Chapter 13
*
Meanwhile, by the time Yulian had finished the transfusion and resumed treating patients,
As Erica stepped out the clinic’s back door, the winter chill that still hadn't gone away greeted her.
Brrr.
Erica gave a slight shiver.
Wangcho snorted and put a beanie on her head.
“Wear it. If you catch a cold on the way, how am I supposed to face the Teacher?”
But Erica frowned and handed the hat back to Wangcho.
“Ugh. It reeks.”
“Tch. Suit yourself.”
Wangcho put the beanie back on with a sullen look.
Erica walked down the alley beside Wangcho.
Even within the dark atmosphere of Limbus Pit, the back alleys were especially bad.
The walls were layered with graffiti of unknown origin, and drunken laughter drifted from somewhere, making the place feel even more ominous.
“Listen carefully on the way, kid.”
Wangcho said without stopping.
“Pick up the medicinal herbs from the Cheon family pharmacy on the corner of 4th Street. Go in and say, ‘The Teacher sent me,’ and they’ll give it to you.”
“…Got it.”
“My underlings will handle contacting the patients. You just clean the clinic, put the tools in order, and do whatever the Teacher tells you.”
Then Wangcho snapped his fingers.
“Ah, right. When you draw water from the well in the morning, don’t take that water to the delivery room. No, forget it. Just boil all of it the moment you bring it in. That keeps accidents from happening.”
“Why?”
“If you want to see the Teacher get pissed off and turn the whole alley upside down, go ahead and do it another way. If you do it right, you might get thrown out into the streets in midwinter and freeze to death.”
Erica nodded hurriedly.
If the cruel ruler of this district hated it that much, there had to be a reason.
The rest of the explanation was simple.
Erica absorbed the information without much trouble.
“So, get up early, fill the water, pick up herbs over on 4th Street….”
“Well, look at you, little vampire. Smarter than I thought. Maybe you’ll graduate sooner than I expected?”
“Graduate?”
Wangcho nodded and took a paper match from his pocket.
With one hand, he quickly scraped the side of the matchbox along the match head peeking halfway out.
Fssst-
He exhaled smoke lazily and flicked the broken match head onto the ground.
“You’re not the first one to become the Teacher’s errand runner.”
Wangcho took a drag from his cigarette.
He jerked his chin toward the upper part of the city, in the direction of Civitas Square.
“There’s a dessert shop up there. I hear it’s incredibly famous.”
“Why are you bringing that up all of a sudden?”
“The heir there used to be the Teacher’s errand runner. After working for a month or two, the Teacher saw they had a talent for handiwork and arranged for them to be adopted up there.”
Erica’s eyes widened at Wangcho’s explanation.
It wasn’t a noble house, but if it was a big enough dessert shop, that still put it in the ranks of a master artisan.
Naturally, it was hard to believe that a back-alley orphan had suddenly been chosen as the heir to a master up in the nicer district.
But Wangcho went on explaining without caring.
“And on Adventurer Street in B-Sector... was it Klaus? That guy was another one the Teacher bought an expensive bayonet for and let graduate. I hear he’s taken off so much lately he’s even got a nickname now.”
Wangcho began counting off the rest on his fingers.
A slave whose ankle got smashed in the arena ended up getting hired by the guard.
A prostitute with consumption retired, got married, and now runs a flower shop.
As Wangcho folded down one finger after another, Erica’s mouth slowly fell open.
“Well, something like that. You hit the jackpot, kid.”
“Then the people around the Teacher are all... th-those...
“Graduated?”
“Yeah. Do they all graduate like that?”
Was this some kind of new religion?
But at Erica’s reaction, Wangcho frowned and shook his head in disgust.
“No, I mean that’s what happens to the jackpot cases. You think every dog and cow gets that treatment?”
“Aw, what? Then there’s a standard for getting it? You said I looked like I’d graduate soon.”
“Beats me?”
Wangcho shrugged.
“Seems like it’s just whatever the Teacher feels like. Though errand runners do tend to turn out better than patients.”
Wangcho gave Erica a quick once-over.
“Well, it seems the younger you are, the more baggage you have, or the more unusual your illness is, the higher the chance.”
He patted his sturdy forearm and grumbled.
“Damn it. If only I’d been born five years later. Or at least gone in with an arm broken or something. Being too healthy is a sin, that’s what it is.”
Wangcho flashed two fingers and grinned.
“Anyway, you’ve got all three of those going for you, and your head works pretty well too. That’s why your chances of graduating are high.”
Erica swallowed hard.
Her gaze fell to her thin wrist.
She saw the worn-out sleeve with burst seams and the grime that never came out from under her nails.
I’ve already had enough miracles.
There was no tomorrow in this life.
