The Value of a Doctor (5)

"There's a crazy ghost story going around here, too, even though we save people's lives."

At Siho's words, I was still babbling nonsense, unable to catch up with reality.

"I'm sorry... what?"

"Maybe you should reconsider that, now that you have the chance."

But she didn't explain what she meant.

Because Professor Kim was glaring at her.

"Seo Siho. We've met before, haven't we?"

"Yes. Good to see you again, Professor."

"I've been hoping to run into you ever since that day."

Professor Kim wore a benevolent smile.

"Our hospital has more than six hundred staff members. The cardiology department alone has forty. It wouldn't be so strange, perhaps, if there were a professor I didn't know."

But his eyes weren't smiling at all.

"And yet... I searched the network, and there is no staff member named Seo Siho. Could there be an error in the system, I wonder?"

"You seem to know everything already, so wouldn't lying about it now be a little silly?"

"Very wise of you."

"It happens often enough."

Siho shrugged off the restrictive patient gown and tossed it aside.

The gesture felt like a declaration that a fight with Professor Kim was unavoidable.

Professor Kim seemed to take it the same way, narrowing his eyes into slits.

"Is there really a reason for us to fight?"

"Oh, there's a reason all right."

Siho pointed at the paramedic hovering over Professor Kim's shoulder, still lost in a hallucination.

"I can't just let you take that person with you."

"Is that your narrative? Saving even monsters like these?"

"What? No."

Siho shook her head with a look of disgust.

"Why would I save those things? The number of monsters I've put down is probably no less than the number of patients you've saved, Professor."

"Then you have no particular need to stop me, do you?"

"Exactly. I don't want to stop you, believe me..."

Siho glanced briefly in my direction and gave a wry smile.

"Professor Kim Seok-tae. Do you know what I learned while working for the Management Bureau?"

"And what is that?"

"A person who has resonated with an Echo can, one way or another, be turned back into a human. But someone who has become a monster can never become human again."

"I see. So you're calling me a monster."

"That wasn't my intention."

"You're not denying it, though."

Siho simply shrugged.

Then, quite naturally, she planted herself in the narrow room's only path to the door.

"The first time you cross the line is the hardest. Once you've crossed it, there's no going back."

Sss... haaah.

She drew a deep breath, and it looked exactly like someone taking a long drag on a cigarette.

"I've thought it over and over, and if you walk out of here, Professor, that's when all hope is lost. So—"

Click.

The muzzle of her shotgun leveled at Professor Kim's head.

"I have to stop you right here."

And the moment her finger settled on the trigger—

"Wait!"

Somehow, before I knew it, I was standing in front of her gun barrel.

"Haaah... this loop's a bust."

In the end, we had no choice but to let Professor Kim go.

I talked Siho down, and after scratching her head in frustration, she let him walk.

Back in my office, she sank onto her swaying hammock and started gnawing on a stick of jerky.

"Jeong-uk. You shouldn't have let Professor Kim Seok-tae go. That was our last chance to stop him."

"But didn't you tell me before that you couldn't stop him there?"

"I did. I definitely said that... it's just, how do I even explain this..."

She scratched her head again.

"Honestly? I can't stop him there either. But that place had the highest chance of success, all things considered."

She spoke as if she knew exactly where and when things would happen.

At that look on her face, I couldn't help but ask.

"... This might sound absurd, but... do you have some kind of foresight?"

"..."

She looked away.

I'd never seen her like this. The woman who never lost her composure was suddenly rationing her words.

"... I can't tell you."

But I couldn't give up either.

The way she'd turned hostile toward Professor Kim when she could easily have avoided the confrontation looked suspicious to anyone with eyes. Even as tough as she was, the Siho I knew wasn't the type to lunge forward recklessly like that.

So despite the impropriety, I had no choice but to press her, again and again.

Besides, she'd called herself a "ghost story"—all the more reason I needed to know for certain.

"If you answer, does the future change?"

"..."

