Chapter 1
South Korea in the year 2030…
Yay! The Castrato Medical Center is peaceful today as well.
“Did you secure the field with suction?”
Though the OR was in an uproar with alerts saying the patient had gone into hypotensive shock, wasn't this the hospital operating room's normal life?
And even more so in a trauma surgery OR.
So we can say the hospital is peaceful again today.
Humming a tune while putting on my surgical gloves, the resident on the operating table shouted in a hurry.
“Fellow doctor! The patient's vitals are dropping!”
“Yeah. I'm doing it as fast as I can too. Fussing doesn't make the formula come out faster.”
Today's patient was a traffic accident victim crushed by a truck.
After finishing the prep, I looked into the patient's open abdomen.
“Luckily, the spleen isn't as shattered. But the upper GI tract is completely necrotic. The volvulus is severe too. What did you do to make a pretzel out of a person's insides?”
“There was a bit of an incident when they were rescued after being crushed by the truck.”
“How many hours did it take to get to the hospital?”
“About four hours.”
“We can't save this one.”
“Huh?”
The resident looked at me in shock at that.
I realized my slip of the tongue and hurriedly corrected myself.
“I mean we can't save the stomach and small intestine. Of course the patient will live. We've saved people in worse shape than this.”
Heck, I've even saved a patient with a bullet in his heart.
And while it was still beating, too.
Don't believe me?
I thought even I couldn't believe this was happening.
“Let's go with a total gastrectomy. For reconstruction later, leave a little extra in case we do Roux-en-Y. Staple it for now.”
While untangling the twisted bowel, I stapled shut the ends of the esophagus and small intestine.
Finally, I inserted a tube into the small intestine for nutrition and made an opening on the outside of the abdomen for waste to pass through.
“What did they eat during the day to end up with this in their stomach?”
“Wouldn't they develop sepsis?”
“Eh, that's for Infectious Diseases to handle. That's their job.”
I changed contaminated gloves a few times along the way.
By suturing the torn diaphragm and inserting a chest tube, the surgery was over.
“Phew...”
I lowered my mask and took off my gloves.
“You handle the final closure. And—”
I tapped the resident on the shoulder.
“Tell Professor Kim in GI that once the patient stabilizes, we'd like reconstruction done.”
“Yes, sir!”
“Oh, and don't forget to take a photo of the surgical site and send it along. We need to know where you placed the feeding tube so we can avoid it later.”
“Yes, sir!”
“I clearly told you, right? Don't forget and get the whole team punished like last time?”
“Yes! Understood! Good work, doctor!”
“Yeah. And also.”
Before leaving the operating room, I gave the resident a reminder.
“Transfer the admission to GI. If they call, I'll block them. If there's a problem, tell another professor. I'm going to sleep through my whole off-duty time.”
As soon as I got out of the operating room, fatigue came crashing over me like a tidal wave.
Checking the time, I'd been at work for 12 hours.
From clocking in that morning to a hit-and-run, a fall, a stabbing, and just now a truck…
It really was a densely packed day.
Ah. Looking again, the date had already changed.
It was 36 hours, not 12. Damn it.
“Fuck. Let me get off work already.”
36 straight hours of surgery.
This isn't something a human should do.
Then, suddenly, I remembered the most important fact I'd forgotten.
I went straight back to the operating room.
And I called over the medical students who were blankly watching from the corner of the OR.
“You med students.”
“Yes, yes, sir!”
“This is a 20-million-won surgery.”
“Huh?”
“The reimbursement for trauma surgery went up a couple of years ago. Do this once, and the six people in this OR split 20 million won. We do have to take out some of the material costs, but still, that's a lot, right?”
“???”
“If you do a night surgery here after 6 p.m., you get almost double. Trauma surgery makes this much money. How about it? You should do trauma surgery, right?”
At those words, the medical students' gazes swept over me, the resident, and the nurses in turn.
Heroes soaked in blood, sweat, and dark circles under their eyes.
Wasn't that enough to make them fall for us?
Soon, one of the med students hesitated, then
“I-I’m sorry.”
Ah, why!
*
As soon as I got home, I threw myself onto the sofa like a corpse.
I don't even have the strength to shower.
“Haah... I need to sleep soon...”
But my chronic modern ailment had flared up.
My body was drained, but my brain refused to rest and kept clamoring for dopamine.
I habitually turned on my smartphone.
“Is there no novel with light content…”
Reality is basically a fantasy world overflowing with ghosts, entities, and patients.
Thanks to that, trauma patients have been pouring in lately, so trauma surgery doesn't get a moment to breathe.
So I didn't want to read something gloomy in a novel too.
“Something calm... and healing...”
I scrolled down, and a title in the rankings caught my eye.
<Schnabel's Journal>
#fantasy #fusionpunk #misunderstanding #medical #…etc
“Schnabel? A plague doctor?”
Schnabel.
