Chapter 1
Chapter 1
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Translator: Ebonarch
Chapter: 1
Chapter Title: Korea
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The traffic light at the four-way intersection flickered rapidly.
"Where am I?"
He knew he was standing in the middle of a city right now. But he couldn't remember why he was here.
"Who am I?"
He couldn't even recall who he was.
He needed information.
He checked the clothes he was wearing.
On his right arm was a picture of Earth with the words Earth Union.
On his left arm, there was a unique emblem along with the text Strategic Special Forces.
There was no name on his chest. No rank insignia either.
"Is this a military uniform?"
He couldn't remember that either.
He lifted his head. Between the curbside trees along the asphalt road, there was a banner for some event. Among the printed text on the banner was the event period.
"2022?"
He turned his head left and right. A whispering voice had come right by his ear, but there was no one beside him.
He asked,
"Who are you?"
He didn't remember what that was, but he could guess its role.
"Then what year is it now?"
He pointed at the banner hanging from the curbside tree.
"It says 2022 on there. What's your basis for judging that info as wrong?"
He was flustered. He hadn't expected that answer.
"Huh? 2082?"
He looked at the banner again.
It clearly said the event date was in 2022. He turned his head and spotted a few more ads mentioning 2022.
"What about your activity logs after you were made?"
He understood immediately what that meant.
"You've lost your memory too, huh?"
"That's what you think. If you can't confirm the year, let's figure out the location first. Where is this?"
He looked around. Far off in the distance, he could see mountains.
"So this must be south of Dobongsan."
"Why again?"
"So you do know something."
"Your so-called basic info isn't all that trustworthy..."
Suddenly, the Combat Support AI warned in a rapid voice.
He whipped his head to the right.
Ignoring the malfunctioning, flickering traffic light, two cars crossing the intersection collided. One of them spun off sideways and slammed into a pile of objects by the roadside.
Some of those objects shattered, sending debris flying toward where he stood.
Suddenly, semi-transparent visual data popped up in front of his eyes.
A red semi-transparent glowing outline appeared around the debris hurtling toward him. A few pieces had yellow outlines as well.
Hazard levels in text and numbers displayed right next to the incoming debris, but there was no time to read them. Instead, he instantly recognized that the red-marked pieces were more dangerous than the yellow ones.
He twisted his body immediately to dodge the red debris. The yellow pieces flew past him without touching his body.
As soon as he evaded the debris, he asked,
"What was that red outline I just saw in my vision?"
"Like showing images through contact lenses?"
A groan came from behind him.
"Ughhh."
He turned around. A piece of debris that had just flown in was embedded in the stomach of an unconscious man.
There were plenty of other people around. They had all flinched in shock from the debris flung by the car crash.
Those people panicked when they saw the injured man too.
"Argh! There's a metal rod in that guy's stomach!"
"I-Is he dead?"
"Call 119!"
Looking at the accident scene, he asked,
"That guy... he got hit by the debris I just dodged, right?"
He had come to his senses where the traffic light was malfunctioning. He still didn't know why the light was broken.
"What's the probability this accident happened because of me?"
"You don't know?"
Looking at the injured man's wound, he asked,
"If we leave him like that, is his life in danger?"
He clicked his tongue.
"The ambulance probably just dispatched this way. It's impossible to get him to a hospital ER with surgical capabilities in 5 minutes."
"If it's 2022 now, those drones don't exist. A regular ambulance with four tires is the best we can hope for."
"No. Common sense just came to me."
He approached the unconscious injured man, checked the wound, and said,
"Assuming this situation is a battlefield, find a way to save him."
Field Emergency Surgery
Implanted Combat Support AI: Suggesting Field Emergency Surgery.
His eyes widened.
"I know how to do surgery? Am I a doctor by any chance? Damn, I must've been a good student."
"Not a doctor, huh. Then how am I supposed to do surgery?"
"You can save this guy?"
No need to hesitate then.
"Do it now."
He patted his pockets. Nothing.
He shouted to the people standing around.
"Needle, thread, knife, disinfectant—bring anything you've got! We have to save this guy!"
The people mistook him for a doctor upon hearing that.
A nearby woman pulled a portable sewing kit from her bag.
"Doctor. I've got a needle, thread, and tweezers. But these are for sewing clothes..."
