The General's Star (5)
The physician who came before Sun Ce was a woman who carried an air of quiet mystery about her.
Her snow-white hair was drawn up into a neat coil and pinned with a simple hairpin, and her eyes — a blue as deep and clear as the open sea — met Sun Ce's stare without so much as a flicker.
It was a startling departure from the norm, when he considered how every physician who had ever locked eyes with Sun Ce had flinched and gone rigid on the spot.
Once, Gongjin — that is, Zhou Yu, by her courtesy name — had even nagged him about it. For heaven's sake, couldn't he please soften that aura of his? She'd pointed out that with a gaze as sharp as his, his very face invited misunderstanding at the slightest misstep. To this day, Sun Ce had no idea what she meant by "softening" one's presence.
Why? Striking first, seizing the initiative — what was wrong with that? He was merely following his father's teaching to the letter: never once act in any way that invites another man's contempt.
And yet this physician before him held her composure perfectly even under his stare, and Sun Ce could tell at a glance that she was no ordinary figure.
Sun Ce spoke. "So, ah... first things first — might I ask what brings you here?"
She had named herself a physician, so he could roughly guess, but it cost nothing to be certain.
Her answer did not stray from his expectations.
"Is it not only natural for a physician to go wherever there are patients?"
"...Oho."
At those words, Sun Ce let out a sound thick with emotion. The Sun household was currently treated as little more than one of Yuan Shu's lackeys, and not a single physician had ever stepped forward of his own accord to tend their wounds. Every healer who had visited this place before had been hauled in by promises of lavish payment, and nothing less.
Sun Jian had ceded Nanyang Commandery to Yuan Shu — and as the price of that bargain, the Sun family now stood, alongside Yuan Shu himself, at the very bottom of the people's esteem.
At that point the physician said, "...In truth, I also came at the request of an acquaintance. But first, let us see to the patient's condition."
"Right."
The remark snagged on Sun Ce's mind for an instant, but tending his father's wound mattered far more, and he personally led the way.
The room where Sun Jian lay was thick with the reek of medicinal herbs, proof enough of how many physicians had already come and gone.
"I still cannot get used to this bitter stench."
"……."
Even as Sun Ce muttered his small complaint, the physician walked straight to Sun Jian's side and knelt. Without a moment's hesitation she unwound the cloth swaddling the wound, and what lay beneath looked, even at a glance, to be in a dreadful state.
Sun Ce shut his mouth at the sight of his father's grim condition.
"……."
The physician studied the wound in the same silence she had kept since entering — and watching her, Sun Ce remembered the bleak verdicts the previous physicians had handed down.
He asked, cautiously. "So... can it be done?"
"……."
The physician held her silence a moment longer, then murmured, calm as still water. "Had the wound festered only a little longer, there would have been nothing left to be done."
"Then that means..."
An answer Sun Ce had never once heard in his life. Hope flooded his voice.
"I will prepare the surgery. Please send everyone nearby out of the room."
"Y-yes!"
Sun Ce shot off like a ray of light, sweeping the soldiers keeping watch back and away. Even he could not recall ever having moved with such speed.
With the soldiers dismissed, Sun Ce paced the courtyard in circles, a portrait of anxiety. The loyal retainers of the Sun clan who had heard that Sun Jian was under the knife fared no better.
Sun Ce, justly famed for his beauty, would complete one circuit of the courtyard — and a breath behind him, a procession of grizzled, middle-aged generals would circle after.
"……."
It was not that Zhou Yu could not understand the anxiety. Still — couldn't they manage to wait a little more quietly?
And so, for hour upon hour, the courtyard revolved so as not to disturb the physician — until the door to Sun Jian's room burst open and the physician stepped out.
Sun Ce closed the distance in an instant. "Did the treatment go well?!"
"...If you would only lower your voice a little. The patient requires rest at the moment."
"!!"
At the physician's words, Sun Ce clamped his mouth shut at once and rolled his eyes instead.
"First things first — my dear lackey must be absolutely quiet, mustn't he."
"What's wrong with m—!"
"Did I not tell you to be quiet?"
The old generals watching the scene from a courteous distance were in much the same predicament.
Faced with such a chaotic tableau, Zhou Yu could not hide her mortification.
The physician's expression did not change by so much as a hair as she said, evenly: "The treatment concluded without mishap."
"...!"
Joy was written plainly across Sun Ce's face, but with his father so near, he restrained himself from leaping about.
