The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim - Chapter 4

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

Chapter 4

The moment he stepped onto the platform, Cho Haneul stepped on a coin that had flown from somewhere.

“Whoaaaaa!”

And with a very refreshing sound, he went sliding across the floor.

He slid about 50 centimeters before landing hard on his bottom.

“Oh my~.”

I followed through the front door that Cho Haneul had opened and passed right by him.

I didn’t forget to throw in a comment as I looked down at Cho Haneul, who was sitting there holding his back.

“Why are you doing outdated slapstick comedy?”

When Cho Haneul quickly raised his head to glare at me, I hid my hand that had been habitually trying to retrieve the coin with void manipulation and smiled slyly.

“Haneul hyung, are you okay?”

Cho Haneul’s friend came over to help him up, but the more he did so, the redder his face became.

“Of, of course I’m fine.”

“Who dropped a coin on the floor? Did you twist your ankle?”

“It’s fine. It’s nothing at all. How did they clean during the break?”

He got up huffing and puffing for no reason, but the more he fussed, the more ridiculous he looked.

“Hmm, what are you doing here?”

Not long after, the Professor returned to the classroom with the Senior Student. Both of them were carrying armfuls of test papers.

“Nothing… sir.”

Cho Haneul couldn’t say anything and returned to his seat.

“Put away all your books. Just rely on your usual skills and take it easy.”

I grinned and spun my pen.

Usual skills?

Swoosh.

I triumphantly turned to the first page of the paper.

* * *

‘…’

Not even 5 minutes had passed before I was pulling at my hair.

Even if they brought dozens or hundreds of different types of patients from the test paper before me, there would be no problem at all.

Accurate diagnosis, meticulous treatment, even instructions for care! I was confident I could provide perfect medical treatment without missing a single thing.

But if I had to choose from 5 multiple choice options?

‘The main symptom is sleep disorder, but why are the choices like this? Are they asking me to examine the pulse and make a pattern identification? Since it’s a deficiency syndrome, I’ll rule out Gentian Liver-Draining Decoction.’

Since I couldn’t freely conduct medical interviews, the given information was woefully inadequate.

Once I started nitpicking with thoughts like ‘There are actually better methods than this?’ or ‘Herbal medicine doesn’t have much meaning for this kind of illness?’, there was no end to it.

‘Only 20 minutes left?!’

By the time I barely managed to figure out how to solve the problems, the given time had disappeared in an instant. I had no choice but to apply the process of elimination to every problem.

I hurriedly solved problems while crossing out choices with taps.

At least the problems asking me to choose herbal prescriptions based on symptoms were manageable.

– Which of the following medicinal materials is made by drying the heartwood of Caesalpinia Sappan L. for blood circulation and stasis removal?

Problems that required simple knowledge like this were…

‘How am I supposed to know the plant’s origin? They call this a proper question?’

There was nothing I could do about it.

‘I don’t know, just number 4!’

In the end, the best strategy was to build a column with the number that appeared least frequently.

“I’ll collect the test papers now~.”

While I might not fall behind my classmates or even the professors in practical experience, textbook knowledge was a completely different story.

I had read medical texts to the point of exhaustion there, but South Korea had its own testing methods. Classical medical texts and studying for exams could hardly be considered the same field of study.

“Ugh…”

I barely finished marking and submitted my test paper. I had solved less than a third of the problems with confidence.

My vision went dizzy.

After showing off so much earlier, what if I had to take a makeup exam?

I wouldn’t be able to hold my head up and walk around.

“It was more manageable than expected, right? It didn’t seem too different from the national exam format.”

“I… suppose so.”

This kind of stuff appears on the national exam too?

‘Surely… I don’t have to worry about passing, do I?’

I had only gulped down saliva, but my stomach felt queasy.

“More than that, it was totally satisfying.”

Hwangseoyeong, who hadn’t thought at all that I would fail the exam, whispered in my ear. When I turned my head in the direction she was gesturing, I saw Cho Haneul.

“Hmm.”

Hwangseoyeong said she felt refreshed, but unfortunately, Cho Haneul wasn’t discouraged at all.

He had to return to his seat without saying anything when the Professor appeared, and sure enough, he was now drawing attention from a corner of the classroom, albeit belatedly.

Hwang Sanghun, Cho Haneul’s closest friend and last semester’s second-place student, pulled over a chair for Cho Haneul to sit on and rolled up his pants.

“Does it hurt here? Around the anterior talofibular ligament?”

“Uh, yeah.”

When Hwang Sanghun pressed firmly on his ankle, Cho Haneul nodded vigorously. Soon he pulled out an acupuncture needle that had been rolling around somewhere on the desk, and several classmates glanced over at them.

“I’ll start with the Qiuxu acupoint.”

He was making a big fuss while performing the most basic ankle treatment.

‘Anyone can see he’s perfectly fine.’

I clearly saw him slip without twisting his ankle and fall on his butt.

If anything hurt, it would be his waist or tailbone, but since he couldn’t expose his buttocks in the classroom, he was probably just putting on an act.

“Ugh, what a show-off.”

Hwangseoyeong voiced exactly what I was thinking.

Did he think he was some F4 just because he hung around with the somewhat good-looking Hwang Sanghun and two lackeys?

‘Now that I look at him, he’s just ordinary too.’

Was it because I had grown accustomed to the face of my master, who was called the greatest beauty of Sichuan, and Cheonma, who was known as the Flower-Faced Asura before ascending to the position of cult leader?

Even Hwang Sanghun, whom I had thought was quite handsome, now looked like nothing more than a squid to my eyes.

Still, Hwang Sanghun frequently appeared on community forums with titles like ‘Does anyone from Oriental Medicine College have a girlfriend?’

“Wow, he’s really good at acupuncture~.”

