Chapter 3
After questioning my academic advisor almost like an interrogation, I was able to get a rough idea of what was going on.
The reason my medical school had admitted me.
Of course, the special admission provision for men and my grades had played a part.
It was also true that my personal statement, interview records, and entrance exam results had been quite good.
But there had been another, bigger reason.
It was my image.
Korea’s top medical school.
A safe, advanced elite educational institution where even men could walk around without an escort.
In this world, that phrase had been a more powerful 'promotional tool' than anyone might expect.
Most men register with the Reproductive Resources Agency once they become adults.
They regularly provide reproductive cells and, in return, receive lifelong living support guaranteed by the state.
Put nicely, it was state protection.
Put less nicely, it was high-end breeding.
That was the most common route for men in this world.
In a world like that, a man with the grades and intelligence to enter medical school had walked in of his own accord.
From the university’s perspective, I must have looked like a promotional opportunity they couldn’t pass up.
They must have welcomed me with open arms at first.
In reality, the proportion of men who made it all the way to university was extremely low.
And even those who got in usually didn’t last very long.
Primary, middle, and high school education could somehow be pushed along in the name of protection and consideration, but university was fundamentally different.
Major courses were graded, exams inevitably used relative grading, and medical school was especially good at grinding people down.
The school would gain the image of being ‘the advanced university that accepted a male medical student,’ while I would attend for a while before moving on to the Reproductive Resources Agency or some other career.
A win-win relationship with no reason for either side to get upset.
That was probably as far as they had calculated.
'The problem was that I had actually held out.'
No, to be honest, I hadn’t merely held out.
Top-tier grades in my first year.
A perfect score in anatomy practicum.
Top-tier grades in every basic medical science subject.
Even a paper I had submitted separately had started making the rounds among the professors.
That seemed to be when the university finally realized it.
This man might actually graduate.
And he might even become a doctor through us.
“Jihoo⋯.”
After that, my academic advisor continued choosing his words with a troubled expression.
“If you graduate, pass the national licensing exam, and actually enter the medical field, then if anything happens afterward, it will be difficult for the university to escape responsibility for supervising you.”
“I’ll make sure I do well so that doesn’t happen.”
“That’s because it isn’t a problem that ends with you simply doing well⋯.”
He pressed the space between his brows with a tired expression.
“There’s something called the Male Social Activity Management Guidelines. When a man enters a public institution, educational institution, or industrial workplace above a certain level, the institution in question has to prepare a safety evaluation and protective measures. If an accident occurs, it stops being a simple personal matter and becomes the institution’s management responsibility.”
“So I was held back not because of my grades, but because of the risk.”
“⋯⋯.”
He couldn’t answer any further.
But I still had one last line of defense for situations like this.
“Then I’ll file a complaint too.”
“A complaint?”
“With the Ministry of Male Welfare.”
“W-Wait, what?!”
The effect was immediate.
The Ministry of Male Welfare.
A government ministry dedicated to protecting men, established around the world alongside the Reproductive Resources Agency after the collapse of the gender ratio.
Its official purpose was to protect male human rights, guarantee their safety, and prevent discrimination in education and career opportunities.
It sounded like an ordinary administrative agency, but the Ministry of Male Welfare’s power in this world was beyond imagination.
The reason was simple.
There were too few men.
This was a world where protecting men, rather than preventing discrimination against women, was treated as a matter of national survival.
In a world like that, what would happen if a man personally filed a complaint saying he had been 'denied an educational opportunity because of his gender'?
And against the top medical school in South Korea, no less?
From the university’s perspective, it would be a nightmare come true.
If that happened, the school would explode, and I would find myself at the center of a ‘male medical student discrimination case.’
I didn’t want things to go that far, either.
There was only one thing I wanted.
To keep attending medical school, then quietly and safely move into a specialty that made money.
In the end, after a long back-and-forth, the university offered a compromise.
One month.
The condition was that I spend exactly one month receiving clinical observation training at the university hospital.
Officially, it was a special observation program to assess the clinical adaptability of male medical students.
But in simple terms, it meant this.
Show us whether you can really last in a hospital.
And the real intention was probably even more obvious.
'Get a whiff of blood, hear a few patient screams, become sick of the women colleagues’ stares, and run away on your own.'
And so, here I was.
Murmur, murmur.
“Mom, look over there⋯.”
“Oh my goodness.”
“Isn’t that a man?”
“Why is a man at the hospital⋯?”
I was standing in the middle of the university hospital lobby.
Bright white walls and the smell of disinfectant.
Nurses and residents bustling through the space.
Patients sitting in wheelchairs, family members lined up in front of the reception counters, and waiting numbers blinking across the electronic display.
It was a sight I had seen countless times in my previous life.
But things were a little different in this life.
People weren’t looking at the patients. They were looking at me.
More precisely, they were looking at a man wearing a white coat.
“Fuck.”
A curse slipped out before I knew it.
“After all that, I ended up back in this fucking place⋯.”
Of course, this wasn’t a formal clinical rotation or anything.
Even if it was an excuse to drive me out, what kind of lunatic would entrust patients to a medical student who was only about to start his second year?
The actual work was simple.
Helping anyone in the hospital who needed assistance.
Pushing wheelchairs, telling patients who had gotten lost where the examination rooms were, and comforting children who cried because they didn’t want an injection.
In other words, it was closer to hospital volunteer work than medical student training.
I heard that the original schedule even included assisting with ICU observation around the third or fourth week.
But the hospital overturned that plan first.
“You expect me to send a male student to the ICU?!”
