Rehabilitation Therapist for the Broken Warrior

I liked looking at things that were broken.

Among them, I especially liked things that had a brilliant and beautiful heyday.

When I see burnt charcoal, I imagine how hot and bright it once was.

When I bow my head and see countless fallen petals on the floor, I am reminded of a time when I had to raise my head to see them.

When I see old furniture or appliances discarded as large waste, I get the feeling that I can see a newlywed couple looking at them with a satisfied look on their faces as they bring them into their home.

When I see the treatment and reality of veterans on TV, I am humbled by the thought of them in their youth, shining, carrying guns and swords, and advancing through the barrage of fire.

After imagining their prime, when I face the reality in front of me again, I feel an unbearable sense of pity and faintness.

I liked that sense of pity and faintness.

The greater the gap between the shining past and the broken present, the more I felt a strange sense of exhilaration.

Was it a longing for the sparkle that was only a fleeting moment? Or was it awe of time, which makes any sparkle shine?

It was a natural step for me to decide to fix broken things.

I wanted to see more broken things, and I wanted to see things that were once more brilliant become broken.

I eventually became a rehabilitation specialist.

As expected, I could feel more emotions by looking at people than at objects.

Especially in places like rehabilitation centers, there are a lot of people who are so broken that they can barely move.

People who were active in the past.

Even athletes often come to the rehabilitation center with serious injuries.

Moreover, the people who come here put in a lot of effort, following my prescriptions and instructions in order to move again like they used to.

Even if they work hard at rehabilitation, it is almost impossible for them to move like they did in their prime!

Watching them struggle brought up new emotions in me.

This was the crucial difference between a broken person and a broken object.

A broken object does not remember the past.

But a broken person remembers the shining past.

People who say, ‘Back in my day…’ and rattle off their life’s greatest achievements were a common type of person you could find anywhere in the world.

And the shining past… never comes back.

To me, who enjoys that feeling of pity, the sight of people undergoing rehabilitation to return to that time gave me a feeling of elation, almost excitement, that made me tremble.

I’m glad I did this job after all.

I was born to be a rehabilitation specialist.

But it seems that things that can never be undone happen to me without exception.

One day, after returning home from work,

I found that one of the books on my bookshelf was emitting a brilliant light out of nowhere.

I picked it up and opened it to see what was going on…

**

When I came to my senses, I had been reborn as a baby in a rural village.

I never thought something like this would actually happen.

The pattern of picking up a shiny novel and then losing consciousness and being reborn as a baby.

No matter how I looked at it, it was a past life.

Fortunately, I had so much time to think that I had enough time to think about what I would do in the future.

The book I picked up was Volume 1 of [The 2nd Great Siloia War Chronicles].

A novel that ends with ‘Chronicles,’ literally a record of war.

It was a story about an ordinary fantasy world where a gate opens and a long war with the demon race breaks out.

With a classic title, a classic theme of human praise that befits it, and a consistently dark atmosphere full of hardship and adversity, it was a work that was popular enough to be published in a single volume.

The elements that were highly praised were the bright protagonist who gives hope just by existing even in a situation of despair, the overwhelming catharsis that comes at the finale after all kinds of hardships, and the unique setting that combines fantasy and abilities.

But the reason I liked this story was because I liked seeing the various characters fall apart.

The protagonist grows through the sacrifice and dedication of the people around him.

I liked the narratives of the supporting characters who appear, break down, and disappear in the process, becoming catalysts for the protagonist’s awakening.

Anyway… what was important now was what I had to do in this world.

The core event of this story and the element that forms the background of the story is the six-year-long all-out war with the demon race.

Checking the year, I found that the gate would open in the year I turned 14.

A long-lasting all-out war.

When an all-out war breaks out, all the young people and adventurers who can fight are conscripted, and people are broken in the war.

As a rehabilitation specialist, it was easy to predict the demand for rehabilitation that would arise afterward.

The largest proportion of people in society who need rehabilitation are the elderly and the sick, but the people who need rehabilitation most desperately in the world are soldiers who have experienced war.

Then what I had to do was…

‘A war…’

This is another world, a fantasy world. There are powerful adventurers who use skills, magic, and abilities everywhere.

And they all participate in the planned six-year war.

Six years on the battlefield.

It’s not an environment where people can easily stay whole.

Besides, I already know how much this war will wear people down, what the adventurers who participate in it will go through, and how they will break down.

People who used to be so strong and splendid on the battlefield will come to the rehabilitation center in a completely broken state.

Come to think of it, is there such a concept as rehabilitation in this world?

I tried to recall the contents of the novel, but of course, there was no such story written.

Well, if there isn’t one, I can just make one.

Rehabilitation … it seems I can’t escape my innate disposition after all.

My heart was already pounding at the thought of which adventurers I would be treating after the war.

Will I be able to hear stories of valor from the war period in a fantasy world?

How funny would it be to actually hear them explain what skills they used in the past?

Perhaps there would be people I read about in the book, who were part of the hero’s party.

A place where people who are broken, clinging to the glory of the past, yet still seeking hope, gather.

A rehabilitation center in this world.

My job was to create that space and to be the hope that they could find.

**

Born in a small rural village, I remained in the church when young people left to seek adventure and worked hard to cultivate healing skills.

I had almost mastered general and modern rehabilitation medicine through residency training.

I learned healing skills just in case they might be helpful, but healing skills were only at the level of healing visible wounds or temporarily giving energy, and were far from rehabilitation, which restores physical function.

However, I judged that buff skills that temporarily increase muscle strength would be useful for rehabilitation, so I found and learned the necessary skills.

And there were also skills that slightly restored permanent status damage.

Although it had a considerable cooldown time, the amount of recovery was very small, and it was treated as a non-mainstream skill because it was very rare for an adventurer’s body to break down or suffer permanent damage.

But rehabilitation is originally about gradually restoring function over a long period of time.

I also found and learned these skills as much as I could.

In this world, there was naturally a method of improving status through training, and the structure of the body was not significantly different from the original world, so I judged that rehabilitation through physical therapy or rehabilitation methods would work.

I spent my childhood taking care of the elderly with mobility problems, which are common in rural villages, and recommending rehabilitation treatment methods and conducting clinical trials to see if they were effective.

Although the data was insignificant, through the rehabilitation progress of the elderly, I developed various methods to implement modern rehabilitation medicine in this world and theories and routines to increase efficiency by linking it with skills.

As the story went, war broke out in the year I turned 14.

When I was 17 years old, in the third year of the war when the fighting was most intense, I volunteered for the kingdom medical service.

The kingdom medical center naturally only treated soldiers or adventurers who were likely to return to the front lines and sent people who were completely broken and unable to even live their daily lives back to their hometowns.

However, the head of medical services was a medical professional with convictions, and he felt a great sense of guilt for turning away patients who could not be treated.

I used this to persuade him and secured a space to treat patients who were beyond recovery.

As a result of continuous treatment for broken soldiers and adventurers, there were cases of successful rehabilitation with very few trials and errors.

In the year I turned 20, the demon king was defeated by the hero of the story, the gate was sealed, and the war ended.

Those who needed treatment were no longer soldiers but citizens, and as I expected, the demand for rehabilitation by retired soldiers who had to return to their daily lives began to surge.

The need for a rehabilitation medicine center was proposed to the kingdom by the head of medical services who had been watching my treatment progress, and I was appointed as its director.

Hope Harvey, Director of the Kingdom Rehabilitation Medicine Center.

This was the new name I got in this world, and it was the starting point of my story.