It was still too early to make a definite judgment.
What mattered now was the patient.
I slowed my pace so as not to startle the man.
After approaching the bedside, I neatly brought my hands together and bowed politely.
“Hello. My name is Yeon Ryeonghwa, and I’ll be in charge of examining you for today’s Ip-gwan Examination.”
The man struggled to raise his head.
The moment his pain-clouded gaze landed on my face, his eyes visibly wavered.
“……Little Lady Yeon Ryeonghwa?”
I narrowed my eyes for just a moment. He already knew who I was.
The man glanced behind me several times, as though checking whether someone else had come in with me.
But the only people who had entered the tent were the attendant and me.
A troubled look spread across the man’s face.
His lips moved several times before he finally spoke cautiously.
“I-I’m sorry. I truly apologize for saying this, but……”
The man hesitated before looking at my face.
“Are you really the one assigned to treat me today, Little Lady?”
His tone was polite, but there was unmistakable anxiety in his voice.
I studied his expression and slowly nodded.
“Yes. I’m the one who will examine you and prescribe your treatment today.”
As soon as I answered, the man tightened his grip.
He closed his eyes for a moment, enduring the pain, then continued with difficulty.
“I-I don’t mean to look down on you, Little Lady. Since the Elders personally approved of you, I’m sure you must have remarkable talent.”
The man was unable to continue for a while. Whether from pain or hesitation, the fingertips gripping the edge of the bed trembled slightly.
“Besides, I come from the slums, so I don’t have the money to receive proper treatment. I’m already grateful that Yakryeong is treating me like this because of the Ip-gwan Examination. However……”
Eventually, as if he had made up his mind, he bit his lip.
“On my way here, I happened to hear people talking. They said the Young Family Head’s daughter is also taking the Ip-gwan Examination today, and that you’ve been weak since birth and never properly learned medicine……”
The man cautiously glanced over my pale face and small frame.
He didn’t merely know my name.
A seven-year-old child who had spent her entire life bedridden and had never properly learned medicine.
He had already heard that.
I quietly looked into the man’s wavering eyes.
A patient whose symptoms were unusually severe.
And the distrust he showed the moment he saw me.
If there had been only one of those things, I could have dismissed it as coincidence. But the two had overlapped.
‘Could it be…… someone deliberately arranged this?’
I swallowed the question without voicing it.
Who had done it, and why, could be figured out later.
Whatever the case, examining this man came first.
The man hadn’t said those things to insult me.
I could tell just by looking at the hand clutching his stomach, his pale face, and his broken breathing.
He was simply afraid. Afraid that something might go wrong.
‘……Because he wants to live.’
And I knew that feeling better than anyone.
The despair that had sunk deep into my chest every time I was told there was no way to treat me.
The countless decoctions I swallowed without even knowing what medicine they contained, hoping that this time, they would work.
I, too, had been forced to entrust my life to someone else’s hands for the sole reason that I wanted to live……
I slowly approached the bedside and lowered myself until I was at eye level with the man.
“You’re very scared, aren’t you?”
The man’s eyes wavered. Unable to answer, he only moved his lips.
A moment later, he barely managed to nod.
“……I still have young children at home. If something happens to me because of this illness……”
His voice trailed off.
I quietly looked at him before speaking in a soft voice.
“I’m afraid of dying too.”
The man slowly raised his head.
“Not everything you heard about me is wrong. My body is weak, and even now, I don’t know when I might become seriously ill again.”
An apologetic look appeared on the man’s face.
I continued before he could apologize.
“So I understand why you’re anxious. You want to live, so you want to be treated by someone you can trust even a little more, right?”
I held out my hand.
It was the small, delicate hand of a seven-year-old child.
“So you don’t have to trust me right away.”
“……”
“Just let me examine you once. If you still find it difficult to trust me after that, you can ask them to call another physician.”
I paused for a moment before adding,
“And the medicine I make will have to be verified by the Elders before it can be used, anyway.”
The man’s gaze lingered on my hand for a long time.
His anxiety had not completely disappeared.
But after a moment,
he slowly loosened the hand that had been clutching his stomach.
Even the slightest movement seemed to send pain through him, and his face contorted.
Nevertheless, the man extended his wrist toward me.
“……I want to live too.”
Without a word, I carefully supported his wrist.
“So please examine my illness.”
“Yes.”
I looked into his eyes and nodded.
“As long as you don’t give up, I won’t give up first either.”
Only then did the man let out a small breath.
It wasn’t a complete relief.
But at least he no longer pulled his hand away from mine.
I comfortably supported his arm with one hand and placed three fingers of my other hand over the point where his pulse beat.
