Surviving as a Rogue Hospital Director - Chapter 2

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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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Episode 2.
When Ui Jin’s eyes opened again, he was in a hospital. Relief washed over him first. He swallowed slowly and tried moving his fingers and toes.
‘Good, it works. Modern medicine really is something. Looks like I made it to the hospital okay.’
Reassured, he tried to take a deep breath. Or rather, he tried to. But air flowing from the Ventilator interrupted his breathing.
The cycle of the Ventilator pushing air in and pulling it out didn’t sync with his own breathing.
Beep-beep-beep, beep-beep-beep.
The machine’s alarms started shrieking like mad, and a nurse rushed in.
“Oh? You’re awake? Just a moment, please.”
She looked at Ui Jin as if she’d seen a ghost, then immediately made a phone call.
“Doctor, this is the SICU. That patient in bed 22—consciousness has returned. Yes, yes, the Director. He’s fighting the Ventilator pretty hard right now. What should we do?”
While the nurse notified the attending physician, Ui Jin bit down on the tube in his mouth. This had to be an E-tube for intubation. It went all the way to his airway and was connected to the Ventilator.
He wanted to pull it out, but there was a balloon at the end of the tube. It was designed to inflate and secure the tube in his airway.
As time passed, Ui Jin’s breathing grew more and more labored. It wasn’t just his imagination. His oxygen saturation readings were dropping rapidly.
As the SPO2 on the monitor fell below 90, the number changed from blue to green.
In that moment, something appeared before Ui Jin’s eyes. The remaining time kept counting down.
[Warning: Respiratory distress state. If left untreated, death within 6 minutes. Time remaining: 5:59]
“Ah, ah, ah—just a moment!”
The doctor who’d just arrived hurriedly pulled out the tube, and the text that had briefly appeared vanished again. What was that? Did I just hallucinate?
The nurse was still staring at Ui Jin with eyes wide as a rabbit’s. As he steadied his breathing, he noticed an unfamiliar logo on the nurse’s uniform for the first time.
‘That’s not from our hospital.’
KNUH. Korea National University Hospital.
A common enough name, but one that didn’t actually exist—instead, it appeared frequently enough in various novels.
A strange feeling crept over Ui Jin, so he pretended his voice wasn’t working and just moved his mouth silently.
“….”
Voice loss was a common aftereffect of intubation.
“Ah, don’t worry—your voice will come back soon. Try not to be too concerned.”
The nurse who saw him mouthing words spoke reassuringly. Her lie seemed to work.
After that, the attending physician ran a few tests, asking questions. Ui Jin thought he understood what he was doing.
Glasgow Coma Scale. It was to assess whether the patient was truly awake and to gauge his level of consciousness.
The GCS was broadly divided into three categories: eye-opening response, verbal response, and motor response.
Since he was opening his eyes spontaneously, that was four points for eye-opening—a perfect score.
“Um, could you try lifting your arm? Ah, yes. That’s enough. Thank you.”
Following instructions, he lifted his arm—six points for motor response, also perfect.
And verbal response was unmeasurable.
‘Good thing I can’t talk.’
When asked what season it was, he wouldn’t have been able to answer—he’d have looked like an idiot, and they might have concluded his consciousness wasn’t intact.
Unlike Ui Jin’s relief, the doctor and nurse treated him with excessive caution. They kept glancing at him. Was it his imagination?
While Ui Jin was surveying the interior of the hospital, a man in a black suit with a visitor’s gown draped over it entered the SICU.
From the doorway, he shouted in an enormous voice.
“Director!”
‘Ugh, my ears. Where are this guy’s visitor’s manners?’
The man had no way of knowing what Ui Jin was thinking as he stepped closer.
Standing right beside him, his eyes were red around the rims, incongruous with his large frame.
‘Wait, didn’t someone just call for the Director?’
The man settled Ui Jin’s suspicion definitively. He roughly wiped away his flowing tears with one hand and spoke.
“I can’t tell you how long I’ve been waiting. The hospital’s in chaos right now. Director.”
Ui Jin, uncertain how to react to this bizarre situation, just blinked.
Then something inexplicable appeared before Ui Jin’s eyes. It resembled the message from earlier.
[Talent detected.]
Was he referring to this man? Looking around, it seemed only Ui Jin could see the message.
[Searching Talent information.]
After a few seconds of loading, detailed information about the man appeared.
[Name: Kim Jae-gyeong / Position: Secretary Director]
Schedule Management: ■■■□□
Administrative Support: ■■■□□
Internal Communication: ■■■■□
External Relations: ■■□□□
– Growth Potential: Negligible
– Affinity: 10
[The textbook example of “good-natured.” Performs tasks as instructed, so detailed explanation is necessary for task execution.]
[*Affinity has reached max; will never betray you.]
‘What… is this?’
Ui Jin rolled his eyes to read the content.
As silence stretched on, a nurse appeared and greeted the secretary.
“Oh, you’re here? But the Director can’t speak right now.”
Now that he thought about it, the nurse didn’t have this kind of information displayed. Neither did the attending physician who’d checked Ui Jin’s consciousness earlier.
“Why can’t he speak? Is he going to be unable to speak for the rest of his life?”
As the nurse gave a brief explanation, the man called Secretary gradually calmed down. Then he sat at the head of Ui Jin’s bed and began smoothly recounting the current situation.
He’d been hit by a car a few days ago on his way home from work and had fallen unconscious—and had remained so ever since.
“You were unconscious for four days. The fact that you’ve woken up at all is a miracle.”
As Ui Jin listened, he felt his face with his hand. An alien sensation. This was definitely not his original body.
“Yesterday they said the chances of you waking up were slim, and yet….”
The secretary trailed off as his voice caught. Then Ui Jin noticed the Patient Bracelet on his wrist.
