Not a Doctor Yet
Thirty days until the national licensing exam.
D-30.
Ever since the red circle had started glaring at me from the calendar on my phone, my entire life had revolved around that single date.
Three in the morning. In the fourth-floor study hall of the Hankuk University College of Medicine library, only three other people remained besides me. Two boys who'd been slumped over asleep for the past half hour, and one girl muttering something to herself while staring at her phone.
I'm winning.
I felt a faint surge of superiority, then realized it was the only positive emotion I'd experienced all day and became doubly depressed.
Just thirty more days. Thirty. That's all.
In South Korea, the best students go to medical school. And there, for the audacious crime of choosing to become a laser-jockey dermatologist instead of some noble engineer contributing to the nation's development, they are sentenced to six years locked inside a university, reading books that suck all the joy out of existence.
Aconitine. Monkshood poison. Forces sodium channels open and leaves them stuck. Bradycardia, arrhythmia, lip numbness. No antidote. Treat symptoms. Atropine if bradycardia develops.
I read over the notes I'd written one more time, reciting them under my breath and cross-checking them against the textbook, until my gaze finally locked onto the string of letters reading C34H47NO11.
And then.
Something's off.
The letters began to swim across the page, little by little. My eyes kept reading, but nothing was making it into my head.
Am I tired?
My vision suddenly turned dry and gritty. I tried to rub my eyes, but my hands felt heavy as lead. My heart gave one hard thump, and the next beat arrived strangely late.
...Bradycardia?
That was my last thought. Fittingly enough, for a med student.
A long while later, when I opened my eyes again, a girl I'd never seen before was looking down at me.
"Awake?"
She smiled, her eyes curving into crescents. I'd been blinking blankly, and I jolted upright.
"Oh my."
The girl braced a knee and backed away a little. I could see brown hair tied back and sleeves dusted with flour, and at her feet sat a basket of bread covered with a cloth.
...Westerners?
That was the first thought that came to me. The next was, where am I?
Behind the girl stretched a yellow plaster wall. Beneath it lay scattered dry grass and shards of broken clay pots, and a bone-white cloth hung across the narrow alley. No matter where I looked, it was an alley I'd never seen. My cheek, numb from being pressed against the ground, had sand stuck to it.
Did I black out?
There was no way someone who'd collapsed from bradycardia in a library had crawled all the way here. Which meant the situation was obvious. Minwoo, that bastard, had woken me up while I was sprawled in the library, decided a tired man needs beer, dragged me to my place, and — naturally — broken out the hard liquor.
That absolute...
In any case, apologizing came first. Apparently I was lying in the middle of an alley, blocking the path of this foreign girl.
Through the hair that had fallen over my face, my eyes met hers. I was about to give an awkward smile and duck my head when her eyes lit up first, bright as stars.
"Wow, you are so cute!!"
I didn't get a single word in. She shoved the basket aside and yanked me into a hug.
...What?
Confusion brushed across my mind. Cute? Me? A person who hadn't shaved in two weeks because of exam prep?
And then the next sensation hit me.
Boobs?!
My perennially-single brain turned white as a sheet in an instant. The apology sentence in my head evaporated entirely, and I froze there, hands raised awkwardly in the air.
The girl's hand smoothed over the back of my head.
"Your face is tiny as a flower bud, but how are your eyes this round? And why on earth is your hair this fluffy?"
Her palm pressed down on the crown of my head, then lifted. When my tousled hair puffed right back up, she smoothed it down again — once, like smoothing out a crumpled cloth, and once more, as if checking the shape.
"W-wait, hold on, excuse me."
I barely managed to squeeze out a voice. Then I stopped dead.
This time, everything in front of me had gone white for an entirely different reason.
...Why does my voice sound like this?
The girl loosened her arms a little, and through the gap I saw the hands I'd been holding up. Short, slender, snow-white fingers. Even the little scar beside my left thumb was gone.
???!?!
I grabbed at the girl's sleeve. The small hand obeyed my every command, and the girl peered down at it with her head tilted.
"Hm? Did you want to say something?"
Oh, I had plenty to say. Plenty.
But instead of opening my mouth, I used that hand to touch my own neck. I felt my chin, then grabbed the hem of the garment spilling down from my shoulders.
