Chapter 1
Chapter 1: The Nineteenth Century [1]
I was born—or rather, reborn—in a small city called Upton in nineteenth-century England.
“Hey, monkey!”
It was a small city with a population of around twelve thousand.
Honestly, compared to my memories of the twenty-first century, it was more like a rural village than a city.
“You wanna die? How dare you say that to my friend!”
“Oooh, Joseph’s mad!”
“Hey, say something too when those bastards act like that! Isn’t it because you stay quiet that they keep it up?”
“Well… it can’t be helped. I look different.”
Racism existed even in the twenty-first century, did it not?
And Britain, being an island nation, was even worse.
But the era I had been reborn into was the nineteenth century.
In the Britain of that time, more than half the people had probably never even seen an East Asian person like me before.
No… how did I get reborn in England instead of Joseon?
Even I wondered about that.
How had this happened?
Later, I found out that my family was apparently one of the first Catholic families in Joseon.
They were heading to Macau to become a priest and a nun, then somehow fell for each other on the way…
My parents said that while traveling to Macau with Father Andrew Kim Taegon and others, love blossomed between them during the voyage.
Still, they could have simply returned to Joseon after that, but since things had already turned out this way, they decided they might as well see England too, so they followed Father Aidan Turner.
Somewhere in the middle of all that, while everyone else was busy working on the ship, who knew what they got up to, but I ended up being born there and our family settled down. That was the family history.
“They’re all God’s children! Just because he looks different, they call him a monkey? Those bastards, I swear!”
Because of that, and because the priest helped us in various ways, we had never truly suffered much hardship.
In particular, my father found work with a wine merchant company run by the Lister Family, who were devout Quakers, so we actually lived better than many other households.
As for me, I was just friends with the Lister Family’s son—in other words, Joseph Lister—and got along with him well.
“Anyway… do you want to try it again today?”
“Ah, are your eyes okay? You said they hurt if you used that too often.”
“It’s fine. For something simple like this… I can manage.”
It was nice enough that the kid was decent.
But this guy had a microscope.
The problem was that it was such a primitive model that it felt like your eyeballs were going to pop out if you looked through it for too long.
Still, for someone like me who had come back from the twenty-first century to the nineteenth, there were not many toys more interesting than a microscope.
“Then should we catch something first?”
“Sounds good.”
And since I was with Joseph, the local social butterfly, even I, an East Asian, could go anywhere.
His family was wealthy enough to be called the richest in the city, so everyone tried hard to stay on Joseph’s good side.
Of course, there were always some bratty kids who did not know their place and still picked fights.
But I had risen all the way to professor in twenty-first-century Korea.
There was not a single one among them who could match me in grit or stubbornness.
“Uh, uh. Pull!”
“Okay!”
Anyway, Joseph and I often went to the nearby shore to catch shrimp or fish.
Then we would perform a simple dissection and observe it under the microscope.
To me, a shrimp’s beating heart was not exactly fascinating.
“Wow… it really… beats…”
But to Joseph, it was an entirely new world.
“I really think I should go to medical school.”
Maybe because of that, his dream became becoming a doctor.
Shrimp and humans were quite different, though.
I was not sure it was wise to decide your future based on something like this, but Joseph’s father was absolutely thrilled by the decision.
“Really? You want to go to medical school?”
“Yes, Father. I want to go with Taepyeong!”
“Taepyeong. Hmm.”
“I know tuition for medical school is expensive. But Taepyeong is my best friend… and he’s smart too. If we go together, we can pay it back later no matter what.”
He was so delighted that he even promised to send me to medical school too.
“Rather than just talk about it, why don’t you go all the way to London and have a look around first?”
“What? Really?”
“Yes, really. Taepyeong, you should ask your father for permission as well.”
“Yes, thank you, sir.”
If they were even going to pay for it, what could my father do?
Besides, it was not as though I was going off to university right away. It was only a visit.
“London?”
“Yes, London. They said I could come along while they go sell wine.”
“Well… that should be fine. Just don’t go around alone. You understand? It’s dangerous.”
“Ah, yes. Of course.”
Getting permission was easy.
Of course, he worried.
But was I a child?
Well, I was fifteen, so I was a child.
But in this era, fifteen was practically an adult, and if I added in the age from my previous life, I was already past fifty.
Really, I was older than my father.
I’m fucking nervous…
Even so, the road from Upton to London filled me with excitement.
It was only natural. Since being reborn, I had never once left this small city.
And that excitement began to die the moment we set out.
The roads are an absolute mess.
I had forgotten this was the nineteenth century.
No matter how rapidly Britain had developed through the Industrial Revolution, the nineteenth century was still the nineteenth century.
“Ugh…”
“Hey, hold on tight.”
Joseph was in the same situation.
He was a country bumpkin from Upton too, so this was his first time on roads like these.
Still, he was probably more shocked than I was.
His house was the very definition of luxury.
From the oriental-style bridge in the garden to the carefully tended trees, everything about it spoke of comfort.
Compared to that, this road was just hell.
