Dr. Myung
I first met Dr. Myung back when I was an instructor in hunter survival. The smooth, eager-to-please first impression wasn't bad. My previous physician had been the sort who liked to phone the work in, so I figured this one would at least be an improvement on him.
The one thing that snagged was that she was a rookie, short on experience, and three years younger than me besides.
Even so, there was a reason a rookie like that could be made a hunter instructor's personal physician on the spot. Her skill was excellent, but the unusual record mattered more. Jo Shin-hye seemed to have spotted it at a glance.
"That doctor just now..."
Dr. Myung had stepped out to see an emergency, and in the gap Jo Shin-hye leaned in to whisper.
"Red eyes aren't exactly common, are they."
"Not just red. It looked like they were actually giving off light."
She was right. They really do emit light. It's a weak light, hard to catch under the sun, but indoors it shows, and in the dark all you can see are those eyes floating around on their own.
"I heard an Immune has a crimson glow in the eyes..."
"That's right. Just pretend you didn't notice. She doesn't like being recognized."
"Ah. Okay."
They say there's a monster-bite scar on her calf. I've never actually seen it. Instead of turning zombie her eyes went red, and after she crawled back from the brink she became a VIP. A charmed life.
Except for them drawing her blood on a schedule.
An Immune's blood is used for research. Decades of that damned research, and not a single result has ever been made public. I don't even know what it is they're studying. It can't be that they mean to turn zombies whose flesh is already hanging in shreds back into people. I wonder sometimes if they're after a vaccine, something so a monster bite won't zombify you, and then I arrive at the conclusion that the best plan is simply not getting bitten. Dr. Myung only lived because she was lucky enough to be bitten on the calf. Get torn up all over and even survival isn't living.
Maybe they're in the middle of some astonishing research I can't begin to imagine. There's no way to check, of course. Every drop of an Immune's blood goes to the Geofront. That's where the research happens.
After I was demoted to an ordinary soldier, Dr. Myung's manner shifted in a way I couldn't quite name, but I didn't mind. She wasn't my physician anymore, and still she kept examining me. A privilege. There was another small privilege, too.
Back when I outranked her, in my days as a hunter instructor, I'd spoken to her casually. The man I am now would use polite speech with anyone, rank aside, but I was a lot younger then. Once they knocked me down to a soldier, and an NCO at that, my station fell far below a doctor's. Even so, suddenly going formal with someone I'd always talked down to felt awkward, so I kept the casual tone. I shouldn't have. I was still young. Dr. Myung never made an issue of it. Maybe because she was young too. Maybe we're one of the few pairs left in Headquarters who still remember each other's clumsy years.
"Hoo. Things just got busy."
Dr. Myung came back in, raking hard at the back of her head.
"It seems something has occurred."
"Yeah. There was an accident outside. You're not hurting anywhere right this second, are you? You look fine. Wait a bit."
After I was knocked all the way down to Postman, she started talking down to me as well. What didn't change was that she kept examining me. Ordinarily an A-rank doctor like Dr. Myung doesn't see postmen. It's a Headquarters recommendation.
Her hands moved with familiar ease as she started hunting through the medicines.
"There was an air-raid defense a little while ago, right? Looks like it came down on the civil servants who were outside."
Tsk. Rotten luck.
"If they were brought this far without dying, then their fortune is still comparatively good."
"They all died. One came in alive. Still breathing, for now."
"Having met a capable physician, they may well go on living."
Even as the talk went on, she was finding the medicine with practiced hands.
"You planning to keep the formal speech up?"
"You were the one who told me to."
"Hearing it for real gives me goosebumps. Just talk the way you usually do."
"Thanks for the certificate. Back then."
"Don't mention it."
The delivery to Settlement AAA. I wasn't the postman originally assigned to it. I'd had that postman written up as down with a bad stomach and taken the job myself. That was Dr. Myung. She'd forged the certificate. I hadn't wanted to go see her in person, so I'd sent a note to ask, and what came back was the fake certificate with a note attached.
