A Surgeon Who Uses Martial Arts [EN]: Chapter 313

Chapter 60: Scheme (3)

Jun-hoo and Ah-young’s pleasant date concluded at the movie theater.

The wildly popular superhero movie ended around 10 PM.

People streamed out of the theater.

Jun-hoo and Ah-young joined the crowd.

As they entered the lobby, with its rows of kiosks and the concession stand across from them, Ah-young said she needed to use the restroom.

Jun-hoo nodded.

With time to kill, he checked his phone.

Perhaps fate was on his side.

No emergency calls came from the medical resident office all day.

He was able to enjoy the date without feeling guilty towards Ah-young.

Jun-hoo’s fingers, while fiddling with his phone, accidentally tapped the text message window.

[I’ll help with anything I can. Please take care of me in the future.]

Jun-hoo chuckled as he read Seo-jin’s text message.

Since Jun-hoo had dangled bait that Seo-jin couldn’t resist, she had no choice but to bite.

After the meeting with Seo-jin, Jun-hoo had contacted Dae-hwi, Hyuk-jae, and the Chief in advance.

He asked them to encourage Seo-jin to consider returning if she contacted them.

All three welcomed the idea enthusiastically.

Seo-jin was the last piece needed to complete the medical resident office.

The Daejeon Neurosurgery Department was severely understaffed.

Designated as a regional trauma center, emergency patients flooded in constantly, but there weren’t enough staff to handle them.

Even with Jun-hoo doing the work of three people, it was still not enough.

Now, only that trash Professor Hong is left.

Well, time will take care of that.

Even though a confrontation with his nemesis was just around the corner, Jun-hoo’s mind was as relaxed as if he were lounging in a sauna.

Surprisingly, dealing with Professor Hong was the easiest of the tasks ahead.

“Sorry. Am I late?”

Jun-hoo snapped out of his thoughts at Ah-young’s words as she approached.

“There’s nothing to be sorry about, and you’re not late.”

“Really? I thought the movie was good, but I couldn’t concentrate. I kept dozing off from the middle.”

Ah-young glanced at the theater, looking disappointed.

In fact, Ah-young barely saw the middle and later parts of the movie. She spent more time looking at the floor than at the screen.

There were times when she drooled in her sleep, and Jun-hoo had to wipe it off for her.

“It’s probably because you’ve been accumulating fatigue. Plus, we walked quite a bit today.”

“Still, I was happy to be with you, Jun-hoo.”

“And not because you ate all the bread you wanted?”

“Seo Jun-hoo, you really hold grudges.”

Ah-young giggled, and Jun-hoo smiled awkwardly.

As a thoracic surgeon, he fully expected Ah-young to live with fatigue.

But seeing her so tired in person broke his heart.

Ah-young had probably been trying hard not to show Jun-hoo how tired she was.

Today, she had exceeded her limit.

“Shall we go?”

“Yeah.”

As they left the movie theater, the bright lights of the downtown area greeted them. The downtown area was more vibrant in the evening than during the day.

The streets were crowded with office workers and young men and women looking for bars.

“Shall we go there today?”

Jun-hoo’s index finger pointed to a building behind the station.

Ah-young frowned after checking the building at the end of his finger.

A place with a neon sign.

It was none other than a motel.

“I’m too tired today. Can’t we just go our separate ways? My head and body feel heavy.”

Ah-young said it gently.

Of course, it wasn’t that she didn’t want to spend the night with Jun-hoo. Ah-young was just very exhausted.

“That’s why I’m suggesting we go there.”

“Are you confident you can just hold hands and sleep if we go there? If so, I’ll go.”

“Of course, I can’t do that.”

“I’m not a martial artist with overflowing energy like you, Jun-hoo. I’m telling you, I really don’t think I can handle it.”

“Um… how should I explain it? You’ll know when you experience it, but it’ll be completely different from usual.”

Jun-hoo said, unusually embarrassed.

