Chapter 28: Laughing Gas Party [1]
Chapter 28: Laughing Gas Party [1]
“Ha ha ha ha ha!”
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
Laughing Gas....
It seemed to be a terrifying gas.
The moment we stepped inside, two men were already roaring with laughter.
Judging by their looks, they seemed like the sort of old men who did not know how to laugh at all, yet there they were grinning that widely.
Surely... Robert Liston won’t end up like that too...?
Wow.
Just imagining it gave me goosebumps.
Why?
Because in this world, there were people whose smiling faces were even more frightening.
And Robert Liston was exactly that kind of person.
“Well now. I thought we had come early, but some of them have already started, ha ha.”
Anyway, we followed the professor inside.
People who might have been servants, butlers, or simply household staff escorted us toward the drawing room.
Now that I looked, the two men I had seen earlier, mad with laughter, seemed to be simply wandering around the party in a daze.
“Is that really all right?”
“Hm? Ah, well. They’re like that because they feel good.”
“Ah... yes.”
It seemed this era still had not formed any proper concept of narcotics.
No matter how I looked at it, they seemed far more excited than people who were merely drunk.
Where I came from, we had a technical term for that: high.
And if someone became addicted to that high through drugs, we called it drug addiction.
In other words, it was something that required treatment....
“First I’ll make the introductions... then we’ll drink, fill our stomachs a little, and after that we’ll inhale it.”
“Ah, yes.”
Here, doctors were telling people to inhale it.
At this rate... maybe this really isn’t nineteenth-century Earth after all.
It felt similar, yet somehow different.
Inhale what, exactly? Glue?
“Let me introduce you. This is Doctor Richard, professor of Internal Medicine at our hospital.”
“Ah, yes. I’m Joseph.”
“I’m Alfred.”
“I’m Pyeong. I’m from Joseon, and I’m a Christian.”
Whatever I was thinking inside, I let the professor lead me by the hand and did my best to introduce myself.
As expected, everyone fixed their gaze on my face.
And just as expected, not one of them dared show any immediate rudeness.
Looking at the trembling expressions on some of their faces, it was obvious that more than one person was dying to make some racist remark or gesture, but because Robert Liston was standing beside me, they held themselves back remarkably well.
“Ah... Pyeong. Joseon, was it? I have heard of it.”
Among them, the nobleman standing before me, Lord Hugh Grant, was especially unusual.
He’s heard of Joseon?
He had heard of that Joseon hidden behind a curtain?
Thinking in terms of twenty-first-century South Korea would be a mistake.
South Korea in 2022 was the land of BTS and Squid Game, basically the most socially dominant country in the world, but Joseon in the early nineteenth century....
People did not simply fail to know where it was. They just did not know it at all.
“Oh, really? To be honest, before meeting Pyeong, I had never heard the name myself.”
“It isn’t as though I know much either. But you do know that my hobby is collecting ceramics, don’t you?”
“Of course. I still remember when I visited the Count’s estate. Such magnificent porcelain....”
It really was nice to be a count.
To think even Robert Liston’s flattery could be directed at him.
All the others I had been introduced to kept their eyes lowered, but this man laughed freely while facing him head-on. That too felt like a privilege of nobility.
It meant he could maintain a firm belief that no matter what happened, Robert Liston’s enormous fist would never land squarely on his face. That really was a privilege.
“Ha ha. I heard it from a merchant who purchased some. He said there is a country called Joseon near Qing... and that the porcelain made there has a restrained beauty of its own.”
From the way he said restrained, he seemed to be referring to white porcelain.
And it felt like this was the moment when I ought to pretend I knew something.
No, not felt like. It was certain.
Both of them were looking at me.
“You have a discerning eye. Joseon white porcelain certainly... tends to follow the tastes of the yangban, the noble class of Joseon. They value frugality over splendor. That is why it tends to carry an elegant hue and form.”
“Aha... so it has an elegant quality, I see. Very well. If I get the chance next time, perhaps I shall buy some white porcelain as well.”
“It would be an honor.”
So I said whatever came to mind.
Everything I knew about Joseon came from my high school Korean history textbook, but even that still meant I knew far more than these people.
“Well then... give it a try.”
“Ah, yes. Thank you.”
And with that, introductions ended, and at last it was time for the gas.
I had vaguely imagined that because it was called Laughing Gas, maybe they filled balloons or something, but that was not it.
Then again, if this world had balloons, it would probably already have condoms and surgical gloves too.
Haa....
Instead, what appeared was an iron canister.
Click.
The professor turned the valve attached to it.
Then it made a sound that really did not seem like something that ought to be happening,
Hissss.
and gas began to escape.
Ah... is there no way not to do this?
I felt like if I did it, I might die.
The two men I had seen earlier kept coming to mind.
No, I did not even need to recall them.
“Kya ha ha ha ha ha!”
They were still rolling around behind me right now.
They were running about cackling like people possessed by some spirit, to the point that their age seemed irrelevant.
Had they really taken such good care of their joints...?
How could they hop around like that?
“Then I’ll go first.”
While I was still hesitating, Colin abruptly raised his hand and stepped forward, perhaps to score points with Robert Liston.
That bastard.
It would not help him anyway.
Wasn’t I already an extraordinary genius and also the blood-bound brother-in-faith of Robert Liston?
“Suuuck.”
Anyway, Colin inhaled the obviously harmful-looking gas.
