Chapter 110: Miracle (4) |
# Miracle (4)
*
After finishing dinner with Yulian.
Led by Charlotte's hand, Jenny found herself heading to one of the Carvedoc clinics they had already investigated.
"Jenny. If my prediction is correct, this Carvedoc's surgical tools were the breeding ground for the bacteria."
"Didn't we check that when we investigated before?"
"As I always say, observation is selection and concentration. It's not about taking everything in — it's about taking in the things that seem important."
"So what you're saying is, you weren't really interested in the surgical tools back then?"
"At the time, I only looked through the warehouse because I was there to check the ingredients."
The owner of the clinic, tucked away in a back alley of the Academy, greeted them with a bandage wrapped around his head.
"Y-You two..."
"We've come to take another look."
"The w-warehouse is over that way..."
The Carvedoc shrank into himself and pointed to the door leading to the warehouse.
He looked rather pitiable, one bruised cheek swollen and cupped in his hand.
But Charlotte shook her head despite his obliging guidance.
"It isn't the warehouse we've come to see this time. It's the procedure room."
The words had barely left her mouth before the Carvedoc's face drained of color and he planted himself squarely in front of the procedure room door.
"Absolutely not!"
"We only want to look at the tools."
"That's exactly what I'm saying you can't do! Maybe not to the same degree as a mage's, but the layout of the room and the magic tools a Carvedoc uses are their lifeblood!"
"I believe I told you last time that we have no interest in your trade secrets."
Charlotte answered without a flicker of emotion and moved toward the workroom.
But the Carvedoc held firm.
"I let you see my ingredients, but the magic tools and the room are absolutely off-limits! Ask any Carvedoc in this territory! That much, at least, is sacred!"
"..."
Charlotte stared at the Carvedoc's miserable face for a long moment.
Then she shook her head and took a step back.
"All right."
"Huh...?"
"If the procedure room is something like a mage's grimoire, then I suppose I ought to respect that."
Charlotte turned and walked away from the procedure room.
Jenny followed after her, tilting her head.
"Why didn't you just hit him out of the way like last time?"
"Last time was a warehouse search. A Carvedoc's warehouse isn't as sacred as a mage's grimoire, so there was no need to show it any respect. And besides..."
Charlotte's eyes grew cold as she recalled the incident.
"That man harassed us first."
"...Right, he did."
Jenny remembered the same thing and turned a look of revulsion back toward the clinic.
"Now that I think about it, I'm furious. We should have hit him harder then. Aren't you angry, Charlotte?"
"I hit him enough to work it out of my system, so I'm fine."
"Lucky you."
And so the two left the procedure room behind and headed for the next clinic.
— "I'm sorry, Little Young Lady. The warehouse is fine, but not the procedure room."
— "Generations of my family's secret methods are woven into that room... I'm sorry."
— "Just the surgical tools, you say? Hmm..."
Most of the Carvedocs refused.
Some even refused to show them so much as a surgical tool.
But after dogged and persistent inquiries, the last Carvedoc on their list agreed to let them see his.
"Well... I'll be retiring soon enough, and I've got no children or apprentices to pass anything on to... So. If it'll be of some use to a future hero, I suppose I ought to show you."
The elderly Carvedoc led Charlotte into the procedure room.
The detective duo stepped inside with pounding hearts.
And what they found inside was —
"Oh?"
"Why... is it so clean...?"
A clean, well-maintained procedure room.
Blood, rust, mold.
Whatever they had expected to find, there was none of it — not even a trace.
"May I ask why your surgical tools are so clean?"
"Ah, you mean these?"
The Carvedoc picked up a gleaming engraving razor and held it up as he explained.
"Some Carvedocs look at the blood and rust soaked into their blades as a mark of experience and don't bother sharpening them much. But at my age, if I don't keep the blades properly maintained, I find it rather difficult to cut engravings cleanly."
The old man chuckled as he showed off his razor.
He went on to explain the rest of his magic tools and the procedure room, but Charlotte couldn't find anything worth flagging as a problem.
"Thank you for explaining everything, Elder. This is for your trouble."
"Right then. Would you like to see any other procedure rooms?"
"Is that possible?"
"I could introduce you to a few of the lads whose rooms I know."
"I'm truly grateful."
After that, the two made their way through the procedure rooms the old man introduced them to.
Some were exactly as they'd imagined — drenched in rust and dried blood — while others were as spotless as the old man's.
As they moved through each one, Charlotte's doubt only deepened.
"Something's off."
"What do you mean, Charlotte? Bacteria aren't visible anyway, are they? Even in a room that looks clean, you could still get infected."
"If that were the case, everyone would have presented with the same symptoms regardless of the engraving or the location. But every victim had received the same specific engraving. Doesn't that seem strange?"
"Now that you mention it..."
Charlotte had a point.
If ordinary bacteria were the issue, there was no reason for the problem to appear in that one engraving and not others.
"Then could it be a side effect of the engraving itself?"
