Take Responsibility for My Body!
Everyone thought the surgery would fail.
When that major hunter-exclusive operation finally ended, I sank heavily into a chair in the hallway outside the operating room.
“Whew… That feels good.”
A surgeon’s life really is garbage, just as expected.
It’s a profession where your basic needs collapse, your schedule gets shattered, and it’s nearly impossible to properly enjoy even one hobby in your lifetime.
Especially if you specialize in severe trauma.
Called in while eating. Called while showering. Called while sleeping.
There is no such thing as leaving work, and personal time is a luxury that simply doesn’t exist.
Yet even in that hellish job there is one sweet moment.
Right after the surgery ends.
The instant you wash your hands, peel off your gown, pull a cold ion drink from the vending machine, quench your throat, and lean back in a chair.
The sense of liberation that washes over you then is almost impossible to describe in words.
And if today’s operation was the last one?
Then the whole day feels absolutely fantastic.
Of course, the patient was still critically injured.
Full recovery? Out of the question.
For the time being we would have to watch her in the ICU, starting with the simple act of breathing.
The torn lung had been sutured but remained unstable, and the chest tube could not be removed immediately.
The abdominal cavity was the same.
The bleeding had been controlled and the intestinal damage contained, but the risk of infection had not disappeared.
A trauma patient who has undergone major surgery is not finished simply because the operation is over.
Re-bleeding could occur within days. Fever could spike. The intestinal sutures might fail to hold.
If the patient was a hunter, you also had to stabilize the mana circuits.
Looking perfectly fine and rushing back into a dungeon could mean everything rupturing again from the inside.
Even so.
She had lived.
I had dragged a dying patient off the operating table, and that was the end of what I needed to do right now.
The rest—recovery—was the responsibility of the ICU, the rehabilitation team, and the patient herself.
I leaned back in the chair and took a long sip of the ion drink.
That was when it happened.
Congratulations!
You have successfully performed emergency trauma surgery on B-class Hunter Jang Mihyeon.
Experience has been awarded.
Tension pneumothorax treatment success +10
Chest tube insertion success +10
Lung laceration suture success +10
Intra-abdominal bleeding hemostasis success +10
Small intestine perforation suture success +10
Mesenteric bleeding hemostasis success +10
Rib stabilization success +10
Critical trauma patient survival confirmed +50
“Huh? What is this?”
A status window had appeared before my eyes, listing treatment achievements like some kind of game log.
The messages kept scrolling until a much larger window appeared at the end.
I stared at it for a moment.
“Oh. I leveled up in one go.”
I had no idea how strict the requirements were, but jumping five levels after a single surgery seemed like a massive gain.
Equipment enhancement, new tool unlocks—both sounded tempting.
But right now I couldn’t care less.
I was sick of the smell of blood, sick of the operating room lights, and sick of status windows.
I swiped the floating panel away with a finger.
“I’ll look at you later. For now, let me rest.”
Just as I finally tried to catch my breath, a voice rang out.
“Ah, found you!”
“Ugh.”
I turned my head. Na Hayeong was sprinting down the corridor toward me.
Right. I’d forgotten.
The doctor who had somehow kept up with my pace inside the operating room.
Na Hayeong.
She belonged to the Hunter Trauma Center at Daehan Central University Hospital.
A Beastification-type awakened hunter.
The youngest hunter specialist in the country.
During surgery my focus had been entirely on the patient, so I hadn’t paid her much attention, but I already knew her reputation.
She was twenty-three—two years older than me.
A Korean-American who had made a name for herself in America’s hunter-medical accelerated program during middle and high school.
She had completed an early graduation track through the awakened medical aptitude exception and quickly distinguished herself in hunter trauma using the keen senses and delicate hand techniques typical of her species.
After returning to Korea she had treated countless hunters and shot to fame almost overnight.
She was currently the hottest rookie in the Korean hunter-medical field.
And I, a mere first-year medical student, had taken the lead role with that kind of heavyweight standing right beside me.
In any field, a newcomer who acts out of line is bound to get marked.
I had been prepared for at least a scolding.
So I lowered my head to apologize.
“I’m sor—”
“How on earth did you do that?!”
“Pardon?”
The apology never made it out.
Instead, both my shoulders were suddenly seized in a death grip.
Her eyes sparkled—actually, they blazed like a predator that had spotted prey.
Her tail had slipped out from under her lab coat and was whipping back and forth wildly.
“That ability you showed earlier! The scalpel that sliced through B-class hunter skin like it was nothing! The chest tube! The suction! The clamps! The suture needles! What were all those?! I’ve never seen instruments like that before!”
“Is that so…?”
