Chapter 11: Limbus Pit Ecological Report (3) |
*
Today's Patient Summary
Natural Birth: 3 cases
- Primipara 2 cases, Multipara 1 case. 1 case required suturing for a 2nd degree perineal tear.
Premature birth: 1 case
Estimated 35 weeks. Weight around 1,900g. Admitted to the 2nd floor nursery.
Breech delivery: 1 case
A case the midwife couldn't handle and postponed. Successful natural birth after attempting an External Cephalic Version.
Suspected Puerperal Fever: 2 cases
Wound Treatment: 4 cases
2 knife wounds (assumed fight), 1 burn (kerosene accident), 1 bruise.
Sexually Transmitted Disease related: 3 cases
1 suspected case of first-stage Syphilis, 2 with Gonorrhea symptoms. Prescribed antibiotics (trial version) and herbs.
Malnutrition and Dehydration: 2 cases
Starvation patients from the heavy snow period. Administered oral rehydration and nutritional treatment.
Gout follow-up: 1 case (Wangcho)
Hmm. As expected, another peaceful day in the Red-Light District.
For the record, I didn't log the last patient.
It was a patient who got a foreign object stuck in an embarrassing place while engaging in certain activities at a brothel, and I didn't feel the need to record it.
'Right. This is the Limbus Pit average.'
I've lived in Uppertown for too long, I forgot about humanity's endless underbelly.
I do wonder if someone delicately raised like me should be seeing such things.
I closed the medical journal.
As I put down my pen and rolled my neck, a stiff pain came with a cracking sound.
It's not good to develop such habits at this age.
“Hooo...”
The consultations were over.
Only after I finished summarizing today's patients did I remember the things that had piled up for six weeks.
I had to organize the report Wangcho gave me this afternoon, the one containing the information I'd requested.
To be precise, it was a scrap of a memo, embarrassing to even call a report.
I took out the paper I'd folded and kept in my pocket, and unfolded it.
Then, in my own way, I began the task of translating that memo into a report format.
[6-Week Death Report]
Death by Freezing and Starvation: 42 bodies
Note: Soaring heating costs due to heavy snow. Includes 3 cases of families freezing to death.
Infant Death: 18 bodies
Stillbirth 12, Deformity 4, Abandonment right after birth 2.
Maternal Death: 9 bodies
Difficult birth 4, Puerperal Fever 3, Excessive bleeding 2.
Accidents and Other: 11 bodies
Caught in factory cogwheel (fatal bleeding after amputation), sewer gas poisoning, stabbing, suicide, etc.
= Total Processed: 80 bodies =
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
My fingertips trembled as I turned the page.
80 people in 6 weeks.
And that's just the number culled from the people within this clinic's sphere of influence, under Wangcho's management.
More bodies must have piled up in the places unseen.
I folded the paper and put it back in my pocket.
In the 21st Century, this would be a major disaster on the level of emergency alerts blaring, breaking news flashes, and parliamentary hearings.
But Wangcho's comment as he handed me the memo back then was beyond my imagination.
- "We did pretty well."
Wangcho added with a chuckle.
- "The ground was frozen, so burying them was a pain, but thanks to that, the bodies didn't rot much, so they didn't smell. We were short on firewood, so we cremated a few and used them for heating. The living have to survive, after all."
- "...You used them as firewood?"
- "Once they're dead, aren't they just lumps of meat? The ones ground up by the cogwheel were beyond recovery, so we just flushed them down the sewer."
- "...Wangcho."
- "Yes, Teacher."
- "From now on, don't burn bodies for heating. Inhaling the smoke is bad for the lungs of the living."
- "Aigoo, as expected, you are merciful, Teacher. Showing respect even to the dead."
- "..."
I think this every time, but I just can't get used to the morality of this world.
But then again, I had no intention of adapting anyway.
After all, a protagonist doesn't adapt to the world; they make the world adapt to them.
I calmly finished the records and put the report in the safe.