A German word meaning a bird's beak.
It's also a word for a plague doctor.
— [Please do not call Schnabel a saint. That is not a miracle.]
— Please don't trust the crow doctor. A plague doctor is not what you think.]
I combined the blurb and the tags.
Misunderstanding and denial... and a saint.
Schnabel is a German word for crow.
In other words, the original work's protagonist was probably a plague doctor wearing a crow mask and going around healing people.
The story would have been about the people around him mistaking him for a saint and putting him on a pedestal.
I have plenty of webnovel experience.
At this point, I could read the shape of it instantly.
‘I can roughly estimate the original work.’
If the protagonist casually wrapped a few bandages and prescribed some medicine, women like the Northern Grand Duchess or the princess passing by would probably get obsessed, saying, “You're the first one who ever treated me like this.”
Then the protagonist would be hailed as a saint or prophet, while he, burdened by it, would try to escape.
Only to get caught again and dragged through wealth and glory.
“He has it easy, this guy.”
Meanwhile, someone else is on the verge of losing his mind suturing the guts of someone crushed by a thousand-geun truck.
And someone else is a misunderstanding-genre protagonist praised just for breathing.
If I could live like that, it would be great.
‘Let's see how he lives in another world.’
I opened the prologue right away.
And before I even read the novel's first sentence,
Crack-!
a sensation like that came with searing pain as if the center of my chest were being torn apart.
A dreadful radiating pain, as if a sharp axe were splitting my sternum and piercing through to my spine.
My smartphone slipped from my hand and hit the floor.
Cold sweat poured down like rain, and my vision flashed white.
‘Ugh... damn it... I’d been feeling like my digestion was off lately.’
Judging by the fact that I didn't even have time to scream before I went down... acute myocardial infarction? Or an aortic dissection?
I always stressed to the med students that if a patient says they have indigestion, you have to suspect heart disease too.
And yet here I was, thinking it was just indigestion and looking for stomach medicine the whole time.
‘Damn it... I was right at the threshold of a professorship...’
***
I opened my eyes to find myself in another world.
‘I survived.’
In a different sense, though.
Anyway, I had been brought back to life.
The name I was given at birth was Yulian Schnabel.
The moment I saw the surname Schnabel, it wasn't hard to guess I'd possessed the novel I was about to read.
And, of all things, as the protagonist.
‘I said I was jealous of the protagonist, not that I wanted to be the protagonist.’
I was also able to directly experience the settings from the novel that I'd been unable to confirm at the time.
This world was a setting that mashed together dark fantasy and fusion punk.
Humanity, driven back by monsters and demons, chose to build walls and hide inside them.
Even so, every now and then, news would come that another fortress had been occupied.
A gloomy world setting that, if I could rank possession targets, I'd definitely put dead last.
The first adult I saw in such a world was not my biological parents, but a friend of theirs.
I heard that my parents had left me in that person's care and then run off to the southern front to heal soldiers.
— “Yulian. Your parents were truly wonderful people.”
Maybe because this was that kind of world.
My parents, who had gone to the southern front, never returned.
‘Even after reincarnating, why did I have to end up in a place like this?’
This was definitely a reincarnation with problems in many ways.
But it wasn't a reincarnation that was all bad.
If I remember correctly, the work had a misunderstanding tag.
That implied only one thing.
‘Still, that means the future is bright.’
I'll be a little unhappy now.
But in the end, the future will be happy.
As long as I put in even a little effort.
So there was no need to be intimidated by a brief unhappiness.
'A chance will definitely come. Until then, I should keep reviewing so I don't forget.'
I was in the middle of imagining that happy future in my head.
Then, suddenly, a chilling possibility flashed through my mind.
Because I remembered the site where the novel I'd been reading was being serialized.
‘Wait. If it's Topbelpia... what gender am I right now?’
I immediately looked down.
…Thankfully, it was still there.
‘Phew... the crown prince and the grand duke won't get obsessed with me, then.’
After that, time passed.
One day, while staying in the annex of my godfather's mansion and constantly reviewing my medical knowledge.
One setting I hadn't been paying attention to came crashing into my life.
The bodies of my missing parents were found.
The moment my status as a potential orphan became that of a confirmed orphan.
“Yulian. Let's go meet your parents. At the very least, you should see them off on their final journey.”
As soon as he heard the news that the bodies had been found, my godfather took me to the southern fortress.
After taking an airship, crossing the Demonlands, and reaching the southern fortress.
I attended my parents' funeral there.
I wasn't able to see my parents' bodies directly.
I was told it wasn't a sight a child should see.
What I could see were only the two blanket-covered bodies being lifted out of the swamp.
Only then did my biological father's death feel real, and I felt a little sad.
Not enough to cry, but enough to need a little cheering up.
“Yulian. If it's hard, go take a walk.”
Taking my godfather's consideration, I had a little time to myself.
Then, by chance, one scene caught my eye.
