A Deadly Shade of Green
Mercury, arsenic, and lead.
Had we come here to commit suicide? Was that the grand design?
"So that is why the color is so dazzling."
"No wonder. It looks... haha, quite like it was painted with real artist's pigment."
"That is because I used genuine painter's materials, gentlemen, haha!"
I was thoroughly stunned.
How could I not be?
To tell the truth, I had grown somewhat complacent lately.
Our nineteenth-century physicians had been babbling incessantly about sanitation and hygiene. They had not stopped at merely washing their own hands, mind you—it had become an all-out crusade. Among them, our very own Joseph was going about forcing everyone else to scrub their hands down to the raw bone. He was so aggressive that an anti-Joseph faction was actively brewing within the hospital... or rather, it had reached the pitch of sheer hysteria.
"Aha! So you are a painter as well as a chef. I thought it possessed an extraordinary artistic flair."
"Still, wouldn't that make the flavor somewhat peculiar?"
"Hahaha! If that were so, would so many patrons grace our humble establishment with their patronage?"
"That is true enough!"
"Indeed, indeed. Well then, shall we..."
And so, I had held out hope.
Or perhaps I had simply let down my guard, fool that I was. I truly believed our nineteenth century was finally becoming civilized.
I had spoken far too soon.
These lunatic bastards were actually preparing confections with this filth and selling them for coin.
And the very men who ought to have intervened before anyone else—esteemed physicians like Robert Liston and James Blundell—were cheerfully reaching out to shovel it into their mouths.
"Wait!"
Selling it? Fine, what could I even do about that? For the moment, I had no authority to stop them. It probably wasn't even illegal. How could it be, when a proper food sanitation act wouldn't exist for decades? People in this era simply shoved whatever they pleased down their gullets.
Even so, I could not sit by and watch men I knew devour what amounted to lethal poison right before my very eyes.
"What is the matter, lad?"
"Ah, both of these are green. My apologies. Here, you take one."
When I let out a sharp cry, Liston looked puzzled, while Blundell offered an apologetic smile. Neither reaction was what I had aimed for, but I took what solace I could. Whatever their reasoning, the toxic sweets had not yet passed their lips.
Another reincarnator... my foot.
I wanted to bash my own skull in for even entertaining such an idiotic fantasy. Come to think of it, a dessert boasting a vivid luster rarely seen even in the twenty-first century should have set off every alarm bell in my head from the very beginning. Instead of waiting patiently in line, I ought to have driven the entire queue away with a broom.
"This is... mercury, lead, and arsenic..."
Think, brain, think.
All three were exquisite, lethal poisons. They were entirely unfit for human consumption. And I did not mean they shouldn't be consumed in excess—I meant they should never, under any circumstance, enter a human stomach. Mercury poisoning had an entire legacy known as Minamata disease, and lead was equally catastrophic.
And arsenic? Arsenic was just pure, unadulterated poison.
"Aye, those three. What of them?"
"Out with it quickly, man. I am famished."
The trouble was that the true perils of mercury and lead were hardly common knowledge yet. Hell, our own hospital still prescribed mercury as medicine, didn't it? Someone had even proposed using it as a surgical antiseptic.
As for lead? I didn't know much about its public perception either... but if modern-educated me didn't know how nineteenth-century folks viewed it, these men definitely had no clue. It wouldn't grab their attention.
Arsenic, though... arsenic is universally recognized as poison. There is no way on earth they don't know that.
Arsenic was an entirely different matter.
—Arsenic? But that's poison!
Back then... when I visited a chemist in search of a syphilis cure, I had heard it with my own ears. Even these primitives could not possibly claim ignorance!
"Isn't arsenic a deadly poison?"
"Hm? Ah... well, it can certainly be employed as one. But this serves an entirely different purpose."
"Indeed, haha. Our dear Pyeong... whenever matters like this arise, his lack of experience truly shows, doesn't it?"
I had brought up arsenic with a triumphant grin, feeling as though I had delivered a decisive blow.
Yet their response was utterly lukewarm. As in, it dealt precisely zero damage.
