Chapter 34
Chapter 34
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 34
Chapter Title: But Whose Corpse Is This? (3)
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Splash.
The heart settled successfully into the glass jar.
I had no idea how long it would last in the alcohol. Should I separate and preserve the other organs too? If I left it like this, they'd all spoil.
"Wrap it up."
Estina stared off into the distance.
"This is my first time dissecting a person."
"Yeah?"
"We usually don't go this far. Most surgeries by healers fail anyway, so there's this opinion that there's no point in even opening them up...?"
"Not impossible."
It's a world with magic, after all.
The operating rooms and equipment from my past life were full of wonders too, but there was no magic. Surgery still meant a person wielding a knife.
I think I'd said something similar before.
"You probably haven't heard, Professor, but there was this saying once: 'The torso and the head will forever remain mysteries to rational surgeons.'"
I think it was mentioned in medical history. Back in the day, surviving abdominal, thoracic, or cranial surgery was rare.
"Surgery is tough, sure, but not always. Manage contamination right, and you can go inside the body and still pull through."
"Honestly, I thought the spleen removal patient was a goner. Opening the belly and pulling out an organ, and they still survived...?"
Surgery's always like that. You can't guarantee outcomes, but I saved them this time, so that's enough. Nothing else matters.
"Results are what matter most to a doctor."
"Oh, one more thing I was curious about. Can you really survive without a spleen?"
Probably. The spleen supports immune cells, filters pathogens from the blood, and removes aged red blood cells.
Of course, you couldn't ignore how blood gets purified passing through it, but most functions could be handled by other organs.
Removing it weakens immunity a bit. That's why there are mandatory vaccines afterward, but I saw it as minor.
"You can live without it. If it ruptures, they usually take the whole thing out."
"I see."
Estina reached for her notebook, then pulled her hand back. Her gloves were bloody—no touching anything.
She definitely looked like a first-timer.
Anyway. Heart was preserved. Now, decide on the other organs.
"Estina. What should we do with this?"
"What are you planning to do with the body?"
"Thinking of cutting out other organs to take."
This time, she shook her head.
"Well... isn't that a bit much? He's still a person. It feels wrong to just hack up the body and store pieces because it's a shame to waste it."
Maybe. I nodded.
Dead doesn't mean free from ethics. He wouldn't have consented to his body for research. Estina had a point.
Protect what we should.
"Then let's tidy up and go."
"What about the robe?"
"Take it to the lab and clean it."
Bloody stuff isn't easy to dispose of.
We carefully packed the body, put it back in the sack with the desiccant, and wiped down the dissection tools.
It was already dawn. We hadn't even been in the basement that long. With masks loosely around our necks, we emerged from the underground dungeon.
"Whoa, fuck, you scared me."
Startled him good.
I wondered who wandered around at dawn. Just a guard. I gave a casual greeting.
"Thanks for your hard work."
He looked like he'd seen a ghost. Estina hid behind me—specifically, hiding the jar with the human heart.
"Who are you?"
"Uh, Professor Asterix."
"You have blood on your hands and clothes."
"Had some business like that."
Oh. Now that I thought about it, yeah.
The guard eyed me strangely. Fair enough—if I'd run into someone head-to-toe in black at 2 a.m. in front of the dungeon, I'd be spooked too.
Wait, not the black clothes. My hands and clothes were soaked in blood.
Not just blood—clotted, then wet, grainy and nasty. Passersby might think serial killer.
"You didn't kill anyone, right?"
"No."
"W-what were you doing?"
What to say without trouble?
"Just cut up a body from the execution grounds"? Might get arrested. Not something to brag about.
I brushed it off.
"Uh, an experiment."
"What kind...?"
"Nothing impressive."
Body was sacked, with salt, locked in the cabinet. Should be fine?
The suspicious glare didn't fade easily. I gave an awkward farewell and hurried back to the lab.
"Phew, at least we didn't get caught with the heart."
Yeah. Showing the guard the heart in the jar might've made him faint. He was already pale just from seeing us.
Removing the corpse smell from the clothes took forever. Ironically, it seemed easier than from preserved bodies.
Formalin stench is brutal to get out. Real corpse smell actually fades better.
Opening bodies for research was fine, but getting blood on clothes and the smell soaked in? Didn't make me want to do it often.
I should recruit dissection volunteers. But grad students first. When are they coming?
Anyway.
Estina's paper got published in the journal yesterday. With me as corresponding author. People seemed to think it was mine.
The paper on causes and countermeasures for plague-like dysentery. It blew up even before publication, during peer review.
Post-publication reaction was explosive. There were folk remedies, but this was the first clear theoretical cause and government-level response.
More precisely, first paper like this.
Rumors swirled in academia early, but politicians and bureaucrats paid special attention this time. Evidence—
A letter from the First Imperial Prince. He usually sends casual ones asking if Mint's well, when're you coming back?
This one screamed agenda. Seal was imperial, not personal.
- Your paper reached the Imperial government.
- Content matters, but that last line stuck: medicine and public health are tools of governance, extensions of administration. Something like that.
Rare serious tone from the prince. Usually scribbled messily. He had something to say.
- Isn't that the point? If Lapis's local gov had no slums, proper sewers, quick plague response—no incident.
- Regent seemed clueless, but politicians see it that way.
Seeing what you want to see. Imperial politicians viewed my paper as a political weapon.
Um.
- Plagues are seen as unstoppable disasters, right? But if they're spread by particles and controllable, as you say...
I could see the prince pondering.
- Doesn't control and management become the state's duty? Debated it endlessly, but bureaucrats lack expertise—no conclusion.
Not just any prince.
He grasped the paper, schemed how to turn it to his advantage.
Whatever the debate's outcome, he could summon "experts" to flaunt knowledge and power.
Funny, thinking about it.
- Soon, prepare a lecture on new plague theory for imperial bureaucrats. New findings should shape policy, no?
Um. No strong feelings on the prince's request. He's an acquaintance who calls me rude, now wants a lecture...
No big emotions. Have Estina do it? First author. Summoned by palace—she'd be thrilled, teary-eyed with honor?
Yeah, make Estina do it.
Of course, her alone before bureaucrats? She'd get shredded like a seal among sharks smelling blood...
Far future, but I could picture Estina's wide doe eyes welling up. Might need to go with her.