I Became a Black Market Tycoon with an Inventory - Chapter 19

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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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019-Mobile Hospital
19. Mobile Hospital
“The person we captured was the leader of the FNL in Burundi.”
“Really? The FNL leader?”
“What’s the FNL?”
“Didn’t you learn about it during training?”
“I know. They’re rebels.”
“There are dozens of rebel groups here.”
“That’s exactly why I just remember them as ‘rebels.’ How am I supposed to memorize all of them?”
“Rebel forces operating in the east of Burundi and Congo. They were once one of Congo’s largest rebel factions, but now they’ve shrunk to around a hundred members or so.”
“Really? Then they’re not a big deal, are they?”
“Still, they’re a rebel leader. Their main base is supposed to be in neighboring Burundi, so if we interrogate him about why he came all the way here, we might uncover something valuable.”
“Is that so? Then he’s quite an important person, isn’t he?”
“Not important—just a damn bastard.”
“Ha ha ha. You’re right. A damn bastard.”
The day after the operation.
Our team had the day off.
Normally, after an operation, the unit gets a day to maintain equipment and regroup.
One day operation. One day maintenance. That’s how it goes.
Since our team went out on yesterday’s operation, today was a maintenance day.
I cleaned the rifles we’d used and organized the equipment.
As I organized the gear,
it felt like I was back at the Incheon National Training Center.
That’s how it was at the center.
On days when we did maintenance instead of training,
we’d talk continuously while maintaining equipment.
We’d talk about operations, training, unit stories,
and once those topics ran dry,
we’d move on to friends, soccer, baseball, current events, idols, YouTube shorts, internet memes.
The topics seemed endless.
Most of it was stuff we didn’t even fully understand ourselves.
Things we’d seen or heard somewhere, which we’d spout out while maintaining equipment.
I mostly just listened.
I didn’t have much to say, and I didn’t know much anyway.
Yet those moments brought me joy.
Except for the heat being worse
and the barracks being converted from containers, nothing had really changed from the Incheon National Training Center.
These people were always beside me.
Eleven reliable seniors.
The youngest got injured, so
There were guys saying they’d catch the bastard who fired the shot and chew him up real good.
I didn’t say it out loud,
but honestly, I think I was a little moved back then.
“So what happens to us?”
“We don’t know. That’s something the United Nations and the Congo Government Military will handle, right?”
“No, not them. Us.”
“What about us?”
“Aren’t they going to give us some kind of commendation?”
“Come on, no way.”
“We captured the rebel leader, and they’re not giving us a commendation?”
“If they give you commendation leave, would you actually take it?”
“Commendation leave?”
“You asked for a commendation. I’m asking if you’d take leave as your commendation.”
“Leave in Congo? In this insane country where bullets fly everywhere? Are you crazy? I don’t want to die early.”
“Hehehehe”
“Don’t laugh.”
“Forget the leave. I hope we at least get promotion points.”
“Right. Promotion points really help when you’re up for advancement.”
“They won’t give us money, will they?”
“No, they won’t.”
As I talked about what happened yesterday and worked on maintenance, the repairs finished before I knew it.
I was about to head out for lunch when the Team Leader who went to the meeting came back.
“Can we gather for a moment before we go get lunch?”
“Yes!!”
Twelve of us gathered in the cramped container barracks.
With twelve adults inside, it looked packed just sitting down.
It seemed to bother him.
“I’ll just give you the bottom line. I’m coming straight from hearing this from the commander, but anyway, everyone who went on yesterday’s operation will receive a commendation. We’re giving promotion points, and Gong In-bae.”
“Sergeant. Gong In-bae.”
“You and I are receiving a medal. The Hwarang Medal of Military Merit.”
“Woooow”
“Congratulations.”
“Congratulations, sir.”
“This bastard Gong In-bae is set for life in the military.”
“Gong In-bae should buy us lunch today, right?”
“Where would I buy it? Are we going outside the base to eat? In Congo where bullets are flying?”
“… This guy can’t say anything right.”
The team’s congratulations continued.
“As you’ve heard, the guy we caught yesterday is the FNL leader. We’re still investigating, but it looks like he came to Congo to form an alliance with other rebel groups. If he’d succeeded, there would’ve been much greater damage, but we stopped it early, and the United Nations is pleased. And that Underground Tunnel Gong In-bae found turned out to be the smuggling organization’s headquarters. Thanks to that, we’ve made a name for ourselves in front of the Congo Government Military and the UN Peacekeeping Force.”
“Ooooooh”
“Everyone worked hard yesterday, so take a real break today. And Gong In-bae, you didn’t skip the Medical Office, did you?”
“It’s fine. Everything has healed by now.”
“Stop talking and get yourself to the Medical Office for treatment. Now.”
“Understood.”
.
.
.
Medical Office.
“It’s you.”
“Sergeant Gong In-bae. Is that who you are?”
“The one who got shot. I can tell from the bandage on your ear that it’s you, right?”
“I wasn’t actually hit by a bullet.”
“You got hit by a ghost round. Come here, let me take a look.”
I realized today for the first time that there were women in this unit.