When she woke in the morning, her urine was always black, her stomach was always empty, and her tongue always craved blood.
She thought that if only she could escape that terrible routine, there would be nothing else to wish for.
But the moment she escaped it, she began craving a different kind of happiness.
‘Graduation….’
She imagined the life that would come after the 'graduation' Wangcho had mentioned.
Inside that iron wall.
There would be warm soup, clean clothes, and a future where no one could look down on her.
She was already hungry.
‘...Right. Just for a little while.’
Desire rose deep within Erica’s eyes.
She still did not trust that human who called himself by that strange profession, 'doctor.'
If he was a healer, then he was a healer. If an alchemist, then he was an alchemist.
What kind of profession was a doctor supposed to be?
From the introduction alone, she couldn’t shake the feeling that he was some kind of scammer.
It wasn’t just his profession—she couldn’t trust his motives either.
Because down in this gutter, there was nothing less trustworthy than a promise of goodwill.
But,
‘It’s worth enduring.’
She didn’t know what purpose that eccentric healer had, but if the end result benefited her, wasn’t it a ship worth boarding?
‘It’s not like I have anything to lose anyway.’
Since a miracle had already happened, graduation was just a bonus.
At worst, she’d break even.
Just as Erica was about to lighten her steps, vaguely dreaming of a sweet future,
“Hey, kid.”
“Yeah?”
“If you want to sell a bear skin you haven’t even caught, that’s your business, but remember one thing.”
Wangcho’s low voice cut into her thoughts.
He turned and looked down at Erica.
The golden eyes unique to hyena beastfolk glowed in the dim alley.
“When people work with the Teacher, there are always one or two idiots who start thinking the power belongs to them and cross the line. Especially the ones who ride the Teacher’s name and go causing trouble at other shops.”
“…The Teacher is that big of a deal?”
“You haven’t even heard the rumors going around this place?”
“I only come out at night, so I don’t know.”
“Fair enough. I’d already forgotten what you looked like a few days ago.”
The tension that had been clinging to Wangcho eased.
Perhaps embarrassed at having suspected a clueless little girl, he rubbed the back of his neck and said,
“Well, you’ll figure it out once you start working, so I’ll tell you in advance.”
He lifted his index finger and tapped his own face.
“It may be your first time meeting that person, but none of us have ever seen the face under that mask.”
Wangcho searched through his memories of the past year.
The past year.
No one in this red-light district had seen the face under that mask.
Even when eating or drinking, he used a private room alone, so whatever lay beneath that crow mask had to be filled in by imagination.
“But sometimes you can learn a little from someone’s breathing.”
Wangcho said, pointing to his half-severed hyena ears.
“This is a secret, but sometimes I can hear coughing from beyond the treatment room. It’s been that way since the first time he came here a year ago.”
A cough is one thing for a day or two.
But if it goes on for a week, then more than a month, you have to assume something’s wrong.
Erica thought the same.
“Maybe his throat’s bad?”
“Not sure. The cough sounds like it’s coming from deeper inside. I think the inside of his throat may have burned away. Fire, chemicals, something like that.”
Erica frowned.
“Who would do that?”
“Nobles, probably.”
Wangcho answered calmly.
“What do you think the Teacher’s race is?”
“Uh….”
Erica thought about it carefully.
A small build for the way he spoke and the aura he gave off.
But too slender to call him a dwarf.
Above all, there was that delicate(?) touch he had shown when finding her veins during the transfusion.
“A gnome?”
“Yeah. A gnome. This is just speculation from here on, but I think the Teacher may have crossed the wrong people—some demihuman-haters.”
“Demihuman-haters?”
“You know how the upper crust are. On the surface they call him ‘Teacher, Teacher,’ but in private they’re holding a grudge, and the moment a treatment goes even slightly wrong, they pounce on it.”
“Ah.”
It was convincing.
There were plenty of cripples who drifted into Limbus Pit with stories like that.
A dwarf who forged a noble’s ceremonial sword, then had their hands crushed so they could never make anything greater again.
An elf who had once been a promising magical researcher, but whose eyes were gouged out for supposedly observing too much.
A beastfolk performer who acted in a satirical play, fell out of a noble’s favor, and was forced to gulp down boiling water.
In these back alleys full of every kind of story, something like Teacher Schnabel’s story could easily happen.
“His skill is that good, and he doesn’t use holy magic, so I figure he probably lost his faith back then too. Ah, forget I said that. It’s just my guess.”
“R-right.”
“Anyway. Even after all that, it seems he still has ties up top. So I’m telling you not to get full of yourself. Your wings aren’t yours—they belong to the Teacher.”
“O-okay, I get it.”
Erica nodded, stumbling over her words.
