The Value of a Doctor (8)

Something unbelievable has happened.

The Echoes have been unleashed upon the world, and we have all had to accept that things can never return to the way they were.

Everyone despairs for the future.

But I think differently.

In the past, mental illness was mistaken for demonic possession, and people lost their lives to that misunderstanding, in all the wrong ways.

Even a few short years ago, a visit to a psychiatrist was looked upon with scorn, making it desperately hard for patients to seek out a hospital at all.

That must never happen again.

Ignorant fear makes rational solutions impossible, and it inevitably mass-produces innocent victims.

Echoes are no different.

I may not be an expert the way Jeong-uk is, but even I know that Echoes are not something to be feared unconditionally.

Is every story in the world truly a ghost story?

Impossible.

Among them there must be folk tales, legends, and heartwarming stories of human kindness.

That is why I ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠did not fear the Echoes.

My beloved disciple was standing up to them so boldly — how could I cower in a corner out of sheer cowardice?

And so, on the fifteenth day since the Echoes were unleashed upon the world,

I discovered that I myself had resonated.

I know exactly why I resonated.

It goes back to when the government began actively supporting the suicide prevention centers and mental health support centers across the country.

Several months had passed since the mass suicide incident caused by The Most Romantic Choice, and the government had finally begun taking seriously the flood of mental illness that the Echoes could unleash.

Through the Ministry of Health and Welfare, they began channeling support to mental health centers nationwide.

Since I also served as director of a suicide prevention center, I welcomed the measure.

But a day passed after the announcement, then two, then a full week, and not a single bit of support ever reached the center.

Then, several days later, only after the city hall audit results were published did I learn the truth.

The section chief of the city hall's Health and Welfare Department — the man in charge of the budget — had been embezzling the funds along the way.

Fictitious centers and programs. Budget requests inflated far beyond reality. Phantom payroll line items. Fraudulent service contracts cooked up with complicit vendors...

He even exploited the fact that those who had already died by suicide had no next of kin, filing claims for their treatment costs and subsidies — and spending it all on his office dinners.

I was furious.

Because of that man's greed, countless people who could have been saved died.

But what enraged me even more was the reaction of the public and the press.

No one paid the slightest attention to his embezzlement.

All that mattered to them was the rising supernova, Professor Lee Jeong-uk; the stale old story of a city official skimming a few hundred million held no interest whatsoever.

To them, the sight of Professor Lee Jeong-uk handling the Echoes with such brilliance while America, Japan, and China floundered helplessly mattered far more than the fact that mental illness patients were being denied the support they needed.

My reason accepted this as only natural.

Hadn't I learned, over my decades as a director, that society had always been exactly this kind of society?

But that day, something sat wrong in my chest.

When I woke from an uneasy dream, I discovered that I had transformed in my bed into the most hideous of monsters.

My memories after becoming a monster were jumbled in every possible way.

Yesterday, I operated on someone's brain.

Or did I? It may well have been several days ago.

At night, I dreamed that I was operating on men like that section chief.

Believing it was only a dream, I marshaled every ounce of my knowledge to punish the man.

I pickled him in drugs, brainwashed him, and resocialized him.

The resocialized section chief emptied out his entire fortune, repaid every embezzled won, and funded the center.

And when I woke from that dream, I realized it had been no dream at all.

Shaking with fear that day, I returned to the hospital as I always did, played the part of an ordinary psychiatry professor, and prayed that no one would notice my deviation.

A day passed that way. Then two. Then fifteen.

Over those days, I learned what cunning animals human beings truly are.

Only the first time is hard. After that, there is nothing left to hesitate over.

A single mistake lowered the threshold beyond all measure, and so my double life began.

Whenever my reason snapped, a resocialized person would be standing before me, spouting nonsense.

Each time, I fled back to the hospital.

At some point, I noticed that I no longer trembled while watching the morning news.

That was when I began calling that hideous inner self the 'Hermit.'

By day the kindly Professor Kim Seok-tae, by night the vicious Hermit — the act of unleashing my hideous inner self upon the world settled into routine.

From then on, I could no longer tell myself apart.

Was Professor Kim Seok-tae secretly venting his hideous impulses in the form of the Hermit?

Or was the Hermit hiding inside the shell of Professor Kim Seok-tae to conceal his crimes?

I couldn't tell, and I didn't want to know.

That was when I began avoiding Jeong-uk.

As the specialist in Echoes, he would see straight through my hideous Hermit at a single glance.

And yet, paradoxically, some corner of my heart was hoping the boy would find me out.

At some point, I became aware that my own baseline had broken.