Yun Ji-hae
Guardian Unit nursing officer.
Captain.
Same rank as my Team Leader.
As I stood there awkwardly, she approached me instead.
“Sit down. You’re too tall for me to see.”
“Understood.”
I sat in the medical chair,
and she removed the bandage that Kwon Jong-o had applied to my ear.
“Ah~ the treatment was better than I expected. The wound was deep, but it’s clean and well-treated. There shouldn’t be any scarring.”
“Thank you.”
“A dressing should be enough. I’ll do it for you.”
She sat right beside me with a gleaming metal tray and began treating my ear.
She was too close.
Her breathing, her scent—I felt it all distinctly.
Excitement? Tension? Attraction? It wasn’t any of those feelings.
It was just uncomfortable.
Was it because I had no experience with this?
I didn’t know how to behave.
“Done. Be careful not to get it wet, and come back tomorrow. I need to change the dressing.”
“Tomorrow I’ll be going on an operation, so it might be difficult. Would the day after tomorrow work?”
“Tomorrow’s operation is one we’re going on together. So just proceed with the mission. I’ll change your dressing during the operation.”
“Yes. Understood. I’ll get going now. Unity”
.
.
.
It’s a Mobile Hospital operation.
A Mobile Hospital operation is a public support service where we travel directly to Congolese people
who lack access to medical care and provide treatment.
No madman would attack a doctor who came to treat Congolese patients,
but… it’s possible someone might.
That’s why we have to guard the perimeter and maintain vigilance.
Our team’s mission was to secure the surrounding area.
Of the six of us, two guarded inside the building and four guarded outside.
Of course, truthfully, the outside was the real duty,
and you could say the inside was just resting under the guise of maintaining security.
So we rotated in pairs of two while executing the operation.
One team patrolled outside the building maintaining vigilance.
One team controlled the building entrance.
One team managed and rested inside the building.
Two hours of perimeter watch, then one hour of rest inside.
The Mobile Hospital was extremely popular.
Enormous crowds of people came flooding in.
You’d wonder if there were really this many sick people.
But unfortunately, only a tiny fraction could receive treatment there.
Many came with diseases like typhoid, cholera, and tuberculosis—conditions stemming from environmental factors.
These are illnesses that wouldn’t occur if people ate well and lived in clean environments,
diseases that could be reduced with preventive vaccinations,
but that’s not feasible for these people.
Even if they recover, there’s no knowing when they’ll contract it again.
Many arrive with traffic accidents, gunshot wounds, or knife injuries they never received treatment for.
Sadly, by the time they reach the hospital, it’s often already too late to do anything.
Surgery would be necessary, but the Mobile Hospital can’t perform surgery.
There are no surgical facilities.
All we can do is perform simple debridement to clean away the rotting tissue,
or give them painkillers and send them on their way.
The Mobile Hospital provides one-time treatment; it’s a traveling facility.
We can’t monitor patients long-term or track their progress while treating them.
When we visit the hospital and provide treatment, we tell patients
to come back in three days, come back in a week—
we ask them to return for follow-up observation of their condition.
We assess their progress and adjust treatment accordingly.
But here, we don’t know when the next treatment will happen.
Whether it will be a month later, a year later,
or if this will be the last time.
Captain Yun Ji-hae felt the same regret,
there are limits to what I can do.
And above all, the Medical Office exists for the soldiers deployed here,
not as a medical service for the Congolese population.
We cannot reverse the roles and responsibilities.
“Go on inside first. I’ll have a cigarette and be right there.”
“Yes, understood.”
While Kwon Jong-o, who had been paired with me, smoked outside, I entered the Medical Office ahead of him.
Ah, that’s refreshing.
The power of air conditioning truly is something.
“Gong In-bae?”
“Sergeant Gong In-bae.”
“Come here. I have a moment free—let me redress your wound.”
“Yes, understood.”
I was about to sit down after coming in from my perimeter patrol
when Captain Yun Ji-hae offered to redress my injury.
She could have done it while I was on duty.
Everything about Congo is terrible.
The weather is terrible.
It’s scorching.
And when night falls, it becomes freezing.
I came inside to escape the heat, and now there’s a dressing to be done.
Captain Yun Ji-hae was about to redress my ear when suddenly there was commotion outside.
“Emergency!!!”
Kwon Jong-o, who had gone out for that cigarette, came rushing in carrying a young man on his back.
Twenty years old? No, he looked even younger than that.
A tall, skeletal man was being carried in by Kwon Jong-o.
“Lay him down here.”
At Captain Yun Ji-hae’s instruction, Kwon Jong-o carefully placed the young man on the treatment bed.
The young man’s condition was horrific.
His body bore gunshot wounds, stab wounds, and marks of brutal violence.
There was barely an inch of his body without injury.
Bones were shattered, skin was torn away.
This was no accident.
These were the marks of torture.
His breathing was already unstable.
“According to the person who brought him, it appears he was tortured by rebel forces.”
Kwon Jong-o explained the situation.
Captain Yun Ji-hae seemed shocked by the young man’s appearance, unable to speak or move.
She could only stand there trembling, staring at him.
