Side Story, Episode 5
If she had not been given time to agonize and agonize again as she was now, she might have been unable to overcome this impatience, anxiety, and pressure, and without realizing it, committed some act or another.
Dropping a very small amount of poison into his tea, perhaps, or in her panic spilling the contents of the glass bottle somewhere on the man’s body. Something that, even if it did not lead to this man’s death, would at least injure him.
Then what sort of ending would have awaited her?
How would she bear that crushing guilt?
After silently staring at the faint ripples forming on the surface of the water, Rizan closed the lid of the glass bottle.
How many times had her life been saved until now? No matter how she thought about it, she simply could not do such a thing to someone who had even remembered the name of a young girl he had briefly saved in passing when she was a child.
A person who knew gratitude and understood propriety must not do that.
Clutching the glass bottle that Akenaus had forced into her hand, Rizan approached Ezekail.
“……Major.”
Calling to him cautiously, Rizan prayed in her heart.
Please, let this man still remember me.
And if he opened his eyes and called her name……
“……Rizan?”
She would reveal every scheme in which she had become entangled.
“How are you here?”
She would ask him to find her family, to save her just one more time.
And tell him that he was in danger now.
That his brother was trying to harm him.
If she could be of help to him, even by doing that.
“……There is something I must tell you.”
Instead of the forced choice Akenaus had imposed upon her, Rizan was prepared to stake her own fate on another path.
Side Story 2. An Unlucky Woman
Polina tightened the handkerchief covering her nose and mouth even more. Though she had tied the knot so tightly that her cheeks and the bridge of her nose stung, the smell of rotting corpses seeping through the cloth showed no sign of fading.
“I think I’m going to throw up.”
One of the students standing near the dissection table muttered to himself.
Most of the students’ faces had already gone pale. And no wonder—it was their first dissection practice since entering the Faculty of Medicine. It was a process one absolutely had to go through to become a doctor, but hearing with one’s ears that “there is such a course” and having an actual corpse before one’s eyes were as different as heaven and earth. Perhaps many freshmen really did vomit while watching dissections, for there was even a small basin placed in the corner of the practice room.
The moment the abdomen of the corpse lying on a sheet darkly stained with foul fluids was cut open, someone could endure it no longer and rushed out of the dissection practice room, retching with a loud heave.
Unless they had somehow dug up a well-preserved mummy from somewhere, there was no way the bodies procured for practice would be in decent condition. The human body rotted surprisingly quickly. Since there was no way to preserve it in a freshly dead state, swiftly dissecting it before it decayed further and then burying it was likely the best that could be done for the deceased’s eternal rest.
Polina struggled to suppress the nausea surging up within her and stepped closer to the dissection table. As the distance between her and the body narrowed, the stench of death grew even stronger.
I should have sprayed perfume on the handkerchief beforehand.
Regret washed over her, but it was already too late. Polina held her breath, determined not to inhale the smell. If she carelessly opened her mouth to breathe, she might have to confirm with her own eyes exactly what she had eaten for breakfast that morning.
Turning her head for a moment to settle her churning stomach, Polina unintentionally met the gaze of a man leaning at an angle against the wall of the dissection practice room. Among the rumpled students, who were so tormented by classes and exams from morning to night that they barely washed their faces properly, the man in his splendid, immaculate attire stood out at once.
The man whose eyes met hers smiled broadly. Polina ignored him expressionlessly and fixed her gaze on the dissection table.
Ethan.
It was a name she was sick to death of. Anyone would feel that way if there were someone who, against one’s will, was constantly attached to them as part of a pair by others.
Ethan, who had entered with unrivaled grades among the male students, and Polina, who had entered with the best grades among the female students, were compared over every little thing. At first, her mindset had merely been that a powerful rival had appeared, so she must not neglect her studies. But such composure did not last long.
