A couple of hours had passed since the meeting with Lee, Seo and the other coaches. They had been rather productive since then, much to Hana's annoyance. They had said they weren't going to let her practice or play Starcraft anymore, a promise they quickly kept. Her computer, mouse, keyboard and monitor had all quickly been removed from the practice room and stashed in Lee's room. Even her chair had been taken leaving only a piece of furniture that seemed more a tombstone than it did an actual desk now.

At least her coaches had the decency to leave her a laptop that she could use, albeit one with a lousy wireless mouse connected via bluetooth. She could try to play games on the laptop if she really wanted to but this mouse had horrible tracking and would be a thorn in her side if she did try to play Starcraft. A part of her couldn't help but wonder if this was Seo's doing. Giving her a bad mouse was such a simple move but would be more effective than any other kind of deterrent... and right out of her mentor's playbook.

Speak of the devil and he'll appear, or she in this case. Seo was there at the doorway, announcing her presence with a knock on the door. "Have you called the doctor yet Hana?" The two women exchanged looks, Seo's patient and Hana's irritated. Seo folded her arms and leaned against the doors frame.

After a minute Hana conceded the battle of wills, reaching for her phone on the dresser next to her bed and started to dial the number on the white business card she had received. As the number rang Seo remained where she was to make sure Hana was following through. The medical clinic's phone rang twice before someone picked up. "Central Seoul Doctor's office, how may I assist you?" asked a patient sounding woman.

"I need to schedule an appointment with one of your doctors." explained Hana.

"Are you a returning patient?"

"No, I'm new."

"What is your name please?"

"Hana Song."

There was a short pause before the other woman responded. "Of course Miss Song, we were told you would be coming. There's an available slot at ten-thirty for you in two days if that works for you."

"S-sure, that's fine." said Hana.

"Great, Doctor Kwun will see you at ten-thirty on Thursday then. And before I go I want to say I'm a big fan. Have a good day Miss Song." The other woman hung up.

Hana frowned as she looked at her phone, the implications of this conversation not lost on her. Two days was awfully fast for a new patient to be able to get in to meet a doctor. And the woman hadn't said that there was a slot open, she had said there was a slot open for Hana. She looked at up Seo, rather perplexed. "Did you guys do something to fast track me visiting this doctor?"

"Yes." admitted Seo. She glanced down the hall towards the practice room then stepped into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her and sitting next to Hana on the bed. "Lee is worried. We're still the top team in the Proleague but without you there's a chance we could fall out of the top four and not make the playoffs. He wants to get you to the doctor and treated as soon as possible so you'll be back before the playoffs begin... but that's not going to happen is it?"

"Huh?" responded Hana, as if she didn't understand the question.

"I'm not stupid Hana. You wouldn't be sticking yourself with needles if it was just your hands. How bad is it really?"

Hana sighed and she pulled one sleeve of her sweater up to just above her elbow. The skin of her arm was a shade of apricot like the rest of her body except in one area. The crook of Hana's elbow had whitened to the point that it resembled bone more than skin and there were tiny blackish-red scars where she had been poking herself with the needles. "The other elbow's like that too and my shoulders have started to hurt as well but I'm not injecting myself there...yet."

Seo's shoulders slumped and she cupped Hana's elbow with one hand while brushing her fingers over those scars with the faintest of touches. "Oh Hana... what have you done to yourself?" asked Seo, her tone graver than Hana had ever heard it. "I knew you were injecting yourself when I found that needle but I didn't realize it would be this bad..."

"Seo I was just-"

"Stop, just stop. I know why you did this, to keep your win streak going but it ended today. I'm not going to let you keep hurting yourself anymore. I don't want to tell Lee about this but I need you to promise me that you won't try to play again this season."

"But what about the Proleague? The team needs me!" protested Hana as she jerked her arm out of Seo's grasp.

"Forget the Proleague. Lee thinks you can come back this season but only because he doesn't know about... this." Seo gave a meaningful look at Hana and the younger woman first wavered then started to openly cringe beneath it. "You don't owe anything to Lee, to the team or to me. You owe it to yourself to deal with your problems."

Not return this season. If someone had suggested that to her earlier this week then she would have laughed in their face but then this day had happened...

Hana looked back down at the needle marks on her arm. Yesterday these had been a point of pride for her, a sign of how dedicated she was to being the best. Now when she looked at them all she saw was how desperate she had been, how far she had been willing to go and what she had done to herself in the name of winning. "Okay Seo, I won't come back this season but I am going to come back."

Seo reached behind Hana's back to grip her far shoulder and pull her protege against her in a one-armed hug. "I don't doubt it."

Hana stared at the empty parking space, unable to comprehend the fact that it was empty. There was supposed to be a vehicle here but there wasn't. There was nothing there in fact, not even any glass that might have indicated a broken window. Just a bare patch of concrete. Hana fished her phone out and dialed a number, her voice surprisingly steady for someone in her situation. "Uhh hey Seo it's me. I think someone stole my car."

