Chapter 19
*
Lunchtime at the clinic. The morning consultations had blown through like a storm, and a brief peace had settled in.
I filled a cup with water and snapped my fingers.
Crackle. Bubble, bubble.
A small flame flared up from the matchstick beside me as the catalyst, and the water boiled in an instant.
Even if it wasn't practical combat magic, lifestyle magic could be used with a catalyst.
Even without magical sensitivity, you could force through this sort of rough miracle as long as you poured in enough mana.
For the record, of course, someone who activated magic this way wouldn't be counted as a mage.
You weren't about to go waving a matchstick around in front of monsters, after all.
Once the water had come to a proper boil, I added instant coffee... no, herbal powder and stirred it well.
In a world without electric kettles, magic was an excellent substitute for household appliances.
“Mm.”
I took a sip, and it tasted damn awful.
Was it because I used a matchstick as the catalyst?
Forget controlling the heat; it didn't even have any charm.
No wonder nobles used expensive tea sets or hired butlers who specialized in tea.
I tried it once, and I don't think I'll ever brew tea like this again.
“Wow….”
Still, this magic hadn't been a complete failure.
Because Eri, who was chewing on a sandwich across from me, had her eyes wide.
Heh. Who do you think I am?
A genius who mastered the basics of magic in three months at age twelve.
From the perspective of a performance meant to show off, this magic was a success.
“Teacher, was that magic just now? Turning on a light.”
“Yes. It's called lifestyle magic.”
“Can I learn that too?”
Eri tugged her chair closer, her eyes sparkling.
At that spirited reaction, the corners of my mouth lifted on their own.
Right.
If you were my assistant, you shouldn't be shrinking back—you should be coming at me like that.
Not giving up just because you came from Limbus Pit.
“With that, you wouldn't need matches, and it’d be convenient when you're walking home at night too. Just snap your fingers, and the fire goes whoosh!”
Her explanation, complete with hand motions, was quite enthusiastic.
I could see the pure curiosity and glittering admiration that suited a teenage girl.
Thanks to that, I couldn't help but smile warmly.
If I were a typical fantasy novel mentor, I'd probably say, 'Very well, I can see your talent,' and teach her at least a basic breathing method.
But in this world, I couldn't do that.
“No.”
“Huh, why?”
“Eri. How old are you?”
“I haven't had my birthday yet, so I'm eleven.”
We're only a few months apart.
“That's why you can't. At least wait until your birthday, then ask me again.”
Eri puffed out her lips.
“What does age have to do with it? I'm smart too.”
“It's not a matter of brains.”
I set down the tea I'd been drinking without even thinking.
I'd been drinking it for the image, but this stuff tasted disgusting.
“You can't learn magic before you're twelve. It's forbidden by law.”
“Huh? What kind of law is that?”
“This one. In the Empire.”
There really was one.
And if you didn't follow it, scary old men from the imperial family would come down to scold you.
“Isn't it just because you don't want to teach me?”
“No. Learning magic before twelve is actually dangerous.”
“What's dangerous about it?”
“If things go wrong, your body could be ruined, and you might never be able to use magic again.”
Eri put down her sandwich and focused on what I said.
“Really? Why? How does that work?”
“To use magic, your mana circuit has to mature. It varies from person to person, but we give it until age twelve as a cushion for when that circuit is fully grown.”
“I might grow faster than that.”
“True. But you might also grow slower.”
There was no way to know whether that mana circuit had finished forming.
So, as an experience-based rule of thumb, once someone turned twelve, we judged them to have finished developing comfortably.
And that was a painful lesson learned from countless wrong answers in the Empire's long history.
“Since magicians are rare, and mages even rarer, the Empire doesn't want to lose talent over something that ridiculous.”
So they made it illegal.
This law applied without exception to commoners, peasants, nobles, and even members of the imperial family.
“So unless there's a special exception, you can't learn magic before twelve.”
“What's the exception?”