"Huh?"
This was not the combat-issued T-shirt I'd been wearing minutes ago. Some unfamiliar fabric hung loose below a drawstring waist. Wind blew straight through where my pants should have been — as if they'd never existed — and my legs visible beneath the short hem were...
"Eep."
"Hmm?"
The girl stared at my face. She brushed the hair off my forehead for me.
"Ahh. You're not fully awake yet, are you?"
"S-sorry?"
"Honestly, you shouldn't sleep in a place like this. If you sleep somewhere cold, Hypnos won't let go of your mind so easily."
"N-no, that's... that's not it..."
One thing was certain, at least: alcohol was not to blame. No amount of drinking shrinks your hands and feet and turns you into a girl. At least, not according to anything I'd ever learned.
I slipped out of the girl's arms and put my back against the wall, forcing out a voice that trembled despite myself.
"Wh-where am I?"
"Athenai."
"...Where?"
"Athenai, I said. To be precise, the alley behind the bakery."
The girl pointed at the rooftops visible beyond the wall. "And that right there is our shop."
I stared at the tip of her finger, then asked again.
"And the year?"
The girl blinked once. "The thirty-second year of King Aegeus's reign. The ninth day of the month of Cronion?"
"..."
My eyes squeezed shut of their own accord.
"Could you say that a little more slowly?"
"The thirty-second year of King Aegeus's reign. The ninth day of the month of Cronion."
Ah. Right. Aegeus-something, year thirty-two. Ninth day, month of Cronion.
What does any of that mean, you little...
Words that sounded like something scrawled in a middle schooler's notebook.
Three self-diagnoses floated up in my head, nice and orderly.
One: a dream.
Two: hallucinations generated by a brain that hadn't yet regained consciousness.
Three: another world.
"You did come from outside, right? Where are your parents?"
The girl folded her arms, looking worried, then after a long moment she smacked her lips as if remembering something.
"Oh, right. I was running an errand."
She hurriedly scooped up the basket, peeled back the cloth to check the bread, then looked at me again.
"If you turn right at the end of that alley, there's a place where people draw water. Sober up there first, then look for your parents."
"My parents..."
"Yeah. If you can't find them, come to the bakery up ahead and ask for Melissa."
"Melissa?"
"Yup. That's me!"
The girl pointed a finger at her own chest, then adjusted her grip on the basket. She was passing me when she paused for a moment.
Huh—
Before I could dodge, my crown got one firm pat. "Water. Right. Parents. Got it?"
She ruffled my hair into a mess as she said it, then smiled and disappeared out of the alley. Left alone in the quiet lane, I turned my hand over and stared at it.
"...Is this for real?"
No matter how blankly I muttered, my voice didn't answer back.
There were no utility poles, no cars. And down at the end of the lane, where it opened onto a broad road, a donkey plodded along slowly, hauling its load.
...
Following the girl's directions led me to the water-drawing spot. I absentmindedly lined up behind the people carrying jars, and only when my turn came did I realize I had no vessel.
...Even the cup is BYO?
As I stood there weakly holding up empty hands, the auntie next to me held out her own cup. "Drink, then bring it back."
"Are you sure?"
"Hehe, of course. Everyone makes mistakes now and then."
As she spoke, she patted my head with a few brisk strokes. When the cup filled, my reflection shimmered on the water's surface — round eyes and soft cheeks beneath a thick mane of black hair.
A high schooler...? No, middle school?
When I blinked, the girl in the water blinked too. She was cute, honestly. The kind of face that would make even a busy stranger stop and give you directions. When I tilted the cup slightly, my brows knit — and even frowning, she didn't look the least bit intimidating.
But who is she?
A face I didn't recognize. And most definitely not me.
My throat was too parched to keep staring, so I drank. My mind snapped sharp and clear — and not a single thing in front of me changed.
So it's not a dream...
My temples throbbed like they were being squeezed.
"Thank you."
As I returned the cup to the auntie and stepped away, my stomach growled.
Grrrble—
Honestly, what an honest body. It doesn't even know who it is, and yet the throat's dry and the stomach's howling.
Glancing around, I spotted the bakery Melissa had mentioned right away. My hand drifted to my pocket without thinking.
Empty.