"Even knowing the future, is it impossible to control every variable?"

"..."

"Do you know the future or not?"

I kept trading questions, feeling like a game of twenty questions. She answered with unbroken silence, but after months at her side, I could read her face.

De facto affirmations—just never a perfect yes.

After endless questions, I finally delivered my verdict like a diagnosis.

"Is it... regression?"

"..."

She squeezed her eyes shut.

A direct hit.

But something about her reaction was off. It was as if she had wished, more than anything, that I wouldn't discover her regression.

She took a deep breath and pulled a cigar from her coat, clamping it between her lips.

Just as I opened my mouth to remind her I didn't allow smoking, she bit off the end of the cigar with her teeth.

With careful precision, she trimmed the cut end, then produced a lighter from her pocket.

An old, dented thing, worn down by years of use.

Tap, tap.

With awkward, clumsy hands, she tried to light the cigar.

I was about to ask what this sudden little ritual meant when she spoke first.

"It would have been better if you'd never guessed right."

"?"

Tap.

After several tries, the ancient lighter finally caught.

With trembling hands, she brought the flame to the cigar.

"It wasn't that I wanted to keep it from you. There was a reason."

She held the lighter just short of the cigar and paused.

"You know the story of the Little Mermaid? It's like that. If anyone learns my secret, I die. That's my narrative."

She thumped her chest.

"Fair warning—my heart's about to ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠stop. Don't try to save me. I'll die regardless."

Then, mid-explanation, she smacked her forehead with a wince.

"Took me long enough to explain. Haa... I'm not dodging this loop."

She regarded the carefully trimmed cigar with fond regret, then set it down on my desk.

Bracing for the dizzying chest pain to come, she folded herself into a lotus position and squeezed her eyes shut.

"Next time, I'll make it count."

With those one words of apology, she ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠went ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠utterly still.

... For about three minutes.

The woman who had been waiting for death like a monk in meditation quietly cracked one eye open.

Then she shifted her position with a vague look of discomfort.

"..."

Two more minutes of that.

Now her eyes were fully open, and she began patting down her own body, visibly bewildered.

"Huh? Why am I not dead?"

For a fleeting moment I thought that airheaded little lapse was adorable—and then reality came rushing back, and I asked my question.

"... What Echo is it?"

"No idea. The Bureau keeps it classified—so classified, even the Bureau doesn't know what mine is."

It wasn't an Echo I remembered, either.

An Echo that regresses time?

No such Echo or Entity exists in the world. I didn't have every one of the hundreds of Entities memorized, but an ability that game-breaking would absolutely have stuck in my head.

Still, just to be sure, I pulled out my phone and opened the Entity compendium.

And at the very last entry of the compendium, I found an Echo I had never seen before, newly registered.

I couldn't tear my eyes from the screen.

Why... were the logs already updated? And what could all those countless entries possibly mean?

While I stood there reeling from the appearance of an Echo I'd never seen, Siho leaned in and stole a peek at my screen. Since I'd been staring at it so intently, I tilted it down toward her almost without thinking.

Her pupils were tracking back and forth, chasing something on the display.

"Siho. Can you actually read this?"

"Yes. Well, look at that—I can read this one, too."

"What does it say?"

"Um..."

She took a moment to choose her words.

"It says I'm allowed to tell you, Jeong-uk."

"Does it say why?"

"Do you understand the mechanism of action of every drug you prescribe?"

I shook my head.

In modern medicine, a huge share of the drugs we use are administered without anyone knowing exactly how they work. Try it first; if there are no side effects, then no harm done—figure out the principle later.

In other words, this was what she was telling me.

"So you don't know the reason?"

"Nope. It just says it's fine."

It left a bad taste in my mouth, but there was nothing to be done. If that was what it said, all I could do was believe it.

"So sharing your secret with me is safe, then?"

"Right?"

For some reason, her answer felt like a brush-off. Her gaze had dropped back to the observation log and refused to leave it.

