The Worth of a Doctor (6)

Redefining my relationship with Shiho had, in turn, expanded our arsenal of means to deal with Entities. Combined, her regression ability and my app made us all but invincible.

…There was a time when I genuinely believed that.

"Jungwook. So what do we do now?"

"You're telling me you don't know, Shiho?"

"I told you already. If I knew, I'd have escaped this loop by now."

Looking closely at her observation records, only her failures had been written down. Which meant that what we knew was how not to fail — not how to succeed.

"Have you ever tried going back to before you turned hostile toward Professor Kim—"

"Never. No — I should say I can't."

Cross-referencing her testimony with the observation records, I pieced together how her regression actually worked: it always rewound to the moment she first turned hostile against the Entity that had caused her death.

In other words, returning to a point before she'd encountered that Entity — or before the hostility began — was impossible.

"Once a loop starts, refusing to antagonize the Entity simply isn't an option anymore."

There was exactly one way for her to escape the agonizing loop: resolve the conflict with that Entity. Flee, kill it, or talk it down — the method didn't matter. Only by dissolving the state of hostility could the loop be released.

And in this loop, her regression point was the standoff in that hospital room.

"I can't go back any further than that. The save point is fixed there."

"Then why did you stop me back there?"

She hesitated a moment, as if organizing her thoughts, and then finally let the truth slip out.

"Let me be absolutely clear about one thing. In every single loop so far, Professor Kim Seok-tae — the man who brainwashed that paramedic — becomes a monster."

Shiho had never divided people from monsters based on Resonance alone.

"You know Animal Farm by George Washington, right?"

"…Don't you mean Animal Farm by George Orwell?"

"That's what I said."

She brushed past it without missing a beat.

"Anyway. After Professor Kim brainwashes the paramedic, this hospital becomes exactly like that book."

"Professor Kim would never do such a thing."

"And I'm the living proof that he does, aren't I?"

I found myself clenching my mouth shut. Because I knew she wasn't lying. And her sudden eruption in the hospital room, too, made perfect sense if that future was real.

"You're saying the professor becomes a tyrant?"

"Why else would I ever have fought him?"

I couldn't begin to imagine it. The man who loved his patients, who had devoted his entire life to other people, transforming into that. He had once even served as head of administration, and in all that time he had never once wielded his authority over anyone. That the gentle, scrupulously honest man could descend upon the hospital as its tyrant was something I simply could not bring myself to believe.

"What on earth happened? Was there some event that could corrupt a man like him?"

"No. He never fell. Good intentions merely paved his road to hell."

And then she laid out the future she had witnessed, piece by piece.

In certain loops, once Professor Kim succeeded in brainwashing the paramedic, he gained confidence and launched an aggressive campaign of 'resocialization.' The first targets were the Entities who had committed atrocities inside the hospital — the orthopedics Entity that severed people's limbs, the transplant surgery Entity that had organs delivered to it. Professor Kim sought them out, subdued them, brainwashed them, and personally reshaped them into obedient members of his new society.

"That resocialization technique seems to be a kind of Echo ability. Entities only ever defy their own Narratives to follow another being in cases like that."

But even after the Entities' resocialization was complete, his project did not stop.

It began with the man who stole medicine, then the ones who stole food, then those who cut in line — and eventually he was brainwashing even people who broke curfew or overslept, all through LSD.

And so Professor Kim brought the entire hospital under his absolute control and built his paradise.

Through it all, he never once indulged in power for its own sake. He simply believed, sincerely, that this was the most ideal society possible.

As for Shiho at that time — she had resisted in order to hold onto her humanity, been dragged away, and ended up pickled in drugs. That was how her story went.

"…Hold on. Isn't that 1984, not Animal Farm?"

"Sorry. I don't really read books."

"…"

Anyway, that wasn't the point.

"The utopia Professor Kim Seok-tae builds is always like this. It starts with good intentions, and it always ends in hell."

She lowered her voice to a near whisper.

"Don't forget. Resonating doesn't make someone a monster — but there are Echoes that resonate only with monsters."

"…"

Listening to her, I found nothing to refute. Because that line had come straight out of the game — it was my favorite line in the entire script.

Not that a Shiho appeared in the game, mind you. It was something a secretary NPC said to the Administrators (the players) whenever they had to dispose of Entities that had once been human — words meant to lend a veneer of justification to the deed.

The secretary NPC's face and Shiho's overlapped in my mind.

"Forgive me for saying this about Professor Kim Seok-tae, but the fact that he resonated with that Echo means he lived a similar kind of life."

He cherished his patients — and just as fiercely, he had never hesitated at any means to help them. I'm not saying he committed crimes in secret before he resonated. Only that he had lived in a way that never once stopped to weigh right and wrong — so relentlessly devoted to his cause that he would consider even this acceptable.

Then another line from the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠secretary, one I'd heard in the demo version, surfaced in my memory.

That line had been the biggest hook of the demo — the one everyone speculated about.

In the game, the Management Bureau treated every Entity as a threat, a monster, and dealt with them through incineration, confinement, or neutralization. Treatment, dialogue, negotiation — none of these existed among the choices. For the Bureau of the demo, the only criterion that mattered was whether someone had resonated or not, nothing more.

I remembered an Entity that had done nothing yet — one that had sobbed and begged to be spared. And every time the Administrators coldly burned even those away, the home office paid out performance bonuses, citing the removal of future risks. And every time, the secretary bustled about praising the Administrators for their perfect discernment.

And that was precisely why the secretary's occasional lines like these were such a glaring contradiction. At the time, I'd assumed it was foreshadowing — a promise that treatment or dialogue options would be added in the full release. But thinking about it now, it might have meant something else entirely.