She understood exactly what Wangcho was trying to say.
It was the Teacher who had ties with nobles, not some errand runner for the Teacher.
So know your place and don’t act big.
It was also a virtue necessary to survive in Limbus Pit, so she accepted it quickly.
“Okay.”
Wangcho nodded in satisfaction too.
Of course, Erica didn’t seem like the type to Wangcho.
Judging by how she’d hidden away at night for years, stealing only blood and never doing anything beyond that, she was unusually good at understanding her place for her age.
But you never knew with people, so the warning was necessary.
‘If another guy like that shows up, it’ll be a pain for everyone.’
During the last blizzard season, there was a guy selling drugs under Teacher Schnabel’s name.
Fortunately, Wangcho found him first before Teacher Schnabel returned, so it was stopped before it could go any further,
‘If the Teacher had seen that mess...’
Even imagining it made Wangcho go cold inside.
A healer with ties to nobles, who also served as a director of the pharmaceutical merchant guild.
He had no confidence he could clean up the mess if someone in his territory impersonated such a person and things escalated.
He just wanted to live peacefully, playing the part of the back-alley boss.
Getting entangled with nobles was absolutely off-limits.
“Hey, Wangcho.”
At Erica’s call, Wangcho returned to reality.
“But why would someone like that come all the way down here? Don’t you find that suspicious?”
“Of course it’s suspicious.”
“Then why are you talking like you trust the Teacher?”
“Then what am I supposed to do, not trust him?”
Wangcho shrugged.
“He saved over eight hundred of my people last year alone. After doing that much for us, even if he came down here to run human experiments, it’s only polite to look the other way on a few things, kid.”
“….”
“And a dog doesn’t turn up its nose at food put in its bowl. The ones who did ended up starving to death.”
Who in this cesspit can afford to be picky about healers?
Wangcho left it at that and continued guiding her.
Erica followed Wangcho’s back and fell into thought.
A dog doesn’t pick at the food in its bowl.
It wasn’t wrong.
Erica had survived that way until now too.
But.
‘Nobles, huh.’
The word stuck in a corner of her heart like a thorn.
‘Is this really okay?’
There is an old saying in this world.
<A rope twisted from gold is still good for hanging yourself with.>
It means that the more splendid the lifeline, the more certainly it can tighten around your throat if you get tangled in it.
It’s also a proverb warning you to be careful when making ties with nobles.
And it also happens to describe the rope Erica was holding right now.
‘Of course, whether that rope would pull her up or leave her dangling in the air was another matter.’
A rude game with no clear graduation criteria and no explanation for failure.
A criterion that even Wangcho, after a full year, still tilted his head over—literally whatever Teacher Schnabel felt like.
But one thing was certain.
Rather than grab a rotten rope and fall, it was better to hang by a golden one.
Her predecessors must have accepted this path with the same mindset.
‘If I’m going to die, I might as well look good doing it.’
Thinking that, she gladly stepped onto that precarious voyage.
*
How many years had it been since she’d had a room with a proper roof and heating?
After Yulian got off work, Erica, left behind at the clinic, thought to herself.
For Limbus Pit, it was a surprisingly cozy living space.
This space was now her room.
‘If I graduate... will I go somewhere better?’
She pulled the bear-fur blanket Wangcho had thrown her over herself and thought.
But was it because of the unease she couldn’t quite shake?
She had a restless sleep, the kind of uneasy rest she’d never had even in the cold alley.
And in her dream, she lived through a day no one had ever lived.
======
▽▽▽
This is the story of an ordinary day no one had ever spent.
▽▽▽
“...Where is this?”
There’s blood on my hands.
No matter how much I wash, it won’t come off.
It feels like it’s seeped under my nails, between my palm lines, deep into the bones.
Ah, right.
I worked again today.
The slaughterhouse ceiling is high.
Things hung from hooks sway in rows.
There are pigs, and cows, and then—
The smell of blood tickles my nose.
A scent that is both familiar and sweet.
Type A.
What came in today was Type A.
The blood type of the owner of this slaughterhouse.
“...”
What was that person’s name again?
My hand trembles as I try to remember.
The moment those golden eyes went out flashes before me.
Not surprise, not resentment—just blank eyes.
Ah, so it was you.
That’s what they seemed to say.
What did they say at the end?
Did they say they were sorry?
Or that they should have killed me sooner?
I don’t remember.
And it’s not worth remembering.
What matters is only that after that, the slaughterhouse became hers.
— “Today they said we needed the pancreas and kidneys.”
Muttering to herself, she selects the parts with practiced hands and places them into a silver steel carrier.
Several cuts of meat are packed with ice into a case that gives off a chilly yet luxurious air.
“...”
She lifts the case and goes upstairs.
