Who Is Entity (12)

***

"Ms. Gu Jihye. Do you have any idea how many days it's been since you lost consciousness?"

"I'm sorry. I don't know."

"You've just woken up after three full days, Ms. Gu Jihye."

"Oh... oh my..."

Gu Jihye nodded her head slowly, sluggishly, as if her neck weighed a ton.

Watching her, I felt a strange, hard-to-define sense of satisfaction.

*I've always wanted to deliver that line at least once.*

—You've just woken up after three days.

It's a line other departments get to use all the time. In neurology, in fact, the patients who *don't* hear it might be the rare ones.

But cardiology almost never gets the chance.

Because a patient who loses consciousness under cardiology is usually one of two things.

Unconscious for a few hours—or unconscious for the rest of their life.

Normally, if someone is admitted here and can't open their eyes as the days crawl by, you start telling the family to prepare themselves.

But Gu Jihye had opened her eyes.

'Well, to be fair, her heart was never the problem.'

The reason she lost consciousness and the reason her heart had been in danger were two entirely separate matters.

If I hadn't been able to distinguish between the two, she would never have woken up at all.

"Then let's check how much the patient herself understands about her condition. First of all—do you remember what happened right before you lost consciousness?"

"Ah... well, that's..."

The middle-aged woman's voice trailed off at the edges.

Her trembling lips told me she was struggling to recall that day's events.

From that alone, I could guess roughly how far her knowledge of it extended.

I changed the subject.

"It seems too difficult for now, so let's set that aside. How are you feeling at the moment?"

"...My chest doesn't hurt."

"Has any kind of obsession or compulsion taken root in your mind?"

She shook her head.

"I can't think of anything at all..."

"Excellent. It appears you've genuinely been cured. Now then, let me explain your condition to you."

I handed her a sheet of paper bearing the information on the Echo that had resonated with her.

It would have been far more convenient to show her directly on a phone or tablet, but since that wasn't possible, I'd written everything out by hand.

"The name of the Echo that resonated with you, Ms. Jihye, is [Digital Portrait]."

Digital Portrait.

An Echo born of the desire to preserve one's most beautiful self in photographs.

Where such an Echo originally came from, no one could say.

But I did know how this patient could break free of it.

"An Echo resonates with a being whose life story resembles its own. If that story were to change, the Echo would no longer be able to maintain its resonance with you."

What is resonance, exactly?

It is the victim continuing the Echo's story.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Taking that idea as my starting point, I set about rewriting Jihye's story.

"Of course, you can't just swap in any story you like."

For instance, I could attach a brand-new past history or chronic illness to a person named Gu Jihye.

I could give her the narrative of being a talented cook, or the story of a woman whose hobby was cross-stitch.

But none of that would have anything to do with the Entity.

"To rewrite the story, I had to understand what kind of story the Echo told—and what kind of story *you* told."

So I contacted her parents.

I knew the Echo's story better than anyone, but I had no idea what hers was.

"Your parents told me you've always loved drawing."

"... "

Gu Jihye's mouth clamped shut. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠ Learning that her life had been dug through and dissected while she slept—naturally, it wasn't a pleasant feeling.

"I also heard that your stream actually started out as an art stream, back in the early days."

"... "

"So with your family's permission, we displayed your artwork in the pediatric ward of this hospital."

The Echo called Digital Portrait had vested the value of beauty solely in her appearance.

But there is more than one way to bring beauty into the world.

The face captured by a camera can be called beautiful—and so can a work of art born from a person's own two hands.

"Your artwork brought joy to a great many children."

And the warmer the children's response grew, the more visibly her condition improved along with it.

"You found a different kind of beauty—not the one the Echo forced upon you."

What Digital Portrait wanted was obvious.

Maintaining a beautiful appearance to earn people's praise. And to keep that praise flowing, eliminating anyone who remembered her true, hideous self.

So I countered that story.

I argued that beauty need not be celebrated through appearance alone.

And this method, as I'd predicted, worked.

"Your ECMO was removed two days ago, and your pacemaker yesterday. And today, you've regained consciousness."

Through that same process, her appearance had been changing at a startling pace.

The wrinkled crone had, at some point, transformed back into the face of a middle-aged woman.

"I've informed your family as well, but you are not yet fully cured. Regaining consciousness does not mean the Echo has vanished completely."

The exhibition in the pediatric ward had warmed her story considerably—but it hadn't rewritten its foundation.

