Who is Entity (6)
By the time I finished the interview and made it back to my office, I had become a superstar.
It was everywhere. NewTube, SNS, community forums, the news, even the newspapers.
Clips of me cursing a streamer to her face and hurling her phone aside were being flung from corner to corner of the internet like some kind of viral video.
The view counts on the related videos climbed so fast I could practically watch it happen, and the comment sections refreshed anew every single time I hit reload.
Watching this, I couldn't help thinking the world has simply gotten too fast. How on earth could it outrun the time it takes me to walk back to my own lab, inside the very same hospital building? They say word travels fast even without legs, but this was pushing it.
Why did I do that…
I buried my forehead against my desk and repented. The cold surface slowly cooled my burning skin.
I really do need to learn to leash this temper of mine.
Just then, my phone buzzed briefly in my pocket. It was the Department Chair.
"Come to my office."
"Oh, great… please tell me he's not angry."
Of course he was. The news had evidently reached the Department Chair's ears mid-rounds. I was summoned to his office on the spot.
The moment I opened the door, a gaunt, sharp-featured middle-aged man greeted me. The glare reflecting off his gold-rimmed glasses stung my eyes, as if speaking volumes about his foul mood.
"Jeong-uk."
"Yes, sir."
"What were you thinking? I can't cover for you this time."
"I'm sorry, sir."
"It's not that you were entirely in the wrong, but… haah… I told you to rein in that temper, didn't I? Or have you forgotten you already got written up once for cursing out a patient's family?"
Tsk.
There was nothing I could do except click my tongue. A bitter taste lingered on the tip of my tongue.
Truthfully, this wasn't the first time I'd slammed the accelerator like this.
A hospital is a place where an extraordinary cross-section of humanity washes through. You find the sublime families keeping vigil over a loved one's final moments, and you also find people screaming at each other over inheritance disputes right at the patient's bedside.
Every once in a while, outright scum of the earth, too.
Dealing with people like that, even I cross the line now and then.
"I'm sorry, Department Chair."
"There's nothing to be sorry for."
The Chair propped his elbows on the desk and laced his fingers together. The pose people usually call the 'scheming boss stance.' In any ordinary movie or drama, this is where I'd get the order to handle it on my own.
But for all his appearance, the Chair was a man with a soft heart.
"There's going to be a disciplinary hearing over this, probably. I'll try my best to talk the Hospital Director out of it, but I doubt I can stop it."
"I see. That's what I figured."
"We'll watch public opinion first, but once this emergency is more or less under control, I expect you'll be suspended for a few months."
Suspension.
You could be tempted to think of it as a paid vacation, but for a professor, that particular mark on the record carried far more weight than it seemed. A disciplinary history like that would work against me in future salary negotiations, and research grants and a whole parade of other benefits would be axed one after another.
Above all, being unable to show your face at the hospital during what should be your prime years is devastating to a doctor's career.
And yet I couldn't bring myself to resent the punishment.
I did smash a phone and curse someone out on camera in front of a crowd, after all.
Shouting at a family member behind the closed door of an exam room and cursing at someone in front of a wall of cameras were two very different weights. The former could be hushed up and swept aside. The latter left evidence, plain and undeniable.
Which is why a disciplinary hearing also served as a kind of WWE performance. It was a desperate gesture to the world — look, our hospital is contrite, we're punishing him ourselves — so please, whatever you do, don't take us to court.
In other words, in situations like this, the punishment also existed to protect me.
"Well, no need to worry about the hearing just yet. Let's get through this mess first, then worry about the rest. We might even consider sending you for training during your suspension— hold on a second."
The Chair paused mid-sentence to check his phone. He narrowed his eyes, read something carefully, then:
"Hm? The Director says your disciplinary hearing isn't happening."
"Excuse me?"
"Public opinion's on your side, apparently. Opening a hearing now would make the hospital look bad, so they're scrapping it. If you don't believe me, want me to read you the news comments?"
I shook my head. I did not want to hear that man read me comments. He was a virtuoso at making people cringe, and I could predict exactly how he'd milk it.
Instead, I checked the news comments myself on the phone he passed over.
I retracted my neck into my shoulders like a turtle under the embarrassing barrage of praise. I wasn't used to this kind of thing. An awkward warmth crept up the back of my neck.
But still…
"Haha. If the reaction's this good, I guess I could do it again sometime."
"Don't."
"That was a joke."
It didn't feel all that bad, actually.
Hsss… hss.
A woman stalked into her apartment, breathing fire through her teeth.
Thud. Thud.
She punched in the door code like she was trying to beat it into submission. Every depressed plastic button let out a dull, wounded thump. A sticky note above the keypad politely asked visitors to press gently — she couldn't have cared less.
The door opened, and she took her frustrations out on the elevator button too, which seemed unusually slow today. The moment she stepped in and the doors closed, she erupted into something close to a scream.
