Complete Cure
I let out a huge yawn. “Haaaam…”
When I opened my eyes again, the first thing I felt was an unexpected surge of refreshment. The headache that had been hammering my skull and the burning sensation in my eyes had vanished completely, like they’d never existed.
Just how long was I out?
Judging by the angle of the sunlight pouring through the cracks in the wall, it was already well past morning and straight into broad daylight. It looked like my completely drained body had recovered while I slept like the dead.
I sat up, scratching my messy hair, when I caught the sound of whispering voices from the corner.
“So anyway! There was blood gushing everywhere, and you know what I did? I grabbed my brother’s arm with both hands like this and pressed it right against that hot iron! That’s how I stopped the bleeding!”
“Ugh… I see. Our France, you must’ve been so scared, but you were incredibly brave. I’m proud of you. You really are my one and only little sister…”
“Right? Right?! I saved my brother’s life, didn’t I? Ahem! Cough, cough-cough!”
“Prin, how’s your condition now… wait a second.”
I’d been stretching as I walked over to the two of them, but my steps suddenly froze. My gaze had locked onto the dented wooden ladle in France’s hands.
The stench that stabbed my nose was unmistakable. What sloshed inside was, to anyone with eyes, nothing but muddy sludge mixed with dirt and filth.
And France was about to pour that rotten water straight into Prin’s mouth.
“Hey, stop right there!!”
I dashed forward and smacked her wrist.
“Are you out of your mind?! Were you seriously going to make him drink that filth?! Give it here, now!”
“Wh-what?! Vita, you’re awake? No, wait! What the heck are you doing all of a sudden?! What if you scare my brother like that?”
“Scare him? Who cares! You’re the one trying to kill him!”
My sharp rebuke made France’s shoulders jump. I kicked the rolling ladle across the floor.
“It hasn’t even been half a day since his surgery! His body’s already weak. Pouring that muddy crap into him? He’d die from disease before his arm even heals!”
“U-um… I-I’m sorry. I just… he said he was so thirsty…”
“…Sigh.”
France looked utterly deflated, sniffling, while Prin broke out in a cold sweat, not knowing what to do. I stared at the hopelessly ignorant, idiotic siblings in turn and let out a deep, exhausted breath.
I’d thought everything would be fine once the surgery succeeded… but that had clearly been naïve. It looked like these two would need my help for quite a while longer.
For the next several days, I spent my daylight hours at the market practicing magic and, well, begging—no, performing high-class street puppet shows with magic. I managed to rake in a decent amount of food and loose coins.
Once the sun set, I’d head back to Prin’s house with my spoils, a pot full of ingredients, and my new routine became shoving warm food down the siblings’ throats.
During those tiring—no, rewarding—days, completely unexpected good news arrived.
“Ehehe! Vita! I didn’t cough even once today!”
The illness that had made France wheeze like she was about to drop dead at any moment turned out not to be some incurable disease after all. The reason was so absurdly simple it was almost disappointing.
All I’d done was make her drink clean water that I filtered, boiled, and cooled every single day. That was it. Just that one basic hygiene practice that any modern person would consider common sense, and the terrible cough that had tormented her vanished like it had never existed.
When I thought about it, it was obvious. A young child drinking from filthy puddles teeming with bacteria and waste every day? Of course she’d end up chronically ill. Their pathetic lack of hygiene had turned an ordinary sickness into what they believed was an incurable disease, and it had been killing the poor girl.
“France…! I’m so glad… I’m really, really glad…!”
Prin watched as color returned to his sister’s once-pale cheeks and she began scampering around their cramped house with her old energy. He covered his face with his remaining hand and burst into tears.
Even after losing one wrist to despair, this idiot big brother was sobbing like a child who’d gained the whole world just because his sister had gotten healthy again. It made something warm bloom in my chest.
“It’s all thanks to Big Sister Vita! Right, brother?”
“Y-yeah! Vita… you’re seriously a miracle for us siblings. Thank you… truly…”
“Hmph. Getting better from such a stupid illness just by drinking clean water. If you understand that, start thinking about how you’re going to repay your debt to me.”
By the time France’s illness had completely disappeared and the hard scab on Prin’s severed wrist had fallen away to reveal fresh new flesh growing underneath, quite a bit of time had passed.
Of course, it wasn’t just the siblings’ health that had recovered during that period. My own life had undergone quite a few—no, some truly dramatic—changes.
