Chapter 89: We Must Save Them... Lol, Click
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 89: We Must Save Them... Lol, Click
Yeon Ji-yoon was appointed as a professor at Hanyang University Hospital at the young age of thirty-two.
Though there were various connections, including her father being the hospital director, and her own share of stories, she had walked a smooth, golden path. No one could ever find fault with her skills.
The perfect woman who had both backing and talent.
That was the title used to describe her.
Every surgery she performed was a success, and her patients adored her.
She was beautiful, young, kind, and even exuded an air of elegance.
Her effortless kindness brought comfort to her patients, and with such excellent treatment outcomes, their adoration was only natural.
Everyone followed her lead.
They praised her, saying she would have been fully recognized for her skills alone even without her father's backing, and they scrambled to get on her good side.
If only the world hadn't changed, she would have lived the exact life she wanted, at least within Hanyang University Hospital.
But the world did change.
Disaster struck, and zombies ran rampant amidst the chaos.
The hospital?
It was literally hell itself.
As soon as the zombie virus broke out, the infected multiplied like wildfire.
Immobile patients. The nurses who were with them.
Doctors. Staff.
There was simply no way out.
Especially on a weekday afternoon.
Escaping zombies in a packed hospital?
Hiding was by far the wiser choice.
Fortunately, Yeon Ji-yoon had been outside.
By the time she returned, the hospital was already a living hell, so the survivors banded together through a group chat.
Doctors. Nurses. At first, a few staff members were mixed in, and the hospital pharmacists joined as well.
The only saving grace was that on their way out, they found a truck that had come to deliver pharmaceuticals to the hospital, and they used it to escape.
The truck full of medical supplies proved incredibly useful.
Whenever they needed a place to stay while hunting zombies, they would rely on a decent faction, taking charge of medical treatment in exchange for safety.
As they secured food this way, they gradually realized that their knowledge was highly valuable in this new world.
Of course, it wasn't always smooth sailing.
There were those who targeted their group, which consisted mostly of women.
Bastards who didn't care about their status as doctors and just wanted to strip them down first.
Less than a month had passed, but they had been through so much. Yeon Ji-yoon streamlined her faction.
Those destined to die died, and those who needed to be abandoned were abandoned.
Leaving only the truly essential people, she scouted other factions to find a more efficient way to survive.
And then, she made contact.
This place is definitely safe.
It was a faction whose reputation had already spread far and wide across Seongsu-dong.
The "Paradise Membership" system was exclusive to Seongsu-dong, allowing people to buy food using the otherwise useless coins obtained from killing zombies.
Yeon Ji-yoon's faction immediately headed down toward Seongsu-dong.
She signed up for the "Paradise Membership" and looked into Paradise.
The more she learned, the more astonishing it was.
In a ruined world.
Smart people quickly grasped reality and adapted.
In such a world, this kind of infrastructure was nothing short of miraculous.
At least, the world Yeon Ji-yoon had seen north of Seongsu-dong, after leaving Hanyang University Hospital, was practically a regression to ancient times, despite the modern backdrop.
From the moment the electricity cut out and the water stopped running, humans ceased to look like humans; they looked like beasts.
Unable to wash, unable to sleep properly.
That was why she desperately wanted to enter Paradise.
She gathered information.
She went to the cafeteria, used coins to buy meals, analyzed the faction's structure, and quickly noticed what they lacked.
Actually, there was barely anything to figure out.
Since her only expertise was medical knowledge, she could see at a glance that this faction lacked medical care.
Although there was someone with a healing skill, she was confident that such an unknown power could never triumph over systematic knowledge.
Over the past month, she had occasionally seen people with healing skills, but they couldn't perform proper medical treatment.
It was certainly an impressive power.
An ordinary person with zero medical knowledge could heal wounds simply by using something called mana.
But it was insufficient.
It's only a half-measure.
Minor cuts were fine, but treating severe injuries that way could cause the wounds to fester or lead to other complications.
That was why she accepted the bet.
Because she believed she could win.
The filthy, lustful gaze directed at her body was utterly repulsive, but she had to keep a cool head.
Just because the leader of Paradise was a pervert didn't mean she should let her emotions get in the way.
No matter how much he acted on instinct, a man leading an entire organization wouldn't be able to act completely recklessly.
She just had to win.
With that thought, she had accepted the bet, but...
"Stop the bleeding!"
Her mind went completely blank when he suddenly stabbed one of her nurses in the stomach.
I have to save her.
Putting the bet aside, this was a nurse who had been with her ever since the zombie apocalypse broke out.
She was a nurse who had taken wounds to protect her and had always stepped up to do the heavy lifting.
Fortunately, they had surgical tools.
A makeshift operating table, clean sheets.
In the pre-apocalypse world, this was absolutely not an environment to perform surgery in, but those days of luxury were long gone.
Worse, her condition was critical, with every second counting.
The dagger had plunged straight into her abdomen and had even been twisted, damaging her internal organs.