"Huh? Oh, it wasn't stolen. Lee had it moved to storage yesterday. That car is really recognizable and we don't want to draw attention to the fact you're going to a doctor's office." said Seo as she explained the absence of Hana's garishly pink sports car.

"But you published a press release last evening. It's on the front page of every esports site right now. They already know." said Hana, not understanding Seo's logic.

"They don't know the full extent of it, just that you're having wrist problems. If reporters saw your car making repeated trips to the doctor's office they'd start poking around and neither of us want that. I did get you a car though, it's to the right of where the Maserati was parked."

Hana's swung to her right towards the vehicle in question and her hand holding the phone faltered then slowly descended to her waist. Calling this thing a car was almost an insult to every other car on the road. Paint so discolored and faded that it was closer to gray than the plain white it had been decades ago when the sedan had rolled out of the factory. There was even a sizable dent in the driver side door of the box shaped abomination. "You must be joking. This is the ugliest car ever made. I can't be seen driving this pile of junk!"

"You don't expect me to spend a fortune buying you a luxury car that you're only going to be taking to the doctor's office do you? I know it doesn't look like much but it'll get the job done and then we can sell it to get some money back." Hana opened her mouth to further argue the point but she could practically see Seo shaking her head through their cell phones as her coach cut her off. "This is the way it's going to be Hana. Complaining won't change anything." Seo hung up.

Hana's fingers tightened on her phone and she had to fight off the urge to dash it into pieces against the cement wall. She cast the car an irritable look but her shoulders sagged in defeat. 'Fine you scrapheap, I'll use you but soon as I get my other car back I'm going Goodfellas on you with a baseball bat.'

The doctor's waiting room was mostly empty, its only occupants Hana and a few other people. As she waited Hana pretended to read one of the magazines from a nearby table while she surreptitiously checked out the other patients waiting in the room. One was a pop star she vaguely recognized from seeing her on the TV. Another was a guy whose name she couldn't remember from some popular TV show she had only watched once or twice before rolling her eyes and closing the stream. The last was a well known journalist whose blog Hana had actually subscribed to during the last election even though she hadn't been able to vote at the time. Including her they were all public figures who had all happened to end up at the same doctor's office on the same day. 'I guess I know why I got sent here even though there's places closer to the team house.' Hana mused to herself. She snuck another peek over the top of her magazine only to see the actor doing the same thing, the fact he recognized her clearly evident in his eyes.

"Miss Song?" A nurse dressed in pink scrubs was standing at a door leading to the back area of the clinic, clipboard in hand. "Please come with me." Hana followed her through the doorway and up to an electronic scale. "Shoes off please." After a second or two the red LED's came on, fifty six point four. Next to the scale was a square metal rod that could slide and down with numbers written on the front of it. Once Hana had her back to it the nurse pushed a blue plastic rod down against the top of Hana's head. Hana glanced at the number out of curiosity since it had been a long time since she had bothered to check how tall she was. The nurse jotted the number down, one hundred and sixty four, on her sheet next to the box for her weight. After that Hana was whisked off to one of the waiting rooms to sit on a paper covered examining table. The nurse turned towards Hana as she pulled a black cuff attached to a pressure dial and black bulb through rubber tubes off of a hook. "Roll up your sleeve please Miss Song."

Hana hesitated, not relishing the idea of exposing her scars to a stranger, but those scars were why she was here. She took a deep breath and hooked her fingers underneath the sleeve, rolling it up into a wad of fabric around her bicep. The nurse paused for a moment before taking the initiative as she shifted the cuff into one hand and pushed at Hana's sweater with the other, moving it up higher so that Hana's slender bicep was fully exposed for the cuff to wrap around. Once the cuff was on the nurse put another reader on the tip of Hana's index finger. The nurse squeezed the bulb several times while the reader did its work then she removed them both once she had gotten their measurements. "The doctor will be with you shortly." said the nurse just before she left the room along with her clipboard.

Posters discussing various medical ailments hung on the wall, a computer sitting at the login menu was in one corner and various medical odds and ends sat in jars on the shelf above the sink by another corner. Nothing interesting to look at or even any magazines to read. Hana started to pull her phone out but she spotted a sign on the wall asking people to leave cell phones off as she did so. She grumbled to herself and slumped over backwards onto the table with a crinkle of paper. 'So boring.'

Fortunately she didn't have to wait long before Doctor Kwun arrived and she sat back up right away trying not to look impatient. Kwun was a middle aged looking man with hair cropped extremely short and an unusually stiff posture that made him look even taller than he already was. The clipboard that the nurse had been filling out had found its way into his hands and he flipped through it briefly before setting it inside. "Your blood pressure is high for someone of your age Miss Song. You should cut back on sugary drinks if that's a habit of yours. Eliminating them altogether would be best. Your pulse didn't indicate anything out of the ordinary." Kwun set the clipboard down on the counter and his gaze quickly found its way towards the marks on her elbow. "What are you injecting yourself with? Morphine? Cocaine? Heroin?"

