[The Bee That Repays Kindness]
“Senior, am I just bad at acupuncture?”
Three weeks had passed, and it was now November.
In that time, Yang Jinwon had received six acupuncture treatments and, as the concentration was gradually increased, three bee venom injections. Even though he was told it wasn’t even at a high concentration yet, he couldn’t help but exclaim:
‘The time it takes for the stiffness to loosen has shortened significantly!’
Morning stiffness.
It is one of the characteristic symptoms of rheumatic diseases, where joints feel stiff and difficult to move upon waking, only improving after some activity. It usually lasts anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours; at his worst, it had taken Jinwon over an hour just to loosen up.
But now, the initial stiffness was much milder, and the time it took to loosen had dropped to about 15 minutes.
“Ankylosing spondylitis is a nightmare in the morning. I have to go out and open the beehive doors, but it used to take me an eternity just to put on my clothes and socks. But look at this.”
Heave-ho—
Jinwon stood up and twisted his waist from side to side.
“My waist used to only turn this much—oh, I’ll attach a comparison video on the side! It barely moved at all. But look, it turns this much now. See? I can even bend down, right?”
Of course, there was no one else in the room, but the camcorder was rolling. Having grown accustomed to living alone with his bees and talking to a camera, Yang Jinwon chattered away, showing off his progress.
He then grabbed his gimbal, mounted his smartphone, and headed outside.
Whirrr—
As he put on his protective suit and opened the hive doors, the bees took flight. Once the temperature dropped below 10 degrees Celsius, they would enter hibernation and stop coming out, but because this year had been exceptionally hot, the bees were still hard at work.
He bent his waist to open the hive doors one by one, his movements far more natural than before.
Jinwon whispered as if sharing a secret.
“This is all thanks to our honeybees and the Oriental medicine doctor.”
After letting his worried subscribers know he was doing much better, he planned to insert the bee venom acupuncture treatment footage later in the video. He carefully caught a honeybee and flipped it over to show its stinger.
“The secret is ‘bee venom,’ a gift from these little friends. You know how it hurts when you get stung by a bee, right? But medically, it’s a treasure. The doctor places it in the exact spots tailored to my condition, and I’m telling you, it’s truly amazing!”
Just then, a car drove up and parked, and a large friend stepped out, waving.
“Doosik is here to help with the honey harvesting today.”
He was a part-timer he used to call often when there was a lot of work, and he had decided to call him in frequently for the time being.
“The doctor told me this. He asked if I was really going to give up after just one year of keeping bees. He told me to hire staff and focus on my treatment, even if I have to take a loss for this year. He said that while it’s a condition I have to manage for life, he’d get me to a state where I can live with my honeybees as much as possible. Hehe.”
As he placed the frames Doosik pulled out into a basin and scraped them with addictive, rhythmic hand movements, he continued.
“Our doctor’s treatment is truly art... My waist is getting better and better thanks to the collaboration between the doctor and the honeybees. The doctor says the bees are repaying their debt of gratitude, but in reality, I’m the one receiving grace from everywhere. He says I’ll get even better as the bee venom concentration increases—aren’t you curious to see how much better I’ll get?”
That night, Jinwon edited the footage he shot today into the three-week treatment video and uploaded the clip.
Click—
The title was .
For the next few days, it recorded a few hundred views, just like usual. But on the fifth day, video notifications suddenly started exploding. For some unknown reason, the video had hit the algorithm.
* * *
The early comments were mostly from his original subscribers.
However, as the comments poured in faster and faster, the new ones were all from new viewers.
Viewers were also highly interested in the mosaic-covered Oriental medicine doctor who appeared in the middle...
This was, firstly, because the doctor’s hand movements during the procedure were extraordinary. Just as one can watch a master dumpling maker for hours without realizing the time, the acupuncture technique of a doctor who had reached such a level was a fascinating and fresh topic for the general public.
And another reason was that Kyungwoo’s teaching, while sounding blunt, was laced with sincere concern for the patient...
In addition, the curiosity surrounding the mosaicked face caused interest to explode. People began to revere him, calling him “Acu-Master.”
100,000 views in just one day. It was a true “viral hit.” Viewers started clicking on other videos from the Honey Farm channel...
The channel, filled with leisurely rural scenery, a slow and sincere tone, and a 4D character obsessed with honeybees, began to grow explosively, bolstered by the channel operator’s warm, handsome face.
And Jinwon... he rubbed his eyes after waking up in the morning.
‘What is this? There’s an extra zero... Is this a glitch?’
The subscriber count, which had been 1,500, had jumped to 15,000. Ten times in a single day. Even when he refreshed the page, it kept going up. And hundreds of comment notifications.
‘Wow... this can’t be a dream, right?’
Jinwon started replying to the comments.
The Honey Farm channel was growing rapidly toward the day it would become a great source of additional income for Yang Jinwon and a fantastic sales channel for his hand-harvested honey.
* * *
> [How is this speed possible...]
The Gamshin-tongmaek-rok was so shocked it even forgot to keep up its usual persona. During the era when ancient medical texts were written, bee venom was only used in its raw form. Raw bee stings were just pricks to the skin, and since they could cause serious side effects, they weren’t considered an orthodox treatment. In other words, because it was never recognized as a treatment for Bone Bi (bone pain) located deep within the musculoskeletal system, the text simply couldn’t understand it.
“It’s the power of miraculous acupuncture.”
> [Even with the perfect combination of acupoints and perfect treatment, this is a refractory case that takes four months...]
“I used medicine, too.”