Then his face went blank and dazed, and he started staggering.
“Ha ha. What are you doing, breathing in that much from the start!”
Watching Colin like that, Robert Liston burst into booming laughter.
He sounded like he had swallowed a steam whistle.
It was loud enough to make your ears hurt.
And yet no one blamed him.
They would not have dared even while sober, so now, with everyone intoxicated, it was only natural.
“Hwa ha ha ha! I’m telling you, there was porcelain!”
“Ha ha ha ha! This is about when I went to war, you see.”
“Yes, yes. Celadon, that’s what I mean!”
“Exactly. The gun, and I, ha ha.”
Even the count was carrying on with a conversation so nonsensical that you had to wonder what on earth they were even talking about, all while laughing uproariously.
“Hff.”
While I was looking around, Alfred and Joseph both inhaled the gas as well.
Both of them took on dazed expressions.
At least they had not taken in as much as Colin, because they were not staggering.
“Ha ha ha. Is it always supposed to feel this good?”
Instead, they started laughing while patting the professor on the shoulder.
Don’t do that, you lunatic. You’ll get killed!
“That’s right! Why do you think it’s called Laughing Gas!”
But Robert Liston merely laughed.
Looking more closely, his eyes too seemed a little unfocused.
Why would that be?
Obviously....
Hadn’t he stood there turning the valve while all four of them inhaled?
He had even been showing them how to do it.
If he had not been affected, that would have been stranger.
“Well then. You do it too!”
An ordinary professor was scary enough. What was a professor with crazed eyes supposed to be like?
With no other choice, I brought my face in front of the gas canister.
Click.
The valve turned, and gas came streaming out.
I took only the slightest whiff, and it did not smell particularly pleasant.
So I merely pretended to inhale.
“Hwaaap.”
Maybe because the professor was no longer in his right mind, he fell for it with that alone.
Even in front of a professor, I had no desire to inhale some unidentified gas like this....
“Ugh....”
Anyway, I put on an act of staggering and backed up as close to the wall as possible.
Then I observed the others.
As a result, I was able to tell a few things.
Whatever that gas was, all the people who inhaled it were showing the same reactions.
“Ha ha ha ha ha ha!”
“Kya ha ha ha ha ha!”
First of all, since it was called Laughing Gas, everyone looked happy.
Among them, the greatest number expressed that happiness through laughter, but some simply ran around wildly.
There was even a bald old man running around like a child who had just received a Christmas present.
Put like that, it might sound like a scene from a horror film, but in person, it really did look that way.
No, wait...?
He had really been running for quite a while.
Even someone young like me, even someone who took decent care of himself, would probably feel like he was dying for breath after running that much, yet he kept running.
No, before that, his legs should have hurt.
He was running as though not only his muscles but his joints ought to be giving out.
This doesn’t seem normal to begin with...?
Because he was bald, it was hard to judge his exact age, but in any case he looked like someone whose youth had been burned away a very long time ago.
He was heavy too.
Would his joints really have been well maintained?
Of course not.
This era did not even have proper painkillers.
Things were so bad that ground willow bark counted as the height of medicine....
Steroids were beyond hope, naturally.
Steroids.
Cortisone.
That drug known by many names was truly a miracle medicine, especially for arthritis.
Did they have it here?
Of course not.
Can’t they... feel pain? Is it because of this gas?
It felt like my heart dropped.
If it showed painkilling effects this strong, should it not be called not a painkiller, but an anesthetic?
And from everything I had observed so far, it did not seem to have any obvious side effects either.
“Ugh....”
Ah, except for Colin.
Maybe because he had inhaled too much earlier, he was wandering around like a zombie.
Still... he did not seem like he was going to die.
He was still moving around, after all.
His complexion was a little pale... but judging by the hand pressed to his stomach, he seemed nauseated.
That was normal enough. If anesthetic or analgesic-type drugs were taken in excess, they could make you feel sick.
Hm.... Could this be used for surgery? If it could... this would be the discovery of the century, wouldn’t it?
First I wanted to know how Laughing Gas was made, but there was no one I could ask.
“Hwa ha ha ha ha!”
Asking Robert Liston right now was half a suicidal act.
He had just broken a table a moment ago.
I had no idea whether he was performing some kind of feat of strength or what, but I had no intention whatsoever of becoming the target.
So, with some absurd rationalization that I could just ask him tomorrow after he sobered up, I decided to move on to experimentation instead.
“Hey... you monkey bastard. What, you idiot. Ha ha ha ha.”
As it happened, Colin was in better condition than before.
Will he remember this?
Though he looked like he was drunk, it was probably different from alcohol.
That meant it might not suppress memory.
Still, it would likely be hazy.
“Hey, you. Hey.”
Just look at him now.
You bastard, you’re rolling around on the floor.
Not walking.
And yet he was flailing his legs around as though he had no idea.
Good. This is an experiment. It’s not petty revenge or anything like that.
Right. What I was doing now was not beating up a racist. I was carrying out an experiment for the great advancement of medical history.
Once I thought of it that way, my heart felt much lighter.
Using the small wooden club-like thing I was holding—something that was probably originally meant to be a hanging hook—I hit Colin.
“Hm?”
I did not strike him hard from the start.
In case he attacked me.
But look at this bastard.
“It doesn’t hurt?”
“Hm?”
He had not even noticed that he had been hit at all.
Good. I’ll go harder and harder from here!