For the Sake of You Who Care for Me (2)
For the Sake of You Who Care for Me (2)
Every once in a long while, I thought about it.
If I had gone to medical school instead of physics, would my future have changed?
The scent from that aching memory was sour. Back then, right after the college entrance exams ended and just before I became a legal adult, I heard people call me an idiot more than at any other time in my life.
Everyone had called me a lunatic. My parents were furious, and my teacher kept trying to persuade me by showing placement charts covered in green. My family was so poor we lived in a semi-basement side room, so my choice of major was like a powder keg for domestic discord.
— You're doing exactly what your sister did!!
My sister, who told me not to worry about money or anything and just live doing whatever I wanted.
Come to think of it, my sister had resembled the young lady of House Saliere.
No matter how hard things got, she was someone who looked after others before herself, someone who pursued ideals over reality.
"Hngh...."
Rote's groan dissolved the sea of consciousness. In the place where the hazy memories had flown away like a mirage, only grains of sand called reality remained.
I changed Rote's damp towel, then leaned back against the chair.
This was the third day I had gone without sleep while nursing my roommate. My eyelids were heavy. Even if I kept blinking or put in eye drops, the gritty sensation persisted. It was a symptom that wouldn't disappear until I got a full night's rest.
The damp towel wasn't the only thing that needed changing.
I had to monitor hygiene too. I frequently checked that mana was circulating through the EMP Scroll and the Sanitation Scroll, squeezing out what little mana I had.
I couldn't exactly smoke Mana Cigarettes in a sickroom. If Rote was to breathe at all, the surrounding air had to stay clean.
My head throbbed as if it were about to burst. Every time I tried to catch a few minutes of sleep, my eyes reflexively snapped open. I was terrified that my friend might turn into a corpse during the moment I closed my eyes. I couldn't possibly stretch out and sleep soundly.
That was why I nursed Rote despite the presence of doctors and nurses. I couldn't fully trust anyone else, and above all, the nursing staff was absurdly short-handed.
"Hoo."
I was in a daze. It felt like experiencing the Butterfly Dream.
I could hardly tell whether I had entered Aether's body, or whether I existed inside a dream Aether was dreaming. If it was the latter, I only wished all of this would end as a single night's nightmare.
"I'm... okay, so...."
"I told you not to talk."
The sheets were soaked and clammy with sweat. Her head was still a fireball, but her arms and legs were cold to the touch. The ironblight symptom could appear at any moment.
The only things I could do were change her towel and administer Oral Rehydration Solution. I hadn't even learned how to give an injection, so I had to ask the school nurse to administer the antibiotics every time. I had never imagined medical work could be this difficult.
I really wasn't cut out for medicine. This wasn't something I could do.
Even so.
Even so.
Right now, I had to do it.
I didn't have the qualifications to be called medical staff, but I chose to nurse Rote. I put every plan for returning to my original world on hold.
That I was doing this as repayment for the Silver Coin Rote once gave me was... probably not the reason.
"Ah."
When I came to my senses again, another four days had passed.
A week. By now, it should have been about time for things to get better.
"Doesn't... hurt...?"
"I'm fine, so worry about yourself for once."
"Hehe...."
I barely managed to keep hold of my hazy consciousness and started a self-diagnosis.
My throat wasn't stinging. I hadn't broken out in cold sweats either. No fever, no swollen lymph nodes, no chills, no coughing or phlegm. Considering the incubation period of the Black Death, I couldn't be considered infected.
To be blunt, unless someone literally placed a curse on me, the odds of me collapsing here were absolutely, positively zero....
Wait.
Wait a minute.
What did that Plague Doctor say at the end?
— I can't just leave empty-handed, so how about I leave you a parting gift.
An absurd hypothesis flashed through my head.
Up until now, Rote had followed quarantine protocols more rigorously than anyone. She never made contact with the infected, and since the dormitory room always had an EMP Scroll running, the chance she had been bitten by a mosquito was infinitesimally low.
Could he have placed a direct curse?
If that were true, the route of infection would be ridiculously unscientific.
But this world was half fantasy. It was an era with enough scientific prowess to mass-produce sulfonamides, and at the same time, a world where irrational phenomena like Spirit Arts and Elemental Magic were incorporated as academic disciplines.
Considering that, it wasn't entirely implausible....
