The Protagonist
His body felt like it was about to crumble.
His throat was parched.
His entire body ached as if he had been beaten, and he had no strength left.
It felt like he had come down with a severe flu—his whole body was tingling and trembling uncontrollably.
"Ugh... Why does it hurt so much...?"
Groaning, he woke up from his sleep, muttering in the midst of the pain.
"Did I catch the flu? I should take some fever reducers... Huh?"
He forced his eyes open.
There’s a saying: "If you listen to your doctor, you’ll live long; if you live like a doctor, you’ll die early."
People praise it as a noble profession, but in reality, it’s physically demanding.
By the time you’re older, your body is worn out from all the strain, and there’s no part of you that doesn’t hurt.
Jin Cheon-hee, a general surgery professor at a university hospital, groaned as he opened his eyes.
"Huh... What...?"
As soon as he opened his eyes, he let out a bewildered groan.
He saw tree branches.
The blue sky was above him, and the air touching his skin felt quite warm.
It was a forest in late spring or early summer.
"... Was there a forest like this near our camp? I thought it was all desert."
He furrowed his brow, placing a hand on his forehead.
His memory was hazy.
He couldn’t clearly remember what he had been doing before he regained consciousness.
He remembered taking a sabbatical.
He had gone to a remote area for medical volunteer work.
A colleague had pestered him so much that he felt like he was dragged there.
"Did someone move me? No... There shouldn’t be a forest like this near the medical relief camp."
The country he had visited for volunteer work was suffering from drought and civil war.
He had worked hard to treat injured and sick children.
As he recalled the past bit by bit, his vision seemed to clear up a little.
He still couldn’t remember what he had done last night, but his mind felt much clearer.
"Don’t panic."
Taking a deep breath, he felt strength gradually returning to his body.
The pain that had been weighing him down slowly subsided.
But even as his strength returned, he couldn’t move his legs when he turned his head to look around.
"Ha... Haha. Is this a dream?"
Sunlight broke through the clouds, illuminating the surroundings.
He was stunned.
Everything around him was corpses.
His legs felt frozen, unable to move.
He pinched his cheek lightly.
It hurt.
"This isn’t a dream..."
The pain on his cheek felt real.
At least his legs were starting to move now, which was a relief.
Jin Cheon-hee finally had the leisure to look around.
"This isn’t a movie set... No, wait. The smell of blood is too strong for this to be fake."
Still, as a surgeon, he was quite familiar with the smell of blood.
But his heart couldn’t help but tremble a little.
The scene around him looked like the aftermath of a battle.
"Judging by their faces, rigor mortis hasn’t set in yet. They must have died less than two hours ago. All the wounds are from sharp weapons... Why are there no gunshot wounds?"
Moreover, their clothing was strange.
It looked like something straight out of the martial arts novels he used to enjoy.
As he slowly examined the corpses, he suddenly realized that the pain he had been feeling in his body was gone.
"First of all, this is definitely not a dream. It’s reality. And I..."
He looked down at his hands.
"They’re small. Like a child’s hands."
His shadow was small too.
It looked like the body of a child around ten years old.
"If I’m dreaming of becoming a child in a martial arts world, I could at least accept that."
Jin Cheon-hee clenched his teeth.
He had started with nothing, without parents, and had overcome countless hardships.
His strong willpower had sustained him.
There were at least dozens of corpses around.
Three carriages lay broken, and some people had been cut in half with a single strike.
"What kind of blade could cut through human bones and muscles in one go?"
He looked down at his blood-stained hands again.
They were tiny, like a child’s.
"A child’s body... This feels exactly like those reincarnation or possession stories I’ve read in novels. Is this what they call possession?"
He shook his body lightly.
The lack of reality made him even more composed.
"Judging by the clothes I’m wearing, I don’t seem to be from a wealthy family... And aside from the corpses, there’s nothing of value here. It looks like we were attacked by bandits or mountain thieves."
Having thought that far, he let out a deep sigh.
"Indeed. This really seems like... possession, like in those novels. I don’t know if it’s time travel or something else, but this is definitely not Korea..."
Then, a memory surfaced.
Rebels had opened the tent and started shooting.
He remembered hastily shielding a child.
He didn’t know why he had done it.
The child had screamed.
What happened next?
The world turned red.
The child had shouted in broken language, "Doctor, doctor!"
Darkness had closed in.
"Ha... My life... I worked so hard, from the orphanage to getting into medical school, becoming a doctor, and then a professor. Just when I thought I could finally live comfortably, I went out to volunteer and ended up dying like this? Ha, what kind of joke is this?"
For a moment, he stared blankly at the ground.
Being a doctor, he was used to seeing corpses.
That’s why, even though he was standing among corpses, he wasn’t as scared as an ordinary person might be.