But regardless of my impression, the Senior Student’s voice rose obviously at the end.

Right, those guys were quite popular.

Cho Haneul was the son of the representative of a well-known network of Oriental medicine clinics, and Hwang Sanghun’s Old Man operated a large Oriental medicine hospital, with the two of them alternating for first place – how could they not be?

Cho Haneul and Hwang Sanghun, plus the two who hung around with them. The only classmates who saw them as thorns in their eyes were Hwangseoyeong and me.

“Let’s watch them make fools of themselves and then go eat.”

“Yeah. What should we eat?”

We turned our heads away as if we had seen something unseemly and left the school.

“Kimchi stew.”

“How many days in a row has it been kimchi stew?”

“I really craved it so much in China.”

“Even if you couldn’t eat it for two months, still – you must have had it five times this past week!”

I scratched my head while taking the lead, and Hwangseoyeong grumbled as she followed me.

“It doesn’t feel right not having afternoon classes. Until last semester, we almost always finished at 6 o’clock.”

“That’s true.”

The food came out quickly.

“Ah, refreshing!”

“Mister, you’re completely drunk already.”

Without realizing it, I let out an exclamation like Cheonma, then caught myself.

In truth, my real age was probably similar to those men drinking in the afternoon over there, rather than Hwangseoyeong’s.

“Want to go to a cafe?”

As soon as we finished eating, Hwangseoyeong asked. Normally, going to a cafe after a meal would be the typical course, but.

“Ah, I’m planning to go to the library. Let’s go to a cafe next time.”

I declined today.

Forget about being first place – I might become the 1% that makes Korea University’s national exam pass rate 99% this year.

I couldn’t embarrass myself like that right after returning to South Korea.

“The library?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re going to study from the first day of the semester? Are you serious?”

Hwangseoyeong blinked with an incredulous expression.

“Completely serious.”

I nodded.

I wasn’t exaggerating – I really needed to study 16 hours a day.

“Hey, there are still over two months left until the graduation exam!”

That’s what I thought until just a while ago too.

Not knowing that unlike other classmates who just needed to review what they studied last semester, I had to redo six years’ worth of studying.

* * *

I left the shocked Hwangseoyeong behind and came to the Central Library.

As expected, there weren’t that many students sitting in the library from 2 PM on the first day of the semester.

“It’s nice and spacious. Not a single classmate in sight.”

Forget classmates, there weren’t even many students from other departments. Only a few people who seemed to be preparing for certifications or exams were scribbling something in the reading room.

“Of course there wouldn’t be.”

Hwangseoyeong whispered in a small voice, yet she had deliberately followed me here.

She could have gone home first, but did she secretly want to study?

As soon as I sat in a corner seat, I searched through the school website and group chat rooms.

I had said I would study, but I was in a situation where I needed to check what subjects there were first.

[This is all there is for exams.]

A notification appeared on my phone.

While I was reading the academic schedule, Hwangseoyeong sent me a file organizing the list of exams and assignments for the second semester of the fourth year in the main course.

When I checked, unlike previous semesters that were packed with lectures from 9 AM to 6 PM, the number of class hours was really significantly reduced.

The curriculum and hospital practicum were essentially all finished by the first semester of the fourth year. The final semester had generously set aside time to prepare for the national exam in January.

There were lectures called 【Medical Law】 and 【Clinical Special Lectures】, but the former was simple memorization, and the latter was light classes where professors from each department shared their clinical treatment stories.

‘The only professors who give separate exams in Clinical Special Lectures are the Herbal Medicine and Acupuncture professors who gave exams from the very first day today… Ugh, what bad luck.’

Anyway, among all the graded exams, the graduation exam had by far the greatest weight.

‘Hmm.’

The graduation exam was a kind of mock test with the same subjects and number of questions as the national exam, but at a slightly more difficult level than the national exam.

It was a system designed for the school to filter out students who might fail in advance, so they could hang a banner boasting a 100% national exam pass rate.

Of course, it wouldn’t be easy for me, who might end up in that 1%.

‘I should start with the first period subject right away.’

I thanked Hwangseoyeong for sending the file and was about to start studying immediately.

[Thanks.]

[Hey, wait a minute.]

But Hwangseoyeong stopped me.

[This Clinical Special Lectures acupuncture course is supposedly a bit tricky without past exam papers.]

[?]

I sent a single question mark and checked the file again. The exam format written there didn’t seem difficult at all.

– Acupuncture Medicine Exam (Professor Kim Seongcheol) – Draw a slip with 4 random acupoints written on it and perform acupuncture

You just need to place the needles and that’s it. What, do they check meticulously down to 0.1cm?

[Only the same points that always come up appear.]

[??]

I typed two question marks.

So, the random selection isn’t truly random, but the same points come up every year?

[Then all the seniors who took the exam know about it?]

[Right. But seniors who graduated over 6 months ago wouldn’t know if you asked them now. ‘That’ club supposedly records and collects them separately.]

[Ah…]

It was an old-fashioned corrupt practice, or rather tradition, of recording problems separately and passing them down to juniors.

Hwang Sanghun, the president of ‘that’ club, would have the materials, and naturally he’d share them with Cho Haneul, his close friend and club member.

I vaguely remembered getting angry in the past about losing out on subjects where past papers were shared that way.

[It’s not a big problem.]

If it were a Western medicine subject, they could ask questions from endlessly obscure areas. Moreover, since the field is so vast and memorizing thousands of pages of PowerPoint presentations is nearly impossible, the presence or absence of past exam questions makes a huge difference.

But if it’s an acupuncture exam in the format written above.

[There are only 365 Jeongyeongchim acupoints, and they need past papers because they can’t memorize that?]

Isn’t that something a Korean medicine doctor should naturally know?

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