Chapter 10
Another peaceful day at Daehan Central University Hospital.
No, calling the largest university hospital in the country peaceful is a little strange, isn't it?
This place was always busy, after all.
The outpatient waiting room was packed with patients from morning, and ambulances never stopped arriving at the emergency center.
Rounds were underway in the wards, names were being called in the examination rooms, and outside the operating rooms, families endured the wait while biting their dry lips.
But a week ago.
Compared to the day when a B-rank Hunter from the Geumseong Guild had been brought in, this was peaceful enough.
At least the medical staff weren't running all the way down to the first-floor lobby today.
There were no emergency broadcasts ringing throughout the hospital, and no security guards blocking off the area in front of the Hunter Trauma Center.
There were no reporters swarming in and shoving cameras into people's faces, nor were two A-rank Hunters glaring at each other in the middle of the hospital as if they were about to tear each other apart.
That might be peaceful at a neighborhood clinic.
But by university hospital standards, this was peaceful enough to count as ordinary life.
However.
Even within that peaceful routine, there was one person.
“Ziiiiiiiiing.”
“Um⋯ Doctor Na? It's almost time for you to start rounds⋯.”
“Ziiiiiiiiing.”
Na Ha-young alone was anything but peaceful.
A park inside Daehan Central University Hospital.
A child in a hospital gown sat in a wheelchair, and Seo Jihoo was carefully pushing it from behind.
As part of a special observation program, he was taking a pediatric ward patient out for a walk.
And Na Ha-young was staring intently at the scene from behind a corner of the building.
I'm always watching you!
As if she wanted to proclaim that fact with her whole body, she was even supplying the sound effect herself.
“Ziiiiiiiiing!!”
The resident standing beside her called out cautiously, but Ha-young reacted a beat late.
This had been happening more and more often lately.
She kept missing the time for rounds, letting conference calls go unanswered, and sometimes even glaring at empty air during preoperative briefings.
More precisely, she wasn't staring into empty air, but in the direction where Seo Jihoo was likely to be.
The reason was simple.
Next week, that man would be returning to university.
A genius the likes of which this era would never see again.
No, even the word genius wasn't enough.
A monster of a doctor.
And that person was going to finish a mere one-month special observation program and disappear back into the lecture halls of medical school.
“Jihoo⋯ why won't you understand how I feel⋯?”
Ha-young gritted her teeth.
And of all the career paths he could choose, he wanted to work at a neighborhood clinic.
Apparently, he was planning to move to a quiet rural area or outlying district with poor medical infrastructure and open a clinic there.
Clinic work with little demand for surgery, almost no emergency calls, and a relaxed schedule.
There was nothing wrong with the idea itself.
From a man's perspective, it might even be a sensible choice.
But Ha-young saw it differently.
It was no different from burying a treasure underground and letting it rot.
A week ago.
During the surgery on the B-rank Hunter Jang Mi-hyeon, Na Ha-young had been forced to acknowledge it.
Seo Jihoo's abilities weren't special only because he was a Hunter.
Of course, a Hunter-specific scalpel capable of casually opening a B-rank Hunter's mana-reinforced tissue was absurd enough on its own.
And his ability to analyze the mana layer around the rib cage, assist with incision depth, and materialize equipment with nothing but his fingertips was something she had never seen before.
But that wasn't what was truly frightening.
Diagnosis.
Judgment.
And his hands.
While everyone's attention was drawn to the bleeding in the abdomen, he had first identified the true cause that was killing the patient.
A tension pneumothorax.
Air leaking from the torn lung had become trapped inside the thoracic cavity, and the resulting pressure was crushing the lung and heart and killing the patient.
It was the kind of moment even experienced doctors could miss.
When people see blood, they look at the blood.
When the abdomen is torn open, they look at the abdomen first.
But Seo Jihoo was different.
Shallow breathing, the movement of one side of the chest, the color of the lips, the slight distension of the jugular vein, the pattern of shock.
He pieced those fragments together in an instant and arrived at an answer.
Then he trusted it and acted immediately.
That was what drove Na Ha-young craziest.
He wasn't some rookie with nothing but talent.
Nor was he an inexperienced genius.
Those hands already belonged to a surgeon who had saved countless patients.
‘That makes no sense.’
Na Ha-young wasn't an ordinary doctor, either.
She had awakened as a Hunter in childhood and redirected the senses characteristic of beast transformation into the medical field.
She had completed a special program in the United States, where Hunter medical systems were more advanced than Korea's, and obtained both her medical license and Hunter specialist certification faster than anyone else.
After returning to South Korea, she had saved countless high-risk patients at the Hunter Trauma Center.
The Golden Scalpel of the Hunter Trauma Center.
That was the nickname Na Ha-young had earned.
Even she had been forced to acknowledge it after watching Seo Jihoo operate.
That was a realm she could not reach.
And yet.
“Tch⋯.”
Why was he trying to waste such incredible talent like this?!
And not at the Hunter Trauma Center, or even a university, but at some quiet neighborhood clinic.
Besides, his career choice wasn't the only problem.
Being a doctor wasn't a profession one could qualify for simply by attending medical school.
Six years of medical school.
The national medical licensing examination.
