Han Juyeong, who hadn’t so much as stirred, let out a faint reply.
“Yes.”
“I can’t force you. But when you feel up to it, I recommend trying to go outside little by little.”
“I… will.”
“I’m sorry I can’t help you any more than this. But one thing is certain: you need the will to overcome it yourself.”
Han Juyeong responded at once to Taesu’s sincere advice.
“Yes.”
“I, and Changgyu too, are each fighting our own pain like this. So you can do it too, Mother.”
“Thank… you.”
Han Juyeong answered in a stammering voice.
In the end, she did not show her face.
She was probably being flooded by all sorts of emotions.
Taesu did not insist on seeing her face either.
“Then I’ll be going after talking your ear off. I hope your heart, more than your body, finds peace.”
Taesu bowed respectfully to Han Juyeong’s back and headed for the front door.
Soon the door to Lee Changgyu’s house opened, and Taesu came out.
He felt the cold air fill his lungs.
Taesu drew in a deep breath of that air and smiled gently.
“I feel a little better. Only a little, but still.”
It was a murmur addressed to no one.
Trauma.
Taesu had it too.
He knew it, but he had been so pressed and chased by responsibility and his schedule that he had never had the chance to take it out and look at it.
This time, he had.
When he kept it bottled up, it had only been frightening, but once he faced it, it seemed worth fighting.
Taesu, lost in thought, suddenly looked bewildered.
“Who’s the patient, and who’s the doctor?”
What did it matter?
What mattered more was how refreshed he felt now.
Taesu stretched his arms wide and moved on with a slightly brighter expression.
By the time Taesu returned to the yard in front of the operating room, the sun was setting.
The villagers were gathered in the yard.
Those who had gone up the mountain during the day seemed to have returned as evening fell.
Their clothes were stained here and there with dirt.
The mountain was their livelihood, but it seemed hiking through it had not been easy.
Quite a few of them looked exhausted.
And yet there were not many ingredients gathered.
‘Strange.’
They were mountain people, but it felt as though the mountain was unfamiliar to them.
That was the amount of ingredients they had collected from the mountain.
As he approached while quietly observing them—
Tadadak.
Kim Hyeokgwon arrived nimbly and immediately began complaining.
“Where on earth have you been?”
“It isn’t a problem for just those two people, is it?”
“You went around to other houses too? How did you know?”
“I had some help from reliable Guide Songhui.”
Taesu answered plainly.
Even so, Kim Hyeokgwon’s displeased expression did not change.
“Then you should have stopped by midway and said something.”
“I should have.”
“Doctor, are you joking right now?”
Kim Hyeokgwon’s protest was rather prickly.
Taesu sensed something and asked cautiously.
“Did something happen?”
“Look at this.”
Swoosh.
Both of his hands were covered in caked mud that was drying.
Taesu, realizing the situation by instinct, asked.
“Did you sort out what they gathered, Hyeokgwon?”
“Who else would do it?”
“The people here…”
Just as Taesu was about to answer, Kim Hyeokgwon shook his head.
“Those people aren’t mountain people. They’re city people.”
“What?”
“They can’t even tell medicinal herbs from poisonous plants. They don’t even recognize edible things right in front of them.”
It was not something he could simply let pass.
Taesu calmly organized his thoughts and asked.
“You’re saying they received a certain amount of the benefits of civilization before coming here?”
“Yes. No doubt about it.”
“I’d had a rough guess, but it was true.”
“They dug up all sorts of things, but fortunately, they didn’t eat any of them. That’s why those people are still alive right now.”
Kim Hyeokgwon pointed somewhere.
Taesu looked at the discarded ingredients and gave an incredulous smile.
“Ha, ha. That’s a mess.”
“It’s not just a problem for today. We’re going to have to check every single day.”
“Then we will. What’s so hard about that?”
“Fine. Let’s do that. It’s easier for me to be bothered than to have someone fall ill.”
Kim Hyeokgwon reached that conclusion.
In his answer was the confidence that he could distinguish medicine from poison.
Taesu, who was talking with him, was the same.
Neither of them said a word about why they were so knowledgeable about poisonous plants, poisonous mushrooms, and venomous insects.
The stories behind that were sensitive, so they avoided them of their own accord.
Kim Hyeokgwon, apparently having said everything he needed to, walked away.
Village Chief Jeon Nosik filled the space he left behind.
“Teacher Choi, I heard you went around to everyone and kept them company. Thank you.”
“It was a time I was grateful for as well.”
“Why say something like that? To be honest, between us, everyone was worried.”
He was referring to those who shut themselves away every winter because of their trauma.
Taesu had met and counseled all of them, so he briefly informed him of the situation.
“Other than Han Juyeong, the others should show themselves soon.”
“That would be even better.”
“Please don’t worry too much.”
Taesu showed confidence on that point.
That was because the conversations had gone well.
Village Chief Jeon Nosik, too, trusted him based on what he had seen so far.
Not only that, he also casually brought up village news and matters that needed thought from time to time.
Now was one such moment.
“Ahem. Starting tomorrow, shouldn’t we divide up the people going to the mountain?”
“Divide them up?”
“Can everyone just dig up medicinal herbs? We have to keep working on the livestock shed and the fences too.”
The cashmere sheep?
For a moment, Taesu’s expression turned awkward.
“Ha, haha.”
“What is it?”
“You know Han Miyeong. Han Juyeong’s older sister.”
“That child’s heart is hurting too.”
Village Chief Jeon Nosik answered forlornly, but that was not what Taesu had meant to say.