"The Toxic Immunity Engraving is an old imprint. No side effects like this have ever been reported."
"Hmm..."
Jenny pressed her fingers against her temple, thinking hard.
"Then should we ask your fiancé for another hint..."
"..."
"Sorry. Your pride wouldn't allow that, would it."
The two put their heads together for a while, turning the problem over between them.
"In any case, it's late. Let's pick this up tomorrow."
Unable to get to the bottom of it, they postponed their investigation until morning and made their way back to the dormitory.
The day was done, and Jenny had just closed her eyes to sleep.
Mumble, mumble.
"Charlotte. Can't you look at it after you wake up?"
Murmur, murmur.
"Charlotte?"
"That's it!"
"Eek!"
Charlotte shot bolt upright in her bed.
She grabbed the overcoat she had taken off and pulled it back on.
"Jenny. I won't be waking you up tomorrow morning, so you'll have to manage on your own!"
"What — where did that come from—"
"There's something I need to check!"
Saying only what she had to say, Charlotte swept out of the room.
Jenny stared at the door long after Charlotte had gone, and muttered to herself with a dazed expression.
"Get some sleep, you absolute nightmare."
*
The following day. Lunchtime.
Jenny sat across from a familiar face in a familiar place and ate her lunch.
"Thank you for the invitation, Lord Yulian."
"If anything, I'm the one who should be thanking you."
Clink.
Set before Jenny were a white clam adductor muscle braised with basil and an ox tongue steak.
Just as he had the previous evening, Yulian took his seat at the head of the table and spoke.
"Thank you for keeping Charlotte company in my place. Today's invitation isn't from a professor — it's from her fiancé, personally, to express his gratitude. So please, don't feel any pressure."
"That surprises me. From what Charlotte told me, you're not the type to give special treatment inside the Academy."
"I have my own life on weekends."
Yulian glanced at the calendar.
Today was Saturday.
"Weekdays might be a different matter, but is inviting a friend over for lunch on the weekend really special treatment?"
"When you put it that way, I can't argue."
Nom.
Jenny savored the food on her plate.
"Does Lord Yulian cook like this for Charlotte often?"
"Whenever we meet and I have the time, I usually do. If I weren't an Academy professor, I might have started packing her a lunch box by now."
"Charlotte is lucky. To have such a thoughtful fiancé."
"It's purely a hobby of mine — now you're making me blush."
Clink.
"So — the reason you called me here today...?"
"To ask after Charlotte, and to make a personal request."
Yulian dabbed the corner of his mouth with his napkin.
From behind it, his unhurried voice came through.
"Is Charlotte making friends well?"
"...Yes. The first year is almost over, and of course she's made plenty of friends."
"About how many, would you say?"
"...I'm sorry for lying."
A bitter smile crossed Yulian's face.
"And how is the investigation into yesterday's case going?"
"As it happens, she ran out last night saying she'd figured out the reason."
"Then we should have a result within a day or two."
Yulian glanced briefly at the calendar.
Then he nodded.
"It seems Miss Charlotte will reach the truth before the Investigation Bureau does. I spoke with the Director of the Investigation Bureau this morning, and they're still convinced it was black sorcerers."
"I actually had a question, Lord Yulian."
Jenny raised her hand tentatively.
"Reading the situation, it seemed to me like this wasn't a deliberate crime but an accident. It will ultimately come down to an unknown disease, I imagine — so it's hard for me to understand why Charlotte is so invested in it..."
"Do you really think that?"
"Pardon?"
There was something that sounded almost like amusement in Yulian's voice.
Jenny looked up at him.
A man swirling a wine glass, smiling.
There was something a little suspect about that smile.
"That this is an accident, not a crime."
"What do you mean by—"
"Allow me to share something rather interesting."
Yulian reached for the knife resting beside his plate.
He drew his fingertips along the edge of the finely honed steak knife as he spoke.
"Miss Jenny. There is no such thing as coincidence in this world."
"...?"
"If this were simply the result of a chance encounter with an unknown disease, you wouldn't have several people 'suddenly' turning up in alleys like that in recent times. Not all at once. Unless it had been a steady, consistent occurrence going back years."
"...Oh."
"Miss Charlotte is likely thinking along much the same lines as I am. Though by the look of things, she only arrived at that conclusion last night."
"Then, Professor — are you saying you already know who the culprit is?"
"No."
Yulian shook his head.
"I know how to find the culprit, but I don't have the time to go running around myself, so I can't confirm it. That part belongs to Miss Charlotte."
"Why won't you just go and catch them yourself—"
"I told you. That part belongs to Miss Charlotte."
Yulian picked up his fork and knife.
"A knife can be used like a fork. A fork can be used like a knife. But in this world, each instrument has its assigned role."
He cut through his food with each in turn as he spoke.
"My role is to find ways to protect all of you from black sorcerers. And if this isn't a matter of black sorcery, then that role should be yielded to someone else."
"Then, if that's the case..."
Before she knew it, Jenny had asked the question.
