Earthbound Spirit
Arturo Paleheart was a young man who left a distinctly unusual impression.
If you asked what was so special about a scruffy job-seeker holed up in a cabin deep in the mountains, I would answer without hesitation: his hair.
His hair was pale.
Not that his complexion was pale or that he looked sickly—his hair itself was a pale blue. If I had to put that bizarre color into words… well, what would you even call it? The kind of shade you might get if you dumped an entire bottle of sky-blue dye over the crown of your head?
In any case, Arturo’s hair color was far too exotic. Especially given that I had no idea how he had ended up with hair like that.
“Hmm…”
I scrutinized the prospective new recruit’s hair carefully, but found no clue that might explain the strange hue.
What on earth was this? Neon-colored dye couldn’t possibly be in fashion in this era, and as for genetics—it wasn’t a color that could occur naturally to begin with.
No. Genetics… maybe?
My minor curiosity only grew stronger once I stepped inside the cabin. Arturo’s younger sister, sitting on the bed with her eyes covered by white bandages, also had hair of that same pale blue.
“Let me take a look at your condition for a moment.”
But my questions went no further. The moment I faced a patient who could not see, the memories of my previous life refused to let my consciousness wander into other thoughts.
If I can help, I help. I take others’ pain and sorrow as my own, and without hesitation reach out a hand to pull them free of the gutter. If they refuse the kindness, I drag them out by force even if it means rolling around in the gutter together. If necessary, I stake everything I have.
That was the way of the senior I respected more than anyone—the most precise summary of her life. In the end she had been broken, ruined, and burned away, yet it remained a vivid trajectory that would never leave my mind.
“Would you mind removing the bandages for a moment?”
Even if I could not perfectly follow that madwoman’s path, as her junior I ought at least to try imitating it. I carefully examined Arisa Paleheart’s wounds—just as she once had, caring for injured and sick children and bestowing treatment upon them. The memories of Cheon Si-jun, the twenty-first-century modern man rather than the country girl Asty, moved me naturally.
“…Yes.”
Whether my sincerity had reached her or she was simply timid, Arisa Paleheart quietly undid the bandages and showed me her eyes. They were not in good shape. It looked as though some metal fragment had scraped straight across her face, crushing both eyes.
Ah, damn. Did I arrive too late?
I examined the girl’s injuries and smiled bitterly. The lost sight was not the important thing now. The destroyed eyeballs were beginning to rot.
“Do your eyes hurt at all?”
“No. They don’t hurt particularly—”
“Inside the eyes?”
“…”
Body tissue that can no longer function necrotizes faster than one might think. Take it from someone who once stubbornly refused to go to the hospital for an injured toe and nearly had it amputated. The human body is far more fragile than people realize; the slightest abnormality and it starts dying off. This blind girl was walking that exact path.
“Are you taking any antibiotics?”
“Pardon?”
“Ah, please forget what I just said. I got mixed up for a moment.”
Ah, look at me. What nonsense was I spouting in an era where antibiotics hadn’t even been invented yet. I must have gotten too immersed in my past-life memories and lost focus. I gave my head a light shake to clear away the old recollections and faced the rotting eyes of the girl who had lost her sight.
A child barely old enough for elementary school, unable even to receive a proper diagnosis from a doctor, let alone treatment, left to die quietly. My head knew this was only natural in this world, but emotionally I could not accept it; my insides burned as if on fire. Even though here I myself was a kid of elementary-school age.
“Rebecca, does the presence of residual necrotic tissue affect healing?”
“…Regenerating a destroyed area is easier than reversing decay.”
“I see.”
Rebecca understood my unintuitive question perfectly and gave a clear answer. So it would be better just to remove it, then. After all, keeping a dead part attached would only harm her health. The problem was how to remove those eyeballs… fortunately, we had a magical flame that could distinguish friend from foe.
“Arturo, go fetch any small blade you can find. Rebecca, bring out the lantern.”
“No, with my power, regenerating the eyeballs—”
“Yes. That doesn’t matter.”