“It is not ‘is that so’! My own claws can open hunter tissue, but they can’t maintain it for long! Durability is poor, depth control is exhausting, and the slightest slip tears the tissue apart. Yet you just glided through it! And you manifested multiple tools at once, then finished the surgery, grabbed an ion drink, and sat down to rest like it was nothing!”
Na Hayeong shook me back and forth.
She really was a hunter; her strength was no joke. A roller coaster would have been less dizzying.
“Your name is Jihoo, right? You’re incredible! Come to our hospital. Hm? Come right now. I’ll write you a recommendation. No, forget the recommendation—I’ll drag you there myself!”
“Wait, wait a moment.”
“With your ability in the Hunter Trauma Center, our success rate would skyrocket. And it’s not just the tools—your hands are abnormal too. Those weren’t a student’s hands. Where did you learn that? America? Europe? Or some classified hunter medical institute?!”
Then I realized.
I had seen this exact scene before.
It was the look professors at university gave when they discovered a truly absurdly talented student and tried every means possible to drag them into graduate school.
I had once been a graduate student myself, after all.
Though the papers I wrote had upended the entire academic world, so within a year the professor who had recruited me ended up running around like my research assistant.
Anyway.
That was exactly the look in Na Hayeong’s eyes right now.
A researcher who had discovered outstanding talent.
A scholar who had found a rare specimen.
And a professor who had discovered a useful slave.
She was practically drooling, panting like a vixen in heat.
However.
“I’m sorry, but I must decline.”
“Eh? What?”
My answer had been decided from the start.
“Why? With skills like that, weren’t you planning to become a hunter specialist?”
Na Hayeong’s expression hardened.
“No.”
“From what I hear, Jihoo, you’re in a rather difficult situation at the university right now. You’re entangled with the Life-Extension Agency and there was talk about problems advancing to second year.”
“You already looked into me?”
“Information is life to a doctor!”
That sounded less like information gathering and more like a background check.
Na Hayeong continued without caring about my reaction.
“I can watch your back. If you join the Hunter Trauma Center, the university won’t dare touch you! I can push you all the way to graduation, and in some cases even arrange special training. With your ability the hospital would want to recruit you immediately.”
Hunters were the highest human resource in this world.
And a hunter specialist capable of saving those hunters would naturally wield enormous authority.
With Na Hayeong’s recommendation and the protection of Daehan Central University Hospital’s Hunter Trauma Center, even the Life-Extension Agency and the university would find it difficult to pressure me.
It might be the best possible parachute I could ask for.
But my answer was already set.
The moment I awakened as a Hunter Trauma Surgeon, I had already planned my new career path.
“I’m going to open my own private clinic.”
“A… private clinic?”
Na Hayeong repeated the words with a face like the world had collapsed.
“Yes. A small neighborhood clinic.”
“With those skills?”
“Precisely because of these skills.”
I set the ion drink can down.
“I have no intention of living in a university hospital. Rolling around in a place like a severe trauma center until I actually die… anyway. I didn’t enter medical school to live like that.”
I cleared my throat and moved on.
“What I want is a hospital that runs on my own schedule. Something like a quiet little neighborhood surgical clinic. Instead of major operations, I’d see patients, write prescriptions, perform minor procedures, and refer serious cases to larger hospitals.”
A quiet neighborhood.
Fixed clinic hours.
Nights without emergency calls.
A life where I slept in my own bed instead of on the duty-room sofa.
Even a surgeon could live that way.
You didn’t have to be trapped in a severe trauma center cutting open abdomens to help people.
“Critical patients can be sent to big hospitals. I’ll live nearby, commute, have my own time after work, eat properly, sleep properly, and live properly.”
“……”
“So I won’t be working at a university hospital.”
Na Hayeong’s face stayed frozen for a long time after she heard that.
She looked as if a hammer had just dropped on her head.
Even her tail had stopped moving.
She stared at me blankly, then murmured in a tiny voice.
“I… I’ve become a body that can’t go on without Jihoo anymore?”
“Even if you use that fallen-sounding tone, what can’t be done still can’t be done.”
“After tasting hands like those, how am I supposed to go back to the way things were?!”
“As long as you don’t die, everything eventually returns to normal. That’s how the world works.”
“Take responsibility…”
“For what, exactly?”
Then fire blazed in her eyes again.
“For my surgical career!”
“I refuse.”
“Jihoo.”
“I said no.”
“Come to our center.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Just one month.”
“I don’t want to.”
“One week.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Then just one day!”
I shot up from my seat.
“I’m leaving now.”
“Your shift isn’t over yet!”
“Then I’ll resume my volunteer hospital service.”
“Jihoo you—!”