You Mediocre Doctor

"Come on, let's go eat."

"Fucking Fridays are the worst. Baldy Liu always runs over, and it's always the last class before lunch or the last one of the afternoon."

"Hey, looks like a new malatang place opened by the school gate. Want to try it?"

At Star City No. 3 High School, the bell for the last morning class had barely finished ringing when students poured out of their classrooms, heading toward the school gates in small groups, chatting and laughing.

The school wasn't a closed campus and had no cafeteria, so most students ate lunch off campus. As a result, the stalls and vendors outside its back gate did a thriving trade.

"This is nice..."

Sitting at his desk, Xia Xu watched his classmates jostle their way out of the classroom, brimming with joy as though they had been set free. Rather than hurry to join them, he wore a wistful, dazed expression that seemed out of place on a teenage face.

In truth, he wasn't really a teenager. To put it in somewhat clichéd terms, he was a transmigrator.

Perhaps even "transmigration" deserved quotation marks. He wasn't actually sure whether he had traveled to another world or whether, for some reason, the world had undergone a few minor changes.

This world was simply too similar to Earth. Everything from its local customs to its social conditions was remarkably alike. Apart from minor differences in names and terminology, it was almost identical to the world he had come from.

That also left him feeling as though a lifetime had passed. It was almost as if he hadn't transmigrated at all, but had become the protagonist of a rebirth novel, regaining his youthful body and sitting in a senior-year classroom once more.

Teachers and parents often liked to offer students who hated school the same piece of advice: once you entered the working world, you would realize how good school had been.

To students, that was bullshit. Xia Xu himself had felt exactly the same back then.

Only after experiencing it firsthand could one understand that those words were actually the heartfelt longing of most people out in the working world.

It wasn't that school life was so wonderful, or that they regretted not studying harder. The two ways of life were simply worlds apart.

Money, marriage, social obligations, work, the need to tread carefully around superiors and subordinates, the countless situations that demanded forced smiles and insincere pleasantries...

Once you stepped beyond the school gates, the troubles of the world came rushing at you. There were far too many pressures and worries, like heavy shackles that made it impossible to breathe and bound your very nature. You could never recover your old vigor and confidence, and your heart was constantly filled with frustration and restlessness.

In the still of the night, many people surely felt an irresistible urge to escape, and naturally found themselves remembering their school days.

Perhaps those days had held frustration, pressure, and fear too, but to their present selves, all of it seemed like trivial matters that could only bring a smile. Classes might have been painful, but there had been little to worry about. Carefree peace and leisure had defined their lives.

Those might have been the most peaceful days of many people's lives, the days when they had felt most human. Every recollection brought regret-not for failing to study, but for failing to fully enjoy that time, and for never being able to return to it.

"But... I did come back."

Xia Xu broke into a broad smile, filled with genuine joy.

Almost a week had passed since his transmigration, but whenever he thought about it, that joy still welled up from time to time, as though every cell in his body were cheering, mingled with a dreamlike sense of unreality.

Even though this place was no longer called Earth but Blue Ocean Star, and even though the original owner of his body, who shared his name, hadn't been doing too well lately, what could be more precious than regaining a young body and the freedom of youth? That alone was enough to leave him thoroughly content.

His classmates quickly left, and the classroom gradually emptied until only seven or eight students were still lingering. Having avoided the earlier shoving and crowding, Xia Xu stretched and prepared to get up for lunch.

But the instant he rose from his seat, a dizzy spell made the world go dark around him. He staggered and dropped straight back into his chair.

"Anemia? But I ate breakfast."

Xia Xu shook his head and only recovered after some effort.

When he raised his head again, however, numerous translucent patterns seemed to have appeared in his vision, like eye floaters.

His gaze instinctively settled on a top student who was still bent over his exercises. The translucent patterns seemed to solidify, becoming clearer until they actually formed words and assembled into something resembling a game's character stat panel.

[Name]: Su Yu

[Life level]: 1

[Fate potential]: Mediocre doctor (1 star)

[Talent potential]: Literature (2 stars)

[Special]: None

[Obsession]: I have to become a good doctor like Dad.

[Affinity]: 20

"Could this be the legendary cheat every transmigrator gets?"

Xia Xu froze. Setting aside questions such as where this cheat had come from, he studied the panel to figure out what it did, then broke into a grin.

"A doctor, my ass. You mediocre doctor."

Xia Xu couldn't help laughing aloud.

He didn't know whether this cheat had any other functions, but the stat panel was fairly straightforward.

The name needed no explanation; naturally, he knew his classmate Su Yu. The rating was probably something like a level, and affinity was self-explanatory. The only fields worth examining were probably fate potential and the ones that followed it.

Fate potential might refer to a person's future destiny, or their potential to become something. Su Yu's fate potential plainly displayed the words "mediocre doctor," which matched his desire to become a doctor in the obsession field.

But the talent potential field clearly referred to an aptitude for learning certain skills or knowledge, and all it listed was two-star literature. That had absolutely nothing to do with medicine. If he really became a doctor, it would be stranger if he weren't a mediocre one.

Still, "Mediocre doctor" wasn't meant as an insult. When Xia Xu focused on the words "mediocre doctor (1 star)," a floating description popped up.

[Mediocre doctor (1 star): Heals the sick and saves lives. Unremarkable, yet worthy of respect.]

From that description, "Mediocre doctor" clearly didn't mean someone condemned for killing patients or failing to cure them. It simply meant someone of ordinary aptitude who performed unremarkably in medicine and achieved nothing particularly great.

"If everything on this stat panel is accurate, couldn't I make infallible predictions as a fortune-teller?"

Xia Xu's eyes lit up as the idea instinctively occurred to him, only for him to smack himself on the forehead a moment later.

"Pah, stupid, stupid. Why the hell would I tell fortunes with an ability like this? Talk about aiming low."

He could see other people's talents, and even their destinies. If he used this ability to find talented people and start a company, what industry couldn't he thrive in?

Even becoming a headhunter would earn him more than fortune-telling. He'd have to have been kicked in the head by a donkey to pass up a respectable, legitimate career and become a fortune-telling charlatan instead.