“There, that’s London.”
No, I took that back.
Hell was London.
“That… gray city?”
That could not be right.
Sir, you said London was the greatest city in the world.
But that…
“Yes, that black smoke is the symbol of London.”
No… don’t make that its symbol.
Don’t go in there.
Clatter, clatter—
Regardless of my wishes, the carriage soon entered London.
From afar, London had already looked nothing like a comedy. Up close, it was pure tragedy.
“Urk.”
“Hahaha! Must be because you’re country boys. You can’t handle the smell of the city!”
The smell was fucking awful.
I looked at the man calling me a country bumpkin.
Internally, I cursed nonstop.
No matter how I thought about it, swearing in my native tongue really was best.
Even in a shitty situation, saying one good ssibal made you feel a little better, did it not?
No, not this time.
There was no way I could feel better today.
London was—
“Bleurgh, bleeeargh.”
Someone was vomiting right beside the moving carriage.
“Make way! Coming through!”
Something covered in burlap passed by next to us, and I caught sight of what looked like a human foot.
I had just been telling myself there was no way, when the man spoke up.
He kept smiling as if this were all wonderful.
“That’s a cadaver being delivered to University College London Medical School. Maybe that’s why their anatomy training is said to be the very best!”
What?
What did you say?
They were delivering cadavers?
The word delivering itself was already a problem, but since the man was a wine merchant, I forced myself to dismiss that as occupational habit.
The real problem was the cadaver itself.
That thing looks pretty badly decomposed, doesn’t it?
If they dissected that, it looked more likely they would acquire a horrific infectious disease before acquiring any knowledge.
“Haha. Joseph has heard me talk about London plenty of times, but since this is your first time, Taepyeong, you’re frozen stiff! Chest out! In a big city, you have to carry yourself proudly!”
“No…”
That was not the issue, man.
They should not be dissecting things like that.
And no one should be attending that university.
“Oh, we’re here. Let’s stop for a bit. This errand is the same as always, so it’ll be over soon. Just wait here, and when I’m done, let’s go have a look at the medical school.”
Without knowing or caring what I was thinking, the man climbed down from the carriage and entered the shop.
Then he and the laborers busily carried the wine inside.
I could not just stand there doing nothing, so I tried to help, but a little brat who worked at the shop started staring holes into me.
“What?”
I thought the monkey talk was about to start again, but an unexpected remark came out instead.
“Wow, you look really unusual.”
Was this a pure, innocent attack?
To say I looked unusual with such a bright, cheerful face.
“Boy, get inside!”
The fortunate thing was that the shop owner was kind.
“Sorry about that. He doesn’t know any better. Haha. I guess he thought it was interesting that your skin is yellow, your eyes are small, and your hair is black.”
I took back what I said about him being kind.
He really dug the knife in.
If this were the twenty-first century, I could probably have him executed for racism.
“Ah, yes. Thank you.”
But this was the nineteenth century.
It was an era when bad men could kidnap you and sell you to a circus.
So, as I had been taught for more than ten years by my father and the priest, I lowered my head deeply.
“Oh, really? Then we’re in luck.”
After that, I kept carrying wine, and eventually the man stepped back from the labor and began chatting with the shop owner.
It was not something I could complain about.
There was no rule saying the boss had to keep doing the dirty work.
“Right. If your son is interested in medical school, that works out well. I’ll finish things up here, so go on ahead.”
“Oh, then I will. Thank you.”
“What’s there to thank me for between us?”
Anyway, after exchanging those words, the man suddenly patted Joseph and me on the shoulders.
“Let’s go.”
“What? Where?”
“They’re doing surgery. Let’s go watch.”
“What?”
Go watch surgery?
What kind of absurd thing was that?
You were not supposed to watch that.
So when I just stood there blankly, the man laughed again.
“Our little Upton country boy is going to fall over in shock today. There’s such a thing as surgery in this world!”
I know that, sir.
I became a surgeon and even a professor.
Though right after becoming a professor, I got a brain tumor—
No, before that, I got hit by a truck and died.
“Come on, let’s go. If we’re late, we’ll miss it. Surgery is quite something to see.”
“Uh…”
“Come on, what are you doing? Don’t tell me you’re scared. You’re good at dissection too, aren’t you?”
“No, it’s not that…”
Before I could say anything else, I was dragged along by the man on one side and Joseph on the other.
“There, that spot looks good.”
The place we arrived at was not even indoors.
It was a square.
It was a wide-open square with all sides exposed.
In a space that would normally have been empty, there was something like a desk set up.
“No! I won’t have it done! I’d rather just die!”
As I stared, wondering what was happening, a scream rang out from somewhere.
When I turned my head, I saw a man being dragged over by four others.
“Do they execute him before the surgery?”
“No, it’s surgery.”
“That?”
“Yes. It’s just because this is your first time. There’s something called surgery. It’s one of the ways to save people.”
The man smiled benevolently as he watched the scene.
I still could not take my eyes off the person being dragged over.
What should I call that expression?
Yes.
Fear.
The patient was terrified.