*
Cough—
On the way to the clinic, I let out a dry cough inside my mask.
Since being born as Yulian, I’d never particularly gotten the impression that I was frail.
But the air and stench of Limbus Pit were a little much for the delicate lungs of a young master from Sanctum Hill.
‘When will I ever be able to take this mask off here?’
And so, coughing again and again at the foul odor I hadn’t smelled in some time, I was on my way to the clinic.
Across the street, my eyes met those of a man smoking a cigarette.
Half-lidded golden eyes lazily swept over me.
“Hmm?”
Those eyes, which had been half-open as they appraised me, grew as round as a full moon.
“Oh! You’ve come, Doctor Schnabel!”
A hyena beastman tossed his cigarette onto the street and came toward me with a swaggering gait.
As he drew closer, I could see the scar crossing his eyebrow and his half-severed ear.
He wore a burgundy mandarin-collar shirt and a black silk vest embroidered with vine patterns in gold thread.
Like the buildings of the red-light district, his attire made it clear where he came from.
“It’s you, Wangcho.”
Wangcho.
He was the boss of the criminal organization that controlled this red-light district.
For the record, Wangcho was a nickname, and his real name was Tao Chen.
But I just called him Wangcho.
He’d asked me to call him that himself.
“It’s been a while, Wangcho. Have you been well?”
“Ha ha. I’m always in good health, of course. Nothing happened to you during the heavy snow, Doctor?”
“I rested well somewhere warm.”
“That’s truly a relief. Whenever you came here, far from being warm, you only ever wore yourself down. Surely you deserve to rest comfortably for about a month out of the year.”
He smiled amiably and rubbed his hands together.
It was the sort of ingratiating attitude that made it seem like he might ask, “So, how much did you have in mind?”
But one mustn’t be fooled by appearances.
This man, for all he looked like this, was the undisputed king of the brothels who had conquered this gutter.
…Come to think of it, his nickname didn’t have much force either.
“But to be honest, Doctor, I was surprised when I received your letter saying you wouldn’t be able to come for six weeks.”
“I remember writing that I likely wouldn’t be able to come because of the heavy snow. Did I perhaps leave that out?”
“Ah, I saw that, of course. But that’s not what I meant.”
Wangcho looked around, then brought his mouth to my ear.
And whispered,
“I thought you had been, er… taken by the ducal house.”
“…All of a sudden?”
“Come now, there’s no need to pretend you don’t know in front of me. I know too. Doctor, you were… well… in Sanctum Hill…”
Wangcho gave me a meaningful look.
As if to say I ought to understand after he’d said that much.
Only then did I understand what Wangcho was trying to say.
“I understand what you’re implying, but all of that is nothing more than rumor.”
There was a certain rumor about Schnabel, the crow doctor, circulating in the red-light district.
That I had once been a slave healer for some ducal house, but after failing a treatment, my face had been burned;
that I began wearing a mask to hide the scars;
and that afterward, I was driven out to the red-light district, where I now lived a life of service as an eccentric gnome with over a hundred and fifty years of experience.
The reason such rumors spread was entirely because of this mask.
My body, accustomed to Sanctum Hill, found the air of the slums harsh, and I wore the mask partly to prevent secondary infection.
But to people who had no concept of infection, the fact that I never took off my crow mask seemed to suggest there had to be some story behind it.
And after people’s imaginations were layered over that speculation several times, the aforementioned rumor was born.
Seeing as they could write that much of a novel out of nothing but a mask, people’s imaginations really were impressive.
“I have nothing to do with any ducal house.”
“Pardon? But didn’t you just get out of a car, Doctor? Did you not come from Sanctum Hill?”
Cars were the exclusive property of nobles.
From the mana-stone kerosene that moved them, to the garage in which they were stored, to their maintenance.
Because in this city, the very fact that one could keep machinery running properly was power.
‘Thanks to all the smog soaked in mana, machines break down at the drop of a hat.’
The more delicate the machine, the more the cost of operating and maintaining it skyrocketed.
Naturally, the ultimate examples were means of transport like cars and airships.
So it was not unreasonable for Wangcho, seeing me commute in such a thing, to recall the rumor that I had connections to nobles.
I waved a hand to correct his misunderstanding.
“There was a patient there who needed me.”
“Don’t tell me the ducal house called you back!?”
“…Not every noble is a duke.”
“Then even if it wasn’t a duke, you are connected to some noble…?”
“…”
“Could it be… that car was given to you by that noble as thanks…?”
I couldn’t say anything.
It wasn’t even wrong, so I was at a loss as to where I should begin correcting his misconception.
Then, suddenly, one fact flashed through my mind.
I’d seen this flow somewhere before.
That’s right.
No matter how I looked at it, this was the flow of a misunderstanding story.