Is there truly a reason we must not harm people? When others are dying senselessly and unjustly because of the Echoes, what could possibly be wrong with killing by my own hand a human being worse than a beast?

If I had become a monster anyway, wasn't it only right to spend that rage on the people who deserved it?

I was not trying to play the hero.

By venting my rage where it belonged, I was contributing to the world.

Of course, I knew my thinking was wrong.

But the pleasure that retribution delivered was so addictive that I could not stop.

And so it was, in truth, nothing more than rationalization.

Psychiatrically speaking, I was in a state where I could no ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠longer make sound moral judgments on my own.

That is why, late as it was, I went looking for Jeong-uk.

He would be able to tell me whether I was wrong or not.

But on the way to find him, the Great Resonance occurred in Yongsan.

Watching the Entities there raging, proudly expressing what they were, I caught myself envying them.

Seeing them now fully dissolved into the world, I even harbored a faint optimism — that perhaps, through Jeong-uk, I might yet receive absolution.

And when I finally found Jeong-uk,

the boy was being held at gunpoint by a soldier.

Believing the world had ended, the soldiers were threatening him, demanding antibiotics.

Something roiled in my chest.

The Hermit whispered that I must punish them.

But I held on.

Because I could not let Jeong-uk see anything barbaric in me.

I had to prove that I was not a monster.

But then the soldier pulled the trigger—

When a single gunshot dropped one of them, bleeding from his thigh, the thread of my reason snapped once more.

When I came to, I had operated on someone yet again.

For his excessive violence, I resocialized him.

Only after my reason returned did I remember that Jeong-uk was watching.

I turned my head to study the boy's reaction.

— "I need to take this gunshot patient."

...Thank goodness.

Jeong-uk was telling me I was all right.

If I had been wrong, the Echo specialist would have scolded me.

And that boy told me I was all right.

There was no longer any need to hide, frantically smothered in guilt.

Reborn as a new self, I immediately wrapped the hospital in fog.

The world outside is dangerous.

Cruel indifference. Moral laziness. Deceptive kindness.

The outside world, where such things run rampant, is far too unhappy a place.

If my patients kept living out there, they would surely go mad.

So I must protect them.

When they have completed a self that will not waver even outside the fog, I will lift it away.

This, and nothing less, was the first prescription of the newborn Professor Kim ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Seok-tae — for his patients' truly happy and healthy minds.

...What have I done?

My mind is a blur.

The time I can remain sane keeps growing shorter.

The Hermit is no longer a mask.

He has seized control.

That despotic madman of a doctor has made Professor Kim Seok-tae his mask.

That doctor is me too — but he is something I cannot control.

Trapped inside that monster, I prayed with everything I had.

Please. Let Jeong-uk stop me.

I wanted that boy to stop the tyrant who could not give up this base pleasure.

Because even that tyrant cannot beat Jeong-uk.

Time flowed on from there.

A few days after the tyrant resocialized a paramedic and a transplant surgeon,

Jeong-uk came to see me, handing me a cup of coffee.

It was espresso.

The one we always drank together after finishing our ER night shifts.

I savored that espresso willingly.

It was more bitter than usual.

Right. Of course. It's been drugged.

We both knew our medications well — we used to lick them once, just in jest, the ones we prescribed to our patients.

I taught him that only by understanding why patients hated taking their medicine could a doctor truly empathize with them, and Jeong-uk, trusting my word, actually went and licked them.

And a bitterness this absurd could only be warfarin or digoxin.

The corners of my mouth lifted.

At last. Jeong-uk has stopped me.

Even the tyrant was convinced. If it was Jeong-uk's judgment, he was accepting that he himself had been wrong.

I — perhaps we — calmly accepted the end that had come for us.

That day's lunch, as it happened, was cheese tonkatsu.

A dish that both Jeong-uk and I loved.

With the fog, the ingredients must have been hard to come by.

Coincidence? If so, what a fated end it was.

And if not — that's fine too.

"I heard one of your patients works here too? Tell them I said thank you."

If Jeong-uk had asked the nutrition department to prepare this menu, that wouldn't be so bad either.

I savored the tonkatsu slowly.

My heart began to ache, bit by bit, but I endured until the very last piece.

And only after finishing that final piece did I accept my ending.

"Jeong...uk..."

The floor is cold.

But it isn't bad.

It was a send-off almost too honorable for a monster like me.

A satisfying ending.

This, and this alone, was the ending befitting a mad doctor.

"Thank... you..."

More than anything, the fact that Jeong-uk was shedding tears as he looked down at me seemed to testify that I had been human —

and that made me so, so happy.