"What... what are you talking about? It's poison! How can the purpose change anything?"
"Now, listen closely. This has been prepared as food, has it not?"
"That... yes, but..."
"Then it naturally differs from when it is used to murder someone."
"How on earth is it different?!"
"The intent is different, above all else. And look at the lovely green tint. This is not raw arsenic. It has been chemically treated."
"What?!"
Did lethal toxicity magically diminish just because the chef's heart was pure? Were they honestly arguing this with a straight face? If the man sitting across from me weren't Robert Liston, I would have smashed him over the head with a bottle of the damn stuff.
"Haha, precisely so, sir," the chef chimed in smoothly. "Natural arsenic possesses no color whatsoever. However, when oxidized and bonded with copper, it takes on this exquisite emerald hue."
"You see? It is not mere arsenic!"
"Quite so! Did you truly think we would go about recklessly swallowing raw poison?"
My stun duration was being refreshed. If this were a game of League of Legends, this chef would be invulnerable. The man had an infinite crowd-control combo.
And was his damage output low? Not in the slightest. I felt like I had just taken a point-blank ultimate to the chest.
So there's copper in it too.
Copper was another fine heavy metal. And oxidized? To put it nicely, it was oxidized; to put it bluntly, it was covered in verdigris. Anyone who had ever seen corroded green bronze relics in a museum knew exactly what that meant.
Ah, come to think of it... that was why it was green.
Of course, because they had subjected it to intense chemical treatments to draw out the most brilliant possible shade, it shone with a truly mesmerizing radiance.
"A gentleman named Carl Scheele invented it, hence the name Scheele's Green. Recently, a rival called Emerald Green has risen in popularity, but in terms of sheer elegance, nothing surpasses this."
"Hahaha! Do you understand now, lad?"
"Hahahaha! Our Pyeong still has much to learn. Do not fret, my boy. Travel with us long enough, and you will find there is plenty of wisdom to be gleaned from everyday life!"
While I stood frozen in place, utterly transfixed by the vibrant color, Liston and Blundell promptly wolfed down their respective portions of arsenic and mercury.
To make matters worse, they slid another arsenic-laced treat right onto my plate.
"Eat up."
"Go on, take a bite."
"Please, do try it, sir. I hear you are a nobleman from the Orient... our cuisine must be quite novel compared to what you are accustomed to back home. Haha."
Had I fully acclimated to the nineteenth century, or had I simply lost my mind?
I couldn't say for sure, but... I ate it.
Not all of it.
About half.
"Huuueeerk."
After that, I couldn't recall a single word exchanged at the table. To an outside observer, I might have appeared composed, but mentally, I had suffered a catastrophic blackout.
"Urgh!"
The moment we returned to the hospital, I bolted straight for the water closet.
Emptying my stomach wasn't difficult in the slightest. The surrounding atmosphere offered plenty of revolting sights and smells to trigger the gag reflex. My only regret was that hardly any of the brilliant green hue was coming back up.
Fuck... am I going to die like this? No, wait. Could it be... that processing arsenic really does neutralize its toxicity? Leaving only the pigment behind? If so, wouldn't that be incredible?
After all, the chef had claimed it was used in paint.
As I racked my brain, a sudden realization hit me. I had seen this exact shade of green somewhere before. And very recently, at that.
I had even openly marveled at it!
Right, of course... Lord Jamie. I saw it at his party.
There had been two distinct greens: Scheele's Green and Emerald Green. Now I realized they were both arsenic-based pigments. If they were truly that dangerous, would a grand aristocrat like him have used them? And paid an absolute fortune for the privilege? It defied common sense.
...Except it made total sense when you remembered who Jamie was.
Lord Jamie was the lunatic who had hired Butcher Harry of his own free will to castrate him. Was he a man whose judgment anyone could trust? Absolutely not. It made no sense at all.
Above all, if this method were truly safe, that brilliant green would still exist in the twenty-first century.
Why? Because it was genuinely breathtaking! It possessed an aristocratic elegance that rivaled Goryeo celadon.