“She was on her bed, hugging a sheep.”
“What?”
“What’s even stranger is that the sheep, which is known for being timid, just stayed still.”
The moment Taesu said it, Village Chief Jeon Nosik looked even more dumbfounded.
“Is a sheep a dog?”
“It might become one here.”
“Huh. Huh.”
Village Chief Jeon Nosik seemed to have nothing to say about that either.
At the same time, the empty lot to the west of the village was also entering a busy period.
Ssak, ssak.
The sound of sawing came from all around.
“Slowly, slowly, sawing away.”
Some even sang along to an old tune handed down by word of mouth.
It was for the fence of the farm where the cashmere sheep would stay.
Because they were working while picturing the future, they did not feel the hardship.
The byproducts of the trees they cut down were useful as well.
Thwack.
With an ax, they were split and transformed into firewood.
The children waited nearby and carried the firewood away little by little.
Elsewhere, the livestock shed and fence construction were underway.
They carried stones, moved them, and stacked them.
Thud, thud.
“Ugh. It’s heavy.”
“Watch your back.”
Words of encouragement rang out constantly here as well.
They were making an effort to build the shed out of stone, both to save wood and to create a safer home for the sheep.
They also built a long retaining wall in preparation for a possible avalanche.
The villagers, without exception, rolled up their sleeves and pitched in.
Those who were not in good health or had nothing else to do helped prepare meals.
Among them were those who had shut themselves away because of their avalanche trauma.
They had not been able to shake off all the pain in their hearts at once. But they clearly showed their will to try, even a little, and to overcome it.
That much vitality began to circulate through the village.
It felt similar to time, which had been stopped, beginning to flow again.
They were not living only for today.
They were living today fully for a tomorrow that would grow better.
The difference was enormous.
Within that lively village, Han Juyeong was still absent.
It seemed she still lacked the courage to come outside.
But that did not mean she was not trying.
Creak.
A tightly shut window opened.
Her face could not be seen, but that alone was a tremendous change and progress.
A few days later.
The villagers were gathered in the hospital yard.
They had set their work aside and, in a calm atmosphere, were watching the hospital’s front door.
Creak.
The front door opened, and Taesu came outside.
Everyone’s eyes were focused on him.
Taesu skipped all preliminaries and shouted powerfully.
“Jeongmin’s bleeding has stopped.”
“Waaah!”
Everyone raised both hands high in joy.
It was not merely to celebrate Jo Jeongmin’s recovery.
They could feel themselves gradually growing healthier as well.
Winter was beginning in the world, but in their hearts, spring was slowly arriving.
The lively time of the village continued on.
Taesu, Jeong Minsu, and Kim Hyeokgwon became just as busy.
First, the most important thing was to look after the health of the patients who had undergone surgery.
The patients who had undergone the large first round of surgeries had mostly finished recovering.
As for An Hyeonguk, two days after surgery, he had already ceased to be a patient.
Hong Nanju’s misunderstanding had also been resolved, and she was regaining her health.
The cause of her bronchial stenosis had been inflammation.
When she overworked her body, the inflammation irritated her bronchi, narrowing them and causing breathing difficulties.
That inflammation was also related to her liver.
After eating healthy meals and adding medicine good for the liver and inflammation, improvement began to show.
Lee Manseok worked even harder because of Hong Nanju’s recovery.
There was also news that though the children had been afraid of him before, they had grown close after seeing him often.
Watching the patients recover brought many mysterious and surprising moments.
But the three of them had no time to leisurely observe it all.
As time passed, they grew busier.
First, the existing operating room was formally named a “hospital.”
The villagers even made a wooden nameplate for it.
After that, strangely, treatment took up a greater share of their time.
As their passion for village work grew, the number of injured people increased as well.
In particular, since they were people injured while working, most of the wounds were abrasions, cuts, and the like.
That was the problem.
Unavoidable accidents certainly existed.
But most were mistakes caused by carelessness.
There was no way Taesu, Jeong Minsu, and Kim Hyeokgwon would treat such wounds gently.
Right now, a familiar villager sat before Taesu.
He had come to the hospital with an abrasion on his leg.
He began by explaining on his own how he had been injured.
“…So I dodged to the side like that, and wouldn’t you know it, I lost my balance right then and fell. That’s how it got scraped like this.”
“Mm.”
Taesu’s indifferent gaze turned to the affected area.
At a glance, it was clearly an injury where he had fallen and scraped himself on the rough cross-section of a piece of wood, tearing his pants and wounding himself.
Meanwhile, the villager was glancing at Taesu’s expression.
Pretending not to notice, Taesu poured hydrogen peroxide directly onto the wound.
Drip, drip.
“Ahh, it stings.”
He grimaced and cried out.
As if he had been waiting for that moment, Taesu barked even more sternly.
“What do you mean, it stings?”
“I’m telling you, it’s not like I got hurt because I wanted to.”
“Didn’t it happen because you were distracted?”
“Wh-what are you talking about? That’s not…”
The villager, flustered, tried to make an excuse.
At that moment, Taesu cut in and said bluntly.
“It scraped from this side over here, like this.”
“That’s right.”
“This is not the direction a wound would take just from falling.”
“Uh, well…”
The moment he became flustered, Kim Hyeokgwon passed behind him and quietly added a word.
“If it’s going to be a clumsy lie, let’s not bother.”
“Hup.”
“I heard the story spread everywhere that Yeonghun got lectured for two hours a few days ago.”
Swoosh.
Kim Hyeokgwon passed by, but the villager flinched and quickly told the truth.