Im Jia's Test Results
Thump-thump.
With a feeling of reverence, the doctor—who had become obsessed with medicine—chewed the Gongjindan he had placed in his mouth. The rich, deep scent of musk cleared his eyes, nose, and ears before he had even swallowed. Then, the crushed mass slid down his throat.
'Whoa!'
Dong-hyeok nearly let out a shout. A warmth that made his heart beat with newfound vigor enveloped his entire body, and soon, a heat like standing under the midday sun radiated from the top of his head to the tips of his toes. The Gongjindan, a perfect harmony of musk, deer antler, angelica, and cornelian cherry, was unlike anything he had ever encountered. It wasn't just a difference in ingredient content; the very flow of Qi was overwhelming.
'I’ve been crazy about medicinal herbs for fifteen years, but I’ve never seen anything like this.'
After feeling that thrilling sensation, Hyun Kyungwoo looked different to him. It was true that Kyungwoo had brought two herbs and he had provided two, but...
'No matter how I think back on it, my herbs seem to be in better condition than before, too. That’s strange.'
He cast a suspicious glance at Kyungwoo. Kyungwoo, meanwhile, picked up a pill and popped it into his mouth. Unlike Kim Dong-hyeok, Kyungwoo didn't feel his heart racing. While it was a famous tonic, for him, it was simply a therapeutic prescription chosen to quickly supply vital energy for the treatment of Bae Eun-dong, the village head of Baejae-ri, who suffered from hearing loss. He hadn't expected it to be any different from the other prescriptions he had infused with Polarity.
Gulp.
'Wait, what is this?'
A majestic flow surged through his body, filling him with power. Though the scale might be different, the nature of it was similar to something Kyungwoo knew well...?
Whoooo— Inhale!
Kyungwoo instinctively performed the Inhalation Technique. At that moment, the flow of Jeong-gi-jon-nae (preserving the righteous energy within), which the technique he practiced daily induced, was activated, and the excess vital energy headed straight for his Danjeon.
'...There was a method like this?!'
The clear disadvantage of his Pain Resonance ability was that he suffered as much pain as the patients he treated. To overcome this, the Gamshin-tongmaek-rok had taught him the Inhalation Technique, which involved absorbing the natural vital energy and storing it in his body. But thinking about it, natural vital energy meant...
'That’s right! Herbs are things that grow while harboring the vital energy of nature, and among them, Gongjindan is the representative prescription for replenishing vital energy.'
It was already a good prescription, but he had used top-tier ingredients for all four components and even infused them with Polarity to strengthen them. Thus, to Kyungwoo, who practiced the Inhalation Technique, this Gongjindan acted like a miraculous medicine.
'No, why didn't that book-bastard tell me this!'
It wasn't enough that it acted like an AI with its worn-out cover; it was a sinister thing that made him perform acupuncture on himself even though it could create a human model. It had probably kept the shortcut hidden, keeping its mouth shut because of some strange belief that "hard work always wins."
'Sigh, I feel like using a blowtorch on it.'
Regardless, he knew now. It was only a slight increase—like going from one grain of rice to two—but it was an amount of vital energy equivalent to what he had gathered in two months of daily training. Kyungwoo popped another Gongjindan into his mouth. Seeing this, Kim Dong-hyeok’s eyes widened in shock.
Does he think it's a waste because I'm eating it?
He felt it was a waste, too, but there was something he had to confirm. Munch, munch, gulp.
He ate the second pill and tried the Inhalation Technique. The energy returned from his Danjeon. As expected, it seemed that eating more than one pill a day didn't result in storage.
'So, even if it's a good medicine, it's not necessarily better to eat more than the prescribed amount.'
That was a little disappointing, but...
Thump-thump.
Kyungwoo’s heart began to tremble. The reason he had temporarily put his lifelong goal on hold was simple. Even if he tried to face his calling, if he could only see fewer than ten patients a day, there was no answer. But with one pill a day...
If he took Gongjindan consistently, he would be able to gather vital energy much faster than now.
'If the number of patients I can see gradually increases like that...!'
Feeling his goal drawing closer, Kyungwoo shuddered slightly.
"Why are you wasting them by eating two at once..."
"Shut it. I'll use what's mine however I want."
Kim Dong-hyeok was still grumbling. He seemed quite upset about the Gongjindan. However, when Kyungwoo pushed half of the pills, which had been neatly arranged on a large tray, toward him, his expression changed.
"Half and half."
