When God closes one door, He always opens a window somewhere else.
That saying is absolutely true.
"Amazing. Truly amazing, South Korea. You finally managed to bankrupt my clinic by overcoming the basic instinct every living creature has to pass on its genes! Bravo. Wonderful. You're the first nation in history to defeat the instinct to reproduce. Then again, why would anyone bother having children? If a bear can become human just by eating garlic and mugwort for a hundred days in the land of Hongik Ingan, who'd willingly suffer through nine months of pregnancy? Fantastic! Wonderful! Absolutely marvelous!"
Hoo.
Kwon Minseong let out a long breath reeking of alcohol.
There weren't enough fingers on both hands to count all the reasons behind the plunging birth rate. He knew that perfectly well. But emotions did not always yield to reason, and at the moment, his own sense of injustice outweighed every one of those countless explanations.
Wiping away tears that never actually came, Kwon Minseong gently stroked the rectangular standing sign mounted on the desk.
[Min Obstetrics and Gynecology Clinic]
After five years, Kwon Minseong's life as a local clinic owner had come to an end.
Human beings reproduced to preserve their genes.
But people had to be able to afford children before they could have them.
South Korea's birth rate, driven by a society that had chosen survival over reproduction, had ultimately proven that there was something even lower than rock bottom.
Five years after opening an obstetrics and gynecology clinic in a building that had once supposedly been occupied entirely by OB/GYN practices, Kwon Minseong's clinic had gone under.
Not struggling.
Not barely hanging on.
Completely and irreversibly bankrupt.
Thunk.
Kwon Minseong set an empty bottle of soju down on the reception desk.
He normally didn't touch alcohol at all, but today was an exception.
He couldn't endure this without drinking.
He had no friends to drunkenly complain to, no family who would mourn the clinic's failure with him, and no girlfriend to comfort him.
There was absolutely no reason not to drink himself senseless.
"I worked so... so hard to raise you..."
Slumped over the desk, Kwon Minseong's shoulders trembled.
No tears came out, but the absence of tears didn't make it any less of a sob.
As someone with no family, the clinic had been his only child.
The color of the sign.
The entrance mat.
The sofas.
The water dispenser.
The notice that read, Please do not dispose of anything except water in the dispenser.
The rolls of toilet paper in the restroom.
The automatic air freshener that hissed every hour.
Even the paintings hanging in the hallway.
There wasn't a single thing in the clinic that hadn't passed through his hands.
He had raised it with utmost devotion.
And yet...
"You damned South Korea!"
The clinic shouldn't have gone under, damn it.
Kwon Minseong leaned back against the reception desk and slowly slid down onto the floor.
The clinic might have gone bankrupt, but the lobby floor was still so spotless that he could spread out a blanket and sleep on it immediately.
"Hic... Even these tiles... I spent four days negotiating with the interior contractor to get the price down..."
Reception was the face of a clinic.
It had to be ten times cleaner than anywhere else.
Kwon Minseong had drilled that into his employees' heads so often they were probably sick of hearing it.
Obstetrics and gynecology was especially sensitive.
A single tiny flaw could generate ten times the complaints.
Because it dealt directly with humanity's instinct to leave descendants, he had poured far more effort into it than most other medical practices.
Well...
The staff had occasionally talked behind his back.
Director Kwon doesn't seem a little too picky for a man?
That's why he's still unmarried at thirty-five.
He's older than I thought.
Seriously. I was shocked when I heard his age. He looks so young.
He's pretty handsome, too. A little short, but he's at least five foot nine. He's a doctor. There's definitely a reason women aren't taking him.
No parents-in-law to deal with either. No family baggage. That's practically the jackpot. And they're still not interested because of his personality?
It's not just his personality. You still don't know our director?
What else is there?
What's the point of marrying a doctor? You wouldn't be able to spend a single ten-thousand-won bill without feeling guilty. The man's obsessed with money.
"What's wrong with being obsessed with money?!"
Remembering the nurses' gossip, Kwon Minseong slapped the marble floor.
Smack!
"Who doesn't like money in a capitalist society? What am I, a monk? A pastor? Even pastors are so obsessed with money they commit tax fraud these days! What's wrong with liking money a little? They all work to make money too! It's not like I committed tax evasion! I paid everyone's salary! I never overcharged my patients!"
Maybe he should have.
Maybe he should have squeezed more money out of his patients.
Sold unnecessary treatment packages.
Run the clinic that way.
Would it still have failed if he had?
No.
The more he thought about it, the more convinced he became that he had simply chosen the wrong specialty.
He should have listened when his seniors warned him that male OB/GYN doctors had no future.
"No..."
The clinic's failure was South Korea's fault.
It had gone under because people stopped having children.
An unprecedented decline in births had caused obstetrics and pediatric clinics across the country to shut down one after another.
Demand kept disappearing.
The doctors remained, lingering like ghosts.
Even finding a salaried position somewhere else was nearly impossible.
And because patients in obstetrics and gynecology generally preferred female doctors, Kwon Minseong had nowhere left to go.
"It's all because only women can get pregnant..."
If men could become pregnant too, none of this would have happened.
Wouldn't that be wonderful?
If men could get pregnant, the birth rate would double.
Patients might even prefer male doctors more often.
And Kwon Minseong would never have had to swallow the bitter pill of closing his clinic.
"Take me there!"
Smack!
He slammed the marble floor he'd spent four days bargaining for.
"Send me there! Send me! Please send me!"
The more he thought about it, the more obvious it seemed.
Men needed to be able to get pregnant.
Smack.
Smack.
Smack.
The hands that were supposed to be a doctor's most precious tools had turned bright red and swollen, but Kwon Minseong had no intention of stopping.
Raising both hands high above his head, he slammed them down.
"Please send me to a world where men can get pregnant too!"
Swoosh—
Kwon Minseong blinked and looked down at his hands.
Not bang.
Not smack.
Swoosh?
Through his alcohol-blurred vision, he saw both hands sink straight through the supposedly solid marble floor.
"Wow... I guess once your business goes under, sinkholes start appearing in floors that were perfectly fine for five years. Or maybe the interior contractor created a black hole out of pure resentment. I did push the price down pretty hard back then. But one and a half million won per row was ridiculous, wasn't it? It's not like the marble was imported directly from Italy. Even if you want a profit, there's got to be a limit—"
"Aaaagh!"
While he rambled drunkenly, the pitch-black sinkhole continued expanding.
Then, in the blink of an eye, it swallowed Kwon Minseong whole.
Didn't they say it?
When God closes one door, He always opens a window somewhere else.
A very black, very twisted window.
"Hey!"
A sharp voice struck Kwon Minseong's ears while he was enjoying a perfectly good sleep.
Who is that...?
The only people who would normally come to his clinic were patients.
But his clinic wasn't just any clinic anymore.
The sign had been taken down.
The property had been handed over to a real-estate agency.
Seventy-two hours had passed since the business officially closed.
There was no way a patient would come to a clinic that no longer existed.
Whoever it was, go home.
We're not open for business.
"Hey! Are you not listening to me?"
The clinic might have shut down, but Kwon Minseong's eardrums were still operating normally.
The sharp rise and fall of the voice and the irritated tone suggested an exceptionally sensitive patient.
Every so often, the speaker let out a strained groan or paused to catch their breath.
The rhythm sounded strangely familiar.
He had heard breathing like that countless times while treating patients at full term.
Kwon Minseong slowly cracked open his left eye and cautiously surveyed his surroundings.
It was too dark to see much of anything.
But one thing stood out clearly.
A belly swollen as large as a mountain.
"This insolent fool! Do you even know who I am?!"