I quite like it, its not for everybody but if you are looking for a funny low stakes slice of life novel with op mc thats is not obnoxious or fucking evil in a modern setting and without dog blood drama or revolving door of petty never ever back down cannon fodder face slapping, this its for you!
For me Ling Ran at the same time its both a typical and atypical protagonist, at the core he is a young man set on his ways that knows what he wants from his life. From his birth he has what we some readers call his biggest golden finger, not the medical system but what we might as well call conceptual beauty, all people regardless of personal taste think him the most handsome, old, young, man, female, EVERYBODY and they react according to their own natural reaction to it(there is not magical love obsession or enslavement, at least not for everybody, some people are just that shallow), he has been always been the center of attention and receive preferential treatment or resentment no matter what he does or felt, his mother has been a godsend in teaching how to cope with it. The most memorable for me its how when he was a child she gave him a box and a sign of "please give me 10 yen" and parked him in a busy street(he was not made to look like a poor beggar or sick), the box overflowed in like a hour with more money that his family clinic makes in a day/week? and she give him the talk that with his looks he does not have to work to eat and live well, he could just gather money while his youth lasts and live out of it, so he should just look for what he enjoys to do and work on that, just his looks will open doors for him. Surgery its that for him, he loves and lives for it, he cares not for fame, money or status, only as much as they enable his life passion of doing surgery. Even without the system he would have been a successful surgeon, he is book smart, not untalented, hard working and his looks will have gave him opportunities, like when on the first day the nurse choose him of all interns to do stitching, his rise would not have been meteoric or anywhere near as high, but he will have done well.
His personality and actions are derived of his coping mechanism for all the attention, he is germophobe that does not like to be touched(you can imagine how much he was touched without his permission since he was child), he has zero interest in romantic relationships or sex(he has been harassed and courted since kindergarden), he does not flatter people and has minimal manners when meeting new people(he knows people always excuse him or dislike him for his looks and that almost always comes first), he is aloof(people are always trying to cozy up to him and take the slightest opening) and in general he just does not get some social niceties/behaviors since he never had to, so he never bothered to learn or maybe he just couldt? it may be accidental representation, but he in general cames across like he is somewhere in the autistic spectrum, I like it.
The constant thing of a gaggle of young nurses, random beautiful girls being introduced to gaga over him got old fast, but it has toned down over the course of the book, its more a background thing now. Really like two named young females in the entire book have been immune to it, the author does not know how to write females well, but at least he is not perverted or woman hating about it.
Like I said he is set on his ways, he likes his routines and does not like unfamiliar places and you know he actually has alive parents he likes, so he has stayed on the same hospital over the course of so far 1000+ chapters, which I actually think its great, I am so done with the trope of mc constantly outgrowing places or burning all bridges and having to move to other place where he just win overs/face slaps the exact same type of characters over and over. He staying in the same hospital actually enables the story to have a stable cast of characters, they are not very deep but I do like them and actually remember them! They have their own unique personalities and will be sad to see them go. There are plenty of chapters where they are center stage and Ling Ran its in the background or not at all on it, its nice and often funny variety.
Also he is not sabotaging himself by doing it, there are sick people everywhere, the hospital has good facilities, he can and does freelance surgery when he runs out of beds and as told in the novel, had he left for those others hospitals when given the chance he would not have gotten as much preferential treatment(he is so spoiled on his hospital) immediately as he receives on his own hospital he will had to spend time proving himself to get the same leeway, surgery volume and freedom for task he does not like doing(medical charts, social niceties, talking with patients, warding off new romantic interests since every time he moves to a new place he has to reject in a socially acceptable way offers of dates from young women, matchmaking with daughters/nieces/granddaughters for all the older people) when he could just spend that time doing surgery or at home and saving himself the distasteful task of uprooting himself out of his routines/home.