No doubt about it. That bastard who walked around in a crow-beaked mask must have pulled something.
**
Around the tenth day since Rote contracted the Black Death.
Despite the continuous administration of the yuzu-derived Oral Rehydration Solution and antibiotics, the ironblight symptom began to appear little by little.
At this stage, it was safe to say the disease had progressed from the middle to the terminal phase.
My lips trembled faintly. The condition chart that had already been struggling took a vertical nosedive. Even in my days working under Professor Haspelt, my mental state had never been this thoroughly wrecked.
Rote coughed from time to time. Each time, blood trickled from the corner of her lips. Seeing that, I connected the Hotline and asked whether additional medical supplies could be provided.
The reply was utterly bleak.
"The antibiotics... have run out?"
[The market prices are unstable right now! On top of that, the northern front is being pushed back, so demand has apparently skyrocketed!]
If antibiotics aren't continuously administered until the bacteria die off, resistance develops. The medical supplies left at the academy were about to run out, so I had no choice but to grit my teeth and ask about the market price of penicillin.
[The price has jumped more than twenty times. It looks like a single dose will cost at least ten Gold Coins.]
"Ten Gold Coins?"
The Empire was a nation with the technology and capital to mass-produce high-end goods. For a commonly used medicine to show this kind of price meant the country's fiscal situation was an absolute mess.
[Yes. The academy is waiting for the price to drop, saying it won't be too late to purchase then. There's hardly anything left except general first-aid supplies now.]
I turned my head. Right beside me lay a dying friend.
There was no time to haggle over prices.
"I'll buy it. Please arrange a week's worth."
[Uh, it's going to be expensive....]
"In return, Teacher Gliston. I have a favor to ask of you."
[Huh? Oh. Tell me.]
"Could you lend me some money?"
Taking on debt.
The one thing I hated most, the thing I had sworn never to do.
Debt made people irresponsible and complacent. I believed it stifled a person's desire for self-improvement toward a financially better life, creating an unprogressive existence, and that it was the root cause of ruined human relationships.
But this time, pride and everything else went out the window.
[...Count Saliere would be pleased. You've got yourself a good friend.]
An affirmative answer. A short while later, the Hotline cut off.
I still couldn't rest. If I couldn't help Rote on the medical side, I would mobilize every connection I had and every ounce of social skill to save my roommate.
I connected Hotlines in multiple directions.
Close friends, classmates I'd been on awkward terms with.
Teachers I respected, even seniors I only knew by name.
I contacted everyone I could reach. Throwing away face and everything else.
Didn't they say heaven helps those who help themselves?
I was a human far too tainted to pray to an absolute being, but it seemed the Goddess who had dropped me here for one lousy paper review was willing to grant even a wreck like me a chance.
In less than half a day, I received a Hotline saying that emergency medical supplies had been transported into the academy, and I finally let out a long sigh.
[I was surprised by how much more was deposited than expected. Under whose name did you borrow the five hundred Gold Coins?]
"Excuse me?"
I had contacted the possessor too and gotten some money out of him, but he hadn't given me that kind of sum.
"...Who was it?"
Unless they were a major noble, there shouldn't have been anyone on the continent who would hand over such a fortune without hesitation.
Thinking about paying it back later gave me a headache, but it didn't matter. I decided to give my thanks later and focused everything on checking Rote's vitals.
Wherever ironblight tissue appeared, I scraped it out with a knife before it could spread, and when the school nurse came, she administered the expensive antibiotics.
On the twelfth day, Shadiel, the head of the Guidance Department, showed up and even sang a song for us. The Hymn she sang was a Unique Magic Art unique to House Argana, with the effect of stabilizing mind and body.
Around this time, doctors also began appearing who took an interest in whether I would fall ill.
"Miss Aether, your constitution seems resistant to the Black Death."
They broached the idea of receiving multiple samples of my blood later. With generous compensation, of course. Since I was in a position where I'd have to pay off my debts as soon as this was over, I readily accepted.
Come to think of it, ever since I gained this body, I had never bled, let alone gotten a scratch. The physical abilities of the Gold-Eye Tribe had to be exceptional.
And finally, on the fourteenth day.
Around noon, when Rote was suffering most from the ironblight symptom. Right when I was beginning to feel my own limits.
Bang!
"You two! We brought the cure!"
Two elves threw open the door to the sickroom and walked in.
Light began to show.