– Choi Beom-jun / 37 years old / SICU – Bed 22
His eyes went wide the moment he read the bracelet.
This was no common name. It was unmistakably the hospital director from the novel he’d been reading just before the accident—Doctor X.
* * *
How he’d been discharged, he couldn’t say. But after lying in the hospital for a solid day and a half, Ui Jin—or rather, Choi Beom-jun now—left.
The secretary kindly supported him all the way to the Director’s Office.
“Ah, you mustn’t overexert yourself just yet.”
Thanks to the secretary’s loud voice, wherever they went, all eyes turned their way. And each time, Beom-jun received greetings.
“Good day to you, Director.”
“Ah, Director. You’ve regained consciousness.”
“Wishing you a swift recovery.”
Everyone they passed showed him the back of their head in deference, fear evident in their bearing. Beom-jun’s ears twitched. No matter how many times he heard it, the title still felt unfamiliar to his ears.
‘Why did it have to be hospital director? I’d have preferred if they’d made me the protagonist instead.’
He grumbled inwardly. Throughout his stay in the hospital, he’d thought of nothing else. How had this come to pass?
Was he originally dead? He couldn’t even fathom how he’d ended up inside Doctor X. Everything was shrouded in fog—unclear, incomprehensible.
Hospital Director Choi Beom-jun of Korea National University Hospital in Doctor X.
What he’d learned so far was that talented people were scarce. Not everyone’s information was visible like the secretary’s.
Then he recalled the status window he’d seen earlier.
[Main Quest: Recruit Talent]
Register 1 Talent to stand by Hospital Director Choi Beom-jun.
Target: Korea National University Hospital staff
– Reward: Survival Probability +3%
– Failure: Death
Death? He couldn’t believe it, so he wiped his eyes and looked again, but it remained the same. As if life and death were simple matters. It was absurd beyond measure.
He stood before a mirror. Before him stood someone as cold-blooded as they came.
Black hair, dyed perhaps. Sharp features—high cheekbones and a jawline like a blade beside his deep-set, exotic eyes. Those cold, piercing eyes completed the picture.
Looking at the three-white-eyes in the mirror sent chills down his spine. No matter that it was his face, his very impression was all wrong. No wonder the doctors trembled at just a stern look.
But even setting aside his appearance, Choi Beom-jun fundamentally had many enemies.
Bullying doctors and threatening them was routine; he didn’t shy away from making enemies. The more he pushed, the more the hospital’s profits rose.
And thus Part One ended with his death at the hands of the Vice Director.
Beom-jun, easy to manipulate as he was, gets murdered by the Vice Director who handles management—all to elevate Lim Sung-hyuk as the next hospital director as his standing rises.
The board of directors, complicit in their silence, was just as culpable.
‘They masked sudden cardiac death as overwork.’
His spine went cold. The terror of death he’d felt before closing his eyes in that traffic accident seized him again.
This time it would be for real. He’d vanish from the world without a trace.
‘That can’t happen.’
Beom-jun clenched his teeth. The Vice Director would betray him midway through, so he’d have to outmaneuver him first. Or else he’d cultivate enough power that the board couldn’t push him around.
“First, I need to figure out where in the timeline we are.”
Beom-jun ran through simulations in his mind. He couldn’t boast about much, but his memory was second to none. Especially since it was a novel he’d just finished reading, the details were still fresh.
When Beom-jun smiled, his cheekbones lifted and his expression creased. It was a smile utterly at odds with those cold, piercing eyes.
* * *
In the Director’s Office, Beom-jun reclined in his chair at an angle.
He’d tried to figure out where in Doctor X the story currently stood, but there was no need. A man had walked into the Director’s Office unannounced that very morning.
“Haven’t I told you this several times already?!”
It was Lim Sung-hyuk. The original protagonist of Doctor X. Sung-hyuk had been shouting at Beom-jun since morning, eyes blazing.
‘That guy’s voice is damn loud. A dog passing by would understand.’
He was starting to see why Sung-hyuk’s actions spread through the hospital so quickly in Doctor X.
Still, his direct visit allowed Beom-jun to check the Talent information.
[Name: Lim Sung-hyuk / Position: Thoracic Surgery Professor]
History Taking: ■■□□□
Physical Examination: ■■■□□
Diagnosis: ■■■■■
Treatment: ■■■■■
Follow-up: ■■■■□
– Growth Potential: Substantial
– Affinity: 5
[Intelligent and diligent by nature. Has extremely high standards for achievement. Caution: abrasive both upward and downward.]
Diagnosis and treatment abilities were already maxed out, and he still had growth potential? He truly was protagonist material.
His history-taking was somewhat lower, but that was inevitable for a doctor skilled in diagnosis. It was faster for him to judge than to listen to the patient’s account.
[Register as Talent? Yes/No]
Beom-jun tried pressing the talent registration button, but what came back was another status window.
[Warning: Affinity is too low. Registration cannot proceed.]
Beom-jun’s eyebrow twitched. He let out a sharp breath through his teeth.
Meanwhile, Sung-hyuk’s voice kept rising.
“This surgery is absolutely necessary! Time is of the essence. It has to be done within this week at least.”
The surgery he spoke of was a cardiac operation on a pediatric patient. The child would need repeated surgeries as he grew to match his body’s size.
‘This is the early part of Doctor X.’
Beom-jun nodded, thinking it through. Now he knew exactly where they were in the timeline.
The early arc where Lim Sung-hyuk comes into conflict with the hospital director over a newborn patient’s surgery.
Beom-jun recalled the Main Quest once more.
[Main Quest: Recruit Talent]
– Failure: Death
To survive, he had to register a Talent as soon as possible. Ideally, that would be Lim Sung-hyuk.

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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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