Chapter 15
If she wakes up, it'll be a fuss again.
I let out a sigh as I looked down at the unconscious Eri.
When we arrived at the Sanctum Hill manor, the maids took Eri and carried her to the annex.
I left the rest to the head maid.
Bath, fresh clothes, food.
Meanwhile, I prepared fifty reasons why this child should be raised in our family's annex to persuade my father and mother.
- She's bright, she has mage talent, and so on...
They gave permission right away before I could even list the reasons.
— “At last, Julian’s being spoiled...!”
My mother deserves a hundred thank-yous for accepting that as spoiled behavior.
*
And so, the next morning arrived.
I received a report from the head maid.
“She woke up last night, ate, and went right back to sleep.”
“Did she cause any trouble?”
“No. Although...”
“Although?”
“She seemed uncomfortable with the blanket and kept rustling around.”
Ah, I see.
It was probably because it was her first time with a cotton quilt.
Something I'd taken for granted since birth was probably only within reach of the wealthier middle class among commoners.
For Eri, a poor orphan from Limbus Pit, it was probably the first blanket she'd ever slept under.
“Should I wake her, young master?”
“I’ll wake her myself.”
“Pardon?”
There she goes again.
The head maid was looking at me strangely again.
It was the same look the servants gave me whenever I appeared in the kitchen.
“I need to explain something early this morning. Ah, and could you prepare a lunchbox for today as well?”
“Ah... yes...”
The head maid looked a little dazed.
The guy who always made his own lunchbox was suddenly asking for help because he was busy today, so some other form of cognitive dissonance must have kicked in.
Leaving the confused head maid behind, I headed to the annex.
Hmm. It’s been a while since I saw my sweet home.
It’s technically in the past tense now since I live in the main house.
I opened the door to the room I used to stay in.
There was a cotton blanket puffed up like a boa constrictor that had swallowed an elephant.
The wriggling meant Eri was tossing around inside.
Or maybe the blanket was in the middle of digesting Eri.
I pulled the blanket back and said,
“Wake up.”
At my voice, Eri rubbed her eyes and lifted her head.
And the moment she saw me, her eyes went wide.
“...Who are you?”
Eri glared at me irritably.
It was a natural reaction.
After all, I wasn’t wearing my crow mask right now.
Eri’s gaze swept over me.
Wariness appeared on her face.
She was sizing me up.
In the red-light district, it was important to judge whether someone was worth picking a fight with, so this must have been a habit etched into her.
“Hey.”
After finishing her assessment, Eri pulled the blanket up and asked,
“How long have you been here?”
Based on her judgment, it seemed she thought I was either one of the others who’d been dragged here or a servant.
This blasted power of misunderstanding just keeps hitting me out of nowhere.
She was probably trying to settle the hierarchy in advance, thinking of me as some senior who’d been dragged here with her.
‘What, does she think Teacher Schnabel is some kind of orphan collector?’
It would’ve been amusing to keep pretending to be a servant, but unfortunately my schedule today was packed.
Since I didn’t have time to joke around, I told her the truth right away.
“It’s me.”
“Since when did I ever see you—”
“Didn’t I tell you yesterday that your mouth determines your worth? Watch your words. This is your last chance.”
“...”
Silence.
One second. Two seconds. Three seconds.
“...Bweh?”
Eri’s mouth fell open.
“Th-there’s no way. Teacher Schnabel is a gnome over 150 years old. He was exiled from a duke’s house after his face was burned...”
“Did you really believe that?”
“Everyone says so.”
“I never once admitted any of that.”
Eri’s eyes wavered.
[A gnome healer with 150 years of experience.]
[After botching treatment at a duke’s house, his face was badly scarred, and he wears a crow mask to hide it.]
[He was later exiled to the red-light district, where he lives a life of service.]
(+These days, that same person rides around in a limousine that comes down from Sanctum Hill.)
It took some time for the half-awake Eri to accept the reality that all of that was a lie.
“...Ehh? Teacher? You tricked me?”
“I never lied.”
It was the face of a child who’d just been told Santa didn’t exist.
Somehow, I feel guilty even though I don’t think I did anything wrong.
“No way... You were my age...? N-no, that’s impossible!!”
Eri screamed and buried herself under the blanket.
What kind of fantasy had she been nursing about me for to react like that?
Then the door opened and a maid came in.
“Young master, breakfast is ready.”
Eri’s head slowly turned toward the maid.
And then back to me.
Me. Maid. Me. Maid.
“Yo-young master...? Not the attending physician...?”
Eri’s voice cracked.
It seemed she had assumed I was some guest of this baronial family, or the family physician.
Well, what kind of young master would come all the way down to Limbus Pit at this age to treat patients?
From a common-sense point of view, thinking the same way as her was perfectly reasonable.
“So you’re not the one getting eaten...?”
“If we’re being technical, I suppose I’m the one doing the eating.”
I sighed and completely pulled the blanket off Eri.
“Eat and get ready. Since it’s the weekend, we’re going somewhere other than the clinic.”
“S-somewhere else?”
“The merchant guild.”