No matter how I looked at it, it didn’t seem like the misunderstanding would be resolved just because I said something.
Realizing this belatedly, I chose silence.
“…”
Come to think of it, it wasn’t a lie either.
He was from a baronial house, but he was still of noble birth.
You could say he was roughly 0.01 of a duke.
Since that was a higher content ratio than the strawberry in strawberry milk, I was certainly not committing fraud.
“Doc… tor?”
“…”
“…I won’t pry.”
Wangcho interpreted my silence on his own.
As if he didn’t want to get entangled in the affairs of nobles, he very deliberately changed the subject.
“Oh, right. As you requested, I looked after the clinic while you were away.”
Wangcho handed me the key.
The reason I had entrusted the clinic to Wangcho.
It was because in this red-light district, the lock on an ownerless building was synonymous with a prostitute’s virginity.
No matter how expensive a lock you put on it, it was bound to be breached eventually.
It was far safer to ask someone to manage the building instead.
“Are you going to start seeing patients right away?”
“What other reason would a doctor have to come to work?”
“Ha ha! That’s true. A foolish question.”
Jingle.
Holding the ring of keys, I stood before the clinic.
A roof with slightly upturned eaves, faded red pillars, and an old lantern hanging above the door.
Originally, it was said to have been a boarding house run by an old shaman woman who had been the only healer for the beastmen.
Eight years before I came to the red-light district, that old woman died of pneumonia, leaving the house empty, and I took it over.
The lantern engraved with a panda that had guarded the entrance back then had now been replaced by a sign of a crow mask.
Click.
I opened the door and stepped inside.
“It’s been a while.”
First, a narrow waiting room came into view.
There was a partition at the back of the waiting room, and beyond it was the examination room.
An examination bed barely large enough for one person to lie on. A creaking wooden chair. A cabinet packed with medicines.
And beyond the closed door at the rear of the examination room, there was a delivery room for mothers; on the second floor, there was a room for newborns.
This was my clinic.
Since it was a clinic renovated from a boarding house, it would be difficult to expect an interior like a twenty-first-century hospital.
But by these standards, it was quite a fine clinic.
“You cleaned as well.”
It had the distinctive smell of the red-light district, but not the musty smell of dust, so it seemed Wangcho had cleaned it regularly.
First, I placed a container of herbs near the entrance to remove odors.
Next, the inside of the shelves. I checked the medicines.
At that, Wangcho approached and rubbed beneath his nose.
“I checked the medicines every day. They may be my men, but their fingers are too sticky to trust.”
“It would have been fine if they took one or two.”
“How could I allow that? Even beasts know gratitude toward those who saved them. I may not be an upright man, but I am no beast.”
“Thank you, Wangcho.”
The medicines were all as they had been.
Though a few had expired and needed to be thrown out.
Lastly, I picked up the mana-stone lamp from the shelf beside the examination bed.
A palm-sized brass case; when I turned the small spring mechanism embedded in its bottom, a warm orange light filled the room.
For reference, this mana-stone lamp was the third most expensive item in the clinic.
Because a light source that emitted neither oil grime nor soot was extremely rare in this world.
It was also an indispensable item in my examination room, where hygiene was essential.
“Come to think of it, Doctor Schnabel. I’m almost out of medicine…”
“Didn’t I give you plenty? Did you perhaps suffer ten gout attacks in just six weeks?”
“Ha ha…”
“Come inside. I’ll take a look and prescribe you medicine.”
The first patient on the clinic’s opening day after so long was Wangcho.
*
*
The first patient at the clinic after six weeks away was Wangcho.
Wangcho sat on the small bed and took off his sock.
“Hrngh… Please bear with it, even if it smells a bit.”
The area around the joint of his big toe was swollen red.
The skin was stretched taut and shiny, as if it might burst at any moment.
Gout.
A disease said to hurt even when brushed by the wind, the disease of nobles and the disease of kings.
Even to the people of this world, it was known as a disease caused when uric acid crystals accumulated in the joints after excessive intake of protein—especially meat rich in purines—or alcohol.
They knew it by rule of thumb.
‘Though in the twenty-first century, there were many studies saying genes and kidneys mattered more.’
By the twenty-first century, the scales had tilted somewhat toward gout being more of a metabolic issue than one of diet.
Still, one could not exclude the influence of diet in gout.
On top of that, the patient before me, befitting his moniker as the master of the red-light district, greatly enjoyed meat and alcohol.
At least in this man’s case, it was definitely due to his diet.
With the way he guzzled beer, even healthy kidneys wouldn’t have been able to withstand it before developing gout.
“You haven’t reduced your meat or alcohol at all.”
“Ha ha ha… You can tell just by looking?”
“The tophus has gotten larger, so of course I can.”
