Chapter 39
Chapter 39
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 39
Chapter Title: Thump Thump (5)
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Mint looked up at me, her eyes sparkling.
It was an expression I hadn't seen in a long time.
It was the first time I'd seen it since leaving the Imperial Palace. Come to think of it, she was kind of pitiful—the princess must have been lonely and bored without any friends.
That said, going with a professor didn't seem much better than going alone... Anyway.
I followed the princess out of the lab.
Academy Cafe.
Truth be told, I didn't come here often. I wasn't the type to sit around leisurely like this.
Usually, I just had Estina fetch it for me. Now that I was here, it wasn't crowded at all.
Just pleasantly quiet. A few passersby did glance at Mint, but she ignored them.
"Your Highness, don't sit next to me—over there—"
"No."
We arrived at the cafe. Instead of sitting across from me, the princess chose the seat beside me. Well, sitting opposite would mean facing the sun.
Her expression had softened a bit, but otherwise, she looked much the same as usual.
Pale face as stiff as her shirt collar, a crooked tie with no one to straighten it. Her hair was meticulously tied up.
Rumors called her the empire's greatest beauty. Even today, I racked my brain trying to picture someone prettier than Mint.
Eh, maybe somewhere out there.
Mint sipped her coffee from her seat. I pondered a conversation topic, but for some reason, she was gazing off into the distance.
"Your tie's crooked, Your Highness."
"Quiet. It's my tie."
Ugh, what a foolish princess temperament.
"Reminds me of the old days. Nice."
"The old days?"
"Back in the palace."
That was a bit surprising. Most of Mint's memories from the palace were probably painful ones, or just sitting alone in a side room, bored out of her mind. I couldn't fathom why she'd call them good memories.
Maybe her past was being romanticized in hindsight?
Yeah, that could be.
"I see."
"A few exams are done, so I've got some free time lately."
"Just out of curiosity. Do you remember your childhood positively, Your Highness?"
"Childhood? Why childhood all of a sudden?"
"You said the old days felt nice."
"Why would that be childhood? Obviously, I'm talking about after you came and treated my tuberculosis."
"Ah."
I hesitated for a moment before speaking up.
"Your Highness, you should practice talking to other people."
"What?"
"There must be things you never learned or enjoyed because you were sick all the time."
Mint's face fell.
"Like how to deal with people... I think it's not too late to start building those skills now. Plenty of people would want to get close to you, and no one would dare treat you poorly."
"You insolent little punk."
The princess shot me a sideways glance. What was I supposed to do if even kind words got this reaction?
"Start with me. You need to practice treating me more like a person."
"Oh ho. Looks like there's one person who can be rude to me right here."
Mint looked at me and let out a laugh.
What a cheeky little princess.
"Time to get up."
"Right, you're busy."
I really did need to go. I stood first. The princess stared blankly at me for a few seconds, then extended her hand.
"Help me up."
Why was she like this? Still, I didn't see the point in bickering more with Mint. Besides, in a way, wasn't she above me?
If she ordered it, I had to do it.
I helped Mint to her feet. She wobbled for a second before standing steadily on her own.
"Well then. See you next time?"
I nodded.
Now it was time to write the paper.
This one needed to directly refute academic conventions too. No gaps in logic or experiments.
There were several pieces of experimental evidence.
First, liver tissue under a microscope made capillaries easy to observe.
And squeezing a heart once produced about 0.1 or 0.2 liters of fluid.
Let's write the paper diligently. It might get into the summer conference, or with luck, even sooner.
"Hey, what about that?"
"What?"
"Last time, the professors threw tantrums and came to your class demanding explanations without even doing the cross-verification from your presentation."
Yeah, that happened.
Professors could be such children. Show them something intriguing, and they'd swarm like kids fighting over a toy.
Like Professor Kropelter or whatever. Anyway.
"So?"
"Forget conferences and reviews—just submit it, round up some people, and present. Wouldn't that be easier for everyone?"
I considered Estina's suggestion.