“Mer... chant guild...?”
Eri’s eyes lost focus.
Worried she might faint again, I hurriedly clapped right in front of her face.
Clap!
“Eek!”
“Snap out of it. Eat your breakfast and come out.”
As I left the room, I gave the maid my instructions.
“After she eats, dress her in her going-out clothes and bring her to the front door.”
“Understood, young master.”
***
An hour later.
Eri who appeared at the front door looked like a completely different person.
Her red hair had been neatly brushed back. A white blouse, navy vest, knee-length skirt, and leather shoes.
She looked like the daughter of some merchant family, not a vagrant from the red-light district.
“...This is weird.”
Eri tugged at her collar, looking uncomfortable.
“I didn’t know clothes could feel this uncomfortable.”
“You’ll have to get used to it. They’re your clothes.”
“Wha? These are mine?”
I led the broken Eri outside.
A black sedan was waiting there.
“Get in.”
After getting into the car, Eri asked cautiously,
“...Where are we going? No, where are we headed?”
Her way of addressing me had changed.
Now that she knew I was a young master, casual speech must have felt uncomfortable.
“You don’t have to speak formally. You’ll be wearing a mask outside anyway.”
“...Okay.”
The car set off.
On the way, Eri asked a question carefully.
“By the way, why do you wear a mask?”
“To protect me from bad energy.”
“Not to hide your identity?”
“I’ve never hidden it.”
My personal information security level hadn’t changed much since my days in 21st-century Korea.
If I gave a red-light district info broker a few coins, they’d probably dig up even my bare face and identity.
Most of them seemed to stop investigating the moment they learned I was from Sanctum Hill, though.
And with the rumor that a healer whose face had been burned at a duke’s house was involved, they were probably afraid of getting caught up in some succession struggle.
I can understand why, to the poor, nobles are basically Celestial Dragons.
‘Still, even if you know what my bare face looks like, I’m not going to eat you.’
The car kept driving all the while.
Unlike yesterday, it was going down, not up.
It left Sanctum Hill and headed to Civitas Square.
The white marble outside the window gradually gave way to gray brick.
“This is... Civitas Square.”
“Yeah.”
“Isn’t this the commoners’ district?”
“That’s right.”
“Teacher, why are we in a place like this... ah.”
Remembering that I was a young master who also went to Limbus Pit, Eri stopped herself.
In the meantime, the car came to a stop.
We had arrived in front of a five-story building in the middle of the shopping district.
A brass sign was mounted on the front of the building.
[Mercure Merchant Guild]
Eri muttered as she looked out the window.
“...The merchant guild?”
Instead of answering, I opened the car door and got out.
Eri got out after me.
The moment we entered the building, all the employees in the lobby bowed in unison.
“...Director?”
She looked up at me.
“Bweh?”
“Get used to it.”
Even I found this treatment burdensome at first, but after a few years, I got used to it.
“Let’s go in.”
Eri followed after me with stiff, creaking steps.
*
The Merchant Guild Master’s office.
When I opened the door, a plump middle-aged man shot to his feet.
A greasy face, glittering eyes, and shiny gold teeth.
A textbook nouveau riche.
But I know this man is actually pretty decent, appearances aside.
On the contrary, he's an unusually conscientious guild master who has no shady business and handles his deals faithfully, a person completely out of place in this world.
‘So conscientious that the guild almost went under right before I brought quinine and insulin.’
That was part of why I chose him as a trading partner.
Saving a merchant this stupidly kind is the protagonist’s duty, after all.
That said, after those two drugs caused the guild to grow rapidly and he got a taste for money, the guild master’s image had been steadily turning into that of a wicked nouveau riche.
It wasn’t just his behavior either; his face had changed a lot too.
Still, he hadn’t been this fat when we first met.
‘Maybe I should make a weight-loss drug later.’
If I keep churning out diabetes medicine, maybe I’ll get lucky and make one someday.
I heard that sort of thing was how it was made in the world I used to live in too.
Well, let’s set that far-future talk aside.
“Ooh! Young master! Welcome!”
The guild master came over, rubbing his hands together.
“Would you like coffee?”
“I’m only 12.”
“Ah, right. You said you’d drink it at 18. I keep forgetting! Haha! Then tea it is. We’ve got some Darjeeling we brought in this year.”
“Thank you.”
The guild master signaled to his secretary.
While the secretary prepared the tea, the guild master brought over a stack of documents from his desk.
The guild master sat on the sofa opposite me and handed me a copy.
“Here’s last quarter’s sales. Quinine was up 12 percent from the previous quarter thanks to increased military contracts, insulin rose 15 percent because marketing succeeded among diabetic nobles, and colchicine was up 8 percent because gout patients kept repurchasing it...”
Numbers flooded out.
I probably wouldn’t understand half of it, but I passed over the already-read documents with the sense that Eri should study them too.
“One, two... um... uhh...”
I could see Eri giving up on counting the zeros with her fingers.
Once I finished checking the documents the guild master had handed me, it was my turn.
I took the research log out of the leather file.
“I have good news, Guild Master.”