"Whoa, really?"
Even though they had made them together, the cost of the ingredients they had contributed was worlds apart. If musk and deer antler accounted for 95% of the cost, angelica and cornelian cherry were only about 5%. Of course, he had desperately wanted to have that Gongjindan even if he had to pay a premium, but he had a conscience and was thinking of asking for only a third...
"You... you were a good guy."
Kyungwoo chuckled at the first compliment he had ever received from him.
'I have to keep getting rare herbs from him and making Gongjindan together, so I should treat him well.'
After making them together, he realized that a herb-nerd was indeed in a different class. When separating the dough to roll them into pills, his intuition for measuring the perfect amount was flawless! The shape of the pills he rolled was a perfect sphere, as if stamped out by a machine!
'If I had made them alone, they wouldn't have reached this level of perfection.'
Now that he had to eat them consistently, he would be making them often. Kyungwoo decided to do one more favor.
"Kim Dong-hyeok. Give me your wrist."
"Why my wrist... Don't tell me..."
"Even if I were actually gay, don't you think I'd have standards?"
"Hey, you wanna die?"
Perhaps because they were high on the medicine, they bickered like they were back in school as Kyungwoo resonated with Kim Dong-hyeok’s body.
'As expected...'
The flow of his entire meridian system was pumped up by the Gongjindan. However, that flow was blocked and slowed down in one place like a bottleneck, and that place was...
"Are you an acupuncture-idiot?"
"What are you talking about? I might be obsessed with herbs, but I'm not bad at acupuncture."
"Then why is your shoulder like this?"
His neck and shoulders. His hypertrophied trapezius muscles were bulging upward—it was exactly the shape that would lead a Western doctor to recommend Botox for the traps.
"It's because I'm always handling herbs and decocting medicine. It's an occupational disease, okay?"
"And you call yourself an Oriental medicine doctor. Tsk tsk."
"Hey. Usually, pulmonologists smoke the most, and hepatologists drink the most. And it’s not usually this bad! I just overdid it today making the Gongjindan 'you asked for'."
"Fine, I'll loosen it up for you since I’m the one who made you suffer."
Kyungwoo pulled an acupuncture needle pouch from his pocket.
"Forget it, it's a hassle. I'm not wearing a shirt, so I'd have to take it off."
"I don't want to burn my eyes either. I'll just place one in your hand."
Kyungwoo located the point between the second and third metacarpal bones on the back of his hand and inserted the needle. He had learned the efficacy of this point through his training with the Gamshin-tongmaek-rok.
"Waiguan? You're using this point for shoulder tension?"
As he spoke, tingle—a distinct sensation of acupuncture arrived.
"Uh, uh, hey, take it easy."
Kyungwoo performed a few more rotations and pulled the needle out.
"Whoa. What did you do?"
The tension that had been bunched up like it was being gripped by a clothespin from behind was released, and his shoulder height dropped significantly.
"Botox for the trapezius using a needle."
"...You're insane."
Dong-hyeok felt even more resentful.
'It's too much that you're even eyeing the medicine business when you're that good at acupuncture too!'
With his shoulders loosened, the Gongjindan effect rose to his head, and his eyes snapped open. And in the history of Oriental medical school, students always drank on the day they made Gongjindan.
"Let's go, I'm buying tonight!"
Because if you drink after eating Gongjindan, you don't get drunk!
Glug, glug, glug.
In the back alley where the clinic was located. The two men were pouring soju while grilling tripe at a tripe restaurant.
"Is the clinic doing okay?"
"Well, I'm the best in this area right now, but I don't know how long that will last."
"Why?"
Kim Dong-hyeok, who had downed his soju, said bitterly.
"Did you see the construction site diagonally across the intersection?"
"The first floor?"
"Yeah. They say Somyeong is moving in there. As a 365 Oriental Clinic."
For a moment, Kyungwoo’s hand gripped his soju glass tightly.
"Somyeong..."
"That's their style. They move in right in front of the most successful place in the area and dry them out."
"What kind of style is that? It's just thuggery."
They would move into a neighborhood where the demand for Oriental medicine wasn't high, hold onto patients, and grow by word of mouth, and then, like ghosts, Somyeong would move in. Right in front of that very clinic. Rumor had it that their headquarters' new branch consulting team analyzed the sales of every Oriental clinic in the country to target and devour the ones worth taking over.
Kim Dong-hyeok let out a deep sigh.