“Ugh.”
With that, my clinical duties were over.
But my workday wasn't over yet.
A protagonist always has a lot to do.
*
A year after I began selling Quinine through my Father's Merchant Guild.
I introduced a new medicine to that merchant guild.
It was none other than Insulin.
Thanks to that, the pharmaceutical merchant guild was preparing for its second boom, following Quinine.
“Wangcho. Is what I asked for ready?”
And this was also the reason I came to have a close relationship with Wangcho.
Just as Quinine needs tree bark, Insulin needs pig's pancreas.
The interesting part is that slaughterhouses are shunned facilities, so they are located in the Limbus Pit.
And the one who controlled that slaughter business was none other than Wangcho.
'So it connects like this.'
Perhaps it's only natural.
In the middle ages, it was undertakers and information guilds,
in modern times, slaughtering and waste disposal,
and in the contemporary era, construction materials and scrap cars.
In any era, the shunned industries—unhealthy and seemingly cursed, but indispensable—were always the bread and butter of criminal organizations.
In that sense, Wangcho and I might have been destined to get close, even without his gout.
“Wangcho. Are the pigs ready?”
“...”
“Wangcho?”
“...”
“Wangcho!!!”
“Gah!”
Wangcho, who had been dozing off at the entrance, woke up with a start.
“Yes? Ah, yes! Of course. I've set aside the pancreases from only the finest specimens butchered today.”
“Thank you as always. Let's go.”
Wangcho guided me with an obsequious attitude.
In that posture, you couldn't find a trace of the pride of the Red-Light District's ruler.
But considering my relationship with Wangcho, this was only natural.
This is because our merchant guild is responsible for half of the sales from Wangcho's slaughterhouse.
“Hehe. Teacher. No, should I be calling you Director from this hour?”
Once the time was right, Wangcho mentioned the relationship between a major corporation's Director and a business partner's president, not that of a doctor and patient.
But I shook my head.
“It's confusing, so just call me Teacher.”
“Understood, Teacher.”
The underworld is like that.
They may seem terrifying on the outside, but ultimately, they're structured to starve if money doesn't flow in from the legitimate world.
No matter if Wangcho owned a hundred slaughterhouses, without a merchant guild to buy the meat, it would all just be a pile of rotten flesh.
Wangcho knew that well, which is why he maintained such a deferential attitude toward me.
“By the way, Teacher. It's been over a year, wouldn't it be okay to start using informal speech? Your formal speech is too much for someone like me.”
“You are not my subordinate, Wangcho.”
But that aside, I don't talk down to Wangcho.
I have a persona I've been crafting since I was four.
If someone like me were to just spew informal speech, it would look so cheap.
What I'm aiming for is a dignified young master who exudes a sense of mystery, not a nouveau riche drunk on power.
“And courtesy doesn't discriminate. I will continue to speak formally, so please be aware of that.”
“Tsk. Talking with you, Teacher, makes me feel ashamed of myself.”
“Then let's go, Wangcho. I, you, and Mr. Otto all need to rest for the night, don't we?”
With an embarrassed Wangcho scratching the back of his head leading the way, we set off for the slaughterhouse.
As we went out the back door of the clinic to head to the slaughterhouse, I saw Otto, my bodyguard and chauffeur.
Otto had his hat pulled down low, arms crossed, leaning against the wall and killing time.
For the record, I wondered if he really had to be outside in this cold weather, but he stubbornly insisted that a bodyguard must, so I decided to leave him be.
“Working hard, buddy.”
Wangcho greeted Otto affably.
Otto received the greeting with a slight nod.
So Wangcho led, and I followed behind him.
Otto followed us from a distance, like a shadow.
“This way. The snow is melting, so the smell will be a bit foul.”
Our destination was the slaughterhouse, located next to the waste disposal site.
The warehouse behind it.
The ground was muddy with a liquid that could have been rainwater or bloody water.
Slosh.