A pristine nothing — not a speck of dust to be found. I turned away, clutching my growling stomach.
And this time, I saw a bear.
...That thing is huge.
To be precise, it was a man built like a bear. A young man with shoulders as wide as the shop door set his load down beside a dusty foot, then bit the end of a cloth and wound it around his left arm.
The cloth had stiffened a dirty yellow. Beneath it, the edges of a wound had gone red, and three flies sat on it.
If I play this right, maybe I could at least earn a meal.
By the time I came back to myself, I was somehow standing in front of him, mouth already moving.
"That cloth's never been washed, has it?"
The bear looked up. "This?"
"Yes. It looks filthy."
"Filthy, you say..."
"How long ago did the wound open?"
The bear glanced down at his arm and shrugged. "Two days. But the bleeding's already stopped."
"Stopped bleeding isn't the end of it. If it isn't treated properly, it can kill you."
I crouched down in front of him, and the bear blinked at me from above.
"Are you a physician?"
"No."
Not yet.
...Though I had no idea whether I ever would be, at this rate.
Up close, I could see it was a long gouge. Dried blood and dust mingled along the wound's edges, and the cloth was soaked through with some yellowish fluid — pus, or something worse.
Does this guy have three livers or something?
If the inflammation crossed his elbow, it would spread to the shoulder. From the shoulder, it would ride the bloodstream through his whole body. And once it spread through his whole body...
"I'll treat it, if you pay me."
I swallowed a sigh and looked up at him.
"You just said you weren't a physician..."
The bear let out a disbelieving laugh and lowered his arm. "How much do you want?"
"Enough to buy one loaf of bread."
I jerked my chin toward the bakery across the way. The bear's gaze followed.
"Then just pay me in bread?"
"Sure. The treatment supplies, however, are on you."
"What do you need?"
"Wine, honey, and a clean cloth."
"Wine and honey, huh..."
The man pulled a leather wineskin from his belt and shook it. "I've got the wine, but none of the rest."
I sighed and looked around. Fortunately, a stall selling honey wasn't far off.
"There's honey right over there."
"Mount Hymettus? One look at that and I can tell it'll cost a fortune..."
"Which matters more to you, money or your life?"
With a long sigh, the bear fished a gold piece from his belt. "Shopkeeper. One jar of honey."
Despite the considerable distance, the coin arced cleanly into the shopkeeper's palm, almost unnaturally so.
"There you go!"
Beaming, the shopkeeper delivered the honey jar over. The bear then raised his voice toward the bakery across the street. "Ma'am! Two loaves and a clean cloth!"
"And a jar of water, please."
At my addition, the bear shot me a sidelong glance. This time a silver piece cut through the air, and the baker emerged carrying a water jar and a stiff length of linen.
"The bread'll be the loaves coming out of the oven in a bit. Nothing beats it fresh and warm."
"Thank you, ma'am."
I tucked the cloth under my arm and scooped water from the jar. After washing my hands clean and holding them out, the young man ducked down with an awkward grin.
"Why'd you wash your hands?"
"Basic procedure."
I rolled up my sleeve and gripped the bear's wrist, turning his arm over and pressing firmly above the wound with my fingers, tracing how far the redness had crept upward. The bear flinched and pulled his arm back slightly.
"Does it hurt?"
"No, it's not that..."
The bear looked down at me with a strange expression.
...Oh.
Understanding finally arrived. I'm a girl who just grabbed a strange man's arm.
Who cares. He's a patient.
My soul — that of a sorrowful male med student — was far too large to blush over something this trivial. I cleared my throat with an ahem and unwound the cloth. The sweet, cloying stench of pus came drifting up in slow waves.
And he didn't grimace once, with it like this?
Worse, something black was lodged in the very center of the wound. I furrowed my brow and looked up.
"There's something stuck in here."
"A splinter of wood. It came out of a bed."
"A... bed?"
"Some lunatic tried to force me onto a bed. We scuffled, and I may have smashed the bed to pieces."
"Tried to force you onto a bed?"
"Yeah. Though in the end I'm the one who laid him out."
I looked at the young man's face. A fairly handsome one, a scrape beside his lip, and — catching my eye — an ivory-handled knife at his waist.
...He's gay. Top-tier gay, at that.
