Chapter 8: The Tightrope and the Swing [4] —Thud, thud.
At the sound of the club striking a palm, Dolseok shuddered.
Kanghyeok glanced over once, then took out a stethoscope from the house-call bag.
He listened to the Pyeonsu's heartbeat.
There's barely any murmur. Good. The bleeding seems mild enough to stop on its own.
It did not seem necessary to open the chest.
Not that he could have done so here anyway.
Letting out a relieved sigh, Kanghyeok muttered,
"That's good. He won't die."
He took out some gauze from the house-call bag and pressed firmly over the wound he had made with the needle.
Fortunately, the Pyeonsu had no other serious underlying condition, and because of that, the bleeding stopped fairly quickly.
"Good. For now, let's wait."
Kanghyeok looked down at the Pyeonsu with a lighter expression.
Only then did the Eoreumsani woman and the other men crowd around the Pyeonsu and begin rubbing his arms and legs.
It was an old folk remedy, and a fairly effective one at that.
After all, it did help the blood pooled in the limbs circulate again.
"Ghk."
A moment later, the Pyeonsu let out a shallow breath and opened his eyes.
He blinked repeatedly, apparently not fully in his right mind yet.
"Mother… my late mother…"
"Father! It's me! Are you alright?"
"Huh? Ah, Yeoni? What in the world…"
"You collapsed while drinking earlier. Don't you remember?"
Yeoni pointed to his half-soaked clothes.
It seemed the Pyeonsu remembered nothing at all.
"I don't know. And who is this gentleman here?"
Even in the middle of confusion, the leader of a troupe was still a leader.
He immediately noticed Kanghyeok and Dolseok among the group.
In particular, he instantly realized Kanghyeok was no ordinary man.
"This gentleman is…"
Yeoni's lips moved, but no words came out.
Come to think of it, they did not even know his name.
The men who had surrounded him as if ready to kill him awkwardly scratched their heads.
Without intending to, they had shown great disrespect to their benefactor.
Starting with Yeoni, everyone gathered there dropped to their knees and apologized.
"We're sorry! We truly committed a mortal offense just now."
Since Kanghyeok had not been especially worried in the first place, he merely nodded as if it were nothing.
"Well, it's not as if you deserve death over it."
Dolseok, on the other hand, looked like a man returned from the dead.
"That's right, you bastards. Do you even know who this gentleman is? This is Baek Kanghyeok of the Suwon Baek clan!"
Only then did he lift his chin high and speak.
His voice was still full of tension, but he looked bolder than before.
"I am Baek Kanghyeok."
Kanghyeok held out his hand in a manner no different from his usual self.
The Pyeonsu, perhaps still lacking strength, only nodded.
His way of speaking remained awkwardly suspended somewhere between honorific and plain speech.
He looked rather stiff, but it was nothing Kanghyeok cared about.
"Ah… I see. But what brings you here?"
"Father, this gentleman saved your life."
"Did he? Then you have my thanks."
"Think nothing of it. But you are not fully recovered yet, so do not relax."
Kanghyeok answered with a wave of his hand.
At his words, everyone's faces tightened with tension.
They had just seen him save the Pyeonsu with strange and uncanny techniques, so no one could take his words lightly.
What was more, Kanghyeok still held a syringe full of blood in his hand.
"Earlier, over there… yes, when you collided with that man from the market stage, how did you feel afterward?"
Kanghyeok pointed at the man who had been on the swing.
It was the very same man who had been waving a club around earlier.
Now he was kneeling and repeatedly bowing his head.
The Pyeonsu frowned, as if the memory of being injured had returned.
"Ah… it hurt quite a bit. But not enough to die."
"At that time, a blood vessel in the sac surrounding your heart ruptured. As blood filled it, your heart could no longer beat properly. I removed that blood, so you need not worry."
Very few people looked as though they understood Kanghyeok's explanation.
Only Yeoni and Dolseok had their eyes shining.
Even they did not seem to understand it fully.
Not that they'd understand it anyway…
The years he had lived as a professor would not leave him alone.
Kanghyeok was about to launch into a full explanation, but stopped himself and smacked his lips.
He still had no idea what to call the middle-aged man in front of him.
At times like this, it was best to ask.
There was no point wrapping up ignorance and hiding it. That only caused trouble.
It was a truth Kanghyeok had learned after many years in the hospital.
"What should I call you?"
At Kanghyeok's question, the Pyeonsu burst into hearty laughter.
