Chapter 009
“It’s a bit embarrassing, receiving such praise from you, Teacher.”
Louis scratched the back of her head with a shy, awkward laugh. Agh, Louis is just too cute. I really want to claim her as my younger sister.
“That reminds me, Louis. How long have you been with the ‘Liberators’?”
I knew that Rick had settled in the Underground City five years ago after leaving Aube Street, meaning he had been with the group for about five years, but I knew nothing of Louis’s history.
“Sister Louis is a founding member,” Rick cut into our conversation bluntly.
A founding member? I turned to look at Louis, my face filled with bewilderment.
“Uh… truth be told, I don’t remember it very well. I was only five years old back then. When the Leader and Lord Richard left the village they lived in to found the Liberators, they brought me along.”
As I listened to Louis’s story, I began counting the years on my fingers in a daze. If Louis was five… were Jin and Richard only sixteen?
In this world, women are considered adults at eighteen and men at nineteen. This meant Jin and Richard had founded the Liberators long before they had even reached adulthood. It was a staggering achievement.
“They told me I was originally the daughter of the blacksmith in the village where the Leader and Lord Richard lived. When the two of them escaped, they took me with them.”
My expression gradually stiffened as I listened. Wait, isn’t that essentially kidnapping a toddler? Why would you abduct a child who was living perfectly fine with her parents?
“Louis, don’t you miss your parents?”
When I asked cautiously, Louis gasped, covering her mouth with her hands before grasping mine tightly.
“Oh, no! Teacher, you mustn’t misunderstand! It’s not as if they kidnapped a child who was growing up happily. My father was… he was a very wicked man.”
Louis cried out earnestly.
However, the confusion in my head only intensified. What is this, Stockholm Syndrome? Has it been so long since she was taken that she’s psychologically aligned herself with her abductors?
“I don’t recall much, but when I think back to those days, there are only painful memories. I don’t have a single memory of eating a meal provided by my father. I either begged on the streets or hurriedly stole food from the kitchen while he was asleep.”
Louis spoke with a dry calmness. As I listened to her story, I became increasingly restless and unsettled. Did I just poke at Louis’s old wounds?
“And… he was very violent.”
I felt like crying. Don’t speak about such things so dispassionately, Louis. I wanted to ask about her mother’s whereabouts as well, but fearing I would only hurt her further, I decided to remain silent.
“So, to me, those two are my saviors. I truly hope you don’t misunderstand them.”
I nodded desperately at Louis’s words.
While I felt a deep pity for Louis, I found myself even more impressed by Jin and Richard. To think that at such a young age, they had not only founded the Liberators but had also rescued a suffering little girl from their village.
Both of them really are righteous men. That was the thought that settled in my mind.
* * *
“There we go, you’re drinking it well! Don’t leave a single drop! I’m going to check the glass.”
Watching Jin dutifully swallow the medicine I handed him made me want to hum a tune. Time had flown by, and it had been nearly two months since I first arrived here.
During that period, Jin had put on some weight. I couldn’t be sure without a scale, but it felt as though he had gained about 3kg.
He was still so thin he looked as if he might collapse at a touch, but he was finally starting to look a little less like a living skeleton.
Because of that, I had reached a point where I couldn’t even stand before him if I took off my mask. As his weight returned, his beauty flourished. I was practically at the point of shouting “Jin!” on every inhale and “Handsome!” on every exhale, though I kept that to myself to avoid whatever snide remark he’d surely have.
“You’re keeping up with your exercises, right?” I asked him.
Calling it “exercise” was a stretch—it consisted entirely of him leaning on Richard to walk a single lap around the room before returning to bed—but it had been about three weeks since I prescribed the regimen.
Thanks to that, he could now sit up on his own without needing to lean back, though he couldn’t sustain the posture for very long.
“Of course, Doctor. I’m doing exactly as instructed. I’m taking my medicine well too, aren’t I?” Jin said boastfully.
‘No, that’s only because I made the medicine taste like delicious fruit, toddler Jin,’ the words nearly escaped my lips, but I swallowed them back with effort.
“I’m going to listen to your chest now.”
I placed the stethoscope in my ears and sat before him. Without a word of protest, Jin unbuttoned his loose shirt. It had been over a month since I first saw a stranger’s bare chest, so the sight no longer stirred any particular emotion. My only observation was: He’s still so thin.
I pressed the chest piece against Jin’s skin. Two months into this routine, a remarkable change had occurred within me. I was now capable of distinguishing his breath sounds to a certain degree.
If I heard a sound like bubbling foam, it meant he was congested with phlegm; when there was a lot of wheezing, I knew he was struggling for air.
“……Oh, boy.”
I let out a soft groan. The problem was that Jin’s condition was growing more severe by the day. While the bubbling sounds had decreased slightly since starting the expectorant, his breathing was becoming increasingly labored and rough.
Even if his physical strength was returning, if his breathing was shortening, it was difficult to claim he was improving… I let out a long sigh.
“I suppose things aren’t looking very good for me.”
