The Physician of Traditional Medicine Returns from Murim - Chapter 56

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This chapter was translated by Lunox Team. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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Chapter 56

I was naturally the first person to realize that Park Seon-yun was sufficiently healthy.

However, Seol Yuhui and Seo Inae, who had been continuously observing him at the desk and in the treatment room, also realized before long that treatment was no longer necessary.

His changed walking posture from the beginning, the feeling of muscle texture when removing needles. And above all, the content of his conversations with me. Unlike the early stages of treatment when he complained about his symptoms, recently he had been preoccupied with observing his surroundings.

“He really seems interested in the Clinic Director, doesn’t he?”

It was an ordinary day when work finished a little early. At the sharp timing when Park Seon-yun and Kim Jinsang had left and early departure was imminent. Unlike Seo Inae who hurriedly changed clothes first, Seol Yuhui opened her mouth with great excitement.

“Anyone can see that’s the case.”

If work had finished at 59 minutes, she would have disappeared like the wind, but since it was only 51 minutes, Seo Inae joined in the small talk.

“Eh, if he’s interested in anyone, it would be Teacher Yuhui.”

I changed clothes before the two of them, then shut down the computer and came out while speaking.

“What? That’s ridiculous! Why would a chaebol young master like me?”

At my claim, Seol Yuhui was shocked and waved her hands frantically.

“Because you’re pretty?”

“What are you saying!”

“You are beautiful though.”

Seo Inae also added a word as if agreeing with me.

“But… Director Chu is also pretty, and actress Park Seseun too, no wait. If he wanted to, he could even get introduced to much prettier celebrities through the actress, couldn’t he?”

Seol Yuhui countered, but Seol Yuhui was somewhat different from just having harmonious facial features.

Of course, Chu Miyoung was beautiful enough to work as an influencer, but Seol Yuhui had that unique atmosphere of someone with strong yin energy.

Should I say she was mysteriously eerie yet made you want to warmly embrace her.

“Ah! Honestly, even his gaze is different! Mr. Park Seon-yun gets all fidgety every time he looks at the Clinic Director, like he has something he wants to say! Senior, you think so too, right?”

Seol Yuhui sought agreement from Seo Inae.

And Seo Inae’s answer was.

“…Maybe so.”

Wrong. Seo Inae was already only looking at the clock. It was impossible to distinguish whether she was answering carelessly due to lack of interest or if she was sincere.

“It might be neither. He could just be someone who enjoys getting acupuncture.”

“Where in the world would such a person exist?!”

I presented a third possibility, but Seol Yuhui made a big X with both arms.

“Why wouldn’t they exist? You also enjoy it every time you get treatment.”

“I ask for it because I can clearly feel my body improving after getting it! On busy days like today, I would have collapsed long ago in the past, but I’m still energetic! If I had been originally healthy, I wouldn’t have gotten it!”

Really?

Every time I opened her acupoints to help with energy circulation, she had such a refreshed expression that I thought she enjoyed it.

Was she actually enduring it?

“Lee Jini also comes occasionally for maintenance even though her knee has been healed for a long time.”

“Come to think of it, that girl is also a bit suspicious. Don’t you think she likes the Clinic Director?”

“Teacher Yuhui… Even if it’s youth, still, the world can’t be that full of love.”

I shook my head as if I couldn’t stop her.

Does it really look that way? Or are they very lonely? Should I introduce someone to them for employee welfare?

Right, once it’s confirmed that the person Park Seon-yun is interested in isn’t Seol Yuhui, I should at least look into it.

“Fine. When he comes next time, I’ll ask directly.”

“What? Ask who?”

“Mr. Park Seon-yun, of course.”

Seol Yuhui blinked in bewilderment.

She seemed to be asking with her face whether it was okay to ask a patient such a question.

“Uh, but what if it’s not…”

“So what. I’ll just become a woman with excessive self-consciousness.”

People can have some misunderstandings while living.

* * *

Though I had decided to choose momentary embarrassment over frustration, Park Seon-yun didn’t appear for nearly a month.

Until my intimacy with Park Seseun reached MAX, neither he nor Kim Jinsang showed themselves.

If he had appeared at this frequency from the beginning, I would have just thought his muscles were stiffening and not paid attention.

However, since he had shown severely suspicious behavior for a while, and Park Seon-yun was still lurking around outside the examination room today, I caught him without hesitation.