The red liquid the local guide was drinking.
That red liquid somehow looked familiar.
So I asked.
“Mister, what are you drinking?”
“Ah, this? It's water boiled from tree bark. If you drink it here when you have a fever, you can make it through.”
It was a drink the local beastman guides helping with the funeral were drinking.
Instead of water, they were constantly drinking that reddish liquid.
“It's from the tirun tree. Would you like to see it too, young master?”
“Can I try it?”
“Here you go. Though... are you sure you'll be all right?”
“What do you mean?”
“Still, it's something eaten by the lowly...”
“They're the ones seeing my parents off on their final journey. I never learned the manners for calling such kind people that.”
“…Thank you for saying that, young master. Please, have some here.”
I took a sip of the water the beastman handed me.
The red water had a dry, bitter, cocktail-like taste.
Like…
‘Tonic water?’
A taste I couldn't mistake.
This tasted like tonic water.
At that moment, the words in my head began assembling themselves.
A demonland swarming with mosquitoes.
A fever like malaria.
And tree bark that tastes like tonic water.
‘Eureka.’
Combining all of these led to the conclusion that quinine could be made.
Quinine.
The name of the malaria treatment.
In the past, Europeans had been unable to colonize Africa because of malaria, but after this drug was discovered, they were able to dominate Africa.
In that sense, it was a drug that changed the world map, too.
'This water definitely tastes like a tonic-water cocktail.'
Tonic water is a beverage made from quinine.
That dry, bitter taste is strangely addictive, so once it was made into medicine, it has a history of being used in cocktails.
'Gin and tonic,' if you like alcohol, you probably know it.
Though not many people know it originated from quinine.
Anyway.
The fact that I thought of quinine the moment I drank the red sap was no coincidence at all.
Because this drink had that cocktail taste.
‘Calm down, Yulian.’
I barely managed to steady my trembling hands.
I wanted nothing more than to start researching the drug right away.
But this was a different world.
Maybe the disease was different, or maybe this was just some other medicine that happened to taste like tonic water.
So before I started on the medicine, I first investigated the fever on the southern front.
And after putting the symptoms together, I could be sure the Demonlands fever was malaria.
It mainly occurred in mosquito-heavy areas, with fever that flared up every three days.
Typical malaria symptoms.
On top of that, drinking this red sap made the fever subside.
There was nothing more to confirm.
‘And I'm already a misunderstanding-genre protagonist, and there's even a stroke of luck like this?’
I started guzzling the kimchi soup I'd been holding back.
Honestly, I didn't know whether this was a stroke of luck meant for the original protagonist.
Maybe it was meant for some other supporting character.
But once I'd found it, there was no option to leave it alone.
'I wasn't even sure if it was right to be developing it at my age, but whatever.'
I immediately set about developing a malaria treatment.
I referred to the history from my previous life for how to make the drug.
The malaria drug quinine was born from studying the bark of trees that African natives had boiled and drunk.
A European who saw that processed the tree's sap into quinine, the malaria drug.
So I decided to do the same here.
'Looks like I had no choice but to stumble through trial and error from the beginning.'
Fortunately, quinine is one of the simplest pharmaceuticals to make: a mere extract.
If you refine a sap that already works on malaria a little more elegantly, quinine is born.
So it was perfect as my first project.
And so, I spent half a year boiling and drying tree sap to make the medicine.
Along the way, I realized the trees in this world were a little different from those in my previous world and changed course.
‘In my previous life, the sap was definitely the raw material...’
In my previous life, the tree's sap was the main ingredient of the medicine.
But in this world, the bark had the stronger healing effect.
Thanks to that, I wasted half a year spinning my wheels researching the wrong raw material.
'Whatever. This means I found it fast.'
But I wasn't especially upset.
If anything, I was relieved.
Relieved that I'd realized my mistake after just half a year.
From that day on, I immediately started studying the bark instead of the sap.
After that, I boiled and roasted the bark, and in between I even gave soldiers pocket money to help with clinical trials.
In the end, quinine was complete.
There was just one minor problem.
‘Can I really name it quinine?’
At first I wondered if I should give it a different name since it had been made from the tirun tree.
Tinin? Tiro?
But then I figured I'd only confuse myself, so I just went with quinine.
If someone asks about the etymology, I'll just say my parents chose it for me in a dream.
“For now, the medicine is finished...”
It was finished, but there was a problem.
There was a limit to how I could supply and sell this medicine in the body of a ten-year-old child.
So I was just mulling over how to promote it when...
- “The head of the household has collapsed!!”
My godfather, who had returned from a southern inspection, collapsed with malaria symptoms.
notes":"Adjusted the chapter title for natural English; tightened several awkward lines for fluency while keeping the source meaning, and used role-based terms like 'resident' and 'godfather' to avoid guessing gender where context was ambiguous."}】submitted_requested to=final 公众号天天中彩票