"N-no. C-cortisone" stammered Hana, caught off-guard by the doctor's bluntness and rapid, but still staccato, manner of speaking.

"Corticosteroids In the elbow? I see. You're an E-sports professional so you spend significant hours in front of a computer with a keyboard and mouse. Taking multiple over the counter drugs according to coach. Repetitive stress injury, carpal tunnel, tennis elbow possible." Hana blinked as he went on, it was almost as if he was talking to himself more than to her. "Do you have any shoulder pain?

"Excuse me? I didn't say anything about taking meds. I don't know where you're getting that from." said Hana with a scowl as she pulled her sweater's sleeve back down to hide her scars.

"Your coach, Seo Eul Ji, is an old friend of mine. You're not the first player of hers to have problems that required discretion from their doctor. We had an enlightening discussion regarding your particular situation yesterday. You've been heavily self-medicating which is a dangerous thing to do. You should be lucky that you didn't get an infection from the Corticosteroids you've so recklessly been injecting yourself with. Furthermore she told me that you have problems respecting other people's authority. Let me explain a few things to you."

Kwun walked forward until he was looming above her as he leaned forward, his countenance completely placid as if discussing the weather. His voice was anything but however and the hard edge to his voice was enough to make her skin break out in goosebumps. "I served in the military like all the other men in this country but I stayed in the service and trained the people who protect our country. Let's just say that I loved my job and leave it at that. You don't need to know the details. What you do need to know is that I am your doctor. You will follow my instructions and your health will improve. If not your health will get worse and that will be your fault. Do you understand?"

"Yes sir." squeaked Hana, feeling every bit the bunny rabbit that had become her logo.

"Good." Just like that his voice was back to normal. "Do you have any shoulder pain?"

"Some but not as much as my wrists and elbows. My right hand is the worst though, that's the hand I have on the keyboard."

"You're left handed?"

"Yes."

"Let me see your hands." Hana held her hands up, palm down, in front of her torso for him to look at. His hands were significantly larger than hers but there was still a surprising deftness as he carefully squeezed her digits and knuckles between his fingers. "No swelling, discoloration or noticeable lumps. Tell me how this feels." Kwun pressed his thumb against the heel of her right hand and held it there as he quietly counted to thirty before releasing the pressure.

Hana frowned as she looked at her hand, not understanding what was going on. "It's... numb. I can't feel... wait now it's tingling. Ow, ow, ow." She started wringing her hand out trying to get rid of the invisible needles now poking into it. "What did you just do to me?"

"That was Tinel's test. I compressed the median nerve in your hand to see how you would respond. Numbness, tingling, a bit of pain. All classic signs of carpal tunnel syndrome. Let's try the other one." Her left hand had the same responses as her right but not as severely.

Next up was to take a look at her elbows. Surprisingly he didn't start with the needle marks that he had seen earlier. "Straighten your arms as much as you can." Hana held both arms out in the air without feeling anything out of the ordinary. "Rotate them so your elbow is facing up then facing down." Next was bending her arm at the elbow and swinging her limb up and down to test that range of motion.

Easy enough, still no pain. "Reach towards the ceiling and stretch your hands as far up as you can."

Hana began to raise her arms up but her hands had scarcely gotten above the crown of her head when she stopped, both shoulders protesting the action. She grimaced visibly and lowered them back down but the newfound ache didn't disappear. "That's as far as I can go."

Kwun rubbed at his chin for a moment as he considered his patient. "How long has it been since you last injected your elbows? Their range of motion seems fine but it's possible you aren't feeling pain there because of the corticosteroids."

"I injected myself last week."

"I see. I'll have to list your elbows as being inconclusive for now. We could wait for the effects to wear off but that will likely take months. I'm going to schedule you for an MRI so we can get a better idea of your elbows condition."

Kwun stood up and moved to the computer so he could start entering information in. "I don't want to suggest anything drastic when it comes to treatment since we have an incomplete diagnosis. I'm going to recommend you stop taking all your pills for the time being. The real problem is the fact that you've been injecting yourself for so long. It's possible that your adrenal glands aren't functioning properly but I can't tell without further tests. There's quite a few possible side effects so I'll need to print out documents of things you should be watching for. The biggest issue right now is weaning you off the corticosteroids. You can't just stop taking them because there's a risk of cardiac issues arising, mainly dyslipidemia or hypertension, something you already have a problem with, which can lead to coronary artery disease."

As the doctor continued to speak his monologue was increasingly peppered with more and more words that would have high scores in a game of scrabble. The more he spoke the more Hana felt herself shrinking inwardly as the full realization of her folly was hammered in by a litany of medical terminology. If Kwun was trying to scare her then he was succeeding.

"After I go my assistant will come back to get a blood sample so we can run some tests on that. For now though I'm going to refer you to a physical therapist to see if we can manage your carpal tunnel and joints without having to resort to surgery."

Kwun printed out another page and added it to the already abundant stack he had been collecting before leaving. Hana stared at them as she waited, alone, the ink letters on the paper a declaration of what her foolishness had brought upon herself.