"I have regular patients, and I’m going to work hard in my own way, but... I don't know if I can compete with a large chain that sprays advertisements and events everywhere."
"Don't talk like a loser, just do your best. Let me know if there's anything I can help with."
"Then, give me Gongjindan often..."
That was something Kyungwoo wanted, too. 'Anyway, opening a shop right in front of a competitor... They’d know how shitty it feels if they had it done to them.'
An eye for an eye. A plan flashed through his mind. Kyungwoo tucked that plan away in his head.
The next morning. After sleeping roughly at Kim Dong-hyeok’s house and packing the Gongjindan, Kyungwoo headed back to Yongdeok-ri.
Vroom—
As he drove down the highway, he perceived a strange sensation. His right hand felt like it was heating up slightly. Kyungwoo soon realized the identity of that feeling.
'Teacher Gong must be treating someone.'
Gong Chayoung, who had been designated as his disciple, was seeing a patient, and that Polarity was flowing into Kyungwoo. 'This is amazing. I used up everything I gathered making Gongjindan yesterday, and it's like automatic charging. But do they see patients on Sundays?'
Just then, a message popped up on his phone.
He had told her that she needed acupuncture every day for intensive treatment of his hearing loss, and she seemed to have interpreted "every day" literally, going in to treat him even on the weekend.
'That insane diligence...'
He understood why Shin-woo had chuckled when he talked about Gong Chayoung. If he asked her, she would probably answer with a blank look, "You said every day, so doesn't that naturally include the weekend?"
'You said I have to raise this friend well to increase my number of disciples, right?'
The Polarity that filled him without him doing anything was sweet. Kyungwoo thought of a way to increase his pool of disciples while helping Gong Chayoung grow.
'Should I really try writing a paper on Jia’s CRPS treatment with Teacher Gong?'
He intended to check if a case report paper on a single instance would be recognized as a medical text.
Seoul Taegang General Hospital. In the hospital, which was crowded due to the medical crisis, a doctor and a woman in her forties were facing each other in the corridor in front of the relatively quiet stairwell. A young girl was sitting in the wheelchair the woman was pushing.
"Thank you, doctor. I’m receiving your help again like this."
"If she's Jeong-hyun’s daughter, she’s no different from my own niece, so I should at least do this much."
The name tag attached to the doctor's gown read [Orthopedic Surgeon Seong Se-hyung]. He was none other than the son of Mansu-halbae from Yongdeok-ri. He had been a neighborhood friend of Im Jia’s father, Im Jeong-hyun, since they were young. Thanks to Seong Se-hyung’s introduction, Im Jia had been visiting the hospital’s anesthesiology and pain medicine department since her CRPS first broke out.
"But why did you suddenly move up the appointment? Is Jia worse?"
"No, it's not that..."
She denied it while waving her hands, but Jia’s mother’s expression was gloomy and dark. Se-hyung, who faced patients every day, interpreted it as a mother’s maternal instinct, unable to admit that her child had gotten worse.
"I see. Her face looks better, though."
"Yes... thank you."
In fact, because the child was covered with a blanket up to her neck so the wind wouldn't touch her body, only her face was visible. Se-hyung offered a polite greeting and turned away.
'I should send a text to Hyun-soo.'
Because of his hot-tempered and blunt personality, others saw him as cold, but Se-hyung felt genuinely sorry for his friend’s daughter, who was suffering from an incurable disease. He was raising a son and daughter of similar age, after all.
/Hyun-soo. You have the Im Jia patient consultation I introduced today, right? Please take good care of her./
So he had contacted his peer, the head of the pain clinic, but... after the consultation that day, he called Se-hyung.
"Why did you call, Chief Lee? Because of the golf appointment this week? You can't cancel now. If you're going to drop out, fill the spot with someone else."
"No, that's not it... look at this."
What Lee Hyun-soo handed over with a bewildered expression was Im Jia’s test results. Seong Se-hyung, who checked them, was startled.
"She suddenly got this much better?"
"I was surprised too, so I asked, and she said she received treatment from a local Oriental medicine doctor."
"An Oriental medicine doctor? What kind of nonsense—"
At that moment, a sense of déjà vu crossed Seong Se-hyung’s mind, and his conversation with his father from a while ago flashed through his brain.
-You reversed facial paralysis with acupuncture? What kind of nonsense is that-
"They said the Oriental clinic provided the medical records because they were going to a general hospital for tests, but look at this."
Seong Se-hyung hurriedly flipped through the papers.