“Patients’ conditions can turn on a dime in there, sometimes several times a day! Who’s going to take responsibility if this precious male student suffers a shock after seeing that?!”
“The ICU is a place even senior medical students enter cautiously! You’re just dumping a bomb in our laps!”
So this was the internal division I had only heard about.
The hospital staff, who were supposed to frighten me into leaving, had somehow begun defying the university in the name of my safety.
“Student Jihoo, you can rest anytime you get tired.”
“Mr. Jihoo, if things get difficult, contact me right away. I’ll give you my number. Ah, I don’t mean anything strange by that!”
“Jihoo, drink this. You shouldn’t let your blood sugar drop.”
From upperclassmen who had graduated from the same university to nurses working at the hospital and even residents.
The patients were no different.
“Hohoho, young man. Take it easy. This old woman can walk on her own.”
The elderly woman, who had been sitting weakly only a moment ago, sprang to her feet before my hand even touched her.
“I won’t cry, so just hold my hand once!”
The child who had been on the verge of tears because they didn’t want their blood drawn had stopped crying and was clutching my finger tightly.
“As if I’d show weakness in front of a man—aaaaaah!”
The patient who had been dragging along a leg in a cast suddenly let out a battle cry, hoisted the wheelchair onto their shoulder, and returned to their hospital room.
I stared blankly at the scene and thought,
‘⋯This is fucking sweet?’
At this rate, a university hospital might not be so bad.
As long as it wasn’t a major trauma center, as long as it wasn’t the emergency room, as long as it wasn’t an operating room steeped in the smell of blood.
That was what I thought.
I expected the fourth week to pass just as smoothly.
WEE-OOO―!
That was until the warning lights embedded in the hospital ceiling began flashing red.
At the same time, an announcement blared through the speakers.
― Hunter Trauma Code Red. Hunter Trauma Code Red.
I raised my head.
“Is this the Code Red I’ve only heard about?”
It was an alarm I had never heard in the ordinary hospital of my previous life.
But I could tell from the reactions around me that this was no minor matter.
The medical staff moving through the lobby went rigid-faced.
The patients and guardians standing in front of the reception counters instinctively backed toward the walls.
Several nurses began running while receiving reports over their radios, and the residents exchanged glances before racing toward the emergency center.
Then a familiar smell swept over me.
The smell of blood.
Even after all this time, my body recognized the metallic smell before my mind did.
“Clear the way! Hunter patient!”
The emergency center doors were thrown open.
Stretchers came rolling in one after another.
One. Two. Three⋯ seven in total.
They were dressed in a way that didn’t belong on modern Earth.
Torn combat uniforms, shattered protective gear, blood-soaked gloves, and dark-red stains that looked like monster bodily fluids.
Women wearing equipment straight out of a game.
Hunters.
The heroes of this world who protected humanity from the monstrous creatures known as monsters.
“How many patients?”
A professor from the emergency medicine department rushed forward and asked.
“Four E-ranks, two D-ranks, and one B-rank!”
“What’s the triage?”
“Two E-ranks have lacerations and suspected fractures, and one is alert! One D-rank has an open fracture of the left femur, and the other has a dislocated shoulder and bleeding!”
“The B-rank?”
“Suspected abdominal injury! Her blood pressure is dropping, and she was briefly in shock at the scene!”
“The B-rank is in shock?”
The air around us instantly grew heavy.
A B-rank Hunter.
In this world, a B-rank was by no means weak.
They could face most monsters head-on and were practically human weapons by ordinary human standards.
And one of those Hunters had been brought in while in shock.
That meant something had gone seriously wrong inside the dungeon.
A woman lay on the stretcher that had drawn the largest number of medical staff.
Her abdomen and flank were soaked beneath her broken breastplate, and her lips were faintly blue.
At a glance, it looked like an abdominal injury.
It was understandable that the rescue team at the scene had judged it that way.
But⋯ something was wrong.
'Her breathing is too shallow?'
It was different from merely suppressing her breathing because of abdominal pain.
One side of her chest wasn’t rising properly.
The veins around her neck were faintly bulging, and the area beneath her clavicle caved in strangely every time she inhaled.
Her face was pale, but the corners of her lips had turned blue. That was proof enough.
But then.
“Prepare an ultrasound!”
“Get two IV lines in and prepare blood!”
“If intra-abdominal bleeding is confirmed, contact the operating room immediately!”
The medical staff’s attention was focused entirely on her abdomen.
Of course, there was blood on her abdomen, and she was showing signs of shock.
They had no choice but to suspect intra-abdominal bleeding first.
But.
That breathing wasn’t caused by abdominal pain.
Neither was that cyanosis.
And that chest movement least of all.
The memories from my previous life clicked coldly into place.
Blunt trauma.
Rib fracture.
Lung injury.
Accumulation of air in the thoracic cavity.
Decreased venous return.
Compression of the lungs and heart.
Tension pneumothorax.
A chill ran down my spine.
‘The abdomen isn’t the priority.’
One of the medical staff removed the B-rank Hunter’s chest protector and shouted,
“Suspected fractures of the left ribs! We’ll have a healer work on her chest too!”
The woman who appeared to be a healer raised her hand.
A faint light began gathering at her fingertips.
She was probably planning to heal the broken ribs first.
At that moment, my mouth moved before I could think.
“Don’t!”
Every eye turned toward me.
Only then did I realize that I had stepped forward.
“⋯Yes?”
The healer turned toward me with a startled expression.
Damn it⋯ I wanted to live comfortably this time.
“If you heal the ribs first, she’ll die.”
My mouth started moving on its own.
“Her 'lungs' are being compressed right now.”