Kyungwoo had no intention of telling it everything. The Gamshin-tongmaek-rok judged whether to treat patients by reading their conditions, but it didn’t seem able to identify the components or mechanisms when a substance unknown to it entered the patient’s body to treat them.
‘It’s surprisingly clueless.’
However, since that thing possessed mysterious abilities that couldn’t be measured by common sense, he always had to be on guard.
“So, what’s the result?”
> [It has not yet reached a state of equilibrium, so judgment is impossible.]
“You have a rough estimate, don’t you? The way I see it, I can cut the time by at least a month, right?”
> [To make a rash judgment before the results are in is like trying to catch a shadow on the water.]
Seeing it start to talk back with such flair, it seemed it had finally regained its senses.
“Fine, let’s wait and see. Let’s be blunt and ask you one thing. How long will this take?”
> [What do you mean by that?]
“I mean, how long until I can see patients without any restrictions?”
He empathized with the patients’ pain. That meant he truly saw the patients’ illnesses as his own. The way doctors connected to the Gamshin-tongmaek-rok grew was by treating a small number of patients very deeply to acquire the essence of Oriental medicine. Of course, he wouldn’t even be given that qualification until he could resonate with the pain of a thousand patients...
But that method was a huge hindrance to Kyungwoo’s plans.
‘Even if not to the point of seeing patients without restrictions, if I could see at least 15 a day...’
While teaching Gong Chayoung, Kyungwoo’s thoughts had changed a bit. He didn’t have to do everything himself. He thought that once he opened his clinic and it grew in scale, he could hire a vice-director to see patients together.
Even so, 15 was the minimum. Assuming he prescribed some medicine, the minimum number of patients needed to maintain the clinic was about 15 per day. Then, what about the current Kyungwoo Oriental Clinic?
Of course, it was in the red. Since it was in the countryside, there were almost no expenses other than labor and medicine costs, and he had received so much incentive while working at the Oriental medicine hospital that it wasn’t a huge burden, but...
‘It’s not about management, it’s about being competitive!’
At the very least, he needed the capacity to rival the individual branches of Somyung. A clinic where he was the face. Even if he hired a vice-director, he had to be able to see enough of the patients who sought him out to remain competitive.
The ancient text was silent for a moment before answering.
> [A doctor who has mastered all the contents of this text is a Divine Doctor, and that level is one that only a single doctor among all those connected to this text has ever reached.]
“Stop talking in riddles and tell me how long it takes to see patients without restrictions.”
> [That would... take about thirty years.]
‘Thirty yeaars...?’
With an incredulous expression, Kyungwoo narrowed his question.
“Then how long does it take to see 15 patients a day without any trouble?”
> [It is not impossible to see them even now—]
“Without trouble!”
> [In that case, that level is a ten-year plan.]
Just as Kyungwoo was about to explode at those words, the text hurriedly replied as if making an excuse.
> [However, the practitioner’s current rate of achievement has far surpassed the previous average. It is... a speed that does not fall far behind even the one who reached the level of a Divine Doctor.]
“How long did it take that person to see 15 patients?”
> [Just one year.]
In fact, Kyungwoo’s speed, which borrowed modern tricks like research papers and bee venom acupuncture, was faster than that Divine Doctor, but the Gamshin-tongmaek-rok kept that to itself, wary of Kyungwoo’s arrogance. Kyungwoo, however, didn’t feel intimidated at all and grinned.
“Is that so? Then shall I try to achieve it in half a year?”
* * *
Whirrr-whirrr-
The printer spat out materials. On the left were stacks of research papers, and on the right were piles of original Oriental medicine texts like the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon, the Treatise on Cold Damage, the Golden Chamber, and the Divine Farmer’s Herb-Root Classic. In the midst of it all, Gong Chayoung was suffering from an identity crisis as she underlined the materials with a highlighter.
‘Am I a public health doctor, or a graduate student?’
Of course, she felt proud. To think that CRPS could be treated to this extent with Oriental medicine! High-concentration bee venom treatment for ankylosing spondylitis—this was a whole new world! Who would have imagined that she would encounter Oriental medicine treatment cases for severe, intractable diseases that were hard to experience even during her school days or internship, right here at her public health doctor assignment?
But...
‘I’m tired...’
Keeping up with Kyungwoo’s level was no easy task even for the “data machine” Gong Chayoung, and lately, she had been growing a bit weary. No, honestly, it wasn’t that she was tired because of the workload, but...
‘Will I ever be able to become like that?’
Perhaps the sense of shame she felt from watching such an outstanding doctor right beside her was a bigger reason. Compared to her peers like Hwang Jehyun or Kim Dong-hyeok, Chayoung’s self-deprecation was a little less since she just had to follow Kyungwoo’s back, but...
‘My acupuncture touch isn’t quite right...’
As the expectations for her acupuncture from the residents of Yongdeok-ri and Baejae-ri grew higher, she could see her own satisfaction with her acupuncture dropping.
‘Am I... losing my touch?’
She had eventually even started thinking like this. Worried, Chayoung decided to ask Kyungwoo honestly.
“Senior, am I just bad at acupuncture?”
“What’s with that all of a sudden?”
“It’s just... I feel like my skills have dropped compared to before. The patients’ satisfaction seems to have dropped, too... and the times I get that perfect ‘acupuncture sensation’ have decreased significantly...”
Kyungwoo chuckled.
‘She really has no meta-cognition.’
He stood up, took off his gown, and walked outside.
“Follow me.”
The chick trapped in the egg had begun to peck at the shell with its beak.