At first, my urethra had tingled a bit when I peed, but after a while it felt as uncomfortable as if someone were squeezing it, prompting me to get it checked. And since I was going to the clinic near the university subway station, I figured I should take the engineering student I was seeing with me. I felt it was right because we’d done it a few times at that point. An innocent mistake on my part.

After peeing into a cup and getting that analyzed, I learned the results weren’t some dramatic STD, just my urethra infected by germs, and inflammation resulting from it. “I didn’t know you could get infected in there,” I mumbled to myself, and the doctor, with a concerned expression, delivered an unsolicited lecture about how a woman’s genitals featured many kinds of bacteria and in some cases the urethra would get infected. Feeling weirdly guilty, I closed the consultation room door behind me, face red. Slightly embarrassed, I went into the injection room and was lying there with my trousers halfway down when I heard across the silence two male nurses talking to each other behind a partition.

—Did you see those two? I’m right, aren’t I?

—Yeah. Faggots.

—Fuck, so disgusting.

Before I could stop myself, I burst out laughing. The engineering student I’d come with said there was no trace of an infection in his sample. I joked about what I’d heard in the injection room, but the engineering student immediately flew into a rage and demanded to see the two assholes who had said such bullshit. Watching his reaction, I finally realized this was something I should’ve been angry about from the beginning, and that I had a tendency to laugh loudly in situations where I should be angry. The shot I received that day was painful, and I went out with the engineering student a few more times until it became boring and I stopped returning his messages.

In the midst of reminiscing about my great past loves, I suddenly heard Jaehee screaming inside the consultation room. The nurse who had followed her in opened the door and said to me, with an apologetic expression, “I think you should come in here.” Inside, neither doctor nor patient looked like they had the wherewithal to pay me any attention. The middle-aged doctor, with an angry face, was waving a small ultrasound printout right under Jaehee’s nose.

—This is all because of the way you live your life. Understand?

—Fuck this, I can’t take it anymore.

Just when the doctor was about to say something else, Jaehee grabbed her bag and stood up. And that’s not all she grabbed; she also picked up the 3D model of the uterus on the desk. I had just enough time to think of the word What? before Jaehee ran out of the consultation room with it. The doctor got up and shouted:

—Hey! Put that back!