Meanwhile, around the time Julian, having finished the blood transfusion, was resuming his consultations.
As soon as she stepped out the clinic's back door, the cold air of a winter that had not yet passed greeted Erica.
Brrr.
Erica trembled lightly.
Wangcho snickered and pulled a beanie over her head.
"Wear it. If you catch a cold on the way, how am I supposed to face the Doctor?"
But Erica scrunched up her face and thrust the hat back at Wangcho.
"Ugh. It reeks."
"Tch. Suit yourself."
Wangcho reluctantly put the beanie back on.
Erica walked alongside Wangcho down the alley.
Even within Limbus Pit, which was by nature a gloomy place, the back alleys were especially worse.
Walls were layered with unidentifiable graffiti, and drunken laughter spilled from somewhere, doubling the ominous atmosphere.
"Listen up while we walk, brat."
Wangcho spoke without slowing his pace.
"Pick up the medicinal ingredients from Cheon's Apothecary on the corner of 4th Avenue. Tell them 'I'm here on the Doctor's errand,' and they'll hand it over."
"...Got it."
"My boys will handle reaching out to patients. You just clean the clinic, organize the tools, and do whatever the Doctor tells you."
Wangcho snapped his fingers.
"Ah, right. When you draw well water in the morning, don't take it to the delivery room. Actually, just boil it all as soon as you draw it. That way there won't be any accidents."
"Why?"
"You want to see the Doctor fly into a rage and flip the whole alley upside down? Do it differently, then. With any luck, you might get thrown out onto the street in the dead of winter and freeze to death."
Erica nodded hurriedly.
Seeing even the cruel ruler of this district react with such revulsion, there was clearly a reason.
The explanations that followed were simple.
Erica memorized the details without difficulty.
"So, wake up early and fetch water, pick up herbs from 4th Avenue over there..."
"Damn. You vampire brat. Smarter than you look, huh? Might graduate faster than I thought?"
"Graduate?"
Wangcho nodded and pulled a paper match from his coat.
He quickly struck the head of the match, which had been peeking halfway out of the matchbox, along its side with one hand.
Fzzt—
He exhaled smoke at leisure, snapped off the burnt match head, and dropped it to the ground.
"You ain't the first to become the Doctor's assistant."
Wangcho took a drag of his cigarette.
He jerked his chin toward the upper city, in the direction of Kivitas Square.
"There's a dessert shop way up there. Heard it's famous."
"Why bring that up all of a sudden?"
"The successor there used to be the Doctor's assistant. Worked a month or two, and the Doctor got him adopted on account of his dexterity."
Erica's eyes widened at Wangcho's explanation.
Not nobility, but still, a large dessert shop was on par with a master artisan's workshop.
Naturally, the news that a back-alley orphan had been suddenly chosen as the successor to an uptown master was hard to believe.
But Wangcho continued without paying her reaction any mind.
"And in B Sector, on Adventurer Street... Klaus, was it? That guy too graduated after the Doctor bought him an expensive bayonet. These days he's risen enough to have earned a nickname."
Wangcho began counting off on his remaining fingers.
The slave with the crushed ankle from the fighting pits got a job with the security force.
The prostitute with lung disease retired, got married, and is running a flower shop.
With each finger Wangcho folded, Erica's mouth fell open a little wider.
"Well, that's how it is. You've hit the jackpot, kid."
"Then the people around the Doctor, that... that thing..."
"Graduation?"
"Yeah. Do they all graduate like that?"
It was like some kind of new religious cult.
But at Erica's reaction, Wangcho grimaced and shook his head.
"No, I'm talking about the ones who struck it big. You think just anyone becomes like that?"
"Hah. What. So there's a standard for graduating like that? Didn't you say I'd graduate soon?"
"Who knows?"
Wangcho shrugged.
"Seems like it's just up to the Doctor's mood. Though assistants tend to turn out better than patients, more often than not."
Wangcho swept his gaze up and down Erica's body.
"Well, seems like the younger you are, the sadder your story, or the stranger your illness, the higher your chances."
He tapped his thick forearm and grumbled.
"Damn. If only I'd been born five years later. Or broken an arm or something somewhere. Being too healthy is a crime, a crime."
Wangcho spread two fingers and smirked.
"Well, anyway. You've got all three of those factors, and your head's screwed on straight too. That's why I said your chances of graduating are high."
Erica swallowed dryly.
Her gaze turned to her emaciated wrist.
She saw sleeves frayed until the threads burst, and dirt under her fingernails that wouldn't wash away.
'A miracle has already happened, and more than enough.'