“Captain. Captain.”
I called out to the Captain.
But still, there was no response.
I grasped Yun Ji-hae’s shoulder and shook it.
“Captain. What should I do first? Yes?”
Only then did she seem to come to her senses.
“Oh… First, I need to check the wound. I have to wipe away the blood, but I’ll handle this. Please step outside for a moment.”
“Yes.”
I didn’t get to rest.
I was supposed to rest for an hour. I was sent away.
The air conditioning only comes from over there.
It’s unfortunate, but I’m willing to make that concession without complaint.
I’m a special forces soldier, after all.
Above all, my heart was pounding—I was shocked too.
Kwon Jong-o wore a look of profound shock.
The young man’s condition was beyond shocking—it was devastating.
His body was ravaged.
The rebels recruit children and young men to expand their power, and
if they resist, they threaten them, and
if that doesn’t work, they torture them to death and leave the bodies scattered anywhere, or so we’d heard.
Kwon Jong-o and I decided to simply assign ourselves to perimeter guard duty.
Rest? What rest?
That was all we could do.
I wanted nothing more than to hunt down those rebel bastards right now
and kill them,
but I couldn’t.
It would violate UN Peacekeeping regulations.
We’re not police.
We have no investigative authority.
If we’d witnessed the crime in progress, we could have intervened,
but we can’t go hunting for perpetrators.
We’re peacekeepers, not the FBI.
To ease the helplessness of being unable to do anything here,
trivial conversation was the best remedy.
Talking about meaningless things while trudging around the perimeter seemed better than awkwardly trying to rest.
We deliberately avoided talking about that young man.
Our hearts felt too heavy for it.
Instead, we talked about the most useless things in the world.
Things we’d seen on YouTube.
That carrots used to be purple.
That pigs can’t look up at the sky due to their body structure.
Koalas have fingerprints similar to humans, or so I’ve heard.
Ketchup was apparently once sold as medicine in pharmacies.
I spilled out facts utterly irrelevant to our survival.
I thought doing so might ease the helplessness a little.
.
.
.
“Gong In-bae, come here. Let’s finish that dressing we couldn’t do earlier.”
“Yes, understood.”
Captain Yun Ji-hae had already regained her composure.
It was Kwon Jong-o and I who hadn’t recovered.
The cool air conditioning didn’t feel particularly welcoming.
The dressing was finished quickly.
It was just dressing one ear.
If it took longer than that, something would be wrong.
“All done. You can remove the gauze tomorrow. You don’t need any further treatment.”
“Thank you.”
“I was grateful earlier.”
“What do you mean?”
“For shaking me and bringing me back to my senses. If you hadn’t… my mind would have… it’s still scattered now, honestly.”
…
“Anyway, I was grateful… That young man… he went to a good place, didn’t he?”
Captain Yun Ji-hae spoke matter-of-factly, but tears were already glistening at the corners of her eyes.
I’m not the kind of person to ask questions in response.
I’m not someone who asks about anything.
I simply pulled out the handkerchief from my back pocket and handed it to her.
.
.
The young man’s body was handed over to his family.
It was a predetermined outcome from the moment he first arrived.
As I said, there’s no operating room here.
With wounds of that severity, he would have needed to reach a university hospital in Seoul to survive.
Here, there’s no diagnostic equipment, no surgical instruments, no blood packs, no nurses to assist in surgery.
Only a patient and a doctor.
All Captain Yun Ji-hae could do was ensure he didn’t suffer.
The family receiving the body wails in anguish.
A younger sibling, appearing to be over ten years old, has a different expression.
It’s the look of someone making a firm resolve.
He must be dreaming of revenge.
He was likely swearing vengeance against the rebel forces that killed his brother.
As a method of revenge,
he would join a different rebel faction and brutally massacre the rebels who killed his brother.
Then the families of the dead would likewise join the rebels, committing yet another massacre.
A vicious cycle continued, with no clear point from which to set things right.
.
.
The journey back to the Military Base.
After experiencing today’s incident, Congo appeared different to me.
The first day of the operation.
When I discovered the weapons smuggling organization and the rebels, it felt unreal.
Truth be told, calling them rebels and weapons smugglers—
it’s the kind of story you only see in movies.
Is there anyone around you smuggling weapons or involved in rebel activity? Of course not.
It felt completely surreal.
Besides, I only conducted reconnaissance,
and during the arrest operation, I was inside an armored vehicle, so it felt even less real.
Yesterday they were just handing out medals.
In a single day,
Congo—this unfamiliar country.
Unfamiliar climate and environment.
Rebels and weapons smuggling on top of it all.
When everything—including the commendation—erupted at once, I felt like I was floating.
But then,
the moment I saw that Young Man today.
I returned to reality.
Can I truly carry out my mission well as a UN Peacekeeping Force member in Congo?
Can I really be of help?
What must I do to be of help?
Such thoughts filled my mind completely.
Yet my gaze remained fixed outward.
Watching for any trouble that might arise.
I simply do what I can.
Observe my surroundings,
conduct patrols,
and reduce potential dangers.
That is my duty now.

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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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