"If you truly do know how, could you give just me a hint? Not Miss Charlotte."
"And you won't tell Miss Charlotte?"
"She'd obviously hate that — so of course not."
"Very well."
Yulian nodded and set down his cutlery for a moment.
"The culprit is simple. The Carvedoc who performed the procedure on the first victim — that's your culprit."
"What? How?"
"To explain that, I think I'll need to show you my laboratory. Would you like to follow me?"
Jenny nodded.
It was the weekend, so she had time to spare.
Yulian brought Jenny along and headed to the laboratory he had set up in his mansion.
As they walked, Yulian gave a brief explanation of the Carvedocs.
"Since you're a healer yourself, Miss Jenny, you already understand the principles of catalysts, symbols, and runic formulas — I don't need to explain those."
"Yes, I'm familiar with them."
"The Carvedoc's methods follow similar principles."
The runic formula becomes the text of the tattoo.
The symbol becomes the location where the tattoo is placed on the body.
And the catalyst becomes the ink used to make the tattoo.
"The catalysts Carvedocs use are the blended ingredients in their ink. A tattoo can't be hidden once it's on the skin, but the ingredients and the procedure location can be kept secret. That's also why Carvedocs always require their clients to wear a blindfold during a procedure."
"I see. But how does that lead to the first victim's Carvedoc being the culprit?"
"Because that Carvedoc discovered how to introduce poison into the ink."
"Poison?"
Yulian nodded.
"Yesterday, when Charlotte was eating dinner, she suspected that poison hemlock and water hemlock might have been mixed into the Carvedocs' ingredients, didn't she?"
"Yes. Though it turned out that wasn't the case."
"To be precise, that's where Charlotte missed it. The problem wasn't those ingredients themselves — it was a substance that came along with them."
"And what was that?"
"Soil."
"Soil...?"
Soil as a poison.
Jenny found that difficult to grasp.
Wouldn't people who handle soil every day have to be showing the same symptoms?
As though he had seen straight through her thoughts, Yulian continued.
"Eating or touching soil won't poison you. The bacteria that survive in that soil are extremely vulnerable to open air. In order to survive, they need an opportunity to burrow deep into contaminated tissue. Something like a knife or a nail, for instance."
Yulian called to mind a particular bacterium.
Clostridium.
Famous, among other things, as the bacteria responsible for tetanus.
Contrary to common belief, tetanus isn't transmitted through rusted objects.
It's transmitted through soil.
The bacteria that grow there are simply far too sensitive to open air — they can only take hold once they've been driven deep into tissue through something like a nail or a blade.
'I'd love to explain the full mechanism, but...'
There was no way to explain something the world hadn't yet discovered.
So Yulian settled for the vaguer point — that it required the help of something like a knife or nail to do its work.
"My deduction is as follows. The Carvedoc who treated the first victim must have eventually realized that his client had died because of the soil in the ink. So he used that knowledge to contaminate the ingredients used by other Carvedocs — by getting soil onto them."
"But why would anyone do such a thing..."
"If the other Carvedocs kept using that ink without knowing anything was wrong, sooner or later word would spread that people treated at those clinics were dying. And the last one standing would be him."
And if the truth happened to come out partway through, it could all be written off as an accident.
In every respect, it was a near-perfect plan.
But the Jenny who had heard the explanation didn't seem entirely convinced.
"I can't believe that. A Carvedoc without formal healer training knowing something that even healers didn't — that can't be right..."
"Miss Jenny."
Yulian's cool voice cut her off.
"Dismissing someone simply because they're in a different profession is not a good look. Perception is a talent everyone possesses, and some people simply discover things first. Others call it coincidence — but I don't."
There is no such thing as coincidence.
That sentence lodged itself deep in Jenny's mind.
She couldn't bring herself to argue back.
"So if what you're saying is true, Professor..."
"Miss Charlotte seems to have worked that much out last night. By now she's probably at the first Carvedoc's clinic, looking for evidence."
His steps came to a stop in front of the laboratory.
"Because Miss Charlotte came to see me late last night with exactly that in mind."
"Why would she...?"
"I think she believed I would have the evidence she needed to be certain. And she was right."
He opened the door.
Inside, the cages came into view — white rats, each of them dead, backs arched like bows.
"Th-That's..."
"As soon as the autopsy request came in after the incident began, I ran an experiment. That was roughly a week ago. The results came in just yesterday."
Yulian pointed to one of the empty cages.
"Miss Charlotte came by last night and took a few of the rats. She plans to use them as evidence, I imagine. I did want to be the one to publish the findings first, but when it comes to moving fast, Charlotte always has me beat..."
Yulian let out a small, rueful sigh.
Jenny quietly began to increase the distance between herself and him.
"Miss Jenny?"
"..."
"Why are you reaching into your sleeve—"
"It's nothing."
"...?"
Jenny kept her fingertips resting on the grip of the revolver hidden in her sleeve, and stared at Yulian with eyes full of fear.