There was no tomorrow in a life here.
The urine upon waking was always dark, her stomach always swollen, her tongue always thirsting for blood.
If she could only escape that terrible daily life, she had thought she would want for nothing more.
But the moment she escaped that life, she began to yearn for a different happiness.
'Graduation...'
She dared to dream of the life after the "graduation" Wangcho had spoken of.
Inside those steel walls.
There, there would be warm soup, clean clothes, and a future where no one could look down on her.
Already, she felt hungry.
'...Right. Just for a little while.'
Deep in Erica's eyes, desire bloomed.
She still did not trust the human who claimed the strange profession of "doctor."
If he were a healer, he would be a healer; if an alchemist, an alchemist.
What kind of profession was a "doctor" supposed to be?
From the very introduction, she couldn't shake the impression that he was some kind of con artist.
She couldn't trust his motives any more than his profession.
In this gutter, there was no blank check as untrustworthy as goodwill.
But,
'It's worth enduring.'
Who cared what that quack healer's goal was; if the result was profit for her, wasn't it a ship worth boarding?
'I have nothing left to lose, anyway.'
Since a miracle had already happened, graduation was just a bonus.
At worst, I'd only break even.
Just as Erica vaguely dreamed of a sweet future and tried to lighten her steps.
"By the way, brat."
"Hmm?"
"Selling a bear pelt before you've caught it is your own business, but remember one thing."
Wangcho's low, heavy voice cut into her consciousness.
He turned around and looked down at her.
Golden eyes unique to a hyena beastkin gleamed in the dark alley.
"Working with the Doctor, there's always one or two who get confused thinking that power is theirs and cross the line. Especially guys who ride on the Doctor's name and pull stupid stunts at other shops."
"...The Doctor is that big of a deal?"
"You haven't heard the rumors going around this scene?"
"I only move around at night, so I don't know."
"Right. I'd already forgotten the state you were in a few days ago."
The tension radiating from Wangcho eased.
Perhaps embarrassed at having suspected a clueless girl, he rubbed the back of his neck and said,
"Well, you'll find out soon enough working here, so I'll tell you in advance."
He raised his index finger and tapped his own face.
"It's your first time meeting him, but even we've never seen the face under that mask."
Wangcho combed through memories of the past year.
The past year.
No one in this red-light district had confirmed the face beneath that mask.
He even ate and drank alone in a separate room, so the contents beneath that crow mask could only be filled in by imagination.
"But if you listen to his breathing, you can tell a few things."
Wangcho pointed to his half-cut hyena ear and said.
"This is a secret, but sometimes you can hear coughing from beyond the clinic room. It's been that way since he came here a year ago."
A day or two of coughing is one thing.
But when it exceeds a week, then a month, you can't help but think there's some illness involved.
Erica thought the same.
"A problem with his throat?"
"Not sure. The cough comes from somewhere deep. I think the inside of his throat might be burned. By fire, chemicals, whatever."
Erica furrowed her brow.
"Who would do that?"
"The nobles, probably."
Wangcho replied flatly.
"What do you think the Doctor's race is?"
"Um..."
Erica thought carefully.
A small stature compared to the attitude and atmosphere he carried.
Too slender a build to call him a dwarf.
Not to mention the delicate(?) hand technique he used to find a vein during the transfusion.
"A gnome?"
"Yeah. He's a gnome. From here on it's just speculation, but I figure the Doctor probably got caught up with demi-human haters."
"Demi-human haters?"
"You know how those uptown bastards are. Acting respectful on the outside while scheming on the inside, just waiting to seize on any slip-up in treatment."
"Ah."
It was persuasive.
There were many among the cripples who flowed into Limbus Pit with such stories.
The dwarf who forged a ceremonial sword for a noble and had both hands crushed so he could never create a greater work.
The elf who had been a promising magic researcher but had her eyes gouged out for observing too much.
The beastkin who performed a satire, fell out of the noble's favor, and was forced to gulp down boiling water.
In these back alleys overflowing with all kinds of stories, Doctor Schnabel's tale was something that could very well have happened.
"With skill like that, yet not using holy magic, I wonder if he lost his faith back then too. Ah, forget I said that. It's just my opinion."
"S-sure."
"Anyway, even after something like that, he still seems to have ties to the upper city. So I'm telling you, don't get cocky. Those wings of yours aren't yours—they belong to the Doctor."
"O-okay."
Erica stammered and nodded.
She understood well what Wangcho was trying to say.
The one with connections to the nobles was the Doctor, not some errand runner of the Doctor.
So know your place and don't overstep.