“If you awaken it on your own without anyone teaching you, or if you're in a situation where you might die unless you learn magic... well, there are other cases too, but none of them apply to you right now.”
“Maybe if I secretly...”
“Don't even dream about it.”
Do you think the imperial family that has held power for a thousand years in this hopeless dark fantasy world is a joke?
If you break that kind of rule, they'll find out like ghosts and send those scary old men after you.
Once they mobilize, not just a baron's house but even a count's house would have to brace itself for annihilation.
Naturally, wiping a slum district off the map would be nothing to them.
“So wait a year.”
“Then I can learn it?”
“Probably.”
Honestly, I wasn't entirely sure myself.
I had no idea whether the Central Magical Administration would approve it.
Magic in this world was treated roughly like firearms, so you had to report it and learn it properly from the start.
And after learning it, you had to register as either a magician or a mage.
They even refused permits if the type of magic, your criminal record, or your background made you seem dangerous.
Because of that, people from poor backgrounds had a hard time getting magic licenses.
Things got worse after some crazy poor bastard went on a rampage in Sanctum Hill about a hundred years ago.
'If I say I'll take responsibility, maybe they'd grant it...'
Well, that was something to think about when the time came.
“All right, once you've finished brunch, let's get the next patient ready. We're only doing morning rounds today, so we'll be heading home early. It's going to be a busy one.”
“What was the schedule for this afternoon?”
“We've got an experiment to do at Boss's slaughterhouse today. That's where we're going.”
“Yeees~”
***
When we arrived at the slaughterhouse, Boss's underlings were in the middle of butchering pigs.
carefully separating the lungs for neonatal surfactant,
and carefully separating the pancreas so it wouldn't be damaged for insulin.
Recently, they'd added the step of separating out the small intestine and scraping the inside clean.
Beside me, wearing a crow mask, Eri pinched her nose.
“Ugh. It smells like shit. You're not actually making medicine out of that poop, are you?”
“No. We'll be making it from the intestines.”
We're going to make heparin from those pigs' small intestines.
The medicine that dissolves blood clots.
And an ultimate trump card for internal medicine.
'With just this, I feel like I could even start a cult.'
Even in this world, strokes and heart attacks caused by blood clots were some of the worst diseases, ones even divine magic couldn't cure.
For someone like that, administering heparin and bringing them back would be no different from a miracle of God or the return of a saint.
If you then hit them with a 'rise and walk' line,
boom, isekai Jesus complete.
Of course, I had no intention of starting a cult.
Even if I was the protagonist of a misunderstanding story, if I tried to fool people by starting a cult, my protagonist buff would wear off.
Unless the genre was picaresque or xianxia, I needed to avoid doing bad things like that whenever possible.
“But, Teacher.”
Eri asked, peering into the bucket holding the cleaned intestines.
“Do we really need this medicine?”
“We do.”
“Hmm….”
Eri tilted her head.
In a world that didn't even properly grasp the concept of blood clots, let alone the mechanism of a stroke.
It would be hard to understand why you'd need to dissolve them in the first place.
“Well, if Teacher says it's necessary, then I guess it is.”
I quietly watched Eri shrug.
In truth, I was making this medicine because of her.
The PNH she suffers from—paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria—has a high risk of stroke caused by blood clots.
She's fine now, but once she gets past twenty, the risk will skyrocket.
So if I couldn't cure the PNH, I would at least make heparin in advance to prepare for a stroke.
'Thanks to magic, controlling enzyme temperature is conveniently easy now, too.'
Recently, magic had made temperature control possible.
The enzyme only worked properly if the water was kept between 37 and 40 degrees Celsius, which was necessary to make heparin, but before now there was no delicate way to maintain that temperature.
Magic had solved that problem to some extent.
'So this really was the event telling me to take the alchemy route.'
And as a bonus, this incident gave me confidence in which direction I should develop my magic.
“Hey, you son of a bitch!”
Just then, a shout from the side cut off my thoughts.