The carriage climbs the slope.
The scenery of Sanctum Hill slides past outside the window.
Streets lined with gas lamps, mansions built of white brick, neatly arranged gardens.
It seems there was a time when she used to long for this street.
But humans are creatures of adaptation, and now Erica felt little when passing through it.
The carriage stops.
The familiar mask emblem hanging at the villa entrance welcomes Erica.
Knock, knock.
The door opens, and a tall handsome man with crow-feather-colored hair greets her.
A pale man who looked as if he’d never seen sunlight.
A face she didn’t know, and yet somehow did.
— “Welcome, Miss Erica.”
His cold eyes curved slightly.
He had the kind of face that would charm plenty of women.
And in fact, he had charmed quite a few.
—
“In good condition. Thank you, as always.”
The man she didn’t know, and yet somehow did, took the case and inspected its contents.
She didn’t feel any warmth from his body when he took it, but Erica didn’t care.
Since the moment this man found her while she was going cold in the back alleys, body heat had long since become a word from a distant memory.
Erica simply lowered her head.
Whatever kind of person her creator and master was, it didn’t matter to her—she was only a thrall, after all.
However, her particular master was sensitive about how he was addressed.
Cult leader, Your Excellency, Master.
There were many titles society used for him, but only one was allowed for Erica.
That person... yes.
He was the Teacher.
The Teacher took the case and disappeared inside.
The destination was probably the aging room.
The ones brought in a few days ago were probably there too.
— “You’ve come all this way, so please have a meal before you go.”
Refusing is not an option for her.
Meanwhile, Erica’s steps headed toward the dining room.
As she passed through the hallway, she met the eyes of a framed picture on the wall.
A happy family photo.
In the middle of it was a young Teacher with a somber expression.
A black ribbon is attached to the photo.
Is it mourning?
It was hard to imagine that person feeling grief.
If she, a mere retainer, were to dare guess, that person would have regretted not being able to show this family his art.
That’s what the black ribbon meant.
Well, not that it matters much.
Erica passed the frame and headed back toward the dining room.
When she reached the dining room, she saw a white tablecloth, silverware, and wineglasses shining beneath the chandelier.
At the host’s seat, the place of honor, sat the Teacher.
She sat in one of the guest seats.
And in the remaining seat—
— “Mmph. Mmmph—!”
A woman with a blood-red gag writhes in her chair.
Young.
Pretty.
She’s wearing an expensive dress.
Ah, one of those types.
A young lady the Teacher had hooked.
There were plenty of women like that in this city.
They hear rumors of a cold handsome healer, dream of being a fairy-tale princess, and end up seated at this table.
“...”
Erica silently looked at the young lady.
Then the Teacher, wearing an apron, placed a plate on the table.
— “The Roman gourmand Apicius considered flamingo tongues the finest delicacy. They understood the tongue’s potential.”
Rome?
Sometimes the Teacher is so smart that he casually spits out knowledge she doesn’t know.
But it wasn’t very important to Erica, so she let it go in one ear and out the other.
— “It’s quite amazing, isn’t it? The muscle that works the busiest and roughest in life becomes so tender when slowly cooked at low temperature. It’ll taste even better with Madeira sauce.”
Clank, clank!
The blood-gagged lady tried to move her chair, but the chair nailed to the floor didn’t budge.
Erica lifted the knife indifferently.
Then the Teacher intruded into her thoughts.
— “Miss Erica. Don’t you know this lady?”
— “Not particularly.”
Did she slander Erica at the last ball, saying she smelled like a pig?
Or did she frown at Erica when she passed by?
I don’t know.
There were so many young ladies she’d bumped into.
Anyway....
— “Even if I knew her, nothing would change.”
— “It’s important. The order changes.”
The Teacher tilted his wineglass.
Before long, the young lady who had been letting out little screams from her chair went limp, exhausted.
The Teacher wiped his mouth with a napkin and stood up.
— “Miss Erica.”
— “Yeah?”
— “Stay here for a few days. The Flamingos have been more active lately.”
Erica nodded.
Flamingos.
A slang term for the knights who patrol Sanctum Hill.
She calmly finished her meal.
Then she met the young lady’s eyes.
— “Mmph!”
— “I don’t have any personal grudge against you. You understand that a hunting dog can’t afford to be picky, right?”
She gripped the knife in reverse.
As Erica approached, the young lady screamed,
Splat.
Red wine splashed onto the newspaper laid at the corner of the table.
<Jane the Ripper, already 12 victims in Sanctum Hill alone>
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“...What was it again?”
And the next day.
At the clinic in Limbus Pit, a red-haired girl rubbed her eyes and sat up.
She only retained the memory that she had dreamed an uncomfortable dream.