"AAARGH! This is SO annoying!"
The streamer Guji. Real name, Gu Jihye.
"Is she out of her MIND?!"
She stamped her feet at the sight of her shattered phone, which still had ages left on its contract. The screen was spiderwebbed with cracks, and one corner had broken clean off.
It could have been worse — at least only the screen had cracked. She'd stomped on it so hard the camera was bent nearly in half.
"She thinks she gets to do whatever she wants just because she's a professor?!"
That morning, she'd been forced to endure an outrageously insulting remark from one irreverent professor.
"Are you even human?!"
That arrogant, condescending attitude — as if telling her to go and come back as an actual person. Gu Jihye absolutely despised it.
"That's professors for you. Maybe they should become human themselves before throwing that word around."
Ding.
The elevator arrived at her floor before she knew it. Her own door lock, of course, was precious — so she entered the code with the gentlest of touches. A caution and delicacy in perfect contrast to moments ago.
Once inside, the very first thing she did was check her stream on the computer.
And seriously, why would she smash my phone, what is wrong with her.
Muttering her umpteenth silent curse at the professor, she pulled up her broadcast. As she readied the stream, her heart began to pound — a nervous flutter, equal parts dread and expectation.
She wouldn't have gotten me banned over what just happened… would she?
Controversy didn't bother her. What broadcast personality in modern South Korea had zero controversy? What mattered was popularity. However immoral, however universally condemned — if you were pretty and entertaining, the world forgave you.
Seven years into her streaming career, she was not a woman whose mental state wavered at the wagging fingers of society. Hateful comments, lawsuit threats, endless slander — she'd long since built up an immunity.
All that mattered was whether her people — her viewers — took her side.
They wouldn't have… left, right?
Struggling to calm her pounding heart, she checked her viewers' reactions. Thankfully, they were still there, cursing the professor on her behalf as they waited for her to go live. The chat window was overflowing with messages cheering her on.
Thank god.
Relieved, Guji resumed her stream.
"Hello, everyone! Scared you, huh? I'm home, so I'm turning the rerun on!"
She glanced at her sub-monitor. On screen, a petite, adorable virtual girl tilted her head inquisitively. Pink twintails, huge sparkling eyes. Though for all that cuteness, the mouth attached to the model was quite — quite — filthy.
"That professor is actually insane. Seriously, what a doctor, huh?"
Chatting with her audience, she savaged Professor Lee Jeong-uk with diligence and passion. The harder she tore into him, the harder her viewers cursed him along with her. Before long, her fury had curdled into pleasure.
That's right. What would someone like that ever know.
As long as she ruled this little kingdom, she would be its beautiful princess forever.
"Really? I changed my eyeliner — can you tell?"
"Thank you, everyone!"
"HEY!"
Forever.
— HungryTroll: Did Guji over-filter her Z pics? She looks way too old, might be better off taking new ones?
A week passed.
South Korea was only just shaking off the aftermath left behind by a single Entity. Other countries were apparently in the full throes of their own measles, but that was none of my business. My nose was buried in my own three feet of dirt, and just keeping up with my current patients was more than enough for me.
"Professor, SICU just called. They're asking if you could come take a look at an echocardiogram at the bedside."
"On my way."
Our hospital still couldn't run normal operations. It wasn't that new secondary victims had appeared. Partly because the novel had been deleted, leaving no way to monitor minds that might have been contaminated, and partly because apps that shut your screen off every ten minutes were now floating around on the market.
The biggest reason, though, was simply that the scar the Entity had left was too deep to heal in a mere week.
There were other reasons too.
"Professor, say — would you care to have lunch with me today?"
"…Is there an Entity you'd like me to look at, by any chance?"
"Well, my daughter bought a doll, and no matter how I look at it, it just feels… unsettling."
"Let's take a look at it."
One by one, firsthand Entity sightings were trickling in. The statistics weren't precise, but roughly a third of the country had now experienced or witnessed an Entity at least once. Even the people who'd dismissed it all as conspiracy theory were slowly, grudgingly acknowledging their existence. The government, too, was now trending toward officially recognizing the Bureau and the Entities.
"This is just an ugly doll."
"It feels like it's watching me at night."
"If it were an Entity, you'd already be stabbing it with a kitchen knife."
"…I suppose not, then."
"Your daughter has… distinctive taste."
Most of the tips that came in suspecting Entities fizzled out like this.
People were still under a misconception. Entities are not red-masked ghosts or classic Hong Kong granny revenants. Entities are far more insidious and far harder to predict.
The 'seventh passenger' that slips into an elevator already carrying six. The 'dust-covered pianist' that drifts, uninvited and unremarked, into a piano competition.
That was how they worked — no warning, woven in so seamlessly you never noticed. So most of the public's reports turned out to be duds.
"I'm embarrassed, honestly. Sorry for the trouble — lunch is on me. Bring the nurses and the residents too."