It was beginning to dawn on me that I'd picked the wrong conversation partner.
Don't meet his eyes. Focus on the treatment.
I nodded silently and held the flesh beside the wound steady.
"This is going to hurt."
"It's fine—"
A choked sound escaped the bear's throat. Along with a strangely satisfying feel under my fingers, a two-knuckle-long wooden splinter — dyed a sickening yellow — landed in my palm.
Holy crap.
I gave an awkward smile and poured on the wine. Red liquor washed away the pus and ran off onto the stone-paved ground, while the bear squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his teeth.
Tougher than Guan Yu, that's for sure.
Next came the honey jar. I sniffed it — yep, genuine honey.
Please work.
The gold standard was foreign body removal, irrigation, then antibiotics. But there was no such thing as antibiotics here. Penicillin wouldn't be discovered until 1928, and this era certainly didn't have petri dishes for culturing mold.
Hence, honey.
Honey draws water out of bacteria through osmotic pressure and generates trace amounts of hydrogen peroxide, killing germs in the process. You could call it a time-tested infection-control method, one already written down on Egyptian papyri three thousand years ago.
I spread the honey evenly over the wound and bound it with fresh cloth. When I gave the bandage a light tap, an ugly tch burst out of the bear.
"Repeat this every day from now on. Wash the wound with well-boiled water and reapply the honey. And if a fever ever starts..."
The clinical prescription cut off mid-sentence.
A fever meant the inflammation had begun to spread through his whole body. And in this era, if it got that far...
You die. That's what.
I took a long, deep breath and opened my mouth again.
"Then pray very, very hard that you don't get one."
The bear rotated his arm this way and that, then looked down at me with eyes a little different from before.
"You really aren't a physician?"
"No, sir. I don't have a license."
"What's a license?"
I thought for a moment, then answered.
"Permission granted by the gods."
I had no idea what era this was, but for people of the ancient world, nothing shut down a conversation quite like invoking the gods.
"Hmm. I see?"
The bear nodded as if that settled it — then dropped a huge hand over my head.
"Anyway, thanks. My arm feels like new."
The hand began ruffling back and forth.
Why do people in this era go straight for the head pat?
Not that I had the guts to tell a man five times my size, hand off, it's annoying.
After a moment, he lowered his hand and looked me in the eye.
"So what's your name?"
Choi Ji-woo.
But there was no way I could drop such a thoroughly East Asian name in some unidentified Western land.
"And yours, mister?"
I deflected first. The bear chuckled like he couldn't believe it — "I asked first, you know..." — then answered in a voice that made it sound like nothing at all.
"Aethrides."
"Aethrides?"
"My real name's a secret. It's... complicated."
"Uh... sure?"
I didn't really follow. So Aethrides wasn't his name, then?
But if I let the conversation die here, he'd only circle back and ask for mine, so I shifted my gaze to his waist instead.
"Where did that fancy sword come from?"
"This?"
The bear checked his belt and smirked. "My father gave it to me."
"Your father?"
"Yeah." His voice swelled with pride as he went on. "My father is a great man. He hid this sword and a pair of sandals beneath a boulder, and told me that when I was strong enough to lift that stone, I should come find him."
Somehow, that setup stirred an odd sense of déjà vu.
Just then the baker came out, two loaves steaming in her hands. The bear took them, tucked one into my arms, crammed the other into his mouth, and rose to his feet.
"Well then, I'll be off. I've got business up top."
"Up top, you mean..."
The bear didn't answer. Instead, his gaze was fixed on the massive city wall far in the distance, and on the red roof jutting up sharply above it.
The palace?
My eyes narrowed without my meaning them to.
"If you can, come back here tomorrow at this hour. I'd like you to look at my arm one more time."
Shouldering his load, the bear waved and walked away — a head taller than everyone around him.
As I quietly watched his back, something from a comic book I'd read as a kid surfaced in my memory.
Come to think of it, that's definitely...
A boy who finds a sword and sandals left beneath a boulder by his father — a king of a neighboring land — puts them on, and sets out on a journey. The countless villains and monsters who stand in his path.
And the final boss who pops up just a few pages later is none other than...
"...The Minotaur?"
This time, it was my own breath that caught in my throat.