Then there was no longer any reason to hesitate. This was a matter of a young girl’s life. Better a hundred times to take bold surgical measures and keep her alive than to worry over already irreversible sight and miss the chance.
“Scalpel.”
From this moment, this bed was an operating table, and I was the finest surgeon in the world. In this neighborhood I was the only one who knew anything resembling modern medicine, so it wasn’t far from the truth.
“It’s a dagger I used for dressing small animals. With this, somehow…”
In that short time Arturo had rummaged through every corner of the cabin and returned with a small dagger, handing it over with a dubious expression. Faint bloodstains remained on the blade; he clearly hadn’t cleaned it properly after last use. Operating with something like this would leave even a healthy patient bedridden with infection.
I habitually reached for disinfectant ethanol from a first-aid kit, then remembered this was the Middle Ages and switched to the lantern instead. I drew out the divine power contained in the lantern, kindled a spark of flame in the air, and carefully heated the surface of the dagger held at an angle.
“?”
As I heated the knife, skeptical looks came flying from behind. Ah, you medieval people don’t know, do you? This is called “sterilization.” It greatly reduces the number of unfortunate patients who die of infection. Of course, explaining would be pointless; they wouldn’t understand, so I decided to pretend it was an enchantment. Why not? Our goddess is fire-type anyway. Saying I purified the impure with the goddess’s grace wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
“Um, who are you…?”
Arisa Paleheart, who had been sitting quietly listening to our conversation, only now asked about my identity, but there was no way I could give a clear answer when I didn’t even know my own identity.
“Your savior.”
I brushed it off with something that barely made sense and began the actual surgery. In truth, the “surgery” was nothing more than removing already-rotted tissue from the body, but when the person performing it was an unlicensed quack doctor, the story was entirely different.
As carefully as possible, I took hold of the girl’s two eyes that had been hidden under the bandages and gently extracted them so she would feel as little pain as possible.
“Nngh…”
“Just a little longer.”
And Arisa endured the pain far more bravely than I expected. Seeing a child who should have been out playing clench her teeth and bear the agony made me feel unsettled all over again. I would have preferred to operate under anesthesia, but attempting anesthesia with this era’s technology would almost certainly mean the patient never woke again. Even for painkillers there was nothing but opium poppies, so I was proceeding raw; the fact that she was holding on suggested she was no ordinary girl either. Or perhaps the nerves had already rotted so thoroughly that she barely felt the pain.
“I’m going to cut now.”
With the thoroughly sterilized dagger I severed the connections to the rotten tissue. Then I returned the lantern to Rebecca and asked her to perform the flame baptism used in rites, thoroughly disinfecting the surgical site as well.
“…With this we’ve prevented any further deterioration. As soon as vision recovery becomes possible, I’ll do it for you right away. Don’t go poking around there just because the eyeballs are gone. I’ll make you a pair of prosthetic eyes to wear. If you leave the empty sockets as they are, your face will sag and eventually start to droop—”
But with this kind of surgery, aftercare was every bit as important as the immediate surgical measures. On the spot I devised a pair of reasonably natural-looking prosthetic eyes and an eyepatch, and decided to teach the girl a special technique as well.
“There’s also a method of reading the terrain by sound alone without a cane. If you want, I can teach you that myself.”
Echolocation.
A unique technique of using the reflection of sound to determine one’s surroundings and the positions of objects. Commonly known as something bats use a great deal, this sonic skill is surprisingly a general technique that humans can also master through training. Of course I couldn’t use it myself, but I had heard about it while following my senior around, so I could at least provide the theoretical foundation.
“Do you feel ready to accept the offer now?”
So both of you, come with me. I’ll give you a generous salary, of course, and teach you all sorts of useful knowledge brought from the future. Swear loyalty to me and serve as my faithful limbs.
I stood still and gazed at Arturo. He nodded, then knelt on one knee before me. Apparently, seeing me use divine power just now had confirmed my identity for him. With a somewhat clumsy gesture I borrowed his sword, tapped him on the shoulder, and returned it; a bond that was hard to put into words seemed to form.
And so Arturo Paleheart became my first escort knight.