Or maybe it was because he had just realized how he had died, so he couldn’t think of anything else.
After organizing his thoughts for a while, he let out a deep sigh.
It was a sigh that didn’t seem to belong to a ten-year-old.
"Alright. I need to keep my wits about me. I don’t know what’s going on, but I can’t just stand here. If bandits come back, I’ll die."
Just then.
"Ugh... Ugh... Someone... please..."
Was there someone alive? Following the voice, he found a middle-aged man with a scruffy beard, his body trembling violently.
The man turned his eyes and saw Jin Cheon-hee.
"Kid... Kid... Give this... to my wife... I’m fine with dying... but my wife... she’s still..."
He held out a blood-stained pouch.
Jin Cheon-hee didn’t take the pouch.
Instead, he reached out and placed his hand on the man’s wound.
The man looked at him in surprise.
The man, losing strength, dropped the pouch to the ground.
The sound of coins clinking rang out.
Clink.
In the body of a child around ten years old, Jin Cheon-hee pressed on the man’s wound instead of taking the money.
"I’ll stop the bleeding."
With the skill of someone who had done it hundreds, if not thousands, of times, he immediately compressed the vein.
"Ugh!"
The man screamed in extreme pain.
Jin Cheon-hee thought it was a good sign that he still had the strength to scream.
"Is this good luck or bad luck? The laceration is this long, but thankfully, his organs aren’t damaged. But the wound is too long, and he’s lost too much blood. If I don’t suture it quickly..."
The front of his abdomen was split open.
The wound was deep enough to see his organs, but fortunately, they weren’t injured.
"There must be a way..."
He quickly looked around.
But there didn’t seem to be any way to suture the wound.
So he reached for the pouch the middle-aged man had tried to give him.
"Please, let there be something useful inside."
Opening the pouch, he found old Chinese coins and a small silk shoe, smaller than a middle finger.
It was a baby’s shoe.
The warmth of it suggested how dearly the man had cherished it.
There was also a beautiful sewing kit.
It looked luxurious, unlike an ordinary sewing kit, but that didn’t matter.
"I found a needle. But there’s no thread... Then..."
He pulled out a strand of the man’s hair.
It was long, fitting for a martial arts era.
Perfect.
He quickly threaded the hair through the needle’s eye.
"It’s going to hurt, but you need to endure it if you want to live."
There was no response.
The middle-aged man was slowly losing consciousness.
A sign of death.
"... Is there no other way?"
In the end, he acted decisively.
Thud.
The needle pierced through the flesh.
The middle-aged man groaned in his faint consciousness.
But Jin Cheon-hee moved his hands with a calm expression.
"I’ve heard that you can use hair for sutures in emergencies, but I never thought I’d have to do it myself. There’s no way to sterilize it, so infection might set in. But there’s no choice. I have to do it now."
In an instant, the wound was sutured.
As the bleeding stopped, the man gasped for breath.
To Jin Cheon-hee, it seemed like the emergency treatment was done.
In truth, he wanted to do more, but the conditions didn’t allow it.
He wanted to find a clean cloth, but there didn’t seem to be any around.
So he took a piece of cloth lying nearby and tied it around the wound.
The man muttered something.
In his hazy consciousness, it was hard to make out, but it seemed like words of gratitude.
Jin Cheon-hee placed the pouch of coins in the man’s hand.
"Survive and give it to her yourself."
He didn’t believe in heaven.
No matter how much you prayed, patients who were meant to die would die.
But he believed in human will.
Knowing the heart of a husband who had left his pregnant wife at home, Jin Cheon-hee comforted him.
After finishing the treatment, Jin Cheon-hee sat down and let out a sigh.
He couldn’t believe the situation he was in, and after saving someone in such circumstances, he felt drained.
Then, it suddenly occurred to him.
"There might be more survivors."
He jumped up from his seat.
Upon carefully examining the surroundings, he found that there were indeed a few people still alive.
It wasn’t a large number, but a few were still breathing.
"I can provide emergency treatment, but can I save them? Even if I treat them now, without help, they’ll eventually..."
He bit his lip hard.
"I’ll think about that later. Right now, I need to save them."
He busily moved his child’s body.
He had to distinguish between those he could save immediately and those he couldn’t.
"This person... has lost too much blood. I can’t save them."
The first person he saw had half of their leg cut off.
The problem was that the artery had been severed, and they had lost too much blood.
If he could quickly suture it and perform a blood transfusion, they might survive, but that was impossible in this situation.
With a heavy heart, he turned away.
It was a patient who could have been saved with proper medical equipment, but there was nothing he could do now.
The weight of that fact pressed down on him.
But a doctor had to remain calm.
There were other critical patients, and he couldn’t afford to delay.