WE TRIED TRANSLATIONS
Translator/Editor: Hydrogen B
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
Chapter 105: Duty of Care
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“...I pray for Your presence...”
I went to church as a child.
Because my aunt went to church.
My aunt needed something to lean on.
Even to a child, she didn't seem like a true believer.
Her visits gradually became less frequent, and before her third Easter at that church, she stopped going altogether.
That was all right.
She was all right without God.
Unlike a God too innocent to blame, there was already a sinner close at hand, burdened with original sin and therefore fit to blame.
Someone she could see and touch.
“...I ask for Your guidance...”
I was my aunt's broken church.
When all I wanted to be was her home.
“Excuse me.”
Click.
The murmuring stopped as I entered the internal medicine consultation room.
A man sitting alone in the unlit room raised his head.
He looked to be in his mid-to-late fifties, his hair half gray.
“Have you ever gotten lost or wandered aimlessly?”
The man abruptly asked me.
His voice was rough, as though his throat had given out from praying too long.
“Yes. Do you know this is a Labyrinth?”
“Ah... a Labyrinth... Yes, I do.”
Maybe the flashlight's sudden beam had dazzled him after he had been in the dark so long. The man narrowed his eyes slightly.
“Do you have double vision, or do you feel like your eyesight has worsened?”
I read the nameplate on the desk.
“Dr. Jeon Yeong-gwang?”
“No... I'm fine.”
Jeon Yeong-gwang still looked a little dazed.
“There's someone outside with some skin peeled off. I'll bring him in. Please take a look at him.”
“Hm? I...”
“I know you're an internist.”
I headed straight back outside the hospital.
Kim Hee-sook and Yun Geon-min were waiting with anxious expressions.
“Oh, you were in there so long, I was worried...!”
Yun Geon-min, whose left cheek had been skinned while chasing a windfall, had stayed remarkably quiet without opening his mouth once.
“There was someone inside, so I was checking on them. Luckily, he was a doctor.”
The patient's eyes widened slightly, then pinched shut in pain.
Even the slightest change in expression probably hurt.
“Let's go.”
When we entered internal medicine, I heard rustling from somewhere other than the consultation room.
“Dr. Jeon Yeong-gwang?”
The doctor turned awkwardly from beyond the wide-open door.
“Ah, I was looking for antibiotics and syringes... The other doctors should have kept things organized... Ah, here they are...”
Understandable.
He had probably barely set foot in here since the hospital opened.
A nurse would normally administer injections of antibiotics.
“Are you currently taking any medication?”
“Hm? Something for rhinitis, maybe...? Why? Do I look like I'm taking strange drugs? At my age, if I did that, I'd be seeing the Lord right away.”
The doctor chuckled and looked past me.
“Ah, is that the patient?”
“Yes. This is Yun Geon-min. Some skin has peeled off his left cheek.”
“Oh dear, how did that happen...? Come over here.”
Jeon Yeong-gwang tapped the examination bed.
The half-crazed man who had done nothing but pray was gone. There was only an ordinary doctor left.
Yun Geon-min weakly nodded and sat down.
“Take your hand away so I can see.”
“Ugh...”
“Oh dear. At least all the skin is still there. It wasn't completely peeled off. The bleeding seems to have mostly stopped... How did this happen...?”
Jeon Yeong-gwang looked at me instead of the patient, who seemed uncomfortable speaking.
“When this place underwent Labyrinthification, the locker room at that gym over there changed too. He opened the wrong locker and this happened.”
I gave him a rough summary, leaving out the part about gold.
“Ah...”
There was something strange in the doctor's eyes as he examined Yun Geon-min.
“Hm, rather than stitching it up unnecessarily, it would be better to secure it and let it heal naturally... You two can wait outside.”
Kim Hee-sook went out and sat in a waiting-room chair, while I headed elsewhere.
“Hm? Where are you going?”
“Ah, I'm just looking around. I'm bored.”
While Jeon Yeong-gwang pressed the half-peeled skin back into place, secured it, and administered antibiotics and painkillers, I looked around his consultation room.
The desk was neat and orderly.
[Pray in faith, and the Lord will raise up the sick. Even if they have sinned, they will be forgiven by the Lord.
†James 5:15]
An antique calligraphy frame stood beside the monitor, while a medical license and what looked like commendations from abroad hung framed on the wall.
Judging by the photograph in the newspaper article, this was definitely Jeon Yeong-gwang himself.
“Urgh, ugh...”
“It'll be over soon. Just hang on a little longer.”
When I returned to the waiting room, Kim Hee-sook was waiting anxiously, staring toward the examination room.
Her expression darkened a little when she looked back at me.
“Have you ever had surgery before?”
“...Yes. I was in a car accident when I was seven.”
“Oh dear, it must have been terrible...”
That was why my parents died.
“It's all right. The prognosis was good. I have no problems now.”
Sometimes, I thought about it.
If only something had been damaged beyond repair back then.
Maybe I, maybe my life, would have been better than it was now...
I could still calculate how a car could break me just enough without killing me.
The make of the vehicle, the distance between it and me, its speed, when the driver noticed me and their resulting reaction time, where they braked. Every possible condition.
Click.
The examination room door opened, and the doctor came out.
“I've let Yun Geon-min rest for a while.”
“Ah, all right.”
“Come to think of it, your names are...”
“Oh my, that's right. I've been so out of it. I'm Kim Hee-sook. I clean here at Uiwi.”
“Oh, thank you for all your hard work.”
Jeon Yeong-gwang gave Kim Hee-sook a small bow.
“I'm Seon Yu-han. I came to Uiwi for an interview.”
“Oh, Father...”