It was Boss.
A middle-aged man in an apron was grabbing the collar of a young man who looked like a new hire.
“Do you know how much this one bit of offal is worth?! Huh?!”
“I-I’m sorry!”
“This one small intestine is worth more than your innards....”
Boss, who had been shouting, met my eyes.
A brief silence.
Then he continued, lowering his voice a little.
“...not that it's any more valuable than that…. Still, be careful! If it gets damaged like this, we can't deliver it!”
“Sorry….”
“Sigh. Let's dock a little from your wages. I was going to dock you for the full amount of the damage you caused, but you'll still have to work here, so I'll only cut one day's pay. No complaints, right?”
“Huh? Y-yes!”
The rookie hurriedly gathered up the pieces of small intestine scattered on the floor.
Then he fled as if running away.
Eri watched the scene and gasped in admiration.
“Wow, Boss's personality has gotten so much softer.”
...
Just what are you doing behind my back for the kid to judge you like this....
After finishing the employee training, Boss walked over with a deep sigh.
“Welcome, Dr. Schnabel.”
“Boss. You've got a lot on your plate.”
“The small intestines are coming along smoothly. But, you see….”
Boss scratched his head.
“The yield is good, but... sigh, we're getting some complaints.”
“Complaints?”
“The butchers, I mean. They're making a fuss that the small-intestine casings are being delivered too late, and that they don't have any casing (*small-intestine casing) for sausage-making. They're saying they'll have to close up shop tomorrow if this keeps up, the fools. Those worthless bastards... I can't exactly bury them alive.”
Ah, I see.
Sausage is a serious matter.
I sympathize, since I'm the kind of person who makes sausages by stuffing the filling directly into the casing when I cook.
“Are there a lot of complaints?”
“A ton. Just this morning, three butcher shop owners came by and kicked up a fuss before leaving. Teacher, can you do something about this?”
“Hmm.”
I rested my chin on my hand and thought.
“How exactly are you processing them?”
“Huh? Well, we do what you told us. We split the belly open and scrape with a spoon as hard as we can without making too many cuts....”
There's the problem.
How long is it going to take to scrape all that with a spoon?
They probably think they're being careful because the intestines are valuable, but if they do it like that, casing deliveries will only be delayed.
Besides, scraping with a spoon actually tears them more easily.
“Let's do it like this instead.”
I picked up one of the intestines that hadn't been cleaned yet.
I turned a beer bottle lying around in a corner of the slaughterhouse into something like a funnel by breaking it so only the neck remained.
I stuffed the intestine into it and said to Eri,
“Pull.”
“Ugh... it's slippery.”
Eri grabbed the other end of the intestine and pulled.
As it passed through the bottle's narrow opening, the mucous lining inside was pushed along and gushed out toward the mouth.
Thunk. Splat.
From the other end came a transparent, thin membrane with the mucosa neatly stripped away.
A perfect sausage casing.
At how easy the process was, Boss's jaw dropped.
“...Can you really do that? If it's for medicine, shouldn't we still scrape it carefully??”
“The mucosa doesn't need to be scraped that delicately. Even a rough scrape is fine for medicinal use.”
“Then the casing…”
“This method will actually damage the casing less than a spoon would. The process will also be faster.”
“Good grief... they say ignorance makes the body suffer. I guess I really am fated to never leave Limbus Pit.”
After that, Boss and I discussed what kind of funnel could replace the beer bottle.
The principle wasn't anything special, so we decided to have a blacksmith custom-make one.
The separated casing went to the butcher shop, and the remaining mucosa came to me.
Now that's killing two birds with one stone.
“Thank you, Teacher.”
“I'll take the mucosa.”
I had Eri carry the bucket full of mucosa.
You could say it's no way to treat a little girl, but that's what I hired her as an assistant for in the first place.
And what I'd recently learned after feeding her a lot was that this kid was stronger than I was.
Maybe that's because she has the potential to be a mage.
Still, a little hurtful to my pride.