"Much appreciated, Professor!"
It wasn't all bad, though. Like this, people kept — kept on and on — buying me meals as a token of thanks. Sometimes lunch, sometimes dinner, sometimes a breakfast boxed lunch. Thanks to them, my food expenses over the past week totaled exactly zero won.
…This isn't going to trip some anti-graft law, is it?
"Professor, where are we eating today?"
"Song-woo, every time you look at my face, all you think about is lunch, isn't it?"
"Hehe."
"Residents are getting a free ride out of this."
"I love you, Professor!"
…However I do the math, I'm pretty sure the real winners here are the residents and nurses freeloading off my side, not me. Ignoring the repulsive second-year drawing a heart above my head, I headed to the procedure room.
This morning's schedule was assisting the Department Chair with a cardiac catheterization.
When I arrived, a male nurse was scrolling through something on his phone. Our connection went back to a college club, and he was still one of my closest friends at the hospital — we called each other older-and-younger brother and swapped hobby talk now and then. For the record, his hobbies were web novels and community forum trawling.
"Jihun. What are you looking at? We need to prep for the procedure."
"The 9 a.m. TICU patient? That one got cancelled. And they pushed the 10 o'clock back because the patient hasn't arrived. So come chill here, Hyung-nim."
No wonder the procedure room was empty except for the two of us. Since trekking all the way back to my office felt like a waste, I settled into a seat next to Jihun.
"Don't tell me the 9 a.m. patient expired?"
"Nah, he recovered so well he doesn't need the procedure anymore, so they called it off. Man~ youth is everything. Everything."
"You're young too, you punk. Anyone would think you're in your forties from the way you talk."
I picked up the plum tea sitting beside Jihun and took a swig. The sweet-tart taste sharpened my head a little.
Another schedule had evaporated into thin air. I sat down at the computer and used the spare time to review the information on today's patients.
That was when Jihun let out something between a sigh and a lament.
"Man, the end times are upon us. The end times."
"What?"
Jihun shoved his phone screen into my face.
Guji TV
It was the streaming channel of the streamer whose face I'd cursed out a week ago.
"That's the girl, you know. The one who got chewed out by you. Apparently getting roasted by you turned into free advertising and her streams are blowing up."
"I see. Good for her."
"You're not mad?"
"What would being mad accomplish? I'm never seeing her again anyway."
Not that I'd stopped disliking the streamer. But demanding that everyone else dislike her too, just because I did, would be beneath me. Popularity is an unpredictable thing by nature, so I simply shrugged and let it go.
"If you sweat the small stuff like that, you'll die before your time."
"Your mindset is truly something, Hyung-nim. Oh, but this girl's a bit weird, actually. Her SNS tastes are… the girl's a bit off."
"How so?"
"I looked, and every single photo on her SNS is edited to look like a grandma. Is that a trend now or something?"
"What are you talking about?"
At that, Jihun rotated the screen toward me. Every photo of the streamer on that screen had been edited into a hideous old crone.
Among them was one she'd taken on a beach in a bikini—
"GWAAAH! You son of a—! If you're going to die, die alone!"
"MWAHAHA! Beautiful things should be shared by all, shouldn't they~!"
Vicious bastard.
No matter how I looked at it, this guy had to be an Entity. How had he been staring at that thing so casually? This was the same devious creature who'd been hoarding tactical weapons on his phone since our school days.
It seemed the man had discovered the rotting El Dorado of his life today.
No wonder he was hammering the screenshot button so diligently!
"One way or another, you belong in a closed psychiatric ward."
"Heh."
"That wasn't a compliment, you punk."
Sluuurp.
Sipping my plum tea, I turned back toward the screen displaying the patient charts. But before I could focus on them, a single thought flickered through my mind.
I swiveled back toward Jihun.
"…Hey. Jihun."
"What is it, Hyung-nim?"
"That streamer — she hasn't gotten prettier recently, has she?"
"No idea? Want me to dig through the streamer gallery?"
"Do it."
I don't browse communities myself, so I couldn't check that kind of thing, but Jihun was a maestro of that underworld. Before long, he had his answer.
"You're right — there's been a sharp uptick in 'she's gotten pretty' comments since last week."
"…What's her main content?"
"Uh… well… I know her as a girl-cam streamer?"
"Roughly."
"Kind of awkward to get into details here. Sounds like she's done all sorts of… embarrassingly varied content. The kind that would get her banned without appeal."
"Drunk driving? Assault?"
"Yesterday and the day before, apparently. And she still hasn't been cut. Who knows when the world ends these days, so I guess everyone's just letting it all hang out."
"Hey. Jihun."
My voice dropped low.
"Turn that stream off. And delete those photos."
"Huh?"
"That woman. She's resonated."
With those words, I showed Jihun the Entity Compendium.
Entities had always come for us without warning.