For the Sake of You Who Care for Me (3)
For the Sake of You Who Care for Me (3)
When I came to, I was lying in a bed.
It didn't seem like the dormitory ceiling.
"Ugh."
My body felt heavy. No, rather than sluggish, "stiff from not moving for a long time" was a better description. My limbs were so rigid I had to put real effort into moving them.
Had I caught the Black Death too?
I did seem to have a fever.
My head didn't feel burning hot, though... At most, it was what you'd call a low-grade fever.
I'd experienced symptoms like this in my original body. It was body aches.
I felt chills, but it wasn't unbearable, and I wasn't coughing my lungs out either. While I was lying there as one with the bed, drifting in a thoughtless haze—
"Ah."
My cerebrum began analyzing why I was lying here like this.
—I brought the cure!
I definitely remembered that much. Vermel and Teacher Gliston had burst through the ward door saying they'd made a cure for the Black Death or whatever, and my memory cut out at that point.
Right. Rote. Was Rote okay? I started to get anxious for no reason.
I didn't know how much time had passed.
Come to think of it, I'd barely slept for two weeks. As I turned things over in my head, my stomach rumbled, demanding food.
Having fully experienced Descartes's mood while staring at the ceiling, I decided I couldn't stay like this and forced my stiff body upright. The moment I did, something cold plopped off my head.
It was a damp towel. Why had that been on my head?
My vision, which had been fading in and out of focus, gradually sharpened. Only then did I realize I was wearing different clothes from what I remembered.
It was a white top and bottom set. A hospital gown.
Strange. I'd only worn the paper quarantine suit while the Black Death was spreading. Had someone changed my clothes for me?
Creak.
While I was groaning, someone came in.
"Oh..."
Our eyes met.
She had neatly brushed short crimson hair and a gentle, gentle face. Among the people I knew, only one girl had those features.
"Y-you're awake...!"
Rote, who had been carrying a plastic washbasin, charged at me without noticing the water spilling over the rim. She was too fast to dodge physically, and I had no intention of dodging anyway.
Rote threw her arms around me and immediately started sobbing.
She thought I was going to die when I collapsed, she was grateful I'd nursed her. Most of all, she was sorry for making me go through so much.
Several sentences drilled into my ears one after another, but what mattered right then wasn't any of that.
Seeing the light return to my half-dead roommate's eyes, I let out a sigh of relief. The Ironblight symptom... was gone. Completely healed.
The sniffling went on for over ten minutes. As I patted the young lady of Count Saliere's house, who had become a seven-year-old child, old memories came back.
I'd been in a car accident once. Not a life-threatening one, but I'd had to wear a cast for months.
Since my life wasn't at risk, no one worried about me.
Except for one person—my older sister.
My sister was different. She was the type of emotional person who would sob that she couldn't live without me.
Now I understood. Why I'd tried to save Rote without any particular compensation in mind.
How long had it been since I collapsed? I asked Rote, and she said I woke up after three days.
"Are you really okay?"
"It's just overwork, I think."
Even under Professor Haspelt, it hadn't been this bad. The fatigue must have stacked up pretty badly.
More than that, I was worried about my roommate's body. Looking at how healthy she was, the cure the possessor brought in must have worked well, but still—not a single trace of bacteria should remain in her system.
I trusted the medical staff had handled that properly.
Now I just had to do my own work.
Get back on track and study magic. Repay my debt to Professor Herlein by manufacturing a Decisive Battle Weapon to defeat the Demon King.
Before that, pay back the money I'd borrowed to buy antibiotics.
"That? You don't have to pay it back."
Rote's older brother, Lorwell Saliere. The moment he said that, closing the ward door behind him as he came in, I froze. My mind, which had been frantically spinning to formulate a repayment plan, ground to a halt.
"My sister's treatment costs will be covered by our house. Why would you be the one to pay for that?"
If I brought out the conjunction "Even so..." here, Rote would probably scold me to death. I chose silence.
A similar thing had happened when I was a kid. Back then, the person who'd promised to pay it off for me had bolted, and a debt notice plus a seizure sticker had flown into our house. I strongly suspected that was the reason I'd grown reluctant to borrow even a single coin from anyone.
"It's fine. My family has plenty of money. The elders dabble in commerce as well."
My concern must have shown on my face. Rote patted my shoulder with a bright smile, telling me there was nothing to worry about.
Right. I'd already trusted this person once. Couldn't I trust her a second time?
I gave a quiet nod in reply.