I granted your favor, so you'll grant mine. From now on, treat me in a manner befitting my station. And would you actually come to the exam room? Since when do we do this by note?
A furious little note had been stuck to it, but the forged certificate was filled out with meticulous care.
Gratitude is gratitude. Seeing Dr. Myung is exhausting, that's all.
Unless something special comes up, I don't particularly want to sit across from her. The worrying never ends, and neither does the nagging. You come in to get one illness cured and leave with another. I don't get badly hurt anyway. Small injuries I can handle myself, and if it comes to it I can find another doctor. Of course, when I actually need a doctor with real skill, I have no choice but to find Dr. Myung. Same with the things you can't ask just anyone. A forged certificate, for one.
"I'll be right back, so wait a little. And the patient behind you?"
"I—"
"It's not urgent, is it? Wait."
"Yes."
Dr. Myung left the exam room again with the bottle she'd found.
"You two close?"
"Close is a strong word. We've known each other a long time."
"How long?"
"Longest I've known anyone at Headquarters."
"Isn't that what close means?"
"She does know my body better than anyone."
"That's a loaded answer."
"It isn't."
Dr. Myung was back quickly. The hair she'd scratched into a mess at the nape was still like that.
"That was fast."
"I just handed over the medicine."
"So they weren't hurt as badly as all that."
"It was the Waste Disposal Squad."
Ah. Not the sort of patient Dr. Myung treats herself. Bottom rung, same as a postman. They'd gone out to haul Headquarters waste into the world beyond and gotten hit, by the look of it.
"The patient in back. Who did you say you were?"
"They told me if I showed you this, it would be enough."
Jo Shin-hye held out the certificate she'd gotten from her younger brother.
"Headache, nausea... Hm? This was written by the Ministry of Future Technology. What is it you do?"
"I'm a marksmanship instructor."
"Are you? You don't feel like a soldier at all. Rank?"
"Ah—"
She still hadn't memorized her own rank. Well. Things had been hectic.
"Check the ID you were issued earlier."
"Ah, one moment."
While Jo Shin-hye rummaged noisily for the card, Dr. Myung's eyes changed.
"What. You two know each other?"
"It just sort of happened."
"Staff Sergeant Jo Shin-hye."
A rank cut to the lowest line that can still make an instructor. Starting from the bottom was about right.
"An NCO who doesn't know her own rank and has to check her ID? You're a bit old to have just been pinned as a staff sergeant. Did somebody place you?"
"Short version, yes. There were circumstances."
"Interesting. The Ministry of Future Technology writing out a referral for a brand-new staff sergeant. That's where they planted you, then."
She'd gotten the rank for nothing, thanks to her brother, but that didn't leave Jo Shin-hye with anything to be pleased about. She'd been a soldier to begin with, hadn't she. Not with a Headquarters unit, but an officer all the same. In a sense it was as good as a steep demotion.
"And what are you here for?"
"I need a full checkup."
"Hm? That's new. The man who always said he knows the changes in his own body better than anyone?"
"People change when they get older."
"Well. That's a change in the body too. And this is the first Woo Jungkook I've seen who's a year older. Here I thought you'd decided never to come at all."
Dr. Myung tossed him a gown.
"Change and come out. I'll be in the testing—"
The exam room door slammed open. Two strangers were trying to shove past the guards.
"Doctor! If you're not busy right now...! Hey, let go of me!"
"It's urgent! It's urgent! Doctor!"
Overwhelmed, the guards finally drew their batons.
"Out! I said out!"
"Arrest every one of these bastards!"
This is why a guard stands outside Dr. Myung's exam room. It happens all the time.
With her back to the door, Dr. Myung looked out the window and clicked a lighter to her cigarette.
"Please! If you can't operate, then at least give us clearance for the surgery!"
"If we just leave him, he'll die!"
The two of them kept pushing even as the batons landed. Jo Shin-hye found herself backing away without meaning to. For Dr. Myung, who saw this constantly, it might as well not have been happening. She only watched the window.
