The Value of a Doctor (2)

Even among Entities, a kind of ecosystem existed. The root of an Entity was the Echo, and the root of an Echo was its Narrative—so it was only natural, in a way, that each of them carved out a domain of their own in order to protect it.

In the game, too, the Entities interacted with one another.

An Entity's first priority was always the reenactment of its Narrative. If another Entity's existence aided that Narrative, they cooperated willingly. If it had no bearing on it, they tended to leave each other alone. But the moment something even slightly obstructed their story, they discarded the offender without hesitation. The result of that logic was the chaos unfolding before us now.

Professor Kim had broken out of the psychiatric ward and was currently shaking down the entire hospital. He was hunting the Entities that had supplied organs to the quack Professor Heo, along with the rotten doctors who had collaborated with them.

I let out a long sigh as I watched the endless stream of reports featuring Professor Kim flooding the sub-channel. The thing I had dreaded had finally become reality.

Every Entity has a berserk button. The game called this state a rampage—and Entities in that state would tear their way out of containment cells and turn the Bureau's interior into a war zone. Informally, it was described as Resonance Stage 6. Stage 5, Complete Resonance, still wore a human shell and went through the motions of an ordinary life. A rampage meant throwing all of that away—becoming a monster outright and running wild.

And indeed, the Professor Kim in the reports pouring in from every corner of the hospital through the sub-channel looked far more like a monster than a man.

"Where are you hiding? You can't hide forever, can you?"

His face had split into five jagged flaps, and his left hand clutched a curette soaked through with blood. He was searching for the paramedics still hiding somewhere inside the hospital—the monstrous wretches who had sold off their own patients' organs.

I watched the screen in silence for a while, then turned it off and spoke to Shiho.

"Shiho."

"Yes. Go ahead."

"Would it be all right if I asked something unreasonable of you?"

"Let me say it again—it's a Danger Level 4. It is not something I can take on."

Danger Level 4. A heavyweight Entity that, once loose, would manufacture at least a thousand victims. Shiho must have assumed I was about to ask her to fight the thing, because she shook her head with a grave face.

"It's not that my life is precious to me anymore, but I'll pass on a pointless dog's death. There's no way I can stop that thing."

"No—that's not what I'm asking."

I could never be the kind of person who asked others to lay down their lives lightly. As someone who knew exactly how heavy the weight of sacrifice was for those left behind, I had no intention of adding to that weight. What I wanted to ask was something else entirely.

"We will stop Professor Kim. But there's no need for you to risk your life doing it."

"You really think that's possible?"

"Of course it is."

I tapped at my phone as I spoke.

"Do you remember what the first Entity I ever stopped was?"

"The Digital Portrait? That's barely Danger Level 1. You just don't understand how terrifying a Level 4 is, Jeong-uk."

"No. The first Entity I stopped was not the Digital Portrait. Have you forgotten?"

"What? Oh—right."

The Most Romantic Choice. An Entity of Danger Level 6—powerful enough, perhaps, to bring a small nation to ruin. It was also the very first Entity I had ever stopped.

"I deleted the novel, and then saved every single suicide attempt to prevent the secondary casualties."

Thanks to that, at least within South Korea, we had managed to halt the gradual spread of that Entity's influence.

"Then..."

"The same goes for Professor Kim."

The way to stop an Entity didn't always have to be suppression. It might be unfamiliar to her, a veteran of the Suppression Department, but in the game, Entities could be managed through all manner of means that had nothing to do with force.

"So just trust me, and follow my lead."

Shiho stared at me in silence for a long moment—then answered with a small nod.

"I shall hold human life in the highest regard from the moment of its conception..."

Our first stop was Professor Heo—the work of Professor Kim's own hands. Even as we arrived, Heo had been reduced to an idiot, endlessly repeating those words.

"What does this have to do with stopping Professor Kim?"

"Understanding the victims is the fastest way to understand an Echo's Narrative."

The victims of Professor Kim and the other psychiatric Entities were all locked away in the closed ward. Obviously, we couldn't walk into the now-deranged psychiatric department and study them there. But if fortune favored us, there happened to be one patient currently outside the closed ward.

"Apparently, Professor Kim didn't judge this one to be a patient who belonged in the closed ward."

He had been that furious about ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠someone laying hands on his patients. What had been done to Heo wasn't treatment so much as a form of discipline—which was why he hadn't been dragged into the closed ward. Of course, weighing whether having your organs harvested or having your brain scraped out was the worse fate was a meaningless exercise; Professor Kim's righteous fury was textbook hypocrisy, selective outrage at its purest. And yet enduring precisely this kind of contradiction, I supposed, was how one took another step closer to what the Echo considered a true doctor.

"Even under threat, I shall never turn my knowledge against humanity..."