Yet it vanished completely from the modern world... which means it's lethally toxic.
It was a green so stunning that one might almost consider risking their life for it. I myself had been so enchanted the first time I saw it that I had contemplated decorating my entire bedchamber in that shade.
And yet... that green had no place in the future I knew.
Haha. Am I going to die? Is this the end...?
No, no. Pull yourself together.
Seeing that my dry heaves were producing nothing more, I stepped out of the water closet. There was another reason my panic began to subside:
"The initial symptoms are vomiting and diarrhea, aren't they?"
Right now, I displayed no acute symptoms of poisoning.
With that realization cooling my frantic mind, scattered fragments of medical knowledge regarding arsenic began floating to the surface.
Furthermore, a single dose rarely kills instantly. That's why arsenic was historically favored for slow, insidious poisoning over prolonged periods.
That was how real poisonings were conducted.
Arsenic was colorless and odorless. Its taste was almost nonexistent, and if any flavor registered at all, it was faintly sweet.
Good god...
Considering that human beings evolved a sensitivity to bitter tastes specifically to detect and avoid lethal toxins, arsenic was practically the quintessential, flawless poison.
Which is precisely why it can masquerade as a dessert.
A sweet poison.
And one that took quite a while to kill when ingested in modest quantities.
Those very properties allowed it to be baked into fine pastries.
In other words, that restaurant was casually subjecting vast swaths of London's populace to slow, systematic assassination.
And that wasn't the half of it.
Dresses, wallpapers, carpets... did anyone honestly believe the arsenic trapped in those fibers would sit quietly and behave?
At this rate, people could start dropping dead in droves.
Lord Jamie... if you spent good money to have a back-alley butcher sever your family jewels, you should have lived out your days in quiet seclusion, burning with shame! Why in the world did you have to throw an opulent gala and trigger a citywide emerald craze?!
I have to stop this.
I had to intervene, by any means necessary.
With that resolve burning in my chest, I marched straight toward Liston's quarters. He was usually found either in the dissecting lab or the operating theater, but since amputations had plummeted at our hospital lately, I checked his research room first.
Sure enough, Liston was inside—and he wasn't alone.
An unfamiliar middle-aged man was standing beside him.
"Who is..."
"Ah, a tradesman! I was just thinking of replacing the wallpaper in here. The room looks dreadful and dreary, don't you think?"
"Ah..."
His decisiveness was truly terrifying. This madman...
Looking closer, every single sample the salesman had laid out across the table was a shade of dazzling green. They appeared to be wallpaper swatches... and to be fair, seen like this, they were undeniably gorgeous.
It wasn't ordinary green. It was radiant and crystalline.
Yet one could not afford to be bewitched. This was the green of the grave.
Is this why Western culture always depicts poison as green?
I wasn't a professional historian, so that might have been pure conjecture... but a deep instinct whispered that I was dead on the mark.
This was it. It had to be!
"Brother, wait a second."
"Hm? What is it? Ah, do you want in on this too? Well, your room's wallpaper is quite ancient itself... reeks of mold, lad. That will ruin your constitution. Let us strip it bare and put up fresh rolls!"
"That's..."
If I put that on my walls, ruining my constitution will be the least of my concerns—I'll be carried out in a pine box!
"Mister, step outside for a moment."
"Pardon? But, sir..."
"I said, step outside."
"Y-yes, right away, sir!"
Perhaps my grim, darkened expression out of concern for my elder colleague frightened him, or perhaps rumors of me being a Qing Dynasty gang leader had reached his ears. Either way, the wallpaper peddler beat a hasty retreat.
Left behind was Liston, wearing a thoroughly flabbergasted look.
"What in the blazes are you doing?"
Having been in high spirits at the prospect of cloaking his sanctum in radiant green, he demanded an explanation.
As for me...
'In the future, green is the universal color of poison...!'
No, I couldn't say that. That would sound like complete lunacy.
My gears began to turn. I racked my brain for a way to steer this brilliant, bullheaded giant back onto the path of the living.