Male doctors did not understand women’s bodies well, and in order to prove that even female doctors were in no way inferior to male doctors, the small number of female students who had gathered in the Faculty of Medicine—considered the exclusive domain of men—with convictions of their own studied that much more desperately, and their grades were better on average as well. Seeing the female students band together and study among themselves, the male students grew wary of them and put forward Ethan, who had the most outstanding grades, as their representative. The female students, refusing to lose, boasted of Polina in turn, and the two students’ grades went beyond personal achievement and even escalated into a battle of pride between the two sides.
By the time she came to her senses, Polina was competing with Ethan over everything. It might have been different if they had shared common ground in ordinary times and could have become friendly, but Polina and Ethan had not a single thing in common except for grades superior to others’. Unlike Polina, who spent all day focused on her studies, roughly twisted up her hair, and wore only black clothes that would not show even if they became dirty, Ethan paid great attention to his appearance and enjoyed every manner of social activity. On the first day of classes, the moment Ethan entered the lecture hall of the Faculty of Medicine, all the freshmen present had mistaken him for a student from another faculty who had wandered into the wrong room.
When Polina rubbed her dry eyes and devoured medical texts, Ethan read Shakespeare’s plays; when Polina, who had no time to eat properly, made do with a single lump of bread for lunch and dinner, Ethan headed to the tavern with his friends.
Ethan had even heard that there were not enough players for an impromptu football match held to promote friendship with another school and jumped straight onto the field. The day he won the match and drank celebratory liquor all night happened to fall during the Faculty of Medicine’s exam week, when Polina had stayed up all night in the library. Yet even while attending school in such a haphazard manner, his grades fought with Polina’s for first and second place, so there was no way she could look upon him favorably even if she tried.
A man who, in the Faculty of Medicine where everyone clung to their studies as if their lives depended on it, alone put studying on the back burner and went about idling and playing. She even found herself doubting whether it was all right for someone whose conduct was so frivolous to become a doctor who would one day handle human lives. As someone who lived practically buried in her studies every day, she could not understand why Ethan had come to medical school at all.
At the first dissection practice, most of the students either vomited or left midway. Fewer than five students held their ground until the end despite smelling the stench of rotting corpses. Polina was one of them.
“For a girl, why are you so damned tough?”
One of the senior students who had come in to assist with the dissection clicked his tongue at Polina.
Unwomanly. Stubborn to a frightening degree.
She had heard it so often since entering the school that she was sick of it.
What on earth did it mean to be womanly, and why was there any reason a woman should not study fiercely?
Not only Polina but all the classmates who had entered with her shuddered at those words. I did not know women would be like that. They have no charm. Why are they trying to compete with men? Because of those damned words—“women,” “girls”—even their speech and clothing, which had been diverse and suited to each person’s individuality at the entrance ceremony, had now all become similarly uniform. Rigid, so they would not look weak or pretty, and sharp, so they would show no openings.
“I am not a woman. I am a doctor.”
By now, it was nothing new. She replied bluntly and turned away, but then clap, clap—the sound of applause caught her steps.
“That was a splendid answer, Polina. I am not a woman, but a doctor…… What a famous saying.”
It was Ethan.
Had he stayed behind and watched all this without leaving?
Polina furrowed her brow.
Moreover, the shamelessness of stopping someone who was already offended and even applauding as he needlessly added a remark was downright unpleasant. Especially coming from a man who, far from being a student clinging to his studies as if his life depended on it, was among the first to be counted for his lack of diligence.
“We gathered here with the sole purpose of studying, yet the seniors and our classmates treat us not as colleagues, but as women. I don’t know what the problem is when prospective doctors, who do not know what kind of patients they may one day have to treat, say they will listen diligently in class. We do not see you people as men, so I cannot understand why you keep trying to see us as women.”
“Ah? You don’t see me as a man?”
Ethan looked shocked at an entirely off-point detail. Dumbfounded, Polina snapped at him.
“I do not.”
“That’s a problem, then……. How about we have a meal together and you look for my charms?”
“No, thank you.”
Polina flatly refused and strode out of the practice room. It seemed Ethan called after her from behind, but she paid no attention.