This was a necessary virtue for survival in Limbus Pit, so she was quick to accept it.
"Good."
Wangcho nodded in satisfaction.
Of course, Wangcho didn't think Erica was the type to do such a thing.
Having spent years only sneaking about at night to steal blood, never doing anything more, she was remarkably good at knowing her place for her age.
But you never know with people, so the warning was necessary.
'Because if another one of those guys shows up, everyone gets uncomfortable.'
During the last heavy snowfall season, there had been a man selling drugs while impersonating Doctor Schnabel.
Fortunately, Wangcho discovered it before Doctor Schnabel returned, so it ended as an attempted crime.
'If the Doctor had seen that spectacle...'
The mere thought sent a chill through Wangcho's guts.
A healer with noble connections who also served as a director of a pharmaceutical guild.
He had no confidence in cleaning up the mess if someone in his district impersonated such a person and the matter escalated.
He wanted to live peacefully, playing the role of a back-alley boss.
Getting entangled with nobles was absolutely out of the question.
"But, Wangcho."
Wangcho returned to reality at Erica's call.
"But why would someone like that come all the way down here? Aren't you suspicious?"
"Of course I'm suspicious."
"Then why do you talk like you trust him?"
"What else can I do but trust him?"
Wangcho shrugged.
"Over the last year alone, he's saved more than eight hundred of my people. After doing that much, even if he's down here to conduct human experiments, common courtesy says we turn a blind eye to a few, damn it."
"..."
"Besides, a dog doesn't pick what lands in its bowl. The ones who are picky all starved to death."
As if anyone living in this cesspool can afford to be choosy about their healer.
With that, Wangcho resumed guiding her.
Erica followed his retreating figure, lost in thought.
You don't pick the food in your bowl.
It wasn't wrong.
Erica had survived this long exactly because of that.
But.
'Nobles.'
That word stuck in a corner of her heart like a thorn.
'Will this really be okay?'
There is a saying in this world.
The more splendid the lifeline, the more certainly it constricts your throat if you become entangled with it wrongly.
It was also a proverb warning one to be careful when forming ties with nobles.
And it was also a proverb that precisely referred to the rope Erica was clinging to now.
‘Of course, there was no telling whether that rope would pull her up—or just leave her hanging in mid-air.’
An unkind game where neither the graduation criteria nor the causes for elimination were known.
A standard that was literally at Mr. Schnabel’s whim, one that even the class president would tilt his head at in confusion after a year of enduring it.
But one thing was certain.
That rather than grab a rotten rope and plummet, it was better to hang herself from a golden one.
Erica’s seniors had likely accepted this path with that same sentiment.
‘Even if I die, at least the quality should be good.’
Thinking so, she willingly stepped onto that precarious voyage.
*
How many years had it been since she had a room with a proper roof and heating?
After Julian left work, Erica, left behind at the clinic, thought so.
By Limbus Fit’s standards, it was a rather cozy living space.
This space was her room now.
‘If I graduate… does that mean I go somewhere better?’
She thought as she covered herself with the bearskin blanket the class president had thrown her before leaving.
Perhaps because of the anxiety she had been unable to brush away.
She had an uncomfortable sleep unlike any she had ever had, even in cold alleyways.
And in her dream, she spent a day that no one had lived through.
======
▽▽▽
This is the story of an ordinary day that no one had ever lived through.
▽▽▽
“…Where is this?”
Blood is on her hands.
No matter how much she washes, it will not come off.
Under her fingernails, between the lines of her palms, it seems to have seeped deep into the bone.
Ah, right.
She had worked today too.
The slaughterhouse ceiling is high.
Things hung on hooks sway in a row.
There are pigs, and cows, and—
The smell of blood tickles her nose.
A scent that is familiar, yet fragrant.
Type A.
What had come in today was Type A.
The blood type that the owner of this slaughterhouse had.
“….”
What was that person’s name?
When she tries to recall it, her hand trembles.
The moment those golden eyes went out flashes by.
Eyes that held neither surprise nor resentment; merely blank.
Ah, so it was you.
It seemed like he was saying that.
What did he say at the end?
Did he say he was sorry?
Or did he say he should have killed her sooner?
She cannot remember.
Nor is it worth remembering.
The only important thing is that after that, the slaughterhouse became hers.
— “…Today, he said he needed the pancreas and kidneys.”
She mutters to herself, selects the parts with familiar hand movements, and places them into a silver steel carrier.
Various cuts of meat are packed with ice into the case, which exudes a somewhat chilly yet luxurious air.
“….”
She takes the case and goes up.
The carriage climbs the slope.