I rapidly diagnosed the state of Professor Heo, who kept repeating the same words over and over like a dementia patient.

"This is perseveration."

"What's that?"

Apparently, the medical knowledge Shiho had been given didn't cover this.

"A symptom in which the same word or phrase is repeated involuntarily, without end. It's classically seen when the frontal lobes are damaged."

It was a common enough finding in psychiatry. Back in my student days, Professor Kim loved to put it on his exams, too. Watching him administer it to a fellow professor now, I felt a strange swirl of emotions—sentiment arriving from several directions at once.

"Let's request a neurology consult and get Professor Heo examined."

"Uh... didn't neurology resonate?"

"Ah."

There was no hard evidence that neurology had resonated—but no hard evidence that it hadn't, either. So I corrected myself.

"We'll get an MRI, and I'll read it myself."

"You know how to read scans?"

"Cardiology works with neurology on consults all the time."

The most common complication of heart disease is brain disease. A thrombus—a clot—formed in the heart travels up to the cerebral vessels and causes an ischemic stroke. It runs the other way, too: when a stroke patient shows up in neurology, they're sent first to cardiology, because in most cases the heart is the culprit. Which is why a highly trained cardiologist can substitute for a portion of neurology's work.

"...That's what I learned from a professor who has since retired."

"What happens if you say that in front of the neurology department?"

"What happens? War. Immediate war."

One way or another, we managed to get Professor Heo into the MRI ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠suite.

"Thank God lab medicine, radiology, and pathology have no Narratives."

Echoes resonated primarily with the famous departments. Put another way, departments with a low profile simply had nothing to resonate with—and the textbook examples were lab medicine, radiology, and pathology. indispensable to any major hospital, yet if you asked patients what those departments actually did, nine out of ten would shrug. Sad, but that was reality. Which made those departments safe. Too unremarkable to have a story worth resonating with.

When I told Shiho this, she asked the exact same question she had asked earlier.

"What happens if you say that to their faces?"

"What happens? They can't do a thing about it."

"...? That's a different reaction than the neurology one."

"I have a lot of friends there."

By some twist of fate, I had plenty of classmates and juniors in those three departments. So unlike with neurology, I felt no hesitation whatsoever about teasing them.

"Anyway, enough small talk."

I pulled up Professor Heo's test results. Radiology had written out their full reading, and I could interpret scans well enough on my own, so the diagnosis came quickly.

"Professor."

"Yes?"

"Why does the report say everything is normal?"

"Good question. Strange, isn't it."

It was the reading sent over from radiology. Translated, it meant the brain was immaculately clean.

"Shiho. Professor Kim definitely performed a frontal lobotomy, didn't he?"

Shiho had watched Professor Kim's surgery with her own eyes. She said the sight of a hook sliding up into a man's nostril was hard to stomach—even for someone who had been through every brand of hell imaginable.

"I saw it clearly, yes. But couldn't Professor Heo have recovered because he's an Entity?"

"Then why is the perseveration still presenting?"

"Uh... Professor Kim Seok-tae is an Entity too, so maybe it's his ability?"

I nodded.

"That seems most likely."

If it weren't for that, there would be no way to explain Professor Heo's current condition with modern medicine. Calling it PTSD or schizophrenia didn't wash either—being reduced to an idiot who repeated the same words over and over like that was unmistakably abnormal.

"The human brain doesn't break that easily."

From this, we drew one conclusion: even if the brain regenerated, a patient who had undergone Professor Kim's surgery could never recover. When she heard it, Shiho let out a deep sigh.

"So that bowl is useless, then."

She meant the bowl left behind by the Beggar Royal—a vessel that regenerated the body the more people shared their blood with it. We had been using it on those gravely injured by Entities, but against Professor Kim in his current rampage, it meant nothing at ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠all.

"Well, one thing is now certain: the surgery isn't just scraping out the brain."

Regeneration was useless. Once the surgery was over, becoming this kind of idiot was a certainty. I began updating the entry in Winy. It had little apparent connection to stopping Professor Kim, but I wanted it on record.

I had just finished writing the entry and was mulling over countermeasures against Professor Kim when Shiho, who had been reading over my shoulder, suddenly lowered her voice.

"Um... Jeong-uk."

"Yes. Go ahead."

"If I ever undergo Professor Kim Seok-tae's surgery and end up like this... don't try to treat me. Just kill me."

"...?"

"I'm asking because you're a doctor. Only then can we survive."

Thrown by her sudden remark, I sat there opening and closing my mouth, and eventually just nodded.

"Understood. I'll take responsibility and end the pain."

"...Liar."

"Sorry, what?"

"It's nothing."

Shiho calmly sipped her tea and picked up a cookie. It did not take ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠long for me to learn why she had said it.