The surgeons jumped into action.
Tools were quickly prepared, along with a substitute for an operating table.
They brought a table from the cafeteria, draped a cloth over it, laid her down, and immediately began the surgery.
They were outdoors, and the environment was highly distracting.
But Yeon Ji-yoon hadn't attained her professorship through luck or connections alone.
She focused.
Driven by the sole determination to save her, she also briefly harbored the thought of winning the bet, securing a solid position in this faction, and eventually taking it over.
She poured all her concentration into the task, leaving her with no room to check on her surroundings.
She didn't even have the leeway to check on the other nurse who had been stabbed.
The other nurse was also a companion, but humans naturally favored those closer to them.
Did she die?
Can a healing skill really cure something like that?
She wanted to assign another doctor to her, but the situation here was far too critical.
Let's handle this first.
How much time had passed?
"Whew."
The worst of the crisis had passed.
She had treated the wound and sutured it shut.
Of course, this wasn't the end.
They had to monitor her progress under absolute bed rest.
"Good job, everyone."
As she looked up at the sky, a wave of dizziness washed over her.
She had concentrated too intensely, and it had been a long time.
"How long has it been?"
"Two and a half hours, Professor."
Only then did she remember the other nurse.
"...What about So-yeon?"
She asked cautiously.
She must be dead.
The nurse was no longer lying where she had last seen her.
"I'm right here."
"...Huh?"
Instead, she was standing.
Wearing clothes drenched in blood right where her abdomen had been stabbed.
As if to prove it wasn't a dream, the tear in her clothes where the dagger had pierced remained perfectly intact.
"How... how is this possible?"
Was it a fake knife?
Of course. They only stabbed my nurse so they wouldn't have to risk their own.
But then, what about all this blood? Unless they had planned and agreed on this beforehand, there was no way it was fake blood.
"..."
Nurse So-yeon couldn't answer.
Instead, someone who had been watching rang the doorbell of the studio apartment building in front of them, and a man walked out, stretching his arms.
"What, you guys just finished? Man, I was so sleepy I took a quick nap, and I slept like a baby. Wow, nice stitching."
"..."
She was too bewildered by what was happening to even think of asking.
The woman who was supposedly Paradise's doctor followed behind the man, rubbing her eyes and letting out a wide yawn as she approached the nurse who had just undergone surgery.
"Oppa, should I heal her?"
"Yeah. If we leave her like this, she's basically a living corpse."
"Okay."
"Don't touch her!"
She screamed at the man who was poking the sutured area with his finger, but he didn't even pretend to listen.
This time, the woman known as the doctor of Paradise stepped up and poked it too.
Then, she raised her hand and spoke.
"Heal!"
A dazzling light poured from her hand.
It was absorbed into the surgical site.
And then, it healed.
Perfecty.
"The bet was over the moment we started, but you guys were working so hard I just let you be. Good job. You can go inside that building over there and rest. Figure out the rest yourselves."
The man leaned in and whispered to Yeon Ji-yoon.
"Go wash up and get ready. You never know when I'll come to fuck you."
"..."
Rather than resentment over her defeat, a profound sense of helplessness blocked out any sound from reaching Yeon Ji-yoon's ears.
It was a red pill.
Until now, she had believed, witnessed, and remained convinced that those mysterious healing skills were ultimately nothing compared to human medical technology.
But all of that was absolutely nothing in front of the real deal.
They had been stabbed in the exact same way, with the exact same wound.
And she could cure it with a single wave of her hand?
Without leaving a single complication behind.
The nurse who had just been healed opened her eyes and stood up.
She said she felt no pain, nor any sensation of having been stabbed.
For the first time, a thought crossed Yeon Ji-yoon's mind.
"Is there... anything we can even do here?"
A critically injured patient is brought back to life with a single gesture.
Why do doctors even exist?
The man, who hadn't left yet, offered her some comfort.
"Don't worry. You guys will earn money at the hospital by doing chores and treating minor patients. High-value talent shouldn't be wasting their time curing things like colds or light scratches, right? You guys can handle that."
"..."
Hanyang University Hospital was quite large.
It was a university hospital, after all.
As a professor there, she was someone who would never be looked down upon, no matter where she went.
To Yeon Ji-yoon, his words were a shocking wake-up call.
"When she says she's tired, brew her some coffee. If you do chores and live under our wing, I'll make sure you can live without any worries."
Yet, the reality she couldn't refute was utterly heartbreaking.
She still couldn't erase the image from her mind.
A patient whom professionals who had spent decades in this field labored for hours to save...
...was brought back to life by a woman with seemingly zero medical knowledge, just by raising her hand and uttering a bizarre word like "Heal!"
"If you don't have the ability, you've got to at least put in the effort to make a living. Do your best. You look pretty tasty, so I'm giving you a Membership Level 3. Have some confidence."
Her self-esteem plummeted straight to rock bottom.