Chapter 180: The Corrected Path
Ethan's training progressed at an astonishing pace.
Under the guidance of two genuine masters, the skill that mattered most—survival—was improving so rapidly that the difference was visible almost every day.
Training with John was relatively straightforward.
At its core, it was simply learning to maintain balance between the Holy Light and the Void—pushing the boundary, pulling himself back, and refining his self-control through endless repetition.
Natasha's training...
felt different.
In fact, Ethan found it almost too easy.
Eventually, he couldn't help asking.
"Were your own training programs really like this?"
"So... gentle? So humane?"
"It's nothing like what I've seen in the movies."
Natasha glanced sideways at him.
"Of course not."
"Then how were you trained?"
"We pushed human potential to its absolute limit."
She spoke matter-of-factly.
"Then we figured out how to survive."
"Simple."
"Efficient."
Ethan blinked.
"Then... why aren't you training me that way?"
Natasha looked at him again, pausing for a moment before answering.
"Because there are plenty of assassins."
"But there's only one doctor who can bring people back from the dead."
"If trainees failed to meet the standard..."
"...they were eliminated."
"And during that kind of training..."
"'eliminated' meant dead."
"Everyone struggled forward with their lives on the line."
She paused before continuing.
"If you could resurrect yourself, we'd happily use the same program."
"But even then, the training would be less effective."
"You'd already know you could come back."
Ethan sighed.
So in the end...
they simply couldn't train him to the point of death.
The logic made sense.
It was just a rather brutal reason.
Curious, he asked John about his own training.
As it turned out, the assassin world wasn't much different.
The Ruska Roma were at least slightly more humane.
Not everyone who failed was killed.
Some were reassigned to ballet.
According to them, it was simply "making good use of otherwise wasted talent."
Then John casually added,
"At the end of training, everyone who survived faced one final examination."
"Fail that..."
"...and you die."
---
Despite everything, Ethan genuinely enjoyed spending time with Natasha.
She was simply too good at reading people.
Creative.
Observant.
Sensitive.
She seemed capable of catching every subtle change in his expressions.
Sometimes...
she even appeared to know what he was thinking before he did.
That wasn't just experience.
There was genuine talent involved.
Then there was another problem.
Natasha had an uncanny habit of casually showing off her figure.
And every now and then, she'd deliberately say something outrageously flirtatious.
For Ethan—a young man whose theoretical knowledge vastly exceeded his practical experience—
he stood absolutely no chance.
Painful...
yet strangely enjoyable.
Eventually, Natasha officially declared his escape training complete.
He had earned a measure of freedom.
Of course, "freedom" came with conditions.
As long as he stayed within designated areas and traveled only to familiar locations...
he no longer required constant supervision.
Ethan couldn't help asking,
"So... which places count?"
Natasha handed him a list.
He read it.
Then fell silent.
It included almost every place he'd ever visited.
Even a private club he'd only been to twice had somehow made the list.
Well...
Freedom, it seemed, still had to be earned.
---
During these weeks, Natasha had been doing two things simultaneously.
Training Ethan.
And observing him.
By now, she had developed a fairly complete understanding of his personality.
He was a young man who lived with a group of hopeless nerds.
He refused to admit he was one of them.
Yet his lifestyle matched theirs almost perfectly.
Her teasing affected him.
Quite noticeably, in fact.
But he always knew where to stop.
His social circle was astonishingly small.
He seemed to have some sort of relationship with the blonde girl living across the hall...
though neither of them had ever clearly defined it.
He also kept in touch with a waitress at a nearby restaurant...
who was obviously an ex.
Thinking of that extraordinarily gifted waitress—with her equally extraordinary figure—
Natasha couldn't help rolling her eyes.
"Spending every night around someone built like that..."
"No wonder he has no interest in fooling around elsewhere."
Aside from his absurdly miraculous medical abilities...
she struggled to find anything particularly remarkable about him.
Yet somehow...
he could cure terminal illnesses.
Heal life-threatening injuries within minutes.
Even bring the dead back to life.
This man...
was the natural enemy of every assassin.
An assassin's greatest weapon was creating irreversible outcomes.
Yet in Ethan's hands...
those outcomes could be rolled back almost instantly.
And resurrection?
According to Ethan's explanation, it wasn't fundamentally different from successful cardiac resuscitation.
Modern medicine could already restart a stopped heart.
In a sense...
that was its own form of resurrection.
So if medical science advanced far enough to revive someone who had just died...
perhaps it wasn't completely impossible.
At first glance, the explanation sounded surprisingly reasonable.
It had certainly convinced plenty of people before.
Looking back now...
she realized just how absurd that reasoning actually was.
The greatest blessing this world had ever received...
was that Ethan had chosen medicine instead of founding a religion.
Though...
if someone with abilities like his did establish a faith...
could anyone honestly call it a cult?
---
There was something else Natasha found even harder to understand.
