Chapter 10: My Senior’s Family Is Rich [1]
Chapter 10: My Senior’s Family Is Rich [1]
As I sat there imagining myself fanning lazily with a folding fan, a carriage pulled up in front of the school.
Crazy.
So he really was rich.
We had to walk around, and this guy, while still just a student, rode in a carriage?
“Not getting in?”
I could see why people liked good cars.
Hearing “Not getting in?” from inside made my heart flutter a little.
That was really something.
This was the same bastard who dissected corpses without even wearing gloves.
In other words, I had already branded him in my mind as an idiot, and yet I still felt excited.
“All right then, let’s go.”
Anyway, once we climbed in, the coachman urged the horses forward.
London in this era was the very definition of overpopulation, so we could not move fast.
If a carriage charged through freely, it would probably kill one person every hundred meters.
Ah, the smell.
As we rode, there was a faint smell of shit.
The Thames was the source of it.
One of the things on my bucket list in my previous life had been to travel to Europe, and one part of that had been to sit in a café by the Thames and look at that clock tower called Big Ben or whatever it was.
But now, when I thought of the Thames, all that came to mind was the smell of shit.
It was probably even more so because Big Ben had not even been built yet.
“We’re almost there.”
Of course, there were plenty of other impressive buildings besides Big Ben.
As if to prove why London was called the center of the world at this moment in time, stone buildings lined both sides of the road.
There were also a huge number of carriages.
Most of them were extravagantly ornate, to the point that it really felt like this was London.
“There.”
When I saw the mansion the senior pointed to, I instinctively looked around.
Take comfort in the fact that this is London.
If only bamboo were growing here, I’d already be carrying a bamboo spear—
No, no. That’s not it.
This man looked like he might actually become friendly with me now.
A rich friend.
Wouldn’t that be a good thing?
I endured it with that one thought alone.
“Wow…”
On the other hand, Joseph kept gasping in admiration.
That was understandable, since ever since leaving Upton and entering London, all he had seen was bleak scenery.
And on top of that, the senior’s mansion was even grander than the Lister house back in Upton, despite standing in expensive London.
“It’s really nice.”
“Hm? Ah, yeah. Well… my father does trade on a rather large scale. My older brothers all went into trade, and I’m the only one who came to medical school.”
“Ah…”
I had heard cases like this were not uncommon.
Back then, primogeniture still dominated, so even in wealthy families, the youngest sons still had that feeling of having to fend for themselves.
Of course, the way the rich fended for themselves and the way the poor did were completely different things.
Anyway, rather than inheriting the family business, those who went into medicine or law were usually the second or third sons rather than the eldest.
Clatter—
The carriage soon came to a stop in front of the mansion gates.
A butler who had come running out from inside stopped short when he saw me.
His timing matched the carriage so strangely well that for a moment I thought we were filming a movie.
“Um…”
Joseph, who was used to situations like this, was about to step forward, but unexpectedly the senior moved first.
“This friend here is my junior from a country called Joseon.”
“Ah… Joseon, if that is…”
“You don’t know it?”
“No, sir, I do not.”
The senior walked past the elderly butler, who had been about to nod, and went into the house.
The stairs leading up were high enough that we had to walk for quite a while.
“To be honest, I’ve heard of Qing and Japan, but Joseon isn’t familiar to me.”
“Yes, well… that would make sense. We’re a mysterious land, after all.”
“Aha.”
Thanks to the lull while we were climbing, I ended up talking some nonsense.
When I glanced to the side, Joseph was looking at me as if asking what kind of nonsense I was spouting, but that was fine.
I knew perfectly well that I was talking nonsense.
Whatever else, the important thing was that we had come here today.
The house was so large that if luck went our way, it felt like we might even be able to stay here.
No, I’d even do housework, so please let that happen.
“Oh.”
Inside the huge doors was a lobby.
There might have been another proper term for it, but I had no idea what it was.
Anyway, it was a huge space filled with all sorts of things.
Inside display cabinets, on top of pillars—
“Ah, these are things my father brought back through trade. They say some of them are extremely rare.”
“Uh… they certainly look that way.”
Wasn’t that Goryeo celadon?
These bastards were smuggling out national treasures.
Or maybe not?
Was it Chinese celadon?
It did not seem likely that many ships traveled as far as Joseon.
“What… what is this?”
After passing all those things that looked valuable, we sat down on a sofa in the drawing room.
There was something placed beneath the table, so I picked it up, and it was something I had not seen in a very long time.
Rubber… isn’t this rubber?
Rubber.
A convenience of twenty-first-century civilization.
Someone might think I was overreacting over a mere piece of rubber.
But in this place, you could not even find plastic.
“Ah, that? I have no idea. I think Father brought it back as a sample and just left it here.”
“A sample… hm.”
“Why?”
“Well, this…”
Anyway, there was rubber.
And the thing I had been worrying about this whole time was none other than gloves.
No matter how much I hated the idea, I still had to do dissection.
I could not do it bare-handed.
No, surgery would have to be done bare-handed too…
If dissection was merely repulsive, surgery pricked at my conscience too deeply.
No matter how much harsh disinfectant I poured on, I would never be able to sterilize my entire hand.
Making gloves out of ordinary cloth would be completely insane.
They would provide some protection, at least.
If I made them thick enough, surely they would not be pierced.
That meant they would be safe enough for dissection.
Even if they were too thick and dulled movement, that would not matter.
But surgery in cloth gloves?
Honestly, it would probably be better to just wash bare hands as clean as possible.
“So, about that… would you mind disinfecting this a little more first?”
“Ah, right. What am I doing.”