Obtaining a license.
Unless he aimed to become a specialist, he could avoid internship and residency training.
With only a medical license, he could open a clinic as a general practitioner.
With Jihoo having just finished his first year, he had at least five years to go.
Long from one perspective, short from another.
But could anyone guarantee that Seo Jihoo would remain safe during that time?
That was the problem.
The National Reproductive Resource Management Agency.
An international organization established under the pretext of managing men's genetic information and reproductive cells.
They had grounds for claiming that it was absolutely necessary to maintain the world's collapsing sex ratio.
It was also true that, thanks to its existence, birth rates and genetic diversity had been maintained at a certain level.
But that was separate from the fact that it was always embroiled in controversy over men's rights.
Especially when it came to men with superior genes.
Intelligence enough to get into medical school.
Talent the Hunter medical field would covet.
And the fact that he was male.
If a man like Seo Jihoo said that, instead of entering their oversight system, he would move to the quiet countryside and open a clinic⋯?
There was no way the Agency would simply leave him alone.
The issue of moving him straight into his second year was proof enough.
On the surface, they had cited grades, safety, and clinical adaptability, but in reality, it was no different from saying they intended to put him through the wringer at a university hospital for a month.
They were throwing a male student who had only finished his first year into the middle of Daehan Central University Hospital, where several people lived and died every day.
For anyone living in this world, it was an idea that could never be called normal.
'At least Jihoo was so capable that he got through it safely despite everything. If they'd been ordinary men, they might have been reduced to wrecks by the fear of death!'
But what would happen after that?
Ha-young's eyes narrowed.
They would definitely reach out again.
When she thought of that, an inexplicable sense of urgency surged in her chest.
‘This is a dark story that isn't widely known, but⋯ some of the men who enter the Agency are said to suffer machine-induced 'death during sex' around the age of forty.’
It never appeared in the official statistics.
Even when it did, it was wrapped in plausible-sounding terminology.
Declining stamina.
Hormonal abnormalities.
Nervous system fatigue.
Damage to reproductive function.
But the rumors circulating within the medical community were a little more explicit.
They get squeezed too hard.
They are kept under management too long.
Until their bodies can't take it anymore.
‘I can't let Jihoo be lost that way!’
Strength gathered in Ha-young's fingertips.
It wasn't just selfish desire.
Keeping Seo Jihoo tied to the Hunter Trauma Center would be the right thing for humanity as a whole, too.
His talent was absolutely necessary in this era of dungeons and Hunters.
So if kind words weren't enough, then even if she had to use somewhat underhanded methods⋯.
Even if she had to threaten him, it would still be better than letting him die.
'Even if Jihoo ends up resenting me for it⋯ I don't want to watch that boy get dragged away by the Agency!'
Ha-young already had one card in her hand.
The true hero behind saving Jang Mi-hyeon, the B-rank Hunter, a week ago.
At the time, Seo Jihoo had asked them to leave his name out of the incident because he didn't want to attract attention.
So Na Ha-young was the one who stood before the reporters.
Officially, she had become the hero who saved Jang Mi-hyeon.
But the credit had originally belonged to Seo Jihoo.
‘If I offered to give it back⋯.’
No, strictly speaking, all she had to do was subtly hint that she would give it back.
Even Seo Jihoo wouldn't be able to turn that down easily.
The pressure of the spotlight he had tried to avoid falling back on him.
If she could only create that opening, it would be enough.
While he was flustered, she would somehow persuade him.
How badly the Hunter Trauma Center needed him.
How many people he could save there.
And above all, how desperately Na Ha-young herself needed Seo Jihoo.
“Heh heh heh heh⋯ You'll never escape⋯.”
“Eek?! Doctor Na?”
A sinister smile spread across Ha-young's lips.
Though Doctor Na was a senior physician the resident respected, that expression was honestly a little frightening.
Frightening enough that the resident beside her reflexively took half a step back.
But Ha-young herself didn't care in the slightest.
Her gaze remained fixed on Seo Jihoo in the distance, pushing the wheelchair.
That was when it happened.
“Doctor Na Ha-young!”
An urgent voice cut through the air.
Ha-young's expression changed instantly.
The playfulness and obsession vanished, and the specialist from the Hunter Trauma Center took her place.
At this hospital, when someone came running to find her saying it was an emergency, the possibilities were obvious.
Severe trauma.
A high-risk Hunter patient.
Or an emergency situation too difficult for the operating room to handle.
“What happened? Don't tell me we have another new Hunter patient?”
But the nurse who came running shook her head as she caught her breath.
“N-no, it's not that.”
“It isn't?”
“A visitor has come to see you, Doctor Na.”
“A guest?”
Ha-young's brow furrowed.
A visitor who had specifically requested to see a specialist from the Hunter Trauma Center at Daehan Central University Hospital.
Moreover, it was during clinic hours.
There weren't many people who could simply meet Na Ha-young at the hospital just because they wanted to.
At the very least, it had to be someone important enough that merely hearing the name would delay her schedule.
When Ha-young only stared at her, the nurse glanced around once and continued in a low voice.
“Hunter Han So-ra of the Baekho Guild is here.”
“⋯What?”