Ethan seemed to feel the same compassion...
for everyone.
And he expected nothing in return.
Many patients who came to the clinic unknowingly received treatments they should never have been able to afford.
Those unable to pay...
were quietly supported by his foundation instead.
If anyone deserved to be called a saint...
it was Saint Ethan.
Natasha had saved lives before.
But those people had always been teammates.
Mission objectives.
Or individuals whose survival served a specific purpose.
This kind of unconditional, persistent kindness...
was something she simply couldn't comprehend.
Rumors claimed that Ethan had obtained his miraculous healing abilities precisely because he lived this way.
She had once dismissed that idea as ridiculous.
Now...
it suddenly felt strangely believable.
Perhaps...
only someone like him could bear such extraordinary power.
Only someone like him would dedicate it to saving as many lives as possible.
Maybe...
the world had intentionally arranged things this way.
---
That afternoon, the clinic welcomed a patient unlike the ones it usually treated.
An eight-year-old boy.
Reason for Visit: Neurodevelopmental disorder accompanied by progressive loss of motor and speech function.
Attached to his file were reports from several prestigious hospitals and neurological specialty centers.
Every diagnosis reached almost the exact same conclusion.
No clearly reversible treatment available.
Recommend long-term rehabilitation and continued observation.
Ethan skimmed the records before looking up.
The boy stood quietly in front of him.
He didn't cry.
He didn't fidget.
It was obvious he'd been through this process countless times before.
He had long since learned how to cooperate with doctors.
Though he still couldn't understand...
why he kept visiting places that all looked the same...
only to repeat the same examinations.
His reactions lagged noticeably behind everyone else's.
He could respond correctly.
It simply took him time.
His parents stood behind him.
His father, somewhere in his early forties, was neatly dressed, though months of exhaustion couldn't be hidden beneath carefully maintained appearances.
His hair and beard had clearly gone untrimmed for quite some time.
His mother held the boy's hand gently.
Yet she never truly let go.
Her expression was unnaturally calm.
Not composed.
Simply worn down by years of relentless emotional exhaustion.
Her face was stiff.
Emotionless.
Her eyes seemed hollow, as though the outside world had long since ceased to matter.
Standing nearby, Natasha needed only a single glance before reaching her assessment.
Threat Level: Zero.
Ethan gestured toward the examination bed.
"Could you help him sit down?"
The boy moved slowly.
Not because he didn't want to hurry.
It was as though every movement first had to complete an entire sequence inside his mind.
Lift his foot.
Pause.
Step forward.
Then sit.
Like a machine suffering from severe processing delay...
yet still trying its very best to function.
His mother placed a thick stack of medical records on the desk.
"He was perfectly normal until he turned two."
"He could talk."
"He could run."
"He recognized everyone."
"When he was three..."
"...he started falling more and more often."
"Then he gradually spoke less."
"It's not that he can't speak."
"He just..."
"...takes an incredibly long time, as though the words become stuck halfway."
Ethan didn't interrupt.
He simply continued reading.
MRI scans.
Genetic testing.
Nerve conduction studies.
Electromyography.
Each report ended with almost identical conclusions.
No structural abnormalities detected.
No evidence of progressive neurological degeneration.
Closing the file, Ethan looked at the child.
"What's your name?"
The boy hesitated.
His lips moved.
But no sound came out.
His mother instinctively started to answer for him...
then forced herself to stop.
Several seconds later, the boy quietly replied,
"...An."
His voice was soft.
But his pronunciation was perfectly clear.
Ethan nodded.
"An."
"Can you climb onto the examination bed for me?"
The boy looked at the bed.
Then at his mother.
She released his hand without urging him forward.
Slowly, carefully, he climbed onto the examination table.
Awkwardly.
But with complete determination.
Ethan began the examination.
Muscle strength.
Reflexes.
Sensory feedback.
Coordination.
From a purely medical standpoint...
everything was still there.
The problem wasn't that the signals no longer existed.
The problem was...
they had spent years traveling along the wrong pathways.
Like a road that once led directly to its destination...
only to be repeatedly diverted, interrupted, and rerouted.
Eventually...
even the brain itself stopped believing the original route still existed.
Ethan removed his gloves and sat silently for a moment.
Finally, the father spoke.
"Doctor..."
"Someone recommended your clinic."
"They said... miracles happen here."
"We're not asking for a miracle."
"We just want to know..."
"...whether there's anything left we haven't already tried."
Ethan looked up.
"Who referred you here?"
The man mentioned a name and briefly described how that person had been treated.
Ethan had no recollection of them.
Apparently...
just another patient he had quietly filed away in his memory as an ordinary case.
Ethan nodded.
"I understand."
He walked over to the examination bed and spoke gently.
"An, I'm going to do something very simple."
"All you need to do is lie down... and close your eyes."
The boy obediently did as he was told.
Ethan placed one hand between the child's forehead and the back of his neck.