"Just give us surgical clearance!"
"Arrest them, all of them!"
Dr. Myung let out a long stream of smoke. Her flashing red eyes caught in the glass.
"Fucking hell, acting so goddamn expensive! You bitch!"
"Arrest them, now!"
By the time the cigarette had burned halfway down, the exam room door could be shut again. What was left of it was jammed into the ashtray, bent at the middle.
"...Supplies still that short these days?"
"What are you doing. You haven't changed."
I'd held off, in case something happened. I stepped behind the small partition in the corner of the exam room and started taking my clothes off.
"Supplies are the same as always."
"So they are short."
There are power Cores and fuel Cores. There is no Core that can treat a person. That's why medical resources are always lacking.
"The one they just brought in is going to die."
A patient past saving?
"Then we conserve. What else is there."
"He's going to die because we decided not to operate."
Jo Shin-hye's swallow was far too loud.
"If we operated, I think he'd live. If I did it myself, he'd probably make it."
Now I understood why those two had made such a scene. Colleagues from the Waste Disposal Squad.
"Damn. Only one pack left. You got any cigarettes?"
Doctors ranked A or higher don't treat low-status people themselves. More precisely, they don't have to. It's a recommendation, not an iron rule, and all of it exists to conserve scarce medical resources. The reason those two had clung to Dr. Myung was that even if they wanted another doctor to treat him, they needed her permission.
"My whole salary walks out the door as cigarette money."
Every emergency patient is required to see an A-rank doctor first. At that point the doctor decides whether to treat them personally, hand them down to a lower-ranked doctor, or give up on treatment entirely. The factors are the severity of the injury, the state of Headquarters' supplies, and last, the patient's station. It isn't a complicated story. In the end it's the doctor's discretion.
"If she's got any cigarettes, tell her to sell me some."
And Dr. Myung keeps that recommendation more strictly than anyone. She believes the way to wring the most out of scarce resources is to spend them only on people who are worth it. At least, that's what she was taught. It's national policy.
"You changed? Follow me."
The testing room was cold. Dr. Myung gave the medical staff one order after another, and in the meantime I lay on the table and got wired to every machine in the place. They hummed.
"Even if the machines are loud, bear it. Your body's going to heat up. Bear that too."
How many medical resources was I burning right now. Fewer than what that man had needed and not received, or more.
"Anything uncomfortable? Breathe deep."
Thinking about it too deeply was pointless. I remembered something the Old Man had told me. The world just before the collapse. He said that era was a brief stretch in which the class order, present through all of human history, had vanished for a while. A short span, even so. If it had been an age like that, maybe everyone would have had a chance at treatment.
All people equal...
There was a time like that. A story as hard to believe as peace.
While the machines worked over every corner of Jungkook's body, Myung Hwa-young stepped back into the exam room. There was still a patient waiting. As she looked for the medicine, Jo Shin-hye glanced around the room. She had passed through plenty of exam rooms herself, back when she was a doctor, but she had never seen one this well equipped, this rich in supplies.
"Take this for now, and if it doesn't work, come back."
"I'll need a new referral as well, won't I?"
Jo Shin-hye couldn't shake the image of the two being driven out. She wondered if she'd end up the same, coming empty-handed.
"How did you come to know that guy?"
"Sorry?"
Myung Hwa-young only stared at her, blank.
"...We met outside. Outside Headquarters."
"You can tell me in detail. I'll keep it secret."
Jo Shin-hye wasn't naive enough to lower her guard at that.
"We just happened to meet, and ended up traveling together."
"Mm. Is that so."
A tone that made it perfectly plain she didn't believe a word.
"I asked because it's strange. He never brings anyone."
Jo Shin-hye didn't bother answering.
And so the questions kept coming.
"Are the two of you going to keep seeing each other?"
Jo Shin-hye's first thought was that this wasn't a question a doctor asks a patient. The intent was unclear, too. In the end she decided on a flat answer.