"…"

I repeated that line to Shiho as well.

"You're saying that even if their Narratives resonated, the way they enact them is still their own choice."

"Correct."

She folded down two fingers.

"Streamer Gu Jihye chose to erase her own photos rather than kill a person. By contrast, what about the Vagrant Royalty? He chose to kill someone to steal their identity. A Narrative is not brainwashing. It isn't a rewrite of common sense. Even when you act according to your Narrative, how you act — that is yours and yours alone to decide."

She hammered the point home again and again.

"In a sense, Resonance is a disease. But not every patient stricken with it despairs of the world and becomes a monster."

Then she pointed at herself.

"I am a person. Even if I resonated without knowing it, for reasons I don't understand — I am still a person. That's exactly why I can't bring myself to pity those who chose to become monsters."

"…"

"What about you, Jungwook? Am I a person? Is Gu Jihye? The Vagrant Royalty? And… Professor Kim?"

She held out the Winy app toward me. Happy Relieved Hospital — the wiki page for the Echo that had resonated with Professor Kim.

"Is this one a person, or a monster?"

My lips, parched dry, trembled for a moment. Then I steadied my heart and opened my mouth.

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

"Jungwook, do you have any idea how long it's been since you asked me to have a meal with you?"

"I'm sorry, Professor. I think I'd been misunderstanding you all this time."

"There we go. There we go. Well reasoned."

The next day, I had lunch with Professor Kim Seok-tae.

"When I saw that you'd resonated, I panicked. I think I jumped at shadows."

"Honestly, I regretted showing you that side of me, too."

Professor Kim smiled with that warm, gentle grace of his. Yes. That was how my mentor had always smiled.

I cut into my cheese tonkatsu, today's lunch special, and kept the conversation going.

"The truth is, I spent all of yesterday in the lab thinking it over, and I realized I'd been shackled by old guidelines. Not every Echo turns people into monsters."

"That's right. Well thought out."

The professor cut into his tonkatsu as well.

"So starting today, I intend to talk to the Winy editors. We shouldn't be describing every Echo as though it were evil."

"But changing how people perceive things is hard, Jungwook."

"I have someone sitting right in front of me who succeeded at it, don't I?"

"Me?"

"I learned from the man who renamed schizophrenia, after all. Surely I can manage at least as much."

There is a saying called the Stigma Effect. The more sinister a disease's name, the deeper the prejudice against it grows. It was true in practice, too. Back when schizophrenia was still called by its old, violent-sounding name in this country, people feared the patients, and the patients, terrified of society's gaze, scrambled above all else to hide their illness. But once the name was changed to something clinical and neutral, the threshold of the hospital lowered, and patients finally began to come through the doors.

You might scoff — all that, from a mere change of name? But the effect had been statistically proven. And the man who had led that reform was Professor Kim Seok-tae.

"We need to shift how people see Entities and Echoes, just a little. So that those who resonate can walk into a hospital as easily as anyone else."

"Well thought out, Jungwook. Though it's a shame. If I'd known you'd grow ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠into such a heavyweight, I would have talked you over to my side by any means necessary."

"Our Department Chair would never have let that happen."

"That rascal's had his eye on you since you were an intern. 'The son of a national hero,' this, 'star power,' that."

I gave a wry smile at the professor's recollection. It was true — the real reason I'd chosen cardiology was that the current Department Chair, ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠back when he was still an assistant professor, had lobbied me relentlessly. With me, the son of a national hero, in cardiology, the department's prestige would rise on that alone, he'd argued — as if my merely occupying a chair like some totem would elevate the whole hospital. He'd been desperate to have me.

…Looking back now, I realize I hadn't been swayed by that beef at all.

Professor Kim, who knew the whole history of it, gazed into the air as though the memory were dear to him.

"If I'd known you'd grow into this, I'd have had no regrets if you'd come to psychiatry."

"…"

"And rightly so. Isn't the Echo remarkably similar to a mental illness?"

I nodded, because the professor's words were simply the truth. Perhaps an Echo belonged to psychiatry rather than internal medicine — I'd had that thought myself, once or twice.

"Well, no use dwelling on it now, is there? The tonkatsu's going cold. Eat up. Mm, this is good~"

Professor Kim began savoring his tonkatsu, one cut piece at a time. It was his favorite food. After every volunteer mission, after every charity basketball tournament, he always went looking for cheese tonkatsu.

"I never imagined I'd be eating cheese tonkatsu in a hospital. The nutrition department ladies have really been through the wringer."

"…"

"One of your patients works in the kitchen, doesn't she? Do thank her for me."

"Yes, sir."

I nodded and started clearing my own bowl. And when both our bowls had all but emptied, I opened my mouth once more.

"Professor Kim."

"Hm? What is it?"

Wiping the sauce from the corner of his mouth with his napkin, the professor looked at me. A warm-faced middle-aged man whose very presence put you at ease. My benefactor, who had set aside his time to counsel me free of charge through the worst of my griefs, back when I entered medical school and tragedy after tragedy broke me down. My mentor, who had pushed me forward in my wanderings and told me to study the field I wanted. My steadfast senior, who had stood by me until the man everyone dismissed as a professor by pure luck was acknowledged as a bona fide member of the hospital's staff. Perhaps the man I ought to call my other father.

I set down my utensils and spoke to my mentor.

"I'm sorry."

Clatter.

Professor Kim collapsed over the table, his cutlery crashing to the floor. Where he lay, his fingertips shook violently, and then his whole body began to convulse.

"Jung…wook…?"

"You let me remain human, Professor. That is why stopping the monster you've become is my duty. At least, I—"

My throat kept closing, blurring the ends of my words, but I forced myself to finish.

"At least, that's how I was taught."