The movement made his chest hurt, and his face promptly twisted.
"Just don't call me this bastard or that bastard."
"Then… fine. I'll just call you Pyeonsu. What did it feel like when you collapsed earlier?"
"Mm…"
"Did it feel as though everything went dark before your eyes?"
"Ah, it did. That's exactly right."
When the heart stopped, blood no longer flowed through the body, so naturally it failed to reach the brain as well.
If one lost consciousness that way, of course the world would go dark.
This was something even an ordinary high school student walking down the street would know.
Of course, in this room, there was not a single person with that level of "higher" education.
Exclamations of admiration broke out here and there.
Dolseok, too, was looking at Kanghyeok with eyes full of reverence.
"That happened because your heart stopped. What I did by pressing on your chest was… to make that heart beat again."
"Then are you saying I died and came back to life?"
"Well… in a sense."
If left alone, he would have truly died by now, so it was not the wrong thing to say.
No, really, it would have been more accurate to say he actually had died.
"Huh… then am I alive now?"
At the Pyeonsu's question, Kanghyeok shook his head.
"Not quite yet. The sac around your heart is no longer bleeding for now, but it could rupture again at any time."
"Then what must be done, sir?"
This time it was the woman called Yeoni who stepped forward.
Since the father she had thought dead had come back to life, her attitude was intensely earnest.
In the confusion earlier, Kanghyeok had not really noticed, but now that he looked, she had quite a pretty face.
It was enough to make him think of a poem by Na Tae-joo.
The closer you look, the prettier she is; the longer you look, the prettier she is.
Thinking that she really did have a face that grew on you, he replied,
"For now, he must take medicine and be kept under observation. If a few days pass, he should be alright."
"Is that really true?"
"What should we do? Just give us your orders!"
Yeoni and the rough men began bowing before Kanghyeok.
The same people who had been ready to kill him earlier had completely changed.
Do they all have bipolar disorder as a group…
Kanghyeok looked down at them with a somewhat baffled expression.
He became curious just how well this Pyeonsu must have treated them in ordinary times for them to be this loyal.
Well… if it's this kind of group, owing me a debt won't be bad.
Kanghyeok recalled the performance he had seen earlier.
The way they leaped here and there, they were clearly no ordinary people.
He did not know how long he would remain in this place, but becoming friendly with a troupe would not be a bad thing at all.
"It's nothing difficult, and there's nothing you need to do. Dolseok."
"Yes, young master."
"Bring me that bag."
"Yes."
Dolseok immediately brought over the jet-black leather bag.
The square-shaped leather bag was clearly no ordinary object.
A person who possessed such a thing could not be ordinary either.
The respect in the hearts of the kneeling troupe members deepened even more.
Kanghyeok rummaged through the bag with an indifferent face, then took out two pills.
Since giving them a lot would be pointless when everything was clearly going to reset every day, he figured it was better to hand them out one at a time.
He passed the pills to Yeoni.
"Here. He must take these every day."
"How is he supposed to take them?"
"He should swallow them with water. For the heart… hm."
There were two kinds of medicine Kanghyeok had taken out.
One was an antibiotic.
It would prevent infection from the inner wound caused by the blow to the chest and from the wound made by the needle puncture.
The other was a steroid, otherwise known as a cure-all for almost everything.
If there was some illness that needed to get better quickly, and it was not viral, then this was what you took.
Kanghyeok searched for an appropriate explanation for a moment, then decided to gloss over it.
"It is medicine that keeps bad energy from building up around the heart. However, if he injures that same area again, there will be no saving him, so he must not perform personally."
"Yes, yes, sir. I'll have him only direct things."
"Pyeonsu, do you understand?"
"I understand. I will do as you instruct."
The Pyeonsu seemed to have regained his senses by now and was sitting upright.
From that posture, he bowed his head to Kanghyeok in respect.
"Thank you. Thanks to you, tomorrow's performance will be carried out safely as well."
"Is the performance really the issue right now… Anyway, it's nothing serious, so don't worry. If anything goes wrong, come to my room. And come to my house tomorrow to get more medicine."
Now that he had treated him, there was little more to do.
Though there was something he wanted the man to do.
There was no need to rush.
It would be a bit much to order around someone who had only just come back from death.
I'll have him do it tomorrow when he comes for the medicine.
Kanghyeok brushed himself off and rose.
At once, the Pyeonsu cried out urgently,
"Now, now—where are you going, benefactor? Yeoni, offer him at least a cup of wine!"
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