Curious at that reaction, I kept scrolling the screen and asked,

"Why are you reading the observation logs?"

"Every one of my loops is recorded in here."

So it hadn't been my imagination. She was completely absorbed in reading her own history.

But she wasn't the only one with questions.

Besieging her with them, impropriety be damned, I pressed on.

"So our entire future is written in there?"

"Not quite."

Tap, tap.

She drummed her fingers on the screen.

"Only this loop is recorded."

"Loop?"

"It's complicated to explain, but—this regression business, you see, it isn't some convenient novel-style power."

She pointed at my screen.

"Say, for instance, I get ambushed before I can even react, and my head goes flying. Would I be able to remember that?"

"No, I suppose not."

"Exactly. Same with any death where my mind gets corrupted, or I can't react, or I never even register what killed me—I can't remember those. And normally, when you die that way, you end up trapped in the loop, repeating that same stretch of time over and over."

She pointed to an observation log dated roughly one month from now.

"That's why I told you we had to stop him in the hospital room. Professor Kim Seok-tae was my run this loop. And fighting him inside that room was where I pushed him back the hardest."

"Ah... then..."

At last, I understood what she was trying to say.

"It was me who..."

"Ruined it. Yeah."

It felt like my heart had dropped straight through the floor.

My wrong choice had led, in the end, to the worst possible future.

"... I'm... sorry."

So this loop was a failure.

Of course, for her it might amount to nothing more than one entry among countless attempts.

But for me, with no regression of my own, this was my first and only chance.

A regret that felt like a fist around my heart came crashing in.

"Because of me..."

"No need to apologize. That's old news now, anyway."

Scrolling my phone's screen for me, she said,

"It's all recorded right here. Until now, I didn't even know why I died, so I couldn't do anything about it. But that's changed. I don't need it to be the hospital room anymore—I can manage anywhere now."

"Meaning...?"

"To put it the way you'd like, Professor—I've more or less mapped out the boss's attack patterns."

Her scrolling finger stopped.

"That's the last of it. Nothing more to read. Whoever wrote this sure was thorough."

"I wrote it?"

"Yep. Looks like every entry is written from your point of view, Jeong-uk. If this loop fails too, I'll be counting on you."

"... It doesn't say how to succeed, then?"

"If we'd solved it, would I have looped back into this round at all? And there wouldn't be any record left to read, would there?"

"Ah."

So all we'd gained was Professor Kim's boss pattern.

While I sat there deflated, she poked me in the cheek.

Startled by the sudden contact, I looked up at her. She was smiling, seemingly delighted about something.

"By the way, you never keep your promises, do you?"

"Sorry, what?"

"I told you, if I ever end up on the operating table, just euthanize me. It's easier for both of us that way."

"That's..."

"Never kept it, did you?"

"... I'll keep it this loop. I promise."

"Liar."

She pointed her finger at the final page of the observation log.

[December 25, 2036]

Some loop stretched on ten years into the future.

Reading those entries, I had no choice but to fall silent.

What unnerved me even more was discovering that I could completely understand why my other self had held out that long.

While my mouth hung open, Siho draped an arm around my shoulder.

She put her arm around me casually, the way an old friend of ten years might.

"Weren't we supposed to be a strictly business relationship?"

"..."

"Well, look at you, Professor. More loyal than I gave you credit for."

Only at that unhesitating, unguarded touch did it finally click.

All this time, Siho had been keeping a wall between us, however invisibly. This easy, unguarded closeness—this was the real her.

Completely unmasked, she showed herself to me with a smile.

"Then let me introduce myself properly again. Your partner—Seo Siho."

I couldn't look away from that smile.

Because it was the first time. The first time I'd ever stood face to face with a woman—someone who wasn't family—with no wall between us.

"So here's to working with you from now on, Mr. Hippocrates?"

My face went hot in an instant.

‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠

I nodded, eyes turned away from her.

Praying, desperately, that she couldn't hear my heartbeat.