Outside the window, the scenery of Santum Hill passes by.
Streets lined with gas lamps, mansions built of white brick, neatly maintained gardens.
It seems there was a time when she had longed for this street.
But they say humans are animals of adaptation; Erica feels nothing in particular now as she passes through it.
The carriage stops.
A familiar mask emblem hanging at the entrance of the villa greets her.
Knock, knock.
The door opens, and a handsome man with hair the color of crow feathers greets her.
A man with a pale appearance, as if he had never once seen sunlight.
A face she did not know, yet knew.
— “Welcome, Miss Erica.”
His cold eyes curved slightly.
He had the sort of face that looked like it would play with many women.
And indeed, he had played with quite a few.
— “The condition is good. Thank you, as always.”
The man she did not know, yet knew, took the case and checked its contents.
She felt no human body heat when handing it over, but Erica did not mind.
Because ever since this man had found her growing cold in some back alley, body temperature had long since become a word buried in a distant memory.
Erica simply bowed her head.
Because whoever her creator and master might be, it was not important to her, who was merely a vassal.
However, her particular master was sensitive to forms of address.
Cult leader, Your Excellency, Master.
Though there were various titles society used for him, only one title was permitted to Erica.
That man was… right.
Teacher.
Teacher took the case and disappeared inside.
The destination was likely the aging room.
What she had brought a few days ago was probably there too.
— “You’ve come a long way. Please have a meal before you go.”
There was no option to refuse for her.
Erica headed toward the dining room.
Passing through the hallway, her eyes met a frame hanging on the wall.
A happy family photo.
In the center was a young Teacher with a gloomy expression.
A black ribbon hung on the photo.
Was it a mourning ribbon?
She could not imagine that person harboring an emotion like grief.
If she, a mere vassal, dared guess, that man probably regretted being unable to show his art to this family.
The black ribbon held that meaning.
Well, it was not a very important fact.
Erica passed the frame and headed to the dining room again.
Upon arriving at the dining room, she saw a white tablecloth gleaming under the chandelier, silverware, and glasses.
Teacher sat in the host’s seat, the seat of highest honor.
She sat in one of the guest seats.
And in the remaining seat was—
— “Mmph! Mmmph—!”
A young woman gagged with blood-stained fabric thrashed in her chair.
She was young.
She was beautiful.
She was wearing an expensive dress.
Ah, so she was that sort.
A young lady who had been hooked by Teacher.
There were many such women in this city.
Having heard rumors of the cold, handsome healer, dreaming of being a fairytale princess, and ending up seated at this table.
“….”
Erica gazed silently at the young lady.
Then, Teacher, wearing an apron, set a plate down on the table.
— “The Roman gourmet Apicius considered flamingo tongue the finest delicacy. They knew the potential of the tongue.”
Rome?
Sometimes Teacher was so clever that he spouted knowledge she did not know too naturally.
But since that was not very important to Erica, she let it go in one ear and out the other.
— “It is quite fascinating, isn’t it? The muscle that moved the busiest and roughest in life becomes so tender when cooked slowly at low temperatures. The flavor will truly blossom with Madeira sauce.”
Rattle, rattle!
The blood-stained gagged young lady tried to move her chair, but the chair nailed to the floor did not budge.
Erica picked up the knife indifferently.
Then, Teacher cut in.
— “Miss Erica. Don’t you know this lady?”
— “I’m not particularly interested.”
Had she denounced Erica for smelling like pigs at the last ball?
Or had she frowned upon seeing Erica walk past?
In any case, there were so many young ladies she had butted heads with.
Besides…
— “It’s not like anything changes if I know her.”
— “It is important. The order changes.”
Teacher tilted his wineglass.
Before anyone knew it, the young lady who had been letting out small screams had tired and slumped down.
Teacher wiped his mouth with a napkin and rose from his seat.
— “Miss Erica.”
— “Mm.”
— “Stay here for a few days. The Flamingos have been quite active lately.”
Erica nodded.
Flamingo.
It was slang for the knights who patrolled Santum Hill.
She calmly finished her meal.
And she met eyes with the young lady before her.
— “Mmph!”
— “I hold no personal grudge. A hunting dog isn’t in a position to be choosy about such things. You understand that, don’t you?”
She gripped the knife in a reverse hold.
As Erica drew near, the young lady wailed.
Splurt.
Red wine splashed across the newspaper at the corner of the table.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“…What was that.”
And the next day.
At the Limbus Fit clinic, a red-haired girl rubbed her eyes and sat up.
Holding only the memory that she had somehow had an unpleasant dream.