"I don't see a reason we wouldn't."
Literally, there was no reason to avoid Jungkook. She thought he had no reason to avoid her, either. That was all. But it landed differently on Myung Hwa-young. It had to. She knew Jungkook almost never kept acquaintances.
"Aha. I see."
Expressionless, Myung Hwa-young nodded, slow.
"All right. From now on, just show your ID and the guards will step aside."
Jo Shin-hye doubted her ears.
"You can come outside clinic hours if you want, but that's my smoke break, so keep it in mind. You seemed like you don't care for the smoke."
"You don't treat just anyone, do you."
"Hm?"
"Is this because of that referral earlier?"
Myung Hwa-young burst out laughing.
"The one the Ministry of Future Technology wrote? Referrals like that are single-use."
"Then what is this favor supposed to mean?"
"You've got quite a personality."
She couldn't understand it, so she couldn't be grateful either. The sight of Myung Hwa-young coldly refusing treatment was still vivid.
"That guy brought you, so it's a courtesy."
"You'd go this far for that? Because I'm an acquaintance of a postman?"
"He isn't a common postman."
Jo Shin-hye knew well enough that Jungkook was no ordinary man. What she doubted was that this entitled her to the same treatment.
"But I—"
"If something happens to you, that guy might develop psychological problems. I don't hand out courtesies for no reason."
Jo Shin-hye's brow drew tight.
"I think you're misunderstanding something. Mr. Jungkook and I have no relationship, and I have no intention of one. I expect the same is true of him."
Myung Hwa-young had a great deal to laugh about today.
"Who said anything? I know that guy has no interest in women. He's a eunuch, guaranteed."
"R-really?"
"Pfft."
Myung Hwa-young stood. A signal that the patient ought to be getting up as well.
"Well, physically he was healthy enough. There might be a problem in the head. Doesn't seem any woman's ever checked for herself."
Jo Shin-hye rose slowly too.
"Just think of it as getting a courtesy for being one of his people."
"Is Mr. Jungkook that special a patient, that you have to look after the people around him too?"
"You don't know what he used to do, do you."
"...?"
"You don't."
It was true she didn't, and there was nothing strange about that. They had known each other a matter of days. Still, the words were unpleasant in a way she couldn't place.
"Yes. We don't know each other well."
She wasn't so rigid that she'd refuse to admit the facts.
"Hmm."
Myung Hwa-young turned over how best to explain Jungkook, and soon decided it would be overstepping.
"True enough. What he used to do doesn't matter. Quite a history, but it's all in the past."
When Myung Hwa-young held the rest back, Jo Shin-hye offered the one small piece she did have.
"I think he's a warmer person than he looks."
"Ah. We're talking about his personality? Pfft."
"...Is that not all right?"
"Not that it isn't. Sure, personality matters too. I wouldn't know."
Myung Hwa-young turned her palm up toward the exam room door. Time to go.
Jo Shin-hye dipped her head and opened the door. She had just put one foot outside when—
"Today is a secret. Don't tell that guy."
"You mean that I can come to the exam room anytime, thanks to Mr. Jungkook?"
"You can keep that, can't you."
Myung Hwa-young was always like this. Which was why Jungkook had no idea how much influence she had on him, and on the people around him.
"Not saying anything is easy. But—"
"Hard to sneak into the exam room? Then just say the Ministry of Future Technology is helping you, so you can keep coming."
She wondered why it had to go that far, but—
"Understood."
The woman was going to keep treating her. Jo Shin-hye didn't want to push it any further. She dipped her head once more, and—
"See you again, Staff Sergeant Jo."
The door shut, and the exam room was Myung Hwa-young's alone again.
She tore open her last pack at once and set a cigarette between her lips. She went to light it, and stopped. The conversation just now wouldn't leave her alone.
"...Woo Jungkook is warm?"
She smoked three cigarettes in a row without getting up. In truth she could have smoked more than that. Then the results of Jungkook's physical came in, and she had to put the cigarette out.