Chapter 2-6

Blacksmith Volume 2 Chapter 6

Today I’m going to the Medical Science elective during my first period.

Really, there is only so much a single person can learn at a time.

That’s what I was thinking about when I was caught by a guy with a refreshing smile on his face.

“Hey Kururi-kun, I heard the rumors. Is it true? Did you really challenge Eliza?”

“Be quiet, we’re in the middle of class.”

I pretended that I didn’t hear Rail’s comment while I was looking at the class tools.

One set of medical equipment is used by two people each.

At one of the eight square tables in the classroom, we listened to the lecture of the current instructor in our four groups.

“If you really had offended Eliza, that’s a scary thought. I could never resolve myself to do that, heck, not even Prince Arc would try offending her.”

“Please be quiet, I won’t be able to listen to the instructor’s lesson.”

I can barely focus on the lesson as it is, and I definitely don’t want to think about Eliza any more. My stomach can’t take it.

Whether or not my scolding worked, I could no longer hear Rail’s voice anymore.

Did he give up?

Curious, I turned to Rail’s direction…

Eh?!

He was just silently standing there, smiling at me. Hahaha… That’s weird, I don’t remember anything funny happening for him to smile like that.

I was right! This guy is just too creepy!

After the instructor’s lecture ended, he passed around some guinea pig corpses that are used for experiments to each group.

It looks like we’re dismantling them today.

This might be good in its own way, I might be able to use it as reference for later on, and there’s even a medical book that describes the procedure, more or less.

Right as the experiment was about to begin, Rail switched places with my partner as if it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

“The instructor’s lecture is over, we can have a conversation like this now, right?”

“May I ask what you want to talk about? Is it about Eliza?”

“Unfortunately, you are correct, so? What really happened between the two of you? I’m interested on your take of the events that transpired.”

“Hey, if you’re going to keep doing this, I’d prefer to work alone. I need to concentrate on my hands.”

“Well, that’s no good right? Hey, I’m a bit anxious since this is the first time I’ve dissected anything, so why don’t we do this together?”

He flashed a wink my way.

This is my first time doing something like this too.

My nerves are on edge as well. Everyone else looked like they were working through it just fine, though the instructor gave out pointers here and there when he thought they were having trouble.

“Okay, for now let’s just continue with the procedures.”

“Right, the book says we need to start by opening up the stomach. Straight to the point, huh?”

We slowly opened its stomach with our medical knives.

“Woah!”

A bit of squirted out and splashed onto Rail’s face. I felt a little sick looking at it, you see I don’t have much resistance to these things. It was like this during that time with the sheep too.

Even so, the mechanism of the internal organs is quite worrisome, there’s a lot of tension that comes with doing this, huh?

“This is the heart… right?” I tried poking its little heart with my finger.

“…I give up, that’s amazing, to actually have enough courage to just touch it like that. You truly are the man who had angered Eliza.”

Stop leading the conversation over to Eliza!

Taking out one of the organs in revenge, I mushed it onto Rail’s face without hesitation.

“Uwaa, how terrible.”

Even though he was wiping mucus off of his face, his smile still hadn’t disappeared. Maybe he’s an ‘M’?

“Hey Kururi-kun, may I ask why you chose to come to Medical Science? Are you going to become a doctor in your territory?”

“…its because of gold.”

“Money? Haha, my image of you just changed. Though I’m still interested, in what happened between you and Eliza that is.”

In response, I mushed another organ into his face.

He yelled “Wabbu~” while he bent his head back to get away.

“I was thinking about becoming a doctor in the future, and hey, Kururi-kun, even though our purposes are different, we’re still going to be together for the rest of class. Wouldn’t it be better to have a conversation instead of staying in awkward silence? I want to talk with you.”

Well I don’t want to talk with you. Getting involved with you will only bring trouble.

“The other students never do. They always avoid me in class and never let me in on their conversations you know?”

“Its because you’re always with Prince Arc, and isn’t it selfish of you to decide that I’m the only one that can get along with you?”

You’re doing this too one-sidedly!

First Prince, isn’t it selfish of you to just dump him on me like this, where are you?!

“The reason why I think that way is, well…” he looked my way and smiled. “a secret.”

“Come to think of it, that selfish prince isn’t here with you today… that’s interesting.”

“So selfish, calling others selfish when they aren’t even here, why don’t you say it to their face instead?”

“Whatever, it doesn’t matter with me, my opinion’s not going to change.”

As if I could say that!! I unintentionally retorted in my head.

“Hey Kururi-kun, you’re acquainted with Iris, right?”

“Yeah, she’s my friend.”

“Apparently, the prince has taken a liking to her, and I even heard that recently they’ve been touring the electives together. So? Do you want to have a talk with our pure-hearted prince?”

I think it’s about time that I made myself clear.

“That doesn’t really have anything to do with me does it? You fall in love when you fall in love, why would any of that bother me?”

When I said that, he raised his hands in surrender, so I pressed on.

“In truth, aren’t you the one that’s the most worried about their relationship?”

He was one of Iris’s love candidates after all, but it’s kinda funny how he could be completely sidelined.

“How mean, rather than that I’m more interested in the secret relationship between you and Eliza, Kururi-kun, and as for how I feel about the prince, I guess I’ll be with him for another ten years or so? Though by then it’ll probably be hard to find a lover or two but anyways, right now I’ll just enjoy myself watching over the relationships of people like you.”

It looks like he’s also had a hard time.

Even so, digging into my open wounds is a different story.

Here, taste my organ attack!!

“You really don’t hold back, do you Kururi? Can’t say I don’t like that relentless side of you though.”

“Eh?!”

“…or not, at least not now.”

Hopefully I’m misunderstanding something.

I don’t want a man to fall for me!

“Its funny talking to you in person Kururi-kun. You’re completely different from how I thought you’d be. I figured you’d be more like the rest aristocracy