As I stayed completely absorbed in the rubber, the senior, apparently anxious, spoke first.
Right.
It was true that I had come here to gain something too, but first and foremost, I had come to save this man.
Can he survive…?
He still might die.
I had treated it, yes, but if even a little contamination had gotten in, infection would set in.
I did wonder whether disinfecting the outside really meant much in the present situation.
Still, I have to do everything I can.
My mind was doubtful, but my hands did not hesitate.
First, I distilled liquor to produce alcohol and received that.
Since I could only do it in a very rudimentary way, it was certainly not pure alcohol.
“Oh…”
“Where in the world did you learn something like this?”
All I had done was boil liquor in a pot, wrap the top with a rounded metal basket, and collect the condensed liquid below.
Even so, the senior and Joseph were staring at me with shining eyes.
When I glanced around, even the butler had stars in his eyes.
When it got to this point, was it not only natural to think I ought to live up to their expectations?
“In Joseon… I learned it there. Heh.”
I smiled as mysteriously as I could when I said it.
“Hoh.”
“No, but you were born here—”
Joseph tried to pick a small fight, but it had no effect.
This was the moment Kim Taepyeong, physician from the mysterious land of Joseon, turned liquor into alcohol.
“First, let’s disinfect it with this. It’s going to hurt a lot. Alcohol on a wound really hurts.”
“Mm.”
At my words, Joseph shut his mouth, and the senior extended his hand with a tense expression.
To the naked eye, there did not seem to be anything wrong with it.
That did not mean I could be sure he would be all right.
Wouldn’t we only know after a day had passed?
If it swells, I’ll just have to cut it open.
Assuming that, since there was at least a surgeon here, his chances of surviving were higher than most people’s, I cleaned the wound with alcohol.
“Urgh, aaah. This…”
“It feels like it’s stinging and burning, doesn’t it? I know. Later, the sensation there may dull somewhat.”
“Why, why?”
If I said it was because the alcohol’s toxicity would kill the nerve tissue, I would look less like some mysterious Oriental and more like the child of Satan, would I not?
“The energy…”
“Ah, I see.”
So I said something that sounded like it belonged in the mouth of Satan’s child, and by nineteenth-century standards it was accepted perfectly well.
Ah… I want to change this quickly.
I want to baptize these ignorant fools in the science of the twenty-first century!
But if I rushed it too much, I felt like I might end up nailed upside down to a cross and burned, so I had to take it slowly.
“For now, this is enough… but we’ll need to watch it over time. If by tomorrow this becomes red and swollen, then we may have to cut it open a little.”
“Cut off the finger?”
No, you lunatic.
Why would I cut off the finger?
Ah, no.
Actually, it wasn’t that unreasonable.
Ah… right now, this is still an era where they just cut everything off.
What a vigorous age, one might say.
Or maybe an age full of thoughtless idiots.
Anyway, I shook my head hard.
“No, no. Just a small incision to let the pus out.”
“I’m alive, and I still get pus?”
What kind of nonsense was this lunatic talking about?
I wanted to smack him across the back of the head, but I held myself back.
“Yes, you can. If that spreads into the bloodstream, it becomes a serious problem… anyway, in the end, what matters is this spot here. We need to manage the injured area properly.”
“Mmm…”
After I said that, I wondered if I had sounded too much like a doctor, so I stared at the senior carefully.
Fortunately, he seemed too distracted remembering the glorious deaths of all the seniors he had seen before.
If I had done nothing, then yes… he probably would have died.
What was it again—someone in Game of Thrones died just from being cut once in the chest with a contaminated knife, did they not?
Ordinary people…
and with a knife contaminated by a corpse, that was the end of the story.
“Anyway, I think I’ll have to check it again first thing tomorrow morning… but my house is rather far from here. What should we do?”
I started selling the idea right away.
I had not shown it, but I had calculated all of this from the moment I followed him here.
Now that I had disinfected it, the chances of him dying had dropped sharply, but if I could treat it every day, I would be even more at ease.
How long until I could be completely at ease?
By my calculation, about two weeks.
The basis for that?
No idea, but judging by the number of rooms in this house, it felt like I could secretly stay here for two weeks without any problem.
“Uh… my house has plenty of rooms. If you don’t mind, stay here.”
Instead of answering, I looked at Joseph.
His eyes were shaking violently.
He was trying not to show it out of sheer determination to become a doctor, but was he not, in the end, still a rich family’s young master?
Would he really want to go back there?
“Pyeong, what should we do? To be honest, it’s already getting late. Tonight…”
He was trying hard, really hard.
Yes, all right, big brother will let you live off this place for a while.
Judging by their circumstances, I did not even need to feel guilty about it.
“All right then. We’ll stay here tonight.”
And tomorrow I’d cut it open if needed, then talk some more and keep staying.
If about two weeks passed like that, wouldn’t we have grown close enough that we could just keep staying here?
I was indulging in that wicked train of thought when someone knocked on the door.
Since it had never been shut to begin with, it was really just a sign of their presence.
Anyway, the senior turned around, and the butler who had made the sound said, “Master has returned.”
“Ah, yes. Boys, come and greet him. Father’s a bit of an unusual man… but he’s not a bad person, so don’t be too nervous.”
Master.
Father.
The moment I heard that some white old fogey had arrived, I tensed up without realizing it.
Don’t call me a coward.
Anyone would end up like this if they came here.
“May I come too?”
I wanted to avoid it if possible, so I asked in hopes I might be refused, but the senior laughed.
“You’ll be fine. The people he trades with on that side are all Easterners anyway.”
“Ah.”
“Then let’s go.”