“Oh? A new drug?”
“If an improvement counts as a new drug, then yes, it’s a new drug.”
The guild master’s eyes lit up.
I opened the research log and showed it to him.
“I succeeded in improving insulin purity. It’s a zinc crystallization method, and the purity went up by about 30 percent compared to the existing version.”
“Th-thirty percent?!”
30 percent was actually a conservative estimate.
I majored in medicine, not alchemy.
Which is why the technology in this world still feels unfamiliar to me.
If even I could improve it by 30 percent, then people who were used to alchemy would obviously do even better.
When the guild master heard that, he shot to his feet.
“Th-then the inflammation problem at the injection site...!”
“I think it’ll be almost solved. The risk of hypoglycemic shock will also drop significantly, and the duration of action will increase too.”
I said that while pointing to the conclusion section of the research log.
The zinc-crystallized insulin also absorbs more slowly, so it can reduce the number of injections per day... in short, it’s a revolution.
The guild master’s hand trembled as he held the log.
“Sob...! Young master... no, Director...! Hic...”
Soon, unable to hold back his overflowing emotions, the guild master burst into tears.
It was a little grotesque, but there was a reason for that reaction.
The old insulin often made the injection site swell up because of impurities, or made patients collapse when the concentration was off.
Because of that, it had been saddled with the stigma of being “a deadly drug for a deadly disease.”
And because of those side effects, the market reaction was colder than expected even though it was an innovative drug for treating diabetes.
Nobles are terribly conservative people, after all.
But this improvement will solve most of that problem.
It’ll probably become a star product standing shoulder to shoulder with quinine.
The guild master, who had already tasted quinine’s glory once, probably sensed that and was reacting like this.
“When do you think we can get it on the market?”
At my question, the guild master, who’d been pressing a fist to his mouth, started counting on his fingers.
“If we lock the factory doors and grind the alchemists down... five months... no, three months should be enough!”
“Set the development period at four months, and add another six months on top of that.”
“Pardon?”
The guild master blinked.
Why should this adorable golden goose be held back any longer?
That resentful feeling was plain in his eyes.
But I had a line I couldn’t compromise on.
“This is the clinical trial period. We need to administer it to at least 50 patients and collect side-effect data. We can’t release it to the market before that.”
I don’t want the medicine I made to go down in history as one with ugly side effects.
What I want is a perfect misunderstanding-novel protagonist, after all.
But the guild master wasn’t a man with ambitions like mine.
He was a man who moved strictly according to money, profit, and the logic of this world.
“Ah, that... Young master, to be honest, the other guilds don’t do that. Once a drug is finished, they sell it right away—they can’t keep up with demand even if they want to...”
As the guild master said.
In this world, to be blunt, morality is a luxury.
In my past life, if a pharmaceutical company botched a side-effect issue, it would collapse. But in this world, you can hush it up and bury it.
A patient with side effects? What patient?
Good heavens! The witness took a wrong turn outside the Wall and vanished on the way?
How in the world did the keepsake of a missing person end up outside the Wall?
Even with our guild’s current scale, we can now pull off even that.
But I don’t want to do that.
That’s not something a misunderstanding-novel protagonist should do.
“I understand. That’s why we should draw a distinction.”
But in this world, persuading people with morality takes far too long.
They even pretend to be convinced, then start pulling weird tricks behind your back.
So you have to persuade them with the logic of money.
“Guild Master. Who are insulin’s main customers? Commoners?”
“No. It’s the nobles, sir.”
“Yes. They’re very suspicious people. They even use slaves to test anything that goes into their bodies.”
“Ah, no way...!”
“We need to show them we’ve put this much care into it so the nobles can feel safe taking the medicine. Then they won’t complain even if the price goes up.”
I sold him on it as a kind of premiumization strategy.
Even when the world changes, performances like this work.
“There’s such deep meaning behind it...!”
The guild master applauded in admiration.
I gave my final reminder.
“However, you mustn’t do the testing carelessly. The moment nobles think this is just a show, it’ll backfire.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, young master!”
The guild master bowed deeply.
I nodded and moved on to the next item.
“And there’s someone I’d like to introduce.”
I pointed at Eri, who'd been sitting there like a sack of barley the entire meeting.
“She’s my personal assistant.”
“Oh. So you’ve finally brought someone in.”
The guild master’s gaze turned to Eri.
A timid girl who still hadn’t shaken off the unmistakable air of someone from the slums.
Someone like the guild master would probably be able to guess her background.
That Limbus Pit smell doesn’t disappear overnight, after all.
But the guild master didn’t show it.
“By the way, what led you to hire this one?”
“I brought her because she has mage talent.”
“A mage! As expected of the young master’s eye for talent...!”
“...”
I shot him a look that said to stop flattering me.
Man, I’m really getting worn down here.
The guild master coughed and straightened his clothes.
And then he politely held out his hand to Eri.
“Gustav Meyerne, Guild Master of the Mercure Merchant Guild. I look forward to working with you, little miss.”
Eri only nodded blankly.
She still had a face that hadn’t processed the situation.