Jin spoke with a tone of self-deprecating irony. My heart sank at his words. I had momentarily forgotten about the “sunfish” sitting right in front of me.
“……No. It’s about the same as before.”
I ended up telling a lie that wouldn’t hold any weight. He was the kind of man who would see right through me just by looking into my eyes.
After recording the auscultation results on his chart, an involuntary sigh escaped me. For respiratory illnesses, oxygen is the best prescription, but there was no way to simply manufacture oxygen in this world.
No matter how brilliant Louis and Rick were, if I told people who lacked even the basic concept of chemical elements to “Make me some oxygen!”, they would surely look at me as if I were insane.
It was strange. There were mana stones for every attribute—ice, fire, water, lightning, light, and darkness! But why was there no air attribute? Well, even if there were, it would likely be atmospheric air mixed with 80% nitrogen rather than pure oxygen.
‘Should I try electrolysis of water?’
Would pouring a lightning mana stone over a water mana stone work? Even as a liberal arts student, I knew that breaking down water produces oxygen and hydrogen, but I didn’t know the exact mechanism to achieve it. I was stuck in a loop of impossible fantasies.
Then, a thought struck me like a bolt from the blue. Oh, how stupid of me! I couldn’t understand why I hadn’t thought of it until now.
There were things in nature that produced oxygen incessantly. Plants. Photosynthesis! I felt pathetic for only remembering this now.
“Rick! Louis!”
I rushed headlong into Rick and Louis’s laboratory.
In truth, I had been spending most of my free time here lately.
Starting with the medicine, humidifier, stethoscope, and penlight for Jin, I had used Rick and Louis to recreate modern tools one by one—items I never could have secured on my own.
So far, we had developed powdered laundry detergent, mint-flavored toothpaste, toothbrushes with soft bristles, and even a lavender-scented body wash. The lavender wash, in particular, was the ultimate luxury for my own personal comfort.
Our medical arsenal now included tweezers, alcohol-soaked cotton swabs, and latex gloves. You could say the latex gloves, like the body wash, were made primarily to satisfy my own professional cravings.
“Teacher Aubert, has another idea come to you?”
Louis greeted me warmly. Rick seemed to be absent from the lab.
“You mentioned there was a greenhouse here, right? Where is it?” I asked urgently.
Louis gave a slightly bewildered laugh at my sudden inquiry. “It’s right next to the lab, but why do you ask?”
“Can I take a look inside?” I pressed immediately. Louis looked puzzled.
“Uh, yes. Of course. Rick is actually in there right now—”
I didn’t even wait for her to finish before pulling Louis along. I was in a desperate hurry.
“Let’s go, quickly!”
Louis looked as if she hadn’t a clue what was happening, but she still smiled brightly and led me to the greenhouse.
And the greenhouse I saw was… simply magnificent.
This air. This scent! It was the smell of oxygen! Well, not that I could literally smell oxygen, but the difference was palpable.
Rick, startled by my sudden appearance, wore an expression of bewilderment identical to Louis’s.
“Is there another greenhouse besides this one?” I asked Rick, who was staring at me blankly. Rick gave a nod.
“Yes. There is a place where poisonous herbs are kept separately, and there is also an empty greenhouse.”
Ah, so the poisonous herbs have their own space… I felt a flicker of curiosity about what Rick did with poisonous herbs, but I suppressed it and looked around with satisfaction.
My plan was this: I would move a bed into the empty greenhouse and have Jin stay there during the daylight hours. Then, I would surround him with plants that the Encyclopedia of Herbs described as beneficial for the respiratory system.
Since plants undergoing photosynthesis release oxygen, the oxygen concentration in the greenhouse was bound to be higher than anywhere else—that was my reasoning.
Then, when night fell, I would move Jin back to his bedroom. Because at night, plants also breathe and release carbon dioxide… right? It had been so long since I’d been in a classroom that the memory was a bit fuzzy.
Of course, there was one major concern: pollen. Pollen is a death sentence for compromised respiratory systems. To solve this, I decided to make an “impossible” request of Louis.
“Louis, do you think you could build a device that purifies the air? Something that filters out dust and particles…”
I felt even as I asked that it was an excessive demand, but Louis’s face lit up more than I expected.
“Teacher, what do you think that noise you’ve been hearing this whole time is?”
Louis countered with a question of her own. Huh? What noise? I looked around. I didn’t hear anything particularly unusual. Could she be referring to the hum of the ventilation fans I had grown so accustomed to? I looked at Louis, my face a mask of confusion.
“Air filters designed by the dwarves are installed throughout the entire city. If we make a small-scale imitation, it won’t take much time at all.”
I was rendered speechless. Good heavens… air purifiers already existed? Come to think of it, there was no way the air in this subterranean city could be this crisp without something like that.
I didn’t know the exact efficiency of the dwarven filters, but given the level of craftsmanship I had seen from them so far, they were likely exceptional.
With that, the pollen problem was solved…
I didn’t know if this wild idea would truly work, but I surveyed the greenhouse, hoping this “armchair theory” would provide Jin with even the slightest bit of relief.