I stepped under the eaves, avoiding a puddle.
Faded scraps of red cloth danced under the eaves, welcoming me.
'I can't get used to this, no matter how many times I see it.'
It's especially eerie because it's nighttime.
Between those cloths was a blackened, rotten wooden signboard.
The letters were stained with blood and grease, making them hard to read, but they gave a good idea of what kind of place this was.
“Here we are, Teacher. It's dark, so be careful not to trip on the threshold.”
“Thank you.”
On either side of the doorframe Wangcho indicated, two pig's heads were impaled on hooks, hanging like gatekeepers.
They say they're talismans for good fortune, but I still couldn't understand this sensibility.
...Damn it. I made eye contact.
I should have something other than pork for dinner tonight.
I walked past the empty eye sockets of the pigs and headed toward the warehouse.
The moment I opened the door, the fishy smell of blood and the stench of rotting innards pierced through my mask.
I think this every time I come here, but if I didn't have my mask, I might have broken character and retched.
In contrast, Wangcho just sniffed the air, showing no further reaction.
Wangcho took the lead and strode inside.
Then he pointed to the drum that should have been full of pancreases and said.
“They should still be warm... huh?”
Wangcho, who was leading, suddenly froze.
“What's wrong?”
“No, it's just... wait a moment. Didn't you hear that, Teacher?”
”I didn't hear anything.”
I'm a normal human, not a Beastkin.
Can't even use magical power yet, either.
At that, Wangcho made a 'shh' gesture and beckoned me forward.
The direction he led me was the area where they kept the blood troughs (Blood Collection Buckets).
As we neared the blood trough area, I understood what he meant.
Slosh, splash, gulp.
I could hear the sound of something quenching its thirst.
Wangcho scowled and grabbed a torch from the wall.
“What crazy son of a bitch dares to touch my property...!”
As the source of the sound grew close enough, Wangcho muttered a thick curse and rolled up his sleeves.
The torch in his hand cut through the darkness.
And at the sight revealed, I couldn't help but gasp.
“Hah.”
“Well, well.”
The thing greedily drinking blood wasn't an animal.
What was there was a small-framed child.
The child had its head shoved into a bucket filled with pig's blood.
I question whether you can call something that buries its face in a container of red liquid, lusting after rotten blood, a human.
Wangcho yelled, horrified.
“Th-this crazy bitch, again!”
Startled by the shout, the child jerked its head out of the bucket.
Through matted, blood-red hair, ruby-like red eyes were revealed.
In those eyes, glittering like a beast's in the torchlight, there was no hint of reason.
"Kyaaak--!”
The child went hissing and ran toward the exit.
But there was no way those emaciated legs, starved for days, could outrun a sturdy adult man.
It was all the more impossible if the opponent was the Beastkin who had conquered the Red-Light District with his fists.
Wangcho instantly snatched the child by the scruff of the neck.
“Got you, you bitch!”
"Let go! I said let go!”
The child struggled, trying to bite Wangcho's arm.
Wangcho made a vicious face and was about to slam the child to the ground.
But then he seemed to remember I was watching, and instead of throwing the child down, he put the bucket over its head and forced it to its knees.
“I'm sorry, Teacher! I thought I locked up, I don't know how this unlucky thing crept in...!”
“Do you know this child?”
“Yes. It's famous in these parts. The Bastard of a Bloodfiend.”
“Bastard of a Bloodfiend?”
Bloodfiend.
It was a term for the Demonkin who prey on human blood outside the wall.
Here, Bloodfiends weren't the type to elegantly drink blood from a wine glass like a Vampire Count.
They were monsters with no trace of dignity, who would tear open a person's chest and plunge their head in to suck the blood.
Wangcho was saying this child was the illegitimate child of such monsters.
“As soon as night falls, it sneaks in like this and steals animal blood. On unlucky days, it gets caught trying to lick a drunk's wound and gets beaten up. It's a vampire brat mad for blood.”