After that, I received several visits that were and weren't sickroom calls. Starting with Professor Meriga Herlein, familiar faces stopped by the ward one after another. Frey, Irka, Teacher Sepia Gliston and Teacher Alex Noelheim, Chairman Robespierre, Guidance Head Shadiel, and other classmates I'd been on at least nodding terms with. Finally, the possessor, who said he had urgent business left and left after just showing his face.
Shouldn't Rote have been receiving all of this? When I asked, she said she'd gone through the same thing two days before.
I looked down at the ill-fitting hospital gown and clicked my tongue. I might as well have been cosplaying a patient.
This was the first time this many people had come to visit. And I wasn't even that sick.
"Now that I think of it, has the Lockdown Order been lifted?"
I wetted my throat with bottled water and asked Lorwell.
The Lockdown Order that had been imposed on the capital of the Philiut Empire and most major cities. Because of it, we hadn't been able to leave the Capital City, and likewise, no one from outside could enter.
"Looks like it's gradually being lifted. Before, it was so strict not even a single rat could slip through."
"That's a relief. Have you been able to get in touch with the Count?"
Count Saliere's main house was located on the frontier far to the southwest of the capital. The distance from the Capital City to there was longer than from here to the northern front lines.
The hotline was a telephone used only in truly urgent situations, and more to the point, it wasn't a device capable of mass-area communication. In this era where the telephone had stopped halfway in its development, long-distance communication required either casually teleporting like some people, or going through the post office.
The former was something only a very small number of Air Mages did, and the latter had been impossible due to the epidemic.
"Yes. We've been exchanging mail for four days now. He said once this crisis subsides completely, he'll send a servant to check if we're all right."
It seemed the southwest territory managed by Count Saliere had also been exposed to the Black Death. Meaning this plague spread nationwide.
The magic beasts' hand had reached not just the capital but the entire empire. Simultaneously, at that.
Normally, an epidemic spreads slowly but gradually—like a typhoon formed at the equator racing north.
The fact that Rote had gotten infected despite thorough quarantine measures—the spread pattern was unscientific. So much so that even a non-expert could tell. The higher-ups must have noticed the magic beasts were behind this, wouldn't they?
"Anyway, we'll be off. The healer said you can be discharged tomorrow or so, so get plenty of rest."
"...Ah, thank you for the consideration."
Right after Rote and Lorwell left, I sat on the edge of the bed and organized my thoughts.
In any case, this incident had made one thing clear. An Extinction-class Magic Beast was no ordinary entity.
Hadn't I seen that gaunt Plague Doctor? It had a visual that could not be described with any word in this world except "monster."
'The Great Machines of the Nine Heavens'—that meant there were at least eight more of those things.
One of them alone had caused this much damage, and there were nine such beings? They could score an apocalypse even without the Demon King.
In fact, this wasn't my first contact with an Extinction-class Magic Beast.
The entrance ceremony.
The master of the Mecha Tyrannos that had blocked my path for some trivial reason back then was definitely an extinction-class belonging to the Great Machines of the Nine Heavens—assuming what I'd learned in Teacher Alex's "Understanding of Magic Beasts" course was accurate.
I'd felt danger back then too. Several buildings, including the academy's northern Open-air Theater and some civilian houses, had been destroyed, and the voice that had snickered as if it were just a greeting still rang in my ears. Why else would I have started developing a nuclear weapon—something that hadn't even been in my plans—after that event?
Even so, it couldn't compare to this situation.
There'd been no casualties at the entrance ceremony. Thousands had died from the Black Death.
At the entrance ceremony, I'd had only my own body to look after. Now, there were plenty of people I had to protect.
The devastation one member of the Great Machines of the Nine Heavens had shown the empire was, in a word, "extinction." To survive that kind of crisis multiple times, I needed a vast amount of knowledge.
Not knowledge of physics, nor of the Magic Arts. Medicine, economics? Even less so.
The future.
I needed to know what would happen in the future.
I groped around for paper. From somewhere, the Hardcover Book came swooping over and asked if I was looking for it, but I ignored it. Sorry, I just need ordinary paper right now.
"Found it."
I discovered a wad of paper in the drawer right in front of me. Hospital medical record templates with clean backs. Using them as scratch paper shouldn't be a problem. Probably.
I pulled the dedicated quill pen from the Hardcover Book and wetted it with ink. This was a really useful magic tool. Despite being a pen that only appeared when the Hardcover Book was opened, it wrote smoothly on other paper too.
I thought for a moment, then drew an oval in the center of the A4 sheet and began branching out from it. It was similar to mind mapping, but slightly different.
[What are you going to do?]
"I'm going to draw a picture."
[A picture...?]
"Yeah. A picture."
A goddamn huge picture.