So when I asked directly what I had been curious about, the answer that came out was.

“Yes, ye-ye-yes, yes? Did I look that way?”

He stammered and glared at his cousin sister.

“I didn’t say anything.”

Park Seseun naturally shrugged her shoulders.

She actually hadn’t said anything. To be precise, she had suddenly burst into laughter and then forgotten to answer due to a biological response and went home.

“Then why did you think that?”

“Anyone would see it that way.”

That was Park Seseun’s words. As expected, it wasn’t just me and our staff who had strange thoughts.

“The three of us talked about it, and I thought Park Seon-yun might be interested in Teacher Yuhui, while this friend said she thought he was interested in you.”

“I vote for the Clinic Director too.”

Seo Inae also added a comment while waving her chart.

Park Seon-yun was extremely flustered.

“What if it’s neither? Then there’s a third possibility I thought of. Perhaps he finds pleasure in being pricked by needles…”

“Pfft… Kup!”

Both staff members shook their heads with disgusted expressions, saying it was absolutely not that.

Even though Park Seseun was hearing it for the second time, she still found it funny and couldn’t stop laughing even while covering her mouth.

“Alright, alright, that was all a joke, so please relax.”

I patted Park Seon-yun’s shoulder to reassure him.

Unable to find words and just gaping, he finally let out a sigh of relief.

“If you don’t want to be misunderstood, just tell us straight. If it’s not about people, then you must be interested in the medicine, right?”

It was understandable for him to be interested in his cousin’s consultation.

But last time, when I was preparing medicine for Grandmother Heo Sunnam’s back pain, he also wandered around near the examination room pretending to drink water.

Even without trying to know, my energy sense is always open within the range of the clinic’s interior.

“Well…”

Listening to that wouldn’t be of any help to him as a businessman, so why on earth?

As I pressed him, Park Seon-yun finally opened his mouth.

“It’s a bit awkward to say here, and I need to prepare myself mentally.”

But he hesitated once again.

Do you know how many months we’ve known each other now? It was absurd.

“I’ll make a restaurant reservation and text you. Please write down your number.”

But this time it seemed to be for real.

Unlike just moments ago when he was flustered and disheveled, he had returned to a fairly business-like expression and tone.

He took out my business card from his bag. It looked crumpled, like the card I had given him from the desk on his first visit.

‘Don’t tell me he really couldn’t contact me because my phone number wasn’t written on it?’

I glanced at Seol Yuhui, and she was raising both fists and mouthing “Fighting!”

The face of the girl who had been so pale was now flushed red.

Anyway, it seemed both hypotheses I had mentioned were wrong.

* * *

I was worried about how long that so-called mental preparation would take, but fortunately, I received a text that very evening.

It was such a long text that scrolling down seemed endless, but the gist was roughly this:

Sorry for being rude.

I wanted to say it at first, but gave up because there was no possibility at all.

But I kept lingering around because I couldn’t let go.

I absolutely had no bad intentions.

Still, I’m sorry for acting in a way that could be misunderstood.

And I’m too busy with work this month and have no time, so come to a certain fine dining restaurant on Sunday at 8 PM.

Except for the last part, everything else was pointless talk.

Hmm, I’ll find out what he wanted to say when I go there.

Was his month-long absence really just because he was busy?

[Yes. See you then.]

My reply was very brief.

And we met on Sunday evening at 8 PM.

I wondered what fine dining was, and it seemed to be roughly high-end cuisine served in courses.

The restaurant had much more stylish interior than the place where I had eaten at Jeong Inseong’s mother’s, and I was guided to a private room as soon as I arrived.

“Hello~.”

Unlike me in ordinary work clothes, Park Seon-yun was dressed sharply in a suit like when we first met.

He probably came after finishing his busy work, but he looked like someone asking for a date, just like the joke I had made.

“Hello.”

Perhaps because this was a space much more familiar to him than to me, he showed composure unlike when he came as a patient and was nervous.

Was his title director? General manager? I couldn’t remember exactly, but anyway, it was high. Even if he was a parachute appointment, there’s a saying that position makes the person, so he could at least put on a decent appearance.

“My sister also asked me to send her regards.”

We saw each other three days ago, what’s with that.

The appetizer came with elaborate food explanations, and we exchanged some small talk for a while.

But since we both clearly had something we wanted to discuss, we reached the main topic before long.

“I’m really sorry. I talked with my sister, and I must have seemed like a really strange person. You must have been very uncomfortable.”

