Hebei Peng Family (5)
"Hah… hah…"
Yeong-yeong’s ragged breathing rasped from behind my back. She hadn’t lost consciousness yet, so I called back to her in a tight, urgent voice.
"Yeong-yeong, don’t panic. Breathe in slowly and deeply."
From the way she was reacting, this was clearly anaphylaxis. Anaphylaxis—also called anaphylactic shock—was a form of allergic reaction caused by an overreaction of the immune system. It usually struck immediately upon exposure to the offending substance, and we had no time to waste. If things went wrong, her blood pressure could plummet, her airway could close, and she could die.
So I spun on my heel, abandoning the path to the Medical Hall, and threw myself toward the Family Head’s Hall instead. The only people who could save a child on the brink of suffocation were Family Head Peng, my father-in-law, or Grandfather, the Lord of Ten Thousand Poisons—and the closest of those was the Family Head’s Hall. Ordinarily either my father-in-law or the old man would be there, which made it the faster option.
"Hah… O-Oppa… hah…"
"That’s right. Just hold on a little longer, Yeong-yeong!"
Her thin voice called for me from my back. I shot forward with lightfoot technique, and the moment the Family Head’s Hall came into view—where I expected my father-in-law to be—I bellowed at the top of my lungs.
"Father-in-law! Miss Peng has collapsed!"
—Bang!
At my shout, the double doors of the Family Head’s Hall slammed wide open. My father-in-law and Family Head Peng came bolting out with startled faces.
"What!? Again?"
"What in the world happened, So-ryong!?"
"Yeong-yeong!"
So Family Head Peng had been in the hall as well. Perfect. I skidded to a halt, laid Yeong-yeong carefully on the stone floor, and checked her condition. Her face was paper-white. Her lips were turning blue. The wheezing in her throat told me her airway was closing for certain. I stripped off my outer robe, rolled it under the back of her neck to keep her airway open, and shouted at Family Head Peng.
"She seems to be having trouble breathing, Family Head Peng!"
"Understood. Hand her over! I’ll push my energy into her."
"Yes, sir!"
Having already been through this more than once, Family Head Peng latched onto Yeong-yeong with practiced, lightning speed and began pouring his qi into her. Her face had gone deathly pale, hives had risen red all over her body, and she was soaked head to toe in cold sweat. It was a crisis—but the moment the head of the Peng Family fed her his energy, color began to creep back into her cheeks.
Qi treatment really is incredible, isn’t it?
Watching Yeong-yeong improve almost at once, I couldn’t help thinking it. What Family Head Peng was doing now was a form of qi therapy. In my previous life, "qi healing" had felt like the exclusive domain of con men—but here it was a genuine, almost miraculous treatment. The standard response to anaphylaxis was emergency care aimed at raising blood pressure and securing the airway, since the patient’s pressure could crash and the throat could swell shut. That meant epinephrine, steroids, antihistamines, intubation, and oxygen, in that order. Here, though, a single stream of qi was handling everything. Opening the airway, speeding the pulse—inner energy took care of it all. It was hard not to be impressed.
Family Head Peng had only been circulating energy into Yeong-yeong for a short while when my father-in-law, standing beside him and taking her pulse, spoke up.
"Miss Peng’s symptoms are the same as last time. Well then, son-in-law—did you see how she collapsed? You were right there, so you must have seen it."
"Yes—did you confirm what caused it?"
This time I had been at her side, so of course they wanted to know whether I had seen how she went down.
"Yes, elders. I saw it clearly."
I nodded at my father-in-law and Family Head Peng’s questions. I had been right beside her when the anaphylaxis hit, so I knew exactly what had set it off. Family Head Peng pressed me again at once.
"Well? What was it!?"
I lifted Yeong-yeong’s left wrist, red and swollen, and answered.
"She was stung by a bee and collapsed."
"A bee?"
"A bee!?"
But the elders only tilted their heads at the word. My father-in-law’s face went from expectant to faintly deflated.
"Hmm… stung by a bee, was she? Well, rare as it is, there are cases where a bee sting produces a reaction like this. But that hardly explains why Miss Peng collapsed before."
He had clearly been hoping for an answer, only to decide, upon hearing mine, that we still wouldn’t find the real cause. If a bee sting had been responsible the last time, the Peng family and everyone else would surely have noticed. A child stung by a bee would have cried out just as she had a moment ago. So he was treating this collapse as separate from the previous ones.
"Then you haven’t found the cause. You’re saying this time it was simply bee venom?"
"That does seem to be the case. Some people are unusually sensitive to bee venom, and Miss Peng appears to be one of them."
Family Head Peng and my father-in-law exchanged the words with regretful faces. I smiled at the two of them and answered.
"No, Father-in-law. Because she was stung by a bee, I think we’ll be able to figure out why she collapsed the times before as well."
It wasn’t that a bee sting left us with no answers, the way he assumed. On the contrary—Yeong-yeong getting stung might let us track down the cause that much faster.
"Hm? You think you’ll be able to figure it out?"
"You think you can find the answer!? Then you already have a suspicion? Well then—why on earth has our Yeong-yeong been collapsing!?"
Both of them stared at me with startled eyes. Just in case, I took a step back, gauging their faces, before I answered. I wasn’t a complete fool. Getting grabbed by the collar again like last time was not on the agenda.
"Before that… I think we may need to remove Miss Peng’s clothes. Would that be all right?"