- "I don't know about the rest, but that was a misunderstanding!"
The child yelled from inside the bucket.
All the while, the way it clung to the bucket with both arms, afraid of losing even the blood left inside, was like a starving dog guarding a bone.
“Shut up, you bitch!”
Wangcho raised his voice and his foot toward the child.
Though it couldn't see anything, the child's shoulders flinched.
It knew instinctively that a kick would come at this timing.
“Wait.”
Seeing that, I broke my neutrality and stepped between them.
The appearance of a clearly unique named character from the Red-Light District, breaking the daily routine.
No matter how I looked at it, this was an event.
Whether a companion event or a foreshadowing event.
In any case, I couldn't let this child be beaten.
“Wangcho, calm down. You weren't about to hit a child in front of me, were you?”
“...I'm sorry, Teacher.”
Wangcho's foot came back down.
I crouched down in front of the child.
And I gently placed my hand on the child's hands that were wrapped around the bucket.
Realizing I was about to take off the bucket, Wangcho hurriedly tried to stop me.
“It's dangerous, Teacher. It might go for your blood!”
“Dangerous? You don't truly believe this child is the Bastard of a Bloodfiend, do you?”
“What?”
“If it were really the Bastard of a Bloodfiend, you would have killed it long ago. The fact you haven't means you instinctively know this child is actually human, doesn't it?”
“...”
Wangcho fell silent.
Humans are such contradictory beings.
They call someone a witch to throw stones, even knowing she's not.
They call someone a monster to hate them, even knowing they're human.
“I'll give you something tastier than blood, so how about we take this bucket off?”
The strength in the child's hands holding the bucket loosened.
I moved its hands and gently lifted off the bucket.
The child furrowed its brow, as if the sudden light was painful.
I met the child's gaze at eye level.
The child was trembling in terror, yet it was still licking the pig's blood smeared around its mouth.
It was a grotesque, yet contradictory scene that also stirred pity.
I put my hand in my pocket and approached the child.
The child flinched and lowered its head.
“I'm not going to hit you, so lift your face.”
“...”
Since it still wouldn't look up, I took a star candy from my pocket and waved it in front of its face.
It was my secret weapon for treating children.
In the 21st Century, if you gave this to kids, you'd get scolded and asked if this was the army, but in this world, this alone was very effective.
Suddenly I'm craving hardtack and milk.
Moving on.
The child showed interest in the star candy and slowly raised its head.
I took that chance to carefully examine its face, revealed under the light.
Its tangled bob was matted with pig's blood, making its original color hard to discern, but the strands that caught the torchlight had a dark red sheen.
Its clothes were a beige shirt and brown overalls.
It was dressed like a boy overall, but looking closely, it was a girl.
I looked at its face again.
Beneath the coating of blood, its skin was deathly pale. Its lips were bluish.
First, a check for anemia.
“Let me see your eyes.”
I lifted the child's chin with my fingers and used my other hand to flip its eyelid.
The sclera was stained yellow.
A check for jaundice.
“I'm going to touch you here for a bit.”
Finally, I shifted my gaze to its abdomen.
Without waiting for permission, I palpated the child's left side.
Before the child could squirm away, my fingertips detected a hard lump.
An organ bulging out from under its emaciated ribs.
It meant its spleen was swollen.
“That's enough.”
I withdrew my hand and put the star candy in the child's mouth.
“You.”
“Munch, munch...”
“When you wake up in the morning, what color is your first urine?”
“...”
The child didn't answer.
But that silence was already an answer.
“Having dark urine doesn't make you a monster, so don't worry.”
“...!!”
The child's breath hitched.
“Cough, cough!”
It coughed and spat out the star candy.
As it regretfully tried to pick it up again, I kicked the candy away and pressed a new one into its hand.
“Don't eat that one, it's dirty. I'll give you a new one.”
I gave the child a handful of star candy and grabbed its wrist.
“Before that, how about getting a check-up?”
***