It was the first time she had seen him so vulnerable.

“Just trust me this once. I won’t disappoint you.”

“Hmm…”

Ah-young crossed her arms and stared at Jun-hoo with a sulky expression. Jun-hoo’s eyes were still full of confidence.

But his intentions were shrouded in mist.

“Tch. If I hadn’t eaten so much bread today, I would have refused for sure.”

“So, is that a yes?”

Ah-young reluctantly nodded.

Then Jun-hoo smiled brightly and forcefully linked arms with Ah-young. They moved their steps into a narrow, secluded alley.

In fact, the most important schedule of today’s itinerary was the one that was about to unfold.

Jun-hoo wanted to spend the night with Ah-young not just because of physical desire.

He had a clear purpose.

A pure purpose: to replenish the energy of Ah-young, who was exhausted from her demanding work.

“But no matter how much I think about it, I still don’t understand?”

“What?”

“How can using your body relieve fatigue? Are you going to massage me like before?”

“No. It’s on a different level.”

“In what way?”

“You’ve been reading a lot of martial arts novels lately. Have you ever heard of ‘Replenishing Yang with Yin’ [a Taoist practice of exchanging energy between a man and a woman]?”

Jun-hoo uttered an unfamiliar term.

* * *

The next day.

Jun-hoo and Ah-young came out of the motel and headed towards the station, feeling the chilly morning air.

“The world of martial arts is really something. How is something like that even possible?”

Ah-young asked in an incredulous voice.

The veiled Replenishing Yang with Yin was simply a man and a woman mixing their bodies together.

The method was nothing special either.

But when Replenishing Yang with Yin was over, Ah-young had an amazing experience that was hard to describe.

Her hazy mind cleared, and her whole body was overflowing with energy, making it hard for her to lie still.

To exaggerate a little, she felt like she could complete a full marathon of 42.195 kilometers right away.

“The principle is that I flow the true energy in my body to you, Ah-young.”

“If that’s the case, can’t you do it simply by holding hands?”

“You can, but the larger the area of contact between each other’s bodies, the faster and better the effect.”

“I see. Then how long does it last?”

“It varies depending on the practitioner, but at my level, it will last at least half a month. I poured true energy into not only the main acupoints but also the secondary meridians, the small acupoints.”

“You idiot. You should have said so sooner.”

“Who was it that kept interrupting me and doubting me?”

“I’m sorry. Teacher.”

Jun-hoo chuckled as Ah-young bowed her head in apology.

Jun-hoo was also proud to see Ah-young looking so energetic, unlike yesterday.

Ah-young’s gait was strong.

Her blurry eyes were well-focused, and her hunched shoulders were straightened.

The dark circles that made it seem like pandas wanted to befriend her had also disappeared without a trace.

In fact, Jun-hoo had never performed Replenishing Yang with Yin in the martial world.

He had only glanced at the contents while rummaging through the Martial Arts Alliance library for useful martial arts books.

In those days, Jun-hoo lived with only one thought in mind: to avenge his father’s death against Jeok Il-do.

‘What you learn will be used someday.’

Thinking that, Jun-hoo smiled again.

Anyway, he was glad that Ah-young had regained her energy.

He didn’t want to see Ah-young struggling.

Taking the subway and then the bus, the two returned to their workplace, Daejeon Shinwon University Hospital.

“Fighting today.”

“Yeah. You too, Ah-young.”

The two parted ways at the 6th-floor escalator. Jun-hoo headed to the 6th floor, and Ah-young headed to the 8th floor.

After a day off, the thoracic surgery department’s work was piled up like a mountain.

There were more than 20 charts to write, and two surgeries scheduled for more than 4 hours.

If it had been Ah-young until yesterday, she would have only sighed deeply at the excessive workload.

But today’s Ah-young was a completely different person from yesterday.

Today’s Ah-young was the owner of inexhaustible stamina.

With her stamina full, her concentration became sharp as well. Even if she wanted to make a mistake, she couldn’t.

