south wall, giving a god’s-eye view of the concrete path, the sad circle of petunias, the solitary bench. The image was grainier than Yeo-hwan expected, sharp in the center but blurring at the edges where the lone security light didn’t reach.
There he was. Kim Seowan. A slender silhouette in standard-issue pale blue pajamas. He was sitting perfectly still on the bench, face tilted up. Even in the silent, pixelated world of the recording, his posture was one of rapt expectation.
“He was out there for twenty minutes alone,” Park grunted, fast-forwarding. The figure of Seowan became a juddering statue, the shadows of clouds whipping over him. “Nurse Hyun was supervising from the doorway. See?” He pointed a stubby finger to the top-left corner, where a blurry shape stood in the illuminated rectangle of the ward’s rear entrance.
“Where’s Hyun now?” Yeo-hwan asked.
“Lunch break.”
Yeo-hwan nodded, eyes glued to the screen. “Slow it down. Normal speed.”
Park obeyed. The timestamp crawled forward. 22:03. The shape in the doorway—Nurse Hyun—stepped back inside. The door closed. For forty-seven seconds, Seowan was completely alone in the frame.
Then a figure entered from the right, from the blind spot where the camera’s view was sheared off by the protruding architecture of the old occupational therapy wing.
Yeo-hwan leaned in.
The figure was tall, dressed in dark scrubs. Moving with a purposeful, familiar stride. They went directly to the bench and sat down, not at the far end, but close. Intimately close. Their shoulder touched Seowan’s.
Seowan didn’t startle. He turned his head slowly. Even through the digital noise, Yeo-hwan could see the omega’s face soften, the way his posture relaxed and inclined toward the newcomer. It was the body language of recognition. Of welcome.
“Zoom in,” Yeo-hwan whispered.
Park worked the controls. The image jumped, pixels swelling into amorphous blocks. The figure’s face was a smudge of grey, features obliterated by shadow and the poor resolution. But the build… the set of the shoulders… the way a strand of hair, cut in a specific, sharp bob, fell just so…
It was a woman’s build. A familiar one.
Nurse Jung Daeun.
But that was impossible. Her timetable. Her alibi.
The figure on screen lifted a hand. Placed it gently on Seowan’s abdomen. Seowan’s own hands came up to cover it. They sat like that for a full three minutes, a silent, two-person ritual in the monochrome garden. Then the figure stood, leaned down, and pressed what could only be a kiss to Seowan’s forehead. They turned and walked briskly back the way they came, disappearing into the architectural blind spot.
Seowan remained on the bench, one hand now cradling his own stomach, looking up at the moon the camera couldn’t see.
Yeo-hwan’s own blood sounded like static in his head. “Can you pull footage from the OT wing corridor? The camera that would have caught where they came from, where they went?”
Park shook his head, popping the cap off a soda bottle. “That one’s been on the fritz for a month. Budget hold-up. It just feeds black static after eight PM.” He took a long swig. “Why? Someone smoking out there?”
“Something like that,” Yeo-hwan said flatly. He pointed at the screen. “Burn that clip. From the 21:50 mark to the 22:10 mark. Onto a drive. Now.”
“Procedure says—”
“Burn it, Officer Park. Psychiatry Wing authority. Patient confidentiality override.” Yeo-hwan’s tone left no room for debate. It was the voice he used with agitated patients who were moments from needing a restraint. Calm, absolute, and layered with steel.
Park blinked, sighed, and fumbled in a drawer for a blank USB drive.
While the file copied, Yeo-hwan’s mind raced. A doppelgänger? A deliberate impersonation? Jung Daeun was a good nurse. Efficient, somewhat stern, but well-liked by the patients for her no-nonsense kindness. He thought of her hands, capable and quick during injections. He thought of the way she’d sometimes rest a hand on a distressed patient’s shoulder. A professional touch. Was it the same touch that had lingered on Seowan’s belly in the garden?
The drive popped out. Yeo-hwan snatched it, his fingers cold. “This visit never happened. You saw nothing unusual on the 14th. Understood?”
Officer Park just nodded, his eyes back on his soda bottle, already wanting the strange, intense doctor out of his stuffy tomb.
The hallway outside the security office was blindingly bright, the disinfectant smell a sharp relief. Yeo-hwan stood for a moment, letting his heartbeat settle. Confrontation was a minefield. If it was Daeun, alerting her would give her time to construct a story, to destroy evidence, to panic. If it wasn’t, accusing a respected nurse of a profound violation would shatter trust and morale on the ward.