This was, at best, a kind of emergency first aid.

"For the Echo to be completely removed, we'll need your full cooperation."

"Th...then how am I supposed to live from now on?"

"An excellent question."

I spread two fingers in front of her.

"You have two options, Ms. Jihye. The first is to simply keep your stream running as it is."

"What?! No way!"

She grabbed my arm and shouted.

"If I do that, my channel is finished!"

"That's correct, it would be. But the Echo would leave you."

The Echo's story ends with its protagonist hiding her hideousness from the world until the very end—and dying for it.

To escape that ending, she would need the courage to expose her ugliness to the public.

The only problem was that her disillusioned fans would abandon her the moment she did.

"There is a second option."

"Wh...what is it?"

She asked me with eyes full of hope.

But the answer I had prepared was, for her, even worse.

"You hide your appearance and start streaming as a VTuber."

"...I'm sorry, what?"

"That way, you could keep streaming for the time being with your current appearance concealed. Since viewers can't see the face behind the avatar, they'd keep cheering you on. Stream like that for a few days, and you'd become beautiful again, just like before."

"But then..."

"Yes. You'd turn back into an Entity."

"... "

It might seem like an odd choice for a doctor to offer, but doctors hand out this particular brand of option surprisingly often.

Say you have a patient with a bad heart.

If that patient works a job that demands frequent all-night shifts, the ideal prescription is to tell them to quit.

But realistically, that's impossible.

The moment they quit, the problem stops being their heart and becomes their ruined life.

So the doctor offers the second option instead.

Keep grinding through the overnight shifts, taking pills on schedule, praying the heart disease never flares up again.

I knew this kind of dilemma intimately.

"I can help you maintain Resonance Stage 4, Ms. Jihye. Whether you keep streaming in that state, or commit to curing the Echo entirely—that choice is yours to make."

"...Does it really have to be one of those two?"

"There are other options, but as a doctor, I'm afraid I can't bring myself to say them out loud."

"Then... if I do become a complete monster, at that point..."

"If you reach full complete Resonance..."

I gestured with my chin at Shiho standing behind me.

The former Management Bureau Suppression Team agent, and chief of the checkpoint.

"I can promise a conclusion carried out according to the most humane procedures available. You would, of course, have to sign a consent form first."

"... "

Gu Jihye's expression darkened.

After a long moment, she forced the words out.

"I'll need to discuss it with my parents."

"Of course."

Leaving the patient and her family behind, I exited the hospital room.

Shiho trailed close at my heels as I left the ward.

"Professor. Did you really have to go that far?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"I think you scared the poor woman half to death..."

I shrugged.

"Some patients need that kind of shock language. Otherwise they don't listen a word you say, keep up the drinking and smoking, and end up right back here in a hospital bed."

Human beings are not particularly wise animals.

Warn them a hundred times that living a certain way will kill them, and only a precious few will actually change.

So somewhere along the way, a doctor's mouth learns to default to the negative and the extreme.

"It's all necessary. Humans are the worst animals on earth at letting go of what they're holding. You have to hit them with at least this much shock to get them to move at all."

"Tch."

Shiho clicked her tongue and pressed in even closer behind me.

"I still don't know if this is actually going to work."

I answered her with a faint smile.

"Don't worry."

I turned and glanced back down the corridor.

At the far end of the hall.

The door of the hospital room we'd just left swung open, and Jihye's father was hurrying toward us, urgency written all over his face.

"Give a person just one person to lean on, and they're also an animal capable of learning from their mistakes, any time, any place."

***

"Hyung-nim, did you see it?"

The next day.

As I was preparing a procedure in the Cardiac Catheterization Lab, Jihun came sidling over.

"The news is going crazy saying you cured an Entity for the first time in world history!"

"Ah, that."

I opened my mouth to mention Jihye's name, then closed it again.

Even within a hospital, patients' names flying around between medical staff was not a good look.

Handled carelessly, it could even become a privacy law violation.

In situations like this, the proper move was to sidestep the patient's name and talk about the disease instead.

"That was a fair bit of work, actually."

On paper, I'd explained it to the patient neatly with the art exhibition—but the full story behind it had been far messier.

How was I supposed to know how to counter the Echo's narrative?

So I just threw everything at the wall.

I spread rumors, I spread heartwarming anecdotes, I sponsored children with leukemia in her name.

