Doctor’s Rebirth - Chapter 481

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 481
At the same time, I continued managing the relief center as I did every day.
The patients were still numerous, though the fights had… decreased somewhat.
And our workforce had grown considerably.
Doctors from headquarters had arrived!
I couldn’t help but do a little shoulder dance at how delightful this was.
‘Phew, now I can finally reduce my overwork.’
It was telling that even Cheonwoo’s waist had become gaunt.
His waist had thinned despite those impressive muscles!
It wasn’t that he ate little.
As a swordsman of sorts, he preferred a vegetarian diet, but just as elephants remain massive eating only grass, this fellow consumed an enormous amount of vegetation.
Of course, I added some meat to give him strength, but his staple diet remained plant-based.
It meant he was working himself to exhaustion as well.
In such circumstances, the arrival of new wo… no, workers was a joyful thing for a patriarch like myself.
“Eun!”
“Hye-a!”
“Hehe, I heard about Eun and came right away to volunteer!”
Sama-hye’s cheeks were flushed.
Hangzhou was both Sama Hyeon’s and Sama-hye’s hometown.
She had passed the Middle-Ranked Physician examination at the top of her class and now confidently moved toward orthopedic medicine.
Since the very illness that had tormented her required orthopedic treatment, it was only natural that her interest grew as she rehabilitated and recovered.
‘Come to think of it, children who suffered greatly in their youth often become medical professionals.’
Becoming an Upper Physician was an extraordinarily difficult achievement.
From that point onward, one had to advance through accomplishments and published works.
‘That’s why the textbooks only go up to Middle-Ranked Physician level.’
A Middle-Ranked Physician is when one has mastered all the knowledge we possess.
An Upper Physician must not only utilize all that knowledge but also push beyond it to make discoveries, or alternatively, build a track record as an orthopedic physician.
‘The standards for Upper Physician have become much stricter since I arrived.’
In the past, Middle-Ranked Physicians with a few years of service were automatically promoted to Upper Physician.
Now it had become more difficult.
However, the title of Upper Physician at Baekrin Medical Guild’s Pusul Hall had begun to gain enough prestige to sustain one’s livelihood for life.
‘Better treatment than a modern doctoral degree… actually considerably better.’
Doctorates are produced by every university, but Baekrin Medical Guild’s Pusul Hall Upper Physicians are produced only by Baekrin Medical Guild.
And now every noble family and official seeks out Baekrin Medical Guild’s Pusul Hall Upper Physicians.
Sama-hye spoke.
“I saw a familiar inn on the way here. The alleys and everything seemed unchanged.”
“I thought Hangzhou changed every time, but it’s surprising?”
“Poor districts never change much. It’s the harbors and main roads that transform.”
She gazed at the surroundings with glistening eyes and then looked at the barracks once.
“The well is still the same too.”
“It’s an old well, so it should be the right one.”
Just then, I heard the sound of something clattering to the ground.
“Hye-a?”
When Sama-hye turned around, a woman about her age was staring at her while holding a dropped water bucket.
“Huh…?”
A faint blue light flickered in Sama-hye’s eyes as she studied the woman intently.
Though not quite at the level of Hyeonwon Jeondan Singeong, her memory surpassed that of ordinary people thanks to her mastery of the inner cultivation techniques at the next tier below.
Sama-hye spoke.
“Dong-wol?”
“You’ve changed so much I wasn’t sure, but it really is you! You’re completely…!”
Her friend rushed over and embraced Sama-hye tightly.
Sama-hye hugged her friend back and patted her on the back.
“You’re alive. I missed you. Have you been doing well…?”
In that moment, Sama-hye grabbed her friend’s wrist.
“Your pickpocketing habits… haven’t changed, have they?”
Her friend’s hand was holding Sama-hye’s ornament.
“Ow! Hehe… You really are Hyeon’s little sister.”
“You’re already trying to rob a friend you haven’t seen in ages?”
‘Ah… So Hye-a gets rough with her childhood friends.’
She always appeared quiet, composed, and mature.
But now that she’d met her friend, her old self had emerged.
Surprisingly, Sama-hye forgave her friend for attempting to pickpocket her more easily than expected.
It was the kind of friendship that only those who had lived in these depths would understand.
“By the way, are you a doctor now? You’ve made it big!”
“Made it big? It’s all thanks to Eun’s kindness.”
Sama-hye and her old friend exchanged greetings and then parted ways, saying they would see each other again later since she would be staying in the barracks for a while.
Sama-hye’s cheeks, already naturally flushed, had turned even redder.
“Meeting and parting, then meeting again…”
She seemed to be in an odd mood after meeting her old friend.
And she seemed happy to show her friend, who remembered when she was sick as a child, that she was doing well now.
‘It’s a good thing. Yeah.’
Perhaps because of that, she seemed slightly excited.
“Have you eaten?”
“Yes, I’ve already eaten.”
“When did you eat?”
“Maybe an hour or two ago? I had rice balls then.”
“Then you must be hungry. I’ll get you some food. I should feed Cheonwoo too. He’s probably in the middle of his energy cultivation practice.”
That was true. I didn’t know.
The reason Cheonwoo had lost weight wasn’t simply because the relief center work was difficult.
I had taught him a unique training method to resolve the distance problem caused by his appearance that I had mentioned before, and Cheonwoo was practicing it with me.
Running a simple relief center is already exhausting, and now I have to manage training alongside it.
“Cheonwoo! Hye-a has arrived. Do you remember her?”
We had crossed paths a few times in the past, though only briefly.
Back then, I only remembered her as Sama Hyeon’s younger sister, but now she had come to work as a middle-aged physician.
