The Value of a Doctor (9)

In the cafeteria everyone else had abandoned, I sat across from Shiho, chewing over the lonely silence between us.

"Jungwook. Are you all right?"

"Honestly? Not even a little."

I looked down at the portable bed set beside the table. On it, wrapped in white cloth, my mentor lay with his eyes closed. I reached out and touched the hand that had slipped free of the fabric.

Cold.

It was a coldness you grew used to in a hospital—cardiology especially—but today, for some reason, it seeped all the way into my bones. It still felt like a dream, the fact that he was gone.

So this is what he meant by depersonalization.

I had never intended to go into cardiology in the first place. I'd meant to follow my mentor into psychiatry and bury my bones there. If I hadn't been seduced by the Department Chair's viper tongue and the promise of premium beef, I'd probably be an assistant professor of psychiatry by now. Which was why I still carried a fair amount of psychiatric knowledge—diluted by years of cardiology, but Professor Kim's terminology surfaced now and then, unmistakable.

So this... is what depersonalization feels like.

Like floating outside my own body, looking down at myself. Everything felt cottony, muffled, distant. If it deepened further, dissociative disorder would set in—the condition the public knows as split personality.

"Haha..."

A dry laugh escaped me. This had to be the condition of Happy Relieved Hospital. A doctor disillusioned with the world, ground down by unbearable stress into dissociation—that was the doctor the Echo resonated with.

But I knew now: there were no more doctors left for Happy Relieved Hospital to claim.

So an Echo shelved in a library is quarantined from society forever.

An Echo is an unfinished story. Until now, I'd believed there were only two ways to deal with them—physical suppression with overwhelming firepower, or resolution by wielding their own narrative against them. That was certainly how the game usually played out.

But after reading the description of the Echo Library newly added to my game app's collection tab, I'd had no choice but to reconsider.

"Siho. This... can we actually trust it?"

I flipped my phone over and showed her the description. My question carried two meanings: was it right to believe this app had truly sealed an Echo—and could I trust what Professor Kim had written inside that book?

She studied the screen carefully, then answered in a low, level voice.

"Honestly, I strongly suspect this app is an Entity."

I nodded. It obviously was. It contained every scrap of information on Echos and Entities, and it even offered a function to seal Echos into e-books—it couldn't possibly be anything else.

She tapped the screen as she spoke.

"Out in the field, you run into countless Entities. And every single time, all the Bureau ever gave us was a gun and the bare minimum of gear. Do you know why?"

I shook my head.

"The Bureau considered items to be paranormal phenomena themselves—residue of Echos, basically. An organization whose stated goal was the total elimination of such things was never going to be fond of actively using them."

Hearing that, I began to form a picture of what kind of place the Management Bureau really was. They were a group terrified of Echos. That fear was the only explanation for such compulsive, obsessive eradication.

"...They were afraid of them?"

"They were. The people managing items and writing regulations were desk workers, unlike the field agents who met Entities face to face. All they had was text on a page—so they feared it far too much."

As she said it, she stared into empty air as if recalling the past. Then, as though something unpleasant had surfaced, she frowned faintly and came back to the present.

"Honestly, I can't say the Bureau was entirely wrong. Entities will use any means necessary to complete their narratives. They can lie behind borrowed goodwill without breaking a sweat."

Echos don't follow arithmetic. They don't all behave by the same patterns, so they can't be predicted. You could call them monsters in the truest sense.

"Once you've been stabbed in the back by Entities enough times, you learn ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to build everything on a foundation of distrust."

She lowered her gaze, fixing her eyes on my phone, scrutinizing the app with open suspicion.

"But you know what conclusion I reached after surviving it all?"

"Distrust every Entity, without exception?"

"No."

She pushed the phone back toward me.

"Erase the fear, face reality head-on, and the truth becomes visible. People hear 'ghost story' and panic on reflex—but isn't it that very prejudice that keeps them from grasping what an Entity actually is?"

I picked up the phone she'd returned. The gist of her advice was simple: ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠the judgment was mine to make. Whether to believe this app was friendly—and whether to trust the story shelved in its library.

I stared hard at the screen. Several minutes passed as I sifted through the app, until I discovered a new entry in the Echo Library.

Of the new icons, I pressed Borrow. At that exact moment, something in my pocket jabbed into my thigh. I had no memory of putting away a pen or any surgical instrument, so, puzzled, I fished the object out.

"This is..."

What came out of my pocket was an e-cigarette, running at full power. For a moment, I had no words.

Watching the gallery churn with posts as if it were on fire, I allowed myself a soft smile. From the wind-swept rooftop, I could see the hospital entrance packed with an ocean of people—patients and their families who hadn't been able to leave while the fog held the building in its grip. People danced as they embraced one another, and the hospital's front yard buzzed with enough noise to rival a street market.

As I watched the whole spectacle from the rooftop's front-row seat, Shiho came up beside me.

"Did you know? In a single day, you just caught up with the number of people I've saved in my entire lifetime."

"Really?"

"I told you, didn't I? The Bureau is a place where there are more people they give up on than people they rescue."

She shrugged and settled in at my side. In her hand was a cigar—the same one she'd pulled out days ago when she'd sensed her own death approaching. She examined it as if it were precious, then slid it back into its tin case.

"Ugh. If I'd known I wasn't going to die back then, I never would've taken it out."

"Does that cigar have some special function?"

"No? It's just... I made a promise with someone precious to me."

She stroked the dented tin case with her palm.

"That I'd smoke this once—before I die."

I could glimpse the tangled emotions in her eyes as she looked at the case. As always, I didn't press further and changed the subject.

"Well, smoking is certainly bad for the body, but good for the mind."

"Can a doctor really say that?"

"Of course. This e-cigarette is actually a gift I gave Professor Kim."

I turned the e-cigarette that had appeared in my pocket along with the Echo Library's Borrow button over in my palm.

"Never dreamed it would turn into an item, though."

This e-cigarette—which Professor Kim had smoked, and which I had given him—carried our story within it. Back in the day, whenever a patient he was treating chose to end their own life, the professor would climb to the rooftop and alone put a cigarette to his lips. But a cigarette he never normally smoked was always stale, or dried out beyond saving, and grumbling, he'd give up—that was his ritual. Once I learned the situation, this e-cigarette was my gift to him.

In a world like that, the only stress relief available to a sucker with neither the means nor the time to get angry was smoking. And so I turned my beloved mentor into a chain smoker.

"..."

Leaning against the railing, I turned the e-cigarette over and over in the light of the setting sun. What remained of it was completely drained of liquid, its tip slightly discolored. And it was powered off.

Shiho, who had been quietly watching the device beside me, spoke up.

"Jungwook. Did you shut it down because you knew the fog would vanish when the cigarette stopped running?"

"Yes... well... roughly."

It was hard to explain, but the moment I took this item in hand, its instructions had simply flowed into my mind—unlike ordinary items, which you had to poke and prod one use at a time to deduce. So I hadn't hesitated to switch off the running device. The instant it died, the fog that had imprisoned the hospital dissolved, and people began moving swiftly through the orderly discharge process under controlled supervision. Everything unfolding before my eyes now was the result.

"We should head down too."

I'd seen enough of the show. Draping my gown over my shoulders, I started to leave the rooftop. With the din of laughter and cheering at my back, I gripped the door handle.

"We can't be late for the professor's funeral."

On the day everyone's miracle came true, I turned my back on the roaring festival and set my feet toward a quiet vigil—for the one soul I had failed to save.