My ability to manipulate mana improved by leaps and bounds every single day. At this point I could control two or three puppets without breaking a sweat.
On top of that, thanks to my tearful nightly efforts studying by candlelight, I had finally escaped total illiteracy. I could now read and stumble through text at a basic level.
Then one day, late at night.
I was on my way home after a successful performance. My head was completely occupied with thoughts of the book I wanted to finish reading.
I need to get back quickly and finish that basic magic theory book I was reading yesterday. Now that I can actually read the letters, I finally feel like I can breathe.
I’d become obsessed with studying in a way I never had during my school days. I was even humming a little tune as I hurried along when—
“…so hand it over already!”
Huh?
I instinctively pressed myself flat against the darkness.
In an alley that should have been silent at this hour, rough and vicious voices were coming from a shadowy empty lot just past the corner.
This wasn’t just drunkards arguing. Someone was fighting. In the middle of the night, no less…
Getting involved would bring nothing but trouble. The smart thing would have been to turn around and take another route immediately. But for some reason, my feet wouldn’t move.
One of the voices coming from beyond the darkness sounded strangely familiar.
I held my breath and melted deeper into the shadows. Without making a single sound, I crept toward the empty lot where the noise was coming from and carefully peeked my head through a gap in a collapsed wall.
The scene before me nearly made me gasp out loud. I barely managed to clamp a hand over my mouth.
“Just because it came out from between your legs doesn’t mean that monster is really your child! Hand it over right now!”
“Give it here already!”
“That thing shouldn’t even exist here! Are you trying to turn these streets bloody again?!”
The faces of the men with twisted, vicious expressions came into view. I recognized them.
They were the same thugs who used to run the prostitutes in the back alleys.
They had the woman completely surrounded, wielding clubs and iron skewers. At the center of their encirclement lay a woman who had been brutally beaten into a bloody pulp.
Even as kicks and threats rained down on her, she curled her body into a tight ball, desperately protecting something in her arms.
What on earth is she protecting that would make them go this crazy?
I drew on my mana to sharpen my vision.
What I saw in her embrace was a tiny, wriggling bundle. It was a newborn, its skin still red and wrinkled, with the remains of an umbilical cord attached—as if it had just emerged from the womb.
But… the hair color was wrong.
Hair had already sprouted on the baby’s head, and the color was utterly bizarre. It wasn’t black.
It was a deep, vivid green so striking it was noticeable even in the darkness.
Yeah. It was a color I had never once seen in this district. Not on a single person.
Ah, I can piece it together now.
This woman must have been one of the prostitutes who crossed the wall to sell her body. She’d gotten pregnant by accident, somehow hid her belly, and eventually gave birth to this mixed-blood child with green hair.
But what was so terrible about being mixed-blood that they were acting like this?
My knowledge and historical common sense couldn’t make sense of the scene. Usually, in an oppressed and discriminated-against ethnic group, a child with outsider blood would at least be seen as a small rope of hope for social advancement, right?
So what was so wrong with this newborn that everyone was looking at it with such terror?
The questions kept multiplying, but the part that truly sent a chill down my spine was something else.
The ring of torches surrounding the woman. As I carefully examined the faces flickering between them, I had to shut my mouth against the goosebumps crawling up my spine.
The people gathered there, radiating bloodlust, weren’t just the lowlife thugs with clubs.
That guy… he’s the old man who sells rotten potatoes at the market. That auntie is the one who made eye contact with me on the street yesterday.
That’s right. Packed in among them were the perfectly ordinary neighbors I must have passed by while wandering the slums. The old man who used to beg, the young man who pulled a rickety cart—people who would normally keep their eyes on the ground and avoid the thugs’ notice. Now they were all holding pitchforks and torches with murder in their eyes, as if they’d made some kind of pact.
“Hurry up and hand over that monster! If—if even a rumor spreads that a hybrid was born here and it reaches their ears…!!”
“Y-yeah! Last time that gate opened for some reason, we luckily got through without anyone dying. But this is different! This is a clear violation of the rules! If they find out, they’ll wipe every last one of us out!!”
“Mitchell, please! You think we want to kill a baby that was just born?! But it has green hair! If it had black hair like us, we might’ve been able to hide it somehow! But how the hell are we supposed to hide that obvious green color?! Kill it! If we want to live, we have to kill it right now!!”