Reverse Life Reversal (3)
“This is killing me.”
They’d called it simple water-hauling grunt work, so at first I’d pictured nothing worse than drawing a few buckets from the well, or maybe parking one big oak barrel in the corner with a ladle floating on top.
What I actually got was packing glass bottles full of water into wooden crates that looked like soju boxes, then shouldering those heavy things and jogging them all over the training grounds.
Even that alone was enough to drive a man half-mad. The real problem was worse: those insane knights gulped the water down at a rate that put hippos to shame.
“Watching them move, I guess it makes sense.”
Wearing full plate while thrashing around, of course they sweat and want a drink.
Anyway. Collect empty crates, sling a full one over my shoulder, and sprint without rest. Before I knew it—
…My muscles are completely shot.
Shift change was approaching. The fact that there even was a shift change meant the Northerners knew how to work their slaves—no, their butlers—properly.
Without rest, efficiency drops and the whole atmosphere turns sour. But if you hand a slave a blessed break right before he collapses, the gratitude he feels toward his master is almost religious.
…Right. Butler, not slave.
In any case, fewer injuries were turning up than I’d expected. As a former doctor, it needled my conscience a little—I’d been half-hoping, given hundreds of armed men, for a steady stream of patients—but everyone kept their cool, maintaining strict discipline and courtesy. Imperial Knights and Northern Knights alike seemed determined to remember that this Joint Training Exercise was, at heart, a formal event.
Of course, that didn’t mean zero casualties. A few minor injuries popped up here and there. Nothing that needed me. Those light scrapes belonged to the high-nosed healers and their specialty.
One little spell and the wound simply vanished.
…I want to learn that too.
Honestly, the fact that they couldn’t even set a dislocated bone felt a bit cheap, but healing magic showed absurd efficiency on lacerations, abrasions, or crush injuries. It didn’t so much heal the wound as wind time back to before the wound ever existed.
That’s practically divine territory.
From a physician’s standpoint, restoring a wound to its original state is the realm of the gods.
Which is exactly why butlers can’t just call a healer whenever they want.
Fine. I’ll admit it—healing magic is incredible. And precisely because it is, most people never get to enjoy it. Not butlers like us, and probably not ordinary citizens either. Casting magic at all is a rare thing.
So the answer was simple. Healing magic was a luxury reserved for nobles and the rich. I would open a clinic for the commoners who never got that privilege—perfectly cornering a niche market. Work hard for about ten years, rake in the coin, then retire to a life of leisure. Perfect, right?
It looked perfect… until a contradiction hit me the moment the thought fully formed.
Do commoners even have money?
No matter how I turned it over, I doubted it. In a novel world like this, the daily-wage peasants living hand-to-mouth had obvious empty pockets. Light abrasions would only net me pocket change. Real critical patients needing major surgery would go straight to the healers instead of me. And even if they did come to me, I had nothing to work with—no surgical instruments, no assistants, and hygiene that was a complete mess.
So in the end I’d just be building a hospital that attracted nothing but penniless patients…
The profit margin would be garbage.
…Yeah, this plan didn’t look good. Best option was still to do business with nobles.
I’d have to pull off something magic and divine power can’t do…
I turned the idea over, then cut it off clean. Every one of these assumptions only mattered if I could leave the North in the first place. Right now I had to focus on one thing: how to get out of the North.
“Ah, please, Young Lady…”
Just one word to the Grand Duke. Tell him that guy is actually useful—he fixed your indigestion and set your bone. One word would be enough.
I sent the telepathic plea in that direction. Whether it actually reached Selene was anyone’s guess.
The master of the North, watching the training grounds, felt his brow crease by the faintest degree. The reason was simple: his daughter Selene had still not returned from wherever she had slipped off to.
“Duke Rudiger, is something the matter?”
The Emperor seated beside him caught the microscopic change in expression and asked. Rudiger immediately smoothed the frown and arranged his face into calm neutrality.
“It is nothing, Your Majesty.”
Once the Emperor looked away, Rudiger clicked his tongue quietly inside. From the way she had been swinging her sword before leaving the grounds, it was obvious Selene’s arm had dislocated. He had meant to pop it back into place at once, but she had offered the flimsy excuse of terrible thirst and vanished.
She must be in pain right now.
Had she simply returned to these VIP seats prepared for the imperial and Northern bloodlines, he could have set it in an instant.
Knights who lived rough were usually the best at forcing a dislocated bone back into place. But Selene never wanted to show him weakness—not now, and not when she had been even younger. So she had almost certainly gone to the healers standing by.
…That is not good.
That was the problem. Healing magic could restore a broken bone to wholeness, but it could not physically reseat a bone that had slipped out of joint. Anxiety began to burn slowly in Rudiger’s gut. He wanted nothing more than to leave his seat that very second and check on his daughter, yet the situation forbade it. The first main event of the Joint Training Exercise—the knights’ bare-handed live sparring—was about to begin. With so many eyes watching, the master of the North could not simply walk away.
While Rudiger forced the restlessness down, a familiar figure appeared in the distance. Selene. He stretched his gaze toward her without letting the Emperor notice, sweeping her condition in a single rapid glance.
Then faint relief and thick puzzlement crossed his eyes together. The arm that should have been hanging out of place was seated perfectly, as if nothing had ever been wrong.
Had a knight resting in the rear set it after the opening ceremony? That was the first thought that rose. Yet even among knights skilled at bone-setting, few could easily handle the delicate bones of a child. The method for a child’s frame was clearly different from that used on a grown adult whose skeleton had thickened. Rudiger himself knew the technique from ancestral wisdom handed down through the North, but ordinary knights rarely did.
While those questions chased one another, Selene had already returned safely and taken the seat of honor prepared for her—right beside Rudiger. In the center of the training grounds the knights’ rough bare-handed bouts were in full swing. Keeping his eyes on the field, Rudiger spoke softly. If he did not ask, he would never learn who the benefactor was who had set his daughter’s arm.
“Who put your arm back in place?”
“……!”
Selene’s small shoulders jerked. She hastily averted her eyes and stammered,
“I-I never dislocated my arm… at all.”
“I am not scolding you. Speak honestly.”
Rudiger kept every ounce of force from his voice and coaxed her gently.
If only her mother were still here for moments like this…
The clumsiness of a father facing a motherless child alone was a lonely thing. While Rudiger swallowed a bitter sigh without letting it show—
After long hesitation and fidgeting, Selene finally parted her lips in a voice as tiny as an ant’s footsteps.
“…A butler set it for me.”
A butler, not a knight?
The unexpected word made Rudiger’s gaze flicker. Only then did a scrap of information surface in his mind.
Come to think of it…
The head butler had mentioned, in passing, that there was a young butler in the Annex who played at being a healer. At the time Rudiger had dismissed it as nothing important. Now that he was certain that same boy had set Selene’s arm, it was no longer something he could ignore.
Rudiger slowly turned his head and met his daughter’s eyes.
“Do you know the boy’s name?”
Selene nodded carefully and spoke the name she had half-heard before.
“…He said it was Jian.”
“Jian.”
Rudiger rolled the name once on his tongue, then gave a short nod of acknowledgment. His gaze returned to the center of the training grounds. Outwardly he appeared wholly absorbed in the knights’ fierce bare-handed matches, yet his mind was filled with something else entirely.
Jian… Jian…
Should he punish the lowborn who had dared lay hands on the young lady’s person? Or should he reward the one who had accomplished what even the healers could not? Either way, the boy was worth meeting face-to-face and examining with his own eyes.
Once the training exercise ends…
He would have to look this butler named Jian in the face. The thought brushed through Rudiger’s mind.