“Let's eat lunch at Kivitas Square today.”
I said to Eri, who was carrying the bucket of mucosa beside me.
Normally I'd eat a lunchbox because of afternoon consultations, but today I had to go up for afternoon research.
We needed to borrow the merchant guild's laboratory to make the medicine.
“Really? Can it be a buffet too?”
“Of course.”
That day's lunch was a buffet.
Even after coming back from the slaughterhouse, she could still eat meat without batting an eye; her appetite really was something else.
***
And so, several months passed.
Heparin extraction went smoothly, and the clinic was still busy.
Winter in the red-light district was cold, and there were many patients.
It was about the same as every year.
'So this makes it my second year in the red-light district, huh?'
Around this time last year, we were all busy because our youngest sibling was being born.
And the heavy snowfall season would probably start soon.
'I should make the medicine and get it ready in advance.'
Last year's heavy snowfall season had killed far too many people.
I couldn't be here for everyone, but I needed to make sure that anyone who needed help could get medicine from Boss up front.
'And if things get bad, tell them not to punish anyone for stealing clinic food.'
Just in case.
Who knows, maybe there'd be a Jean Valjean in need of help this winter.
In a world like this, it wouldn't hurt to have at least one priest for someone like that.
Ah, was it bishop, not priest?
Anyway.
That day too, after finishing morning consultations, I headed to the butcher restaurant 'Fleishhof' run by Boss.
“Erika, slow down. You'll trip.”
Upon arriving at the restaurant, I looked up.
A sign written in Imperial script hung from the roof, whose eaves curved up toward the sky.
And beneath that Imperial script, gold-leaf letters in beastfolk writing, resembling archaic East Asian characters, read 'Buraesu Hobo (富來壽 豪府).'
Looking down, on either side of the circular doorway frame, oil-stained red lanterns swayed back and forth.
“Teacher! They say Fleishhof has sausage in today, so should we have that for lunch?”
“Let's see what meat they had yesterday first, then decide after that.”
Opening the door revealed a bright, two-story interior with an open ceiling all the way up.
In the central hall, dozens of square wooden tables were packed tightly together, and between them Boss's female staff, towels draped over their shoulders, hurried back and forth carrying plates of meat.
I don't know much about wuxia, but I do know this structure is an inn, and that those female staff should be called serving girls.
But the menu was Western-style.
I still can't get used to it no matter how many times I see it.
I couldn't even tell where to start criticizing it, so I decided to just accept it as Boss's sense of style and stop caring.
I was heading toward the reserved room at the entrance of that bizarre hybrid place.
At the room's entrance, Boss was standing with his arms crossed, waiting for me, and stopped me.
“Teacher. Do you have a moment?”
The old man, who'd been grinning ear to ear, called me over with a serious look.
It was exactly like the face the emergency medicine professor in my past life used to make when he was waiting for me to go out for lunch.
I suddenly lost my appetite.
“...What is it, Boss?”
“Would you consider heading up a little early this year?”
What Boss was suggesting was that I go up before the snow started.
“These days, the atmosphere around Sector H isn't looking good. I don't know what those bastards over there ate, but their eyes are rolling back and they're crawling up into our Sector D.”
Looks like they're going snow-blind already because the heavy snowfall season is coming soon.
Eri chimed in from beside me.
“It's the season when everyone starts ripping each other's throats out just to snag one more garbage bag before the snow comes.”
“Eri. Mind your language.”
“Hmph.”
What kind of word is 'throat-ripping' for an eleven-year-old?
Still, I got the meaning.
Basically, it was the sort of story where hibernation season approached and wild animals came down into human settlements.
“Understood. When should I head up?”
“If possible, I'd like you to go up today.”
Boss looked around, then whispered to me.
“During the heavy snowfall season, we'll have to let our own trash have a little scrap. For someone like you, Teacher, it won't be a pretty sight, so please take Eri and head up. I'll contact you once things are sorted out.”