Thanks to Jun-hoo, Ah-young was reborn as a flawless resident.

* * *

After a sweet day off, Jun-hoo returned to his daily routine.

The atmosphere in the medical resident office was still a mess.

The conflict between Chief Si-deok and Associate Professor Hoon-sik was intensifying day by day.

In particular, the morning conference was nothing short of a war.

For the first time in a while, there was a vacancy for the associate professor position, and the assistant professors that Si-deok and Hoon-sik were pushing were different.

There was only one seat, but there were two people who wanted to sit, so conflict was inevitable.

More importantly, the associate professor promotion was not simply a matter of promoting one person.

The assistant professors involved in the promotion were merely supporting actors.

In fact, Si-deok and Hoon-sik were essentially fighting for control of the medical resident office.

Since a winner and a loser had to be determined, Si-deok and Hoon-sik did not yield an inch to each other.

Thanks to that, the atmosphere in the medical resident office only became more brutal.

But Jun-hoo had no intention of intervening in Si-deok and Hoon-sik’s fight.

In just four more days, Hoon-sik would have to leave the hospital on his own feet, bearing dishonor.

The ultimate winner could only be Si-deok.

Jun-hoo was the only one who knew the outcome of this war that others were completely unaware of.

Thanks to Si-deok’s consideration, Jun-hoo was focusing on cervical and lumbar spine surgeries.

He was steadily increasing his surgical proficiency by physically experiencing the actual cases from the quasi-thesis that Teacher Jae-hyun had sent.

When it was his on-call duty, he would practice the simplified surgical procedures in his head, performing the surgery alone.

In the meantime, Ho-seop was hospitalized in the neurosurgery department.

He was diagnosed with Arnold-Chiari malformation [a structural defect in the base of the skull and cerebellum] in the outpatient clinic, and the surgery date was confirmed.

“Teacher. Thank you so much. If I hadn’t seen you at the cafe that day, something really bad would have happened to our Ho-seop.”

“…”

“I’m really sorry for acting so prickly back then. I sincerely apologize.”

Ho-seop’s mother, whom he met in the hospital room, bowed her head 90 degrees to Jun-hoo.

Jun-hoo comforted the guardian, saying that it could happen.

What fault did the guardian have?

If a neurosurgeon suddenly told them that their son was suffering from a serious illness, there would be few people who could easily accept it.

As time passed, D-2 days arrived to kick out Hoon-sik.

Coincidentally, Jun-hoo was assigned to assist Hoon-sik’s surgery that morning.

Hoon-sik was a surgeon who was better with his mouth than with his hands, so there was not much to learn from Hoon-sik’s surgery.

From the beginning, Jun-hoo did not store Hoon-sik’s surgical procedures in his head.

He was now confident that he would be better than Hoon-sik in any cervical and lumbar spine surgery.

“Seo Jun-hoo.”

Hoon-sik called out to Jun-hoo as he was leaving the operating room after the surgery.

Hoon-sik’s eyes were full of dissatisfaction as he looked at Jun-hoo.

“Yes. Professor. Is there anything you want to say…?”

“Ha… this guy is so out of it. Don’t you really know what I want to say?”

“I’m sorry, but I really don’t know.”

Jun-hoo deliberately played the role of a clueless person.

In response, Hoon-sik twisted the left corner of his mouth crookedly.

“You remember that I instructed you to organize the thesis, right?”

“Yes. I remember. I also know that the deadline is two days away.”

“Are you organizing it properly? There’s no progress report at all?”

“The amount is so vast and I’m processing it meticulously, so it’s taking longer. I’m sorry.”

“You have to organize it properly and send it since you made me wait. I’ll be in real trouble if the thesis falls through this time.”

“Just trust me.”

A satisfied smile hung on Jun-hoo’s lips.

In fact, Jun-hoo had only opened the email once.

He had never even looked at the materials attached to the email.