A vein pulsed at Family Head Peng’s temple, then sank just as quickly. He let out a long breath and asked again.
"Hoo… Fine. What’s the reason this time? And for heaven’s sake, explain yourself before you start proposing things. Every time my daughter collapses you want her clothes off, and I assume there’s a reason—but from where I’m standing… And on top of that, you’ve already stripped your upper robe to say it… I… haaah…"
"Ah… I-I was in a hurry…"
Listening to him, I had to admit he had a point. The proper order was to state the purpose first and then the action—but until now I had been doing it the other way around, naming the act and explaining the reason only afterward. It was probably a leftover habit from my previous life as a streamer, when I used to drop the conclusion first and save the explanation for the next video. At the end of a broadcast I would usually throw out a hook like, "Tomorrow we’re catching Korea’s most venomous snake!"
That’s how you land the hook, so it just became a habit.
I scratched my head with an awkward look. He nodded and asked,
"Well… I’ve heard you’ve grown quite close with my daughter. That Yeong-yeong follows you around like a real older brother?"
"Yes, Family Head Peng."
"Right. Anyway—why do you want her undressed again this time? The way you keep saying it, a man starts to wonder if you mean something else. And you’ve already peeled off your upper clothes…"
"O-Of course not!"
I waved both hands frantically and explained to Family Head Peng.
"Because we need to examine every inch of her body."
—Crack.
He clenched his fist and asked again.
"I distinctly told you to explain first…"
At this rate I was genuinely going to get hit, so I answered in a rush.
"Because there’s something we need to find!"
"Find? Find what?"
At the words something to find, Family Head Peng blinked.
—Click.
The door to the quarters opened carefully, and my sister-in-law stepped out. Her face, however, was the same expressionless mask as always. Unable to read the result from her features, my father-in-law and Family Head Peng rushed her at once with questions.
"Well, Miss Tang—did you check? Was it really there? Was it?"
"Well, Hwa-eun, did you confirm it? Was it truly there, just as So-ryong said?"
At their questions she looked at me, smiled faintly, and nodded.
"Yes. Just as So-ryong said—it was definitely there."
"Ohh! Truly!?"
"It was really there?"
"Yes. There were so many blotches on her skin that it was hard to tell them apart, but there were clearly two or three old marks, and one recent mark as well—found on her back."
At her report that she had found something, both elders brightened at once. Their noisy excitement brought Mother-in-law’s voice from further inside.
"The child still hasn’t fully come to. Please keep your voices down, all of you."
"Ah—yes, Lady Tang."
"Understood, my lady."
The reason the two of them had grown so excited at the news that my sister-in-law had found something was simple: she had found, on Yeong-yeong’s body, the very traces I had asked her to look for. Circumstantial evidence had been enough for me—but this had been the step of confirming hard physical proof.
"There were marks, just as you said. Now stop dragging it out and tell me why my daughter has been collapsing all this time. You said you’d explain once the marks on her body were confirmed, did you not?"
Family Head Peng’s face said he could not hold back a second longer. I had promised to speak once I was certain after examining Yeong-yeong’s body, and now he was calling that promise due. I glanced toward the quarters where Yeong-yeong still slept and answered.
"Yes. Yeong-yeong has almost certainly been poisoned by bee venom."
"Bee venom?"
"Bee venom, you say?"
All three of them tilted their heads at my answer. Family Head Peng pressed me again.
"Hold on—Family Head Tang clearly said a moment ago that it wasn’t bee venom… And if she had been stung by a bee, we would have noticed, wouldn’t we? Our rear garden has no flowers and a stone-paved floor. Bees have no reason to fly in there."
They hadn’t seen any bee sting, and if she had been stung they would of course have realized it. He was right, so I nodded. They doted on Yeong-yeong enough that they were hardly the sort of parents who would miss something like that.
"Yes, of course. But while it is bee venom, it wasn’t a bee that stung her—which is why it was so hard to notice."
"Hm? Bee venom, but not a bee?"
"Bee venom, but not from a bee?"
My sister-in-law, my father-in-law, and Family Head Peng all blinked at the idea of bee-venom poisoning without a bee. I smiled and nodded.
"Yes. As people of our Tang family know well, not every poison works the same way on every person. For some, a single drop on the tip of a needle is enough. For others, ten times that dose still won’t stop their breathing."
My father-in-law’s voice came from beside me. He nodded along, backing me up.
"So-ryong is quite right, Family Head Peng."
"Yes, yes, I understand that much. Just explain it cleanly, will you? You’ve got a real talent for keeping a man on tenterhooks."
Under the constant prodding, I went on.
"Yeong-yeong was born with a body far more vulnerable to bee venom than other people. You saw it a moment ago, didn’t you?"
"Yes, I did."
"I can’t speak for anything else, but Yeong-yeong is clearly weak to bee venom. So whatever brought her down must have been bee venom. And yet she has never been stung by a bee at home? That’s because she was stung by a cousin of the bee—something from a collateral branch of the same family."
"A cousin of the bee? A collateral branch?"
"There are cousins and collateral lines of bees?"
The elders looked as if they had never heard of such a thing. I pointed toward the mountain-side courtyard compound where the Peng family was lodging and said,
"Well then—shall we go catch the bee’s collateral kin that nearly killed our Yeong-yeong?"
After all, wasn’t I the collateral-line killer around here? Whether it was a side branch of the Tang family or a side branch of the bees, once this Fabre showed up, they didn’t stand a chance.