"Hand it over anyway!"
Someone else pulled out a utility knife for cutting paper.
"I've got a box cutter... will this work?"
"Box cutter! Perfect! Give it here!"
Lots of people had hand sanitizer.
"I've got alcohol spray for hand disinfection!"
"Give me all the disinfectant! We'll figure out what to use! Bring any unopened bottled water too!"
That was everything usable from what people had on hand.
He asked,
"Next step?"
"You're going to move my hands?"
"Then do it."
The moment he said that, his hands started moving on their own. It felt like a reflex making his knee straighten—his hands acting independently. But he could still feel the sensations at his fingertips.
The AI-controlled fingers took a needle from the sewing kit and bent it into a curve.
Traffic jams formed on surrounding roads due to the broken traffic light. The 119 ambulance arrived at the scene 8 minutes after the call.
The paramedics moved urgently upon seeing the blood on the ground.
"Hurry!"
The person who had called 119 waved their arms wildly.
"Over here! We've got an injured person!"
The paramedics rushed to the injured man and checked his condition. He was still breathing. His pulse was there too.
While another paramedic fetched the stretcher, the first one examined the injury.
Lucky—the bleeding's stopped, but he's lost a ton of blood.
There was no time to ask questions or clarify the situation. The paramedics loaded the patient into the ambulance right away.
There was a general hospital not far from the accident site. The 119 ambulance pulled up to its emergency room.
The ER staff took over the patient and got a situation report. But the paramedics hadn't had time to learn the full details on-site amid the rush.
ER doctor Lee Jeong-hyeon checked the patient's wound and froze.
"Huh?"
The wound was sutured with thread. The doctor asked the paramedic,
"Was there a doctor on scene?"
"Couldn't confirm."
"What? They sutured him up and didn't even explain his condition?"
"No one on scene identified themselves as a doctor."
"Then what's this? Oh, I get it. Maybe a surgical patient from a nearby hospital wandered out and got into the accident..."
Another paramedic, who had taken a call from the scene, suddenly shouted,
"Huh? What? What kind of nonsense is that?"
The doctor asked,
"What's wrong?"
The paramedic replied with a flustered look.
"Witnesses say a metal rod was stuck in the guy's stomach, and some doctor on scene just pulled it out."
The ER doctor's face went pale.
"How long did it take for the ambulance to arrive?"
"Under 10 minutes."
In that short time, only one method came to mind.
"If they just superficially sutured a penetrating abdominal wound..."
The ER went into immediate lockdown. Calls went out to surgery, and an OR was booked.
After the surgery, surgeon Kim Jung-seok, who had participated, went to find ER doctor Lee Jeong-hyeon. They were med school classmates.
ER doctor Lee Jeong-hyeon asked,
"How's the patient?"
"He survived."
"Good. Since it ended quicker than expected, the internal damage must not have been too bad?"
Surgeon Kim Jung-seok shook his head.
"I was shocked when I opened him up. If they hadn't stopped the bleeding first, he would've died before even getting off the stretcher. Maybe even before the ambulance arrived."
"Huh? That serious?"
"Insanely so."
Lee Jeong-hyeon couldn't wrap his head around it.
"Wasn't it just superficial suturing?"
"No. Internal damage was severe—massive bleeding—but pretty much everything was handled. Barely any leaks."
Based on common sense, Lee Jeong-hyeon could draw only one conclusion.
"The doctor who sutured first must be incredible. From one of the nearby hospitals, probably."
"But it's too weird."
"What do you mean?"
Surgeon Kim Jung-seok said with a confused expression.
"They just used regular thread."
"Huh?"
"Both inside and out—just plain thread."
"Suturing with suture thread—what's wrong with that? Did they do it wrong?"
"They did it perfectly. It bought time by forcibly stopping the internal bleeding on scene. But get this."
Kim Jung-seok traced a straight line in the air with his fingertip.
"The stitch spacing and pattern are perfectly uniform, like done by a sewing machine. I've never seen anything like it."
"Could be coincidence."
"No. Not just the outside—the inside too. Though the inside is even tighter."
"Seriously skilled. So what's the problem?"
"It wasn't suture thread. It was thread for sewing buttons. Just regular thread."
Lee Jeong-hyeon was stunned.