“Doctor, have you been here the whole time?”
Jeon Yeong-gwang's eyebrows twitched, and his expression darkened.
“Do you feel low, depressed, or hopeless?”
“...Embarrassingly, yes. I'm still so lacking.”
Jeon Yeong-gwang spoke quietly, as though praying.
“I tried going downstairs. At first, I thought it was just an accident... But no matter how far down I went, I always ended up back here. Where did you three come from, and how did you get here...?”
Kim Hee-sook and I briefly explained what had happened in the IT Operations Room on the twelfth floor.
“Something like that... Then do you ever feel as though electronic devices, like computers, influence the way you think...?”
Why was this man asking questions from a mental health questionnaire when he was an internist?
“No.”
The things that influenced the way I thought were all people.
The people who had left me.
Though one of them did speak to me through an electronic device.
“Anyway, we're trying to keep going up together.”
Kim Hee-sook started carefully, her tone neither too light nor too heavy.
“How about coming with us, Doctor...?”
“...All right. Let's do that.”
He accepted surprisingly easily.
I thought he had given up and was only praying.
Had seeing people from another floor given him hope?
Not bad.
“Ah, Doctor, could you check us too? About what I said earlier, being stabbed in the back...”
“Of course. I'll take a look once Yun Geon-min comes out.”
Right then, Yun Geon-min shuffled out with clean white gauze over his left cheek.
“Ugh...”
“Yun Geon-min! Are you feeling a little better?”
“Yes... But what were you talking about?”
“Oh, this doctor is coming with us. He said he'll check the wounds on my back and Mr. Seon's too.”
While Kim Hee-sook and Jeon Yeong-gwang went into the examination room, one question nagged at the back of my mind.
But then, what was it?
There was still no clear clue about the condition for leaving this floor.
Was locker number twenty-six in the locker room really the problem?
Or was it the gym beyond the locker room, which we hadn't entered yet?
Click.
Kim Hee-sook came out again, and I went into the examination room as though taking a baton from her.
“Doctor, have you looked in psychiatry or dentistry?”
“Hm? No. Do your gums hurt or bleed?”
I heard the doctor's voice behind me.
“What? No, I was asking because I haven't checked those places yet. We need to find the condition to leave.”
“Ah... Hm, anyway, you've already treated it well, so there's nothing more for me to do. You're much better at this than I am. I just need to clean it and change the gauze.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
Once the treatment was over, I left the examination room with Jeon Yeong-gwang.
“Then shall we go?”
“What, we're getting up already?”
Yun Geon-min sat in a waiting-room chair and looked sulkily up at me.
“Do you have any unusual sensations in your legs?”
“What kind of unpleasant thing is that to say? I need to rest a little longer... Right, Doctor?”
“Hm? It's not that serious... Still, it's better to rest as much as possible.”
“See? You should listen to the doctor. Is there any illness or symptom you'd like to ask a doctor about?”
“Ha... No. Forget it.”
I almost went by myself, then decided against it.
If something happened while I wasn't there, it would be a pain to figure out.
“Let's rest a little longer before we go. Would about fifteen minutes be enough?”
As if that was enough, the doctor slowly nodded.
In the end, we sat scattered around the lounge-like waiting room and started talking about this and that.
“Doctor, do you have any snacks? I should've grabbed some on the third floor, but I forgot...”
“Ah, yes. There should be some at the desk over there. They're for the doctors, but... It should be fine.”
For a while, the crinkling of plastic wrappers filled the room.
“Oh, I feel a little better after eating something sweet.”
Kim Hee-sook let out a deep sigh, then turned toward me.
“Have you ever been diagnosed with diabetes, or are you currently receiving medication?”
Was she asking because I wasn't eating?
“No. I just don't feel like it right now.”
This time, Yun Geon-min stared straight at me.
“Are you suffering from a loss of appetite?”
His pronunciation was slightly slurred as he asked that strange question.
His cheeks bulged around the candy in his mouth.
“How many snacks that are sweet or stick to your teeth, such as cookies, candy, and cake, do you eat a day?”
“Hm? Me? I just have some snacks while I'm working if they're around...”
When Yun Geon-min answered, Jeon Yeong-gwang looked at him.
“Do you have little interest or pleasure in working?”
The internist was asking another question that sounded like it came from a psychiatric questionnaire.
Dissonance.
The dissonance that had been slowly crawling up my spine ever since we arrived on this floor, not just this hospital.
“Have you been diagnosed with early psychosis, or are you currently receiving medication?”
“Hm? What? Me? Not at all. Why all of a sudden...?”
“Ah, Doctor, don't worry so much. He's a little like that, you know. His social awareness is a little... But have you ever felt like people were hinting about you, or saying something with a hidden meaning?”
“What? What are you even talking about...?”
“Oh my, Doctor. Have you ever had to ask someone to repeat themselves because you couldn't understand what they said during a conversation?”
“Hm? No, what are you all doing...? Is there alcohol in this chocolate or something...?”
“How often do you drink alcohol?”
“I don't even smoke! By the way, have you ever smoked more than five packs of cigarettes in your entire life?”
My blood ran cold.
All confusion had disappeared from Jeon Yeong-gwang's eyes as he stared straight at me.
Strange questions. Not at all true, 0 points.
Questions that seemed to fit the context, yet were somehow discordant. Sometimes true, 1 point.
Questions that examined one another's bodies and minds as though we were doctors conducting consultations. Very true, 2 points.
A flow of conversation I couldn't possibly rein in.
Ah... damn it.
I was going to die.
“No. Am I plagued by thoughts that I'd be better off dead, or of hurting myself in some way?”
Even I couldn't escape that flow.
Footnotes:
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