I tried every trick in the book, and the art exhibition just happened to be the one that stuck.

'Then again, the history of medicine was always like this...'

New treatments are rarely developed by understanding the principle first and then approaching the problem.

Far more often, people do everything first, and reverse-engineer the principle from the results afterward.

This treatment was no different.

It was closer to snagging a lucky catch and then shrugging, *well, I suppose the principle must work something like this.*

"Honestly, I thought it'd take months, at least."

Finding the answer in three days was pure, dumb luck.

Considering that developing a single new drug can swallow years of an entire company's life, three days was a stroke of fortune roughly comparable to winning the lottery.

"So does the Echo treatment method get named after you now, hyung-nim? Jungwook Therapy? Or maybe Wook Therapy?"

"I don't think so. These days you're not even supposed to put a person's name on a disease or a treatment in the first place."

In the old days, diseases and procedures got named after people all the time, but modern practice frowns on it.

The reasoning: a doctor should get an instinctive grasp of a diagnosis the instant they hear it, and a person's name attached to it kills that clarity.

"And what the hell is a 'Wook Therapy' anyway? We might ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠as well call it Episode Therapy."

"Ooh, I like that. Narrative Therapy?"

"Narrative Therapy... not bad."

The procedure prep continued even as we talked.

I checked the status of the anesthetic propofol, then picked the conversation back up.

"It's not an official treatment yet, mind you. I'll need to write up the case paper, and it only gets formally recognized once I present it at the cardiology conference next month."

"And if it doesn't get recognized?"

"Hmm. They'll recognize it, most likely. The trouble is, worrying about that comes second—right now I should be worrying about whether the conference is even going to happen at all."

Lately, the Echoes' incubation periods were quietly expiring one after another, and Entities were beginning to surface all across the country.

This was no time to worry about a medical conference. It was time to worry about whether the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠nation of South Korea itself survived.

"Well, the people up top will sort it out somehow."

I've said it a hundred times, and I'll say it again: I'm a doctor.

The intricacies of social systems, infrastructure, administration—none of that is my field.

Just keeping pace with the people crossing this hospital's threshold takes everything I have.

Just then, Jihun, who'd been scrolling through today's procedure schedule, let out a gasp.

"Right—hyung-nim!"

"Hm? What?"

"The Department Chair asked me to pass something along. About that Resonance patient you treated the day before yesterday."

"Yeah. What about the patient?"

"The Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service won't approve her treatment costs."

*Thunk.*

The syringe slipped from my hand.

"What the—shit? So the patient's supposed to pay for all of it out of pocket?!"

If it had been some other disease caused by an Entity, I might have understood.

Necrosis that modern medicine couldn't explain, or a plant suddenly sprouting from someone's body—

If they'd refused payment for treatment of *that* kind, fine. I'd get it.

But strictly speaking, Gu Jihye's condition fell squarely within the domain of modern medicine.

Granted, the disease's presentation was hard to explain with conventional knowledge—but right ventricular failure itself was, by any strict standard, an eligible condition for coverage.

"On what grounds are they denying payment?"

"Oh, all of it. Everything from 'she could've survived without ECMO' to 'the neurology consult probably wasn't necessary'... They slashed the whole thing."

"Those bastards... my father's day, too, and nothing's changed."

There's a great deal of injustice in this world I can swallow.

But there is exactly one thing I will never swallow.

Brushing away a person's devotion with a round of applause and calling it even.

Some would say otherwise.

That human life matters more than money, doesn't it?

But losing my father taught me one thing.

If life is truly that precious, then surely the devotion spent to save it deserves, at the bare minimum, the sincerity of being paid for.

Otherwise, no one will ever strive to emulate a hero again, and the world grows only barer and colder.

*'If this precedent stands, living in this world gets harder for everyone.'*

An apocalypse never begins for some extraordinary reason.

People turned into Entities. People harmed by Entities.

The true apocalypse begins the moment no one can expect help from anyone.

I tore off my gloves and picked up the phone sitting outside the procedure room.

"Hyung-nim, what are you doing?"

"Calling the reporters."

"I'm sorry—what?"

"Let's see where they can tell me to go pound sand once the investigation starts."

A world that could fall apart at any moment.

There was nothing left to lose anyway—and as it happened, I'd hooked exactly the right fish.

"From now on, I'm doing everything I damn well please before I go."

I would sooner be a person of virtue than a sucker.

Absolutely.