Prologue: To the Nineteenth Century?
Prologue: To the Nineteenth Century?
“Juhyeok.”
“Just tell me already. Am I… in trouble?”
Even as I said that, I still held a faint hope.
How could this make any sense?
I was only thirty-eight.
I had only just gotten my specialist certification and finished my military service. I had only just completed my fellowship and was finally starting to think life might become bearable.
“This is… your CT scan.”
Instead of answering, my friend turned the monitor toward me.
What appeared on the screen was the inside of my head.
More precisely, it was my brain—somewhere around the middle, if you sliced it horizontally from above.
Even though I wanted to look away, my medical training as a doctor was too deeply ingrained, so I could not take my eyes off the tumor, which was nearly four centimeters across.
The degree of enhancement, the shape of it—
“It’s malignant. We would need a biopsy to know for sure, but… as it is now, surgery will be difficult.”
“Ha…”
Yeah. Just looking at it, it was obvious surgery would not work.
It looked completely fucked.
Why the hell was something like that growing inside my head?
Before I knew it, my eyes had closed.
“Uh…”
I was sure I had been in the consultation room just a moment ago.
When I opened my eyes, I saw a familiar ceiling.
I was lying in a hospital room.
“He already had a seizure?”
“Yes.”
“Did you contact his parents?”
“Well, Juhyeok’s an orphan. He isn’t married either.”
“Ah… right…”
Apparently not realizing I was awake, the senior neurosurgery professor and my friend were talking beside me.
“How long… does he have left?”
My friend asked in a dark voice.
The professor did not answer right away and let out a sigh first.
No…
It was a familiar look.
Even I had hesitated to speak when facing patients with pancreatic cancer or bile duct cancer.
In other words, it meant there was no hope.
“At most, a month. He’s young, so that makes it worse.”
“Ha.”
“At least he’s alone… tell him to get himself together. Tell him to leave with some happy memories, at least.”
“Should we transfer him to hospice?”
“If the pain starts, there won’t be much choice. He’ll need palliative care.”
Palliative care.
Treatment not to prolong life, but to make the road to death a little more comfortable.
This is fucking bullshit…
All I had done was live diligently.
And as a result, I had only just been appointed and become a professor.
Before I could even print my professor business cards, I got a brain tumor.
What the hell…
What kind of life was this supposed to be?
I did not remember much after that.
“Right, take care.”
“Thanks.”
The moment I was discharged, I got on a train and headed for Donghae.
I just wanted to see the sea before I died.
I had safely arrived and was about to walk toward the shore when something came flying at me at high speed.
“Huh, what the—”
At first, I thought it was a hallucination caused by the brain tumor.
There was no way a truck the size of a house would suddenly appear here.
Wasn’t it bad enough that I had cancer?
Now a truck too?
Wasn’t that a bit much?
“U-uaaagh!”
That was what I thought as I flew through the air.
I thought I saw black asphalt, and then my consciousness abruptly cut out.
“Oh? The baby’s crying!”
And when I opened my eyes again, an unfamiliar ceiling was swaying above me.
It felt like someone was lifting and shaking me.
No, they really were shaking me.
“Ah, thank God.”
Then someone shoved me toward a woman I had never seen before.
The woman smiled when she saw me, then immediately fainted.
I also felt strangely weak, so I closed my eyes.
When I opened them again, I was wrapped so tightly that I could not move a muscle.
I could barely turn my head, but I could at least grasp what was going on.
I think… I’ve become a baby.