I sighed and lightly pressed the affected area.
“Urgh! Agghhh…!”
Wangcho screamed and pulled his foot back.
To think that a man known as the master of the red-light district would break into a cold sweat just because someone pressed his toe.
Before gout, even a first-rank superhuman was powerless.
“Look at this. Both the size of the tophus and the pain have worsened. At this rate, your kidneys will be damaged too.”
“Well, life is harsh, so what joy is there in living if I don’t even have liquor? Ha ha…”
“If you keep chasing that joy, you’ll find the road to the afterlife first.”
Even as I scolded him, I turned toward the shelf.
Clink, clatter.
I unlocked it and familiarly took out a medicine bottle.
A brown bottle labeled in Latin: [Colchicum autumnale].
It was colchicine, extracted from the bulbs of autumn crocus.
“Ah, speaking of which, Doctor, it’s been terribly difficult to get crocuses from beyond the wall these days. Those potion makers have been sweeping them all up, damn them.”
“It must be because it’s hibernation season. This is when demand for potions is high.”
The period immediately after the heavy snow ends is called hibernation season.
Another term for it is subjugation season.
Because this is the season when magical beasts that have not fully awakened from sleep can be subjugated relatively easily.
If their numbers aren’t reduced significantly now, things will get difficult in autumn later, so it is also the time when people try to reduce their numbers as much as possible, even if they have to push themselves a bit.
“But why in the world do those potion makers put this stuff in potions? Because of it, whenever I drink a potion, my backside leaks like a sieve the next day. I try to drink it to survive, but I end up hesitating out of embarrassment.”
“It can’t be helped. Otherwise, you’d suffer even more from something else.”
Potions did not only have healing effects.
They contained trace toxins, so if they remained in the intestines for too long, there was a risk of accumulation.
At such times, autumn crocus was used to induce diarrhea and quickly expel those toxins.
In other words, that was not a side effect of potions, but an intended effect.
When I explained that to him, Wangcho clapped his hands.
“I knew it. So when my sphincter loosened after I took this medicine last time, that was an intended effect too.”
“That was because you didn’t follow the dosage, Wangcho.”
At Wangcho’s words, I recalled our first meeting.
My connection with Wangcho began when I diagnosed his limping condition and treated his gout.
The problem was that, at the time, I had underestimated the common sense of people in this world.
People in this world seemed to think that the more medicine you took, the better.
So on the day I first prescribed him medicine, this man took four pills at once and suffered a storm of diarrhea so severe it seemed his intestines would spill out.
It was an unprecedented incident in which the master of the red-light district and a first-rank superhuman nearly crossed the River Jordan from dehydration.
I gave him water, fed him potions, fed him porridge…
In any case, it was chaos.
Be that as it may.
Wangcho accepted the packet of medicine with a bright smile.
“Ha ha. Well, what’s a little diarrhea? This medicine is a real wonder. In the old days, I used to worry that I might have to just cut off my toe, but if I take this, the next day it stops hurting as if it were washed clean away.”
“What use is medicine no matter how much you take if your habits stay the same? Have you no intention of cutting back on meat and alcohol?”
“Ha ha ha…”
Wangcho gave a dry laugh as he accepted the packet containing five pills.
For reference, the reason I gave him only a small amount at a time was because I did not trust this man.
He possessed the miraculous calculation that the more medicine he had left, the more reassured he felt drinking heavily.
Wangcho rustled about as he tucked the medicine packet he’d received from me into his inner pocket.
I spoke to him as he rose from the bed.
“I’ll see you again next month. If the attack is severe, come before then.”
“Thank you, Doctor.”
Wangcho put on his sock and stood.
Then, as if he had remembered something, he snapped his fingers and paused by the door.
“Oh, right, Doctor.”
“Yes?”
“There are quite a few patients who piled up over the past six weeks. There are the midwives you trained, Doctor, but they can’t replace you, can they? I’ve sorted them in order of urgency. Shall I send them in?”
This was the secret to how he had become Wangcho.
To the state, Limbus Pit was nothing more than a meat shield with no value worth protecting.
Wangcho was the one who, in place of the state, looked after the poor who could not receive the protection of such administrative power.
That was why most of the patients and pregnant women who came to this clinic were also people sent by Wangcho.
“Please do.”
“Understood. Then I’ll be going.”
After Wangcho left, I looked around the empty examination room for a moment.
It was quiet now, but well.
It was obvious that in half a day, it would be filled with the screams of midwives and the cries of babies.
Considering the six weeks’ worth of patients that had piled up, I should expect this place to turn into a madhouse for the time being.
There was a reason people spoke of the calm before the storm.
‘Haa… Should I rest a bit in advance?’
I lay myself down on the hard chair and enjoyed a brief moment of peace.