Seemed like a good idea.
"Yeah, let's do that."
People would show up anyway.
They were the types who'd sneaked peeks at the cross-verification paper and crashed my class. Send invitations, and they'd come running.
Ideas had to be acted on right away.
Why? Life's a series of choices. With so much you can't do, seize what you can when inspiration strikes.
I submitted the paper on "The Circulation of Blood" to the journal, rented a lecture hall, and sent invitations to those professors who'd occupied my class last time.
"Let's begin."
The crowd was already murmuring before I even started. Not many professors had come in person—mostly grad students sent in their place.
"A few days ago, we had a patient with organ rupture. I wanted to check blood loss and if blood pressure was holding, but there was no good way to do it."
Murmurs of agreement rippled through the hall. Any doctor—or healer—had seen it: patients dying from hemorrhage.
"Let's go back to basics. What is blood? Where does it come from in the body, and where does it go? There've been hypotheses since ancient times."
I scanned the auditorium.
"To cut to the chase: blood leaves the heart and, with only minor compositional changes, returns to it. It circulates a couple times without being created or destroyed."
"Pardon?"
The hall erupted in murmurs.
This scene I'd seen many times. At odds with majority opinion, they'd scrutinize for flaws under a microscope.
A male grad student in the front row raised his hand. Didn't know his name or whose proxy he was.
"Any evidence?"
Plenty.
"I'll start with the strongest. How much blood do you think fits in the heart?"
No one answered.
I pulled a glass jar from under the podium.
Human heart preserved in alcohol. I removed it, squeezed hard, and about a cup of fluid splashed onto the floor.
"You saw that? The heart pumps out about 0.1 liters per beat. Heart rate can exceed 150 during exercise."
Stroke volume during exertion could surpass 15 liters per minute. Here's the issue.
"Think about it. Weird, right? Human body only holds about 3 liters of blood. Does it make sense that the entire volume is generated and consumed every 10 seconds?"
Wonder how they'd react?
I scanned the hall again. Half confused, half bored.
This problem wasn't new from me. No one had solved it yet, so it lingered as an unsolved puzzle.
Now Anne raised her hand.
I gestured for her question.
"Professor Asterix. Isn't there no evidence that squeezing a heart by hand mimics what it does inside a living body?"
I nodded.
"Miss Anne. Ever dissected a live rat? To observe the heart."
"No?"
"Try it. Watch how the heart moves in a mammal's body."
Of course, even in a living body, the heart squeezes blood out like that. Anne sat back down with a complicated expression.
"Any more questions so far?"
Several hands shot up.
"Even if true, aren't there no paths in the body for blood to flow that fast?"
"Even if it's not consumed that way, doesn't it have to be produced somewhere?"
"If peripheral tissues aren't absorbing and using blood, where do nutrients come from?"
Lots of questions today.
Satisfying.
I wasn't sure about the other questions.
But the first one was a doubt I'd had as an undergrad. Why was arterial blood pressure in the triple digits while venous was single digits?
That was the crux.
If arteries and veins formed a continuous loop for blood, why such different properties? Colors differed too. Past flawed theories stemmed from this.
"Could you be more specific?"
"Even if you claim otherwise, isn't it observable fact that blood gets absorbed into peripheral tissues and doesn't come back out?"
"It does come back. Through the veins."
"If Professor Asterix is right, what structure connects arteries and veins?"
Capillaries.
"To sum up: arteries and veins have different properties, and there's no tube connecting them. That's the academic consensus, right?"
Heads nodded.
"Straight to the conclusion again. Arteries and veins are connected by microscopic structures called capillaries that pass through peripheral tissues and organs."
This time, a professor stood. Professor Brown, an orthodox figure in the Academy's Healer Faculty.
He'd been vehemently against germ theory too.
"Isn't this outside falsifiable science again? Now we have to assume invisible blood vessels for your claim to hold?"
Well, yeah, but what could I do about invisible vessels existing? Good thing I'd already observed the capillaries.