He needed evidence. Not just grainy footage. He needed to see her timetable for himself, the original, not the digital copy. He needed to know who’d swapped shifts with her, who’d approved it.
He turned left, away from the psychiatry wing, toward the main nursing administration office. His footsteps were quick, sharp echoes in the empty corridor. He passed a mural of a smiling sun, its paint chipped and faded.
He pushed through the swinging doors into Admin. The room was a forest of paper. Filing cabinets stood like sentinels. At the central desk, Choi Min-ji, the perpetually harried nursing director, was buried behind three stacked trays of forms.
“Min-ji-ssi,” Yeo-hwan said, forcing a smile that felt like a crack in ice.
She looked up, pushing her glasses up her nose. “Yeo-hwan-ssi. If it’s about the overtime approvals, I told you, next week—”
“It’s about a shift swap. Last month. The 14th. Nurse Jung Daeun.”
Choi Min-ji blinked, then swiveled in her chair to a specific cabinet. She pulled a large, leather-bound ledger. The physical master log. Her finger traced down a column. “The 14th… Daeun… here. Scheduled for a 2 to 10 PM. She swapped with… Lee Hye-jin. For a family wedding. Approved by… me.” She looked up. “Why?”
“Just cross-referencing for an incident report,” he lied smoothly. “A patient mentioned seeing someone that night, we’re ruling things out. Do you have Lee Hye-jin’s contact?”
“She’s on today. Ward 4.”
Yeo-hwan thanked her and left, the lie sitting uneasily in his throat. Lee Hye-jin was a young, mousy nurse, relatively new. He found her in the medication room, counting pills into a small cup.
“Hye-jin-ssi, a quick question,” he said, leaning against the doorframe, adopting a casually concerned expression. “You swapped with Nurse Daeun on the 14th?”
She looked up, nervous. “Yes, Doctor.”
“Her family wedding, right? How was it?”
Hye-jin’s eyes darted. “Oh, I wouldn’t know. I just worked her shift.”
“Right, of course. But she covered for you another time in return?”
The nurse’s fingers fumbled a pill. It skittered across the counter. “No. Not yet. It was a straight swap. I needed the 14th off for… for my brother’s university thing.” She was a terrible liar. Her ears were turning red.
“I see,” Yeo-hwan said, his tone gentle. “Well, thanks. Just paperwork.”
He walked away, the pieces clicking into a damning, hollow shape. The swap was a fiction. Daeun had never been at a wedding. Hye-jin was covering for something, probably for a favor or out of simple fear.
His pager buzzed. A short code from the second-floor observation suite. Seowan was asking for him.
Yeo-hwan changed course, his stomach a knot of cold wires. The private suite was quieter, with a window that looked out onto a blank wall. Seowan was sitting up in bed, a tray of untouched food beside him.
“The aura here is… stagnant, Doctor,” Seowan said softly as Yeo-hwan entered. “The mana doesn’t flow. It’s bad for the sacred sword’s development.”
“We’ll have you back in the garden soon,” Yeo-hwan said, the promise tasting like tin. He picked up the chart at the foot of the bed. Vitals stable. “Seowan-ssi, the night in the garden. With Mediator Daeun. Can you describe her to me? What she was wearing?”
Seowan’s eyes grew dreamy. “He wears robes of condensed starlight. But that night… he wore the humble garments of this realm. To walk among the sick without causing alarm. Dark cloth. But his presence… it shone right through.”
Dark cloth. Scrubs.
“And his face?”
“A face of boundless compassion,” Seowan whispered. “Eyes that hold the memory of ancient forests. I cannot describe it further. To look upon it directly is to glimpse the core of the sun.”
Yeo-hwan’s pager buzzed again, twice in rapid succession. Urgent. He excused himself and stepped into the hall.
It was the front desk. Nurse Jung Daeun was there, asking to see Kim Seowan’s chart for medication reconciliation. She was early for her shift.
Yeo-hwan looked down the hall. He could see the nursing station. And there she was, leaning calmly on the counter, chatting with the desk clerk. Her sharp bob was perfect. Her scrubs were the standard pale blue, not dark. She laughed at something, the sound echoing brightly down the sterile corridor.
She looked up. Her eyes met his across the distance. She gave a small, professional nod of acknowledgment. A smile.
Yeo-hwan did not smile back. He felt the weight of the USB drive in his pocket, a tiny, cold stone of truth.
He gave a slight nod in return, then turned and walked the other way, his pace measured, his mind screaming.
He had the when. He had the how.
Now he needed the why. And most of all, he needed to know what a woman who believed she was an alpha mediator from a delusion, or who was exploiting one, was capable of doing next.