Sun Ce stole a glance into the room. His father's face — breathing slow and even — had grown so much more at peace that even Sun Ce, standing at a distance, could see it.
"It is fortunate that the physicians who came before managed to slow the decline."
"Yes..."
Resolving to send someone along later with a proper token of thanks, Sun Ce asked, "Come to think of it, everything was so urgent I never had the chance to ask. Might I know your name?"
Asked the question, the physician answered. "Please, call me Hua Tuo."
"...Hua Tuo?"
The moment the name reached his ears, a conversation Sun Ce had once shared with another physician surfaced in his mind.
'She is honored as the finest among us physicians — the very best of us all.'
He had pressed physician after physician about her since, and every last one of them had nodded without hesitation, acknowledging the woman.
The Divine Physician.
A healer of whom everyone had said the title was no more than her due, singing her praises until their mouths wore out — and she stood before Sun Ce's very eyes.
He had sensed from the moment they first met that she was no ordinary person. But to think she was that Divine Physician!
So he had failed to recognize his own family's savior!
Sun Ce bowed with meticulous courtesy. "I have incurred a debt that a lifetime would not suffice to repay."
For all that Sun Ce bore a reputation for a hasty, violent temper, he was not the sort of man to behave so toward one who had saved his family.
Hua Tuo, receiving the bow, gently stayed him. "Please, spare me the formality. I have only come to aid you at the request of an acquaintance."
"……."
Come to think of it, Hua Tuo had said as much when she first arrived — that she had come at an acquaintance's behest.
"It sits poorly with me to say this before the very people it concerns, but your family's name does not stand well in the world at present."
"That is..."
Sun Ce could not bring himself to deny it. His father might be hailed as the Tiger of Jiangdong, but in the end he was a guest general under Yuan Shu — and with Yuan Shu's misrule drawing the curses of the common people, the reputation of anyone entangled with the man could hardly help but sour alongside it.
"I myself had no reason to aid people of such reputation, and I meant to ignore the matter entirely... but the one who set this request in motion through my acquaintance was far too exalted a figure to refuse."
Listening, Sun Ce asked, carefully. "Might I perhaps learn who it was that made this request of your acquaintance?"
"The most famous person in the realm at this very moment. I doubt you are unaware of them."
With those words, Hua Tuo fixed Sun Ce with her limpid blue eyes.
"Hwahyeon of Jeongneung."
"……."
"Or perhaps 'the General-in-Chief of Han' would be the more familiar way to say it."
The instant he heard the name of the man who had helped his family, Sun Ce felt as though his head were ringing.
'I shall take my leave now.'
The moment Sun Jian's condition showed signs of turning, Hua Tuo packed her belongings and left Nanyang Commandery without a backward glance.
His father had yet to regain consciousness, and the unease gnawing at Sun Ce made him try to hold her there — but Hua Tuo looked so resolute that he had no choice but to let her go.
'It is nothing more than the lingering effect of the Mafeisan. You need not worry yourself overmuch.'
'...I understand.'
Detaining one's benefactor against her will would have been its own breach of courtesy, and so Sun Ce released her.
'The treated flesh may yet fester again, so please pass along word that he is to refrain from vigorous activity for the time being.'
With those parting words, Hua Tuo paid her respects to Sun Ce and was gone.
The physicians all said, with one voice, that she was a creature like the wind — wandering the realm, forever changing where she laid her head. The comparison, it seemed, had been truer than true.
Sun Ce knelt at his father's bedside, watching him breathe in soft, even rhythm.
'...Hwahyeon of Jeongneung.'
The name of the General-in-Chief who ruled Luoyang in these days.
Why would the hostile power his father had once clashed with at Hulao Pass reach out to help his family? He had been too young to take the field in those days, but his father had said — said plainly — that it had been a battlefield of extraordinary ferocity.
He had asked Hua Tuo the reason for it, only to be told that she had come simply to treat a patient and knew nothing of such matters.
Could it be that they had marked his father's abilities in that battle, and had now moved to draw the Sun family in?
"...What an absurd thing to imagine."
Picturing the man, Sun Ce let out a dry chuckle.
"And yet... I cannot pretend this debt does not exist."
Come to think of it — word was that Yuan Shu would soon lead an army in person to attack Cao Cao.
Watching the color creep slowly back into Sun Jian's face, Sun Ce sank deep into thought.