This was an apology I had already received in a long text.

It was strange, but not particularly uncomfortable. That stalker guy who followed Chu Miyoung around was obviously crazy at first glance, but Park Seon-yun was completely different from such cases.

“You don’t need to apologize. You seemed to have something you wanted to say, but you kept hesitating, so I was just curious.”

“That’s right. You had already seen through everything from the beginning.”

Park Seon-yun nodded lightly.

“So, what exactly is that ‘something you wanted to say’?”

“…That’s the thing.”

Suddenly, Park Seon-yun’s eyes flashed.

And she grabbed my hand firmly.

“Would you like to do business with our company? We’ll provide active support!”

“Business?”

So it was a business proposal after all? A suggestion within my expected range.

I let out a sigh. My answer was already prepared.

I just had to refuse, saying I didn’t have any particular items to offer…

“PK Bio doesn’t take up a large portion of PK Group, but it’s the subsidiary that grandfather cared about most. I can do more than you might think.”

But she continued talking without giving me a chance to speak.

Except when receiving acupuncture, she had a calm and neat feeling, so I thought if she brought up a business proposal, it would be based on logic, but contrary to that, Park Seon-yun’s voice was agitated.

“Have you ever read our grandfather’s autobiography?”

“No.”

As soon as the microphone came to me, I answered sharply.

Would Seo Inae have read it?

Although PK is indeed a major corporation that ranks within the top ten domestically, I don’t have the hobby of reading autobiographies of conglomerate heads in the first place.

I had probably burned the only autobiography of ‘that person’ I would ever read in my life with the Three-Fold True Fire.

“R-right. Then I’ll just tell you briefly!”

“Yes.”

I should just listen to her prepared presentation and that’s it.

I leaned back leisurely in my chair.

“When our grandfather came up to Seoul from the countryside and was doing construction labor, he became seriously ill, and there was a Medical Practitioner who helped him at that time.”

Park Seon-yun closed her eyes and immersed herself in the story.

Medical Practitioner? How far back is she going? This was really a word I was hearing for the first time in decades.

Memories from medical history classes during my pre-med days came flooding back.

During the Japanese colonial period, they downgraded Joseon’s traditional Korean doctors to Medical Practitioners to eliminate them, then removed schools and excluded them from public medicine. It was a term that completely disappeared into history after the Korean traditional medicine system was established after independence.

“Did grandfather recover completely after taking that medicine?”

“Yes. And later, after achieving great success in business, he sought out that person and asked what kind of medicine had cured him.”

“Hmm, was it perhaps Ssanghwa-tang?”

“How did you know?!”

Park Seon-yun’s eyes widened.

I had guessed, and it was the right answer.

“Since you said he became ill rather than being injured from physical labor, Ssanghwa-tang would be perfect for that situation.”

“You’re truly amazing.”

Park Seon-yun was impressed, but any Korean traditional medicine doctor would prescribe Ssanghwa-tang in the same situation. Of course, some people might prescribe Sipjeon-daebo-tang or Ssanggeum-tang, but the general principle of the medicine was dual supplementation of qi and blood .

“Getting back to the story, grandfather essentially entrusted PK Bio to that person, and he succeeded in selling fatigue recovery products like Ssanghwa-tang, as well as digestives and hangover remedies as commercialized products. They’re still selling steadily to this day.”

“He was also capable in business achievements.”

“Yes.”

Hmm? Something was…

Park Seon-yun’s eyes looked strange.

Of course, they had been flashing since earlier, but this was beyond that.

Is this what madness in clear eyes looks like?

“Grandfather called him both a lifesaver and a soulmate.”

“Ah, yes…”

Park Seon-yun spoke in a subdued voice.

Soul what? That suddenly went too far. Did I show that I wasn’t very curious, so many stories got skipped?

“There were many crises in the process of growing the company, but grandfather would tell that Medical Practitioner’s story until our ears were calloused. Other relatives got tired of it, but I loved hearing it no matter how many times! That’s probably why I specifically chose to join the bio side.”

It’s not ‘probably’ – that’s exactly it.

Even without reading the autobiography, I could tell what Park Seon-yun wanted to say.

“He had an unexpectedly romantic side. So… are you asking me to become your Medical Practitioner?”

This guy, she’s crazy about romance, isn’t she?

It seemed like she had let go of the strings she had been restraining with reason.

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