The sensation of his cold, clammy skin reached my fingertips.
I lowered my eyes and concentrated on his pulse.
Thump, thump.
Fast.
But something was strange.
With pain this severe, his pulse should have carried a similarly strong force, yet the pulse beneath my fingertips lacked strength despite its speed.
‘His body is exhausted.’
Still feeling his pulse, I examined the man’s complexion again.
A pale face.
Cold sweat.
Cold fingertips.
His vitality was far too depleted to simply be the condition of someone suffering abdominal pain from indigestion.
I withdrew my hand.
“I’m going to examine your abdomen.”
“Yes……”
I rubbed my palms together several times to warm them before carefully placing them over his stomach.
I could feel the chill even through his clothes.
I slowly applied pressure with my fingertips, starting around his navel, and when I reached his lower abdomen, the man’s body jerked violently.
“Ugh……”
“Does it hurt the most here?”
“Yes. But it doesn’t hurt only there. A little while ago, it was over here……”
The man pointed to the side of his abdomen.
‘The pain isn’t fixed in one place either.’
Several possibilities quickly came to mind and were discarded.
It wasn’t enough yet.
I withdrew my hand.
“What did you eat last night?”
“Last night?”
“Yes. If you ate anything different from usual, please tell me everything.”
The man searched his memory for a moment.
“After finishing work, I had a little alcohol with an acquaintance. I ate some meat too…… I suppose I ate more greasy food than usual.”
“What happened after that?”
“I went home and drank some cold water because I was thirsty.”
“Did you get any sleep after the pain started?”
The man shook his head with an exhausted expression.
“No. I couldn’t sleep a wink all night. It hurts too much to fall asleep.”
I nodded slightly.
The pulse, complexion, and condition of his abdomen that I had examined so far all connected.
“You had diarrhea once at dawn, but you didn’t vomit. And instead of feeling feverish, your stomach felt cold, as though it had frozen from the inside, didn’t it?”
“……!”
The man stared at me in surprise. Watching his reaction, I continued.
“The pain probably didn’t stay in one place like a single stabbing sensation either. It moved around, as though something inside your abdomen were being twisted.”
“T-that’s right.”
The man’s eyes widened.
“Everything you said is exactly right. How did you……”
I placed my fingers against his wrist again.
His pulse was fast but weak beneath my fingertips.
‘As I thought.’
All that was written on the examination paper was “acute abdominal pain.”
If one only followed the pain visible on the surface, it would be easy to think that whatever was obstructing him needed to be forcefully expelled as quickly as possible.
But this man was different.
His stomach had already been weakened by greasy food and alcohol, and then cold qi had entered, preventing the food from properly descending.
On top of that, he had already suffered diarrhea, causing him to lose a considerable amount of vitality.
‘I can’t use strong medicine here.’
If I forcibly pushed out the obstruction alone, the pain might decrease temporarily, but his already weakened vitality could be drained along with it.
That would only delay his recovery.
I removed my hand from his pulse.
When looking only at the symptoms before me, one naturally wanted to treat them aggressively.
But what he actually needed was the opposite.
“The cold qi has attacked your weakened stomach, and undigested food is also causing an obstruction.”
The man asked nervously,
“Is it a very dangerous illness?”
“It isn’t something that will take your life right away.”
“Really?”
A faint look of relief passed across the man’s stiff face.
“But just because the pain is severe doesn’t mean we should forcefully remove the obstruction. Your vitality has already dropped quite a bit.”
I pulled the rumpled blanket up over his stomach.
“We need to warm your stomach while slowly relieving the obstruction. We also need to use medicine that helps prevent your vitality from weakening further.”
“Then…… Can I get better?”
“Yes.”
I answered without hesitation.
“If we treat it now, you can recover.”
Only then did the man’s tense shoulders lower slightly.
“I’ll make the medicine right away! In the meantime, keep yourself warm. Don’t hold your breath, either. Breathe slowly and rest.”
“Yes.”
I turned around.
The man who had been looking for another physician just moments ago carefully called out to me from behind.
“Little Lady.”
I stopped and turned around. The man bowed his head.
“……Please.”
I smiled faintly.
“Yes.”
When I lifted the tent flap and stepped outside, the sounds of grinding and chopping medicinal herbs rushed toward me all at once.
The incense being used to measure the time had already burned down more than halfway.
Only then did I feel a little pressed for time.
‘More time has passed than I thought.’
The examinees were busily moving back and forth between their medicinal herb boxes and braziers.
I immediately returned to my preparation table and opened my medicinal herb box.
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