Holy Light shimmered in his palm, its radiance suppressed to such an extent that an ordinary person wouldn't notice it at all.
To Ethan's eyes, however, the light wasn't blinding or scorching.
It simply illuminated.
Quietly.
Precisely.
Patiently correcting.
Like someone painstakingly taking a tangled network of wires and restoring each one to its proper place.
The boy's breathing gradually became smooth and steady.
The unconscious tension in his body melted away.
Moments later...
he drifted peacefully to sleep.
His mother instinctively covered her mouth.
It had been so long...
since she'd seen her son look this relaxed.
Ethan withdrew his hand.
"That's enough."
He stepped back and looked at the parents.
"You can wake him now."
The mother froze for a moment.
Then, without hesitation, she hurried over and gently shook the boy's shoulder.
"An?"
The child slowly opened his eyes.
Confusion flickered across his face for an instant.
Then his gaze settled on his mother's.
"Mom."
The word came out clearly.
Completely.
Without hesitation.
Without stumbling.
Without the painful pauses that had plagued him for years.
It was as though a road that had always existed...
had suddenly been cleared.
His mother's entire body stiffened.
The next second, she collapsed to her knees, clutching her son tightly in her arms.
Her sobs erupted uncontrollably.
Not quiet tears.
Not restrained sniffles.
It was the complete emotional collapse of five years' worth of suppressed despair.
His father remained rooted where he stood, his lips trembling.
He tried several times to speak.
Not a single word came out.
Finally, he covered his face with both hands as his shoulders shook violently.
Ethan stood quietly nearby, giving them all the time they needed.
When they had calmed down a little, he gestured for the boy to sit back in the chair.
"An."
"Say this for me."
"I want some water."
The boy frowned slightly, as though chasing after invisible words.
Several seconds passed.
Then he looked up.
"I..."
"want..."
"some..."
"water."
The sentence was slow.
But complete.
This time, nothing became stuck halfway.
After running a few more simple tests, Ethan finally spoke.
"The problem with his language pathways has been corrected."
"From now on, his words won't keep getting trapped halfway."
"His speech isn't fluent yet, but that's simply because he needs practice."
"Go home."
"Talk with him."
"Encourage him to keep speaking."
His mother suddenly looked up.
"W-What about..."
"...his walking?"
Ethan nodded.
"It's exactly the same."
"The motor pathways have also been corrected."
"His body just isn't used to them yet."
"It's like someone who hasn't walked for years."
"Even if the nerves function perfectly, the legs can't suddenly start running."
He paused before adding,
"Continue all the rehabilitation training you've already been doing."
"Starting today..."
"...that's when it will finally begin working as intended."
"Don't change your treatment plan."
"Keep following your current exercises and daily routine."
"You won't see every improvement overnight."
"But little by little..."
"...you'll notice the changes."
"He'll walk more steadily."
"He'll fall less often."
"He'll become more willing to try."
"The neural connections have already been rebuilt."
"Now..."
"...all he has to do is use them."
Silence filled the examination room.
Sitting in his mother's arms, the boy softly called again,
"Mom."
This time...
his mother smiled.
---
After the family left, the examination room became quiet once more.
Ethan let out a long breath.
He thought they were fortunate.
And happy.
Not because they had a child with special needs.
That was never something that could be called fortunate or unfortunate.
It could happen to anyone.
Every child with special needs was an enormous trial for an entire family.
Time.
Money.
Emotional strength.
Hope.
All of it was worn away, little by little.
And yet...
their son was already eight years old.
His parents were still there.
Still accompanying him.
Still protecting him.
Still refusing to give up.
They hadn't run away.
They hadn't abandoned him.
That wasn't a miracle.
It was what years of unwavering love and kindness looked like.
Ethan quietly shared those thoughts with Natasha.
She didn't respond immediately.
She simply stood there, her expression as calm as ever.
Only after a long silence did she finally say,
"When that little boy called out 'Mom' just now..."
"...it was completely fluent."
Ethan blinked before smiling.
Rather than answering directly, he changed the subject.
"Do you know why, across almost every language in the world, the word for mother sounds like 'Mama,' while the word for father varies so much?"
Natasha glanced at him and shook her head.
"Because mothers breastfeed."
As he spoke, Ethan demonstrated by pressing his lips together and making a gentle suckling motion.
"When babies nurse, their lips repeatedly close and open."
"The most natural sound they can make—without learning anything—is..."
"'Mama.'"
"It doesn't depend on language."
"It comes from the shape of the mouth."
"No matter where you're born..."
"...that sound barely changes."
Natasha remained silent.
For the briefest moment...
something flickered across her normally composed expression.
So subtle that it was almost impossible to notice.
Ethan sat back down in his chair.
A minute passed.
She still said nothing.
Just as he assumed the conversation had ended...
Natasha suddenly spoke.
"So..."
"Is that why you keep going to that restaurant in Williamsburg?"
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