Prologue: A Fondness for the Broken
I liked looking at broken things.
Especially those that had once shone with brilliant, beautiful glory in their prime.
When I see the remnants of a coal briquette, I imagine how hot and radiant it must have burned.
When I gaze at countless petals scattered on the ground, I remember the days when I had to crane my neck upward just to behold them.
Old furniture or appliances discarded as bulky trash evoke the image of newlyweds beaming with joy as they brought them into their home.
On TV, when they show how veterans are treated versus their reality, I picture them young and gleaming, shouldering rifles and charging through barrages of fire, and I fall silent in reverence.
After imagining their peak in full, when I confront the reality before my eyes, an unbearable pity and wistful longing washes over me.
I loved that feeling.
The greater the gap between their shining past and ruined present, the more this strange thrill coursed through me.
Was it longing for that fleeting sparkle? Or awe at time itself, which draws every glimmer to its light?
It was only natural that someone like me would decide to fix broken things.
I wanted to see more of them—especially those that had shone even brighter before they broke.
In the end, I became a rehabilitation specialist.
Looking at people stirred far more emotions than mere objects. Places like rehab centers were packed with the severely broken, barely able to move.
People who had once been active and vibrant. Athletes with grave injuries were common visitors.
And those who came here poured every ounce of effort into following my prescriptions and instructions, desperate to move like they used to.
Even though no amount of rehab could bring back their most dazzling days—something close to impossible!
Watching their struggles awakened entirely new emotions in me.
This was the decisive difference between broken people and broken things.
A broken object doesn't reminisce about the past.
But a broken person does. "Back in my day~"—recounting their life's greatest hits endlessly. That type was everywhere.
And that shining past... never returns. For someone like me who savored the pathos, their desperate rehab efforts to reclaim it delivered an intoxicating high—a thrill bordering on ecstasy.
I knew I'd chosen right.
I was born to be a rehab specialist.
But even irreversible ruin spares no one—not even me.
One day after work, back home, I noticed one book on the shelf emitting a sudden, radiant glow. Curious, I picked it up and opened it...
When I came to, I was reborn as a baby in some rural village.
I'd never imagined something like this could actually happen. The classic pattern: grab a glowing novel, black out, reincarnate as a baby. No doubt about it—this was isekai.
Luckily, I had plenty of time to think. Enough to plan what I'd do next.
The book I'd grabbed was volume 1 of The Second Siloia Great War Chronicles. True to its "Chronicles" title, it chronicled a war. A standard fantasy tale: gates open in a mundane world, sparking a prolonged conflict with the demon race.
Classic title, classic human triumph theme, relentlessly grim with hardship and adversity—yet popular enough for standalone volumes. Praised for its hopeful protagonist who embodied light amid despair, the overwhelming catharsis at the finale after endless trials, and its unique blend of fantasy with superpowers.
But I loved it for a different reason: watching the characters break down.
The protagonist grows through the sacrifices and devotion of those around them. I adored the side characters' arcs—emerging, shattering, vanishing as catalysts for the hero's awakening.
Anyway... what mattered now was my role in this world.
The story's core event—and backdrop—was a total war against demons lasting six years. Checking the timeline, the gate would open the year I turned fourteen.
A grueling, years-long total war. Every able-bodied youth and adventurer conscripted. In the carnage, people would break.
As a rehab expert, predicting the post-war demand was child's play. Society's rehab needs were mostly elders and the chronically ill—but the most desperate? War-torn soldiers.
So my path was clear...
War...
This was a fantasy isekai world. Powerful adventurers wielding skills, magic, and abilities everywhere. All thrust into the six-year war ahead.
Six years on the battlefield. No one emerges unscathed. And I already knew how brutally it would grind them down, how those flashy warriors would shatter.
They'd come crawling to rehab centers, utterly ruined. Did this world even have rehab?
Racking my brain over the novel—no mention. If not, I'd create it.
Rehab... I couldn't escape my innate nature, it seemed.
My heart already raced imagining the adventurers I'd treat post-war. Would I hear their fantasy war tales? How hilarious to hear them boast about skills they'd wielded? Maybe even the hero's party members from the book?
A haven for the broken, clinging to past glories yet seeking hope. That's what this world's rehab centers would be.
My job: build that space. Become their beacon of hope.
Born in a small rural village, while youths left for adventure, I stayed at the church honing healing skills.
Mastered modern rehab medicine—restoring bodily functions—through residency training. I learned healing skills just in case, but they only mended visible wounds or gave temporary buffs—far from true rehab.
Still, buffs like temporary strength boosts proved useful, so I acquired relevant skills. There were even skills to faintly restore permanent stat damage—niche, due to long cooldowns, tiny recovery, and rare permanent injuries among adventurers.
But rehab is about steady, incremental recovery over time. I mastered every such skill available.
This world had stat growth via training, and bodies weren't vastly different from my old one. Physical therapy and rehab techniques should work. I spent my youth caring for mobility-impaired village elders, testing treatments clinically.
Meager data, but their progress helped me adapt modern rehab to this world—linking it to skills for efficiency, devising routines and theories.
Then, at fourteen as foretold, war erupted. At seventeen, in the war's third and fiercest year, I volunteered for the kingdom's medical corps.
The royal medical center treated only those fit to return to the front—soldiers, adventurers. The utterly broken, unable to live normally, were sent home. But the head physician, a man of conviction, agonized over abandoning the hopeless. I leveraged that guilt, persuading him to secure space for the "unrecoverable."
Steady treatment of shattered soldiers and adventurers yielded quick successes with minimal trial and error. By twenty, the hero sealed the gate, repelled the Demon King, and ended the war.
Now the needy weren't soldiers but civilians. As predicted, demand exploded from veterans reintegrating into daily life.
The head physician, who'd monitored my results, advocated for a rehab medicine center to the crown. I became its director.
Hope Harvey, Director of the Nodun Kingdom Rehab Medical Center.
This was the new name I earned in this world—and the starting point of my story.