"What kind of bullshit is that?"
"I couldn't believe it either. But it's true."
Lee Jeong-hyeon blanked out for a moment, then asked,
"You removed all that thread, right?"
Kim Jung-seok shook his head.
"No. Left it in for now."
"Huh? Why?"
Surgeon Kim Jung-seok said in genuine admiration.
"It was clearly just regular thread, but I didn't have the guts to remove it and re-suture. If I pulled it all out, I wasn't confident I could stop the bleeding. So I just touched up the forcibly sealed spots from the scene and closed it back up. Full surgery we'll discuss with the other professors once the patient's stabilized."
"Uh... was the initial treatment that solid?"
Kim Jung-seok nodded vigorously.
"Beyond anything you can imagine. If I'd done that hemostasis surgery, I'd write a paper and hit the big time."
This time, Kim Jung-seok asked,
"Who the hell did it, and where?"
He'd come straight to the ER after surgery to ask that.
"No idea. Me neither."
"Wasn't it near the accident?"
"Was there a mobile hospital vehicle equipped for emergency surgery on scene? Just find out whose it was. No clue why they used regular thread instead of suture, though."
"No, this isn't surgery you can do in a mobile unit..."
"Then maybe transferred to a nearby hospital first?"
As they puzzled over it, Detective Park Ki-jeong arrived. He'd checked the scene and come to the hospital to check on the injured man's status.
Surgeon Kim Jung-seok, confirming the detective's ID, asked,
"Perfect timing. Whose mobile hospital vehicle was it? Or what's the name of the hospital right by the scene?"
Detective Park Ki-jeong asked back,
"What are you talking about?"
"Someone had to do the surgery on the patient, right?"
"They said it was done right there on the street."
The two doctors' eyes went wide.
"Pardon?"
"What kind of nonsense is that?"
Detective Park Ki-jeong said with an impressed look.
"Surprising, right? I was shocked too. Must be some ex-US military field surgeon or someone with long experience in medical aid in foreign war zones."
Surgeon Kim Jung-seok had seen exactly what hemostasis techniques were used inside the patient's body with his own eyes. That's why he was even more flustered.
"No, even with that experience, you can't do surgery like that on the street. What I saw today wasn't first aid—it was genuine precision surgery..."
"Pardon?"
"You're saying they did that surgery on the street? No way—how?"
"I'm no doctor—how should I know what to tell you?"
Detective Park Ki-jeong asked again,
"Was it that difficult?"
"No scalpel on the street, for starters..."
"Witnesses said they used a box cutter."
"Pardon? What kind of knife?"
"The kind for cutting paper."
Kim Jung-seok thought hearing it'd been sutured on the street was the most shocking part. But this made his eyes bulge wider.
"Huh? A box cutter? You think human flesh cuts that cleanly with any old knife? What, are they a sword master?"
"All the witnesses said the same—have to believe them."
"What about the needle? We know the thread, but the needle?"
"They said they bent one from the sewing kit."
"Wow. Insane. Disinfection then?"
"Lots of people on scene had hand sanitizer alcohol..."
"Pardon?"
"Oh. And bottled water."
Kim Jung-seok fell into confusion.
"No way, what kind of... How'd they even secure visibility on the surgical site..."
ER doctor Lee Jeong-hyeon interjected from the side,
"Did you disinfect properly when you opened the patient's abdomen?"
Surgeon Kim Jung-seok replied with a paling face.
"Uh... yeah. Used antibiotics too. But now I'm second-guessing if it was enough."
Kim Jung-seok pressed Detective Park Ki-jeong,
"No—the paramedics just watched while this major surgery happened on the street?"
He wasn't accusing—just couldn't comprehend.
"They finished before the ambulance arrived and left the scene. What could they do?"
"Pardon? How long until the ambulance got there..."
ER doctor Lee Jeong-hyeon answered instead.
"Heard it was under 10 minutes."
Kim Jung-seok recalled what he'd seen in the OR that day.
"All that in just 10 minutes?"
He couldn't quite believe it, but he couldn't dismiss it outright either. Then a thought struck him.
"Gotta call our department head."
Lee Jeong-hyeon asked,
"Now? He's on vacation in the US, right? It's dawn there."
"I know. He shouldn't have gone. He'll fly back the second he hears this."