Cheonwoo set down the firewood and greeted Sama-hye warmly.
Sama-hye nodded, but then her gaze suddenly drifted toward Cheonwoo’s chest, and her face flushed even deeper red before she hurriedly excused herself and moved away.
Watching this, I wondered if perhaps the bloom of youth and romance had arrived, but I shook my head.
‘Ah, Cheonwoo is a swordsman.’
A swordsman must keep his distance from the pleasures of women.
‘While I’m in Hangzhou, I should have new robes tailored for Cheonwoo.’
He keeps tearing his robes, so I’m not sure how long a new set will last, but I’m somewhat concerned about whether it’s appropriate for him to expose his chest like that in broad daylight, regardless of gender.
* * *
Sama-hye adapted to the relief center work faster than expected.
Most importantly.
“Hye-a? Wow! It really is Hye-a!”
“Chun Man, your leg is alright? What happened to that one leg?”
“Hahaha, I lost it fighting the Black Blade gang.”
Chun Man’s mother, who was standing nearby, spoke up.
“No, that’s not it. A dog bit him, and since we couldn’t treat it, we had to amputate. What Black Blade gang—that boy’s full of nonsense.”
“Mom!”
And so it was. Sama-hye had become the star of the slums.
“I’ll make you a prosthetic leg that fits perfectly. Don’t worry.”
There aren’t many ways to succeed in a place like this.
Even if someone learns martial arts and climbs up, typically they just learn the techniques of the Black Blade gang, live as a gang member, and die that way. Unless a rare stroke of fortune passes through, it’s extremely difficult to have a proper occupation and live a respectable life.
In an era without welfare, it was even harder.
Most residents couldn’t read, and since they couldn’t read, entering a merchant company was out of the question. At best, they could become day laborers carrying goods.
As a result, most residents either did odd jobs sporadically or turned to theft, fraud, prostitution, or sometimes even drug dealing—things they shouldn’t do.
Yet the fact that Sama-hye, whom everyone thought would die soon, had returned as a doctor gave the people of this alley indescribable emotions.
“Wow, Grandfather. You’re still so spry.”
“Spry? What nonsense… So your back is completely healed now….”
Later, he became so ill that moving at all became impossible, but when he was younger and his spine wasn’t as twisted, it seemed he had engaged in genuine exchanges with people.
“Yes. It’s all healed. Grandfather. Looking at the list of medicinal ingredients in the medicine that the Patriarch prepared for you, fortunately there’s nothing expensive in it. You need to brew it like tea every day and drink it slowly three times after meals. Don’t think of it as gulping it down—more like sipping it slowly, like this.”
‘Sama-hye explains things better than I expected.’
The hardest part of being a doctor is dealing with people.
Interestingly, a doctor is both blue-collar and white-collar work.
On top of that, it’s a service profession that involves meeting people.
Fortunately, this isn’t an era that demands excessive politeness, so it’s manageable, but still—patients don’t understand complicated medical terminology.
What matters more is explaining things simply and conveying how to get better.
Fortunately, it’s not an era that demands excessive politeness, so it’s fine, but still, even if I use difficult medical terminology, the patient won’t understand it.
Rather than that, it was important to explain it simply and convey how to do it better.
Sama-hye handled that quite well too.
Above all, seeing people she knew seemed to boost her own self-esteem.
And rightfully so.
For this moment, she was a star.
Knowing how people looked at her, she seemed to push herself even harder.
“Hye-a.”
“Oh, Eun?”
“It’s almost closing time. And.”
[Let’s rest for a bit. Otherwise, you’ll catch a cold on your first day.]
I forced Sama-hye to take a break.
I could sense what she was feeling right now.
‘Back in my childhood, when someone got into medical school, banners would hang in elementary, middle, and high schools.’
I’m not sure how it is these days.
Maybe it’s different now with individualism?
But that’s how it was when I was young.
When those banners went up, you felt good for a moment. ‘I’m pretty amazing,’ you’d think.
But once you come to your senses, people start expecting more and more from you, and before long, instead of visiting the neighborhood clinic, they start texting you at dawn.
It’s fortunate if you can draw the line somewhere.
But the kinder the person, the more they try to meet others’ expectations.
And at the end of that struggle, when you come to your senses, nothing remains—you’ve poured everything out, leaving only an empty shell of yourself.
I hoped Sama-hye wouldn’t end up that way.
After sending everyone off, I said:
“Tonight we’re having spicy pork rice bowls!”
“…?”
“Well… you slice the pork thinly and stir-fry it with spices….”
After explaining every detail to Sama-hye, her eyes finally lit up.
“That sounds delicious, Eun!”
“Good. That’s the spirit. It was worth the thought. I spent a moment or two pondering what would be good for dinner.”
“Somehow, Eun, you always think so hard about food and nothing else.”
“Of course. Why would I work if I had to eat something tasteless?”
I answered a fundamental question with a fundamental answer.
Sama-hye blinked her eyes in surprise at the unexpected response.
“You can’t work without tasty food?”
“I can’t. Why do humans earn money? To eat delicious things.”
“…?”
To explain it that way.
In primitive times, humans procured food through hunting.
They hunted and caught fish, eating what they caught.
In the agricultural age, they farmed and planted fruit trees to harvest fruit.
It’s just replacing the hunting labor of those times with agricultural labor.
“And what if society becomes even more complex than this? Your job is to treat people and receive payment for it. That’s your hunt, so to speak.”
“Then eating is the process of savoring that prey?”
“Exactly. That’s why when lunch tastes bad, my mood stays foul the entire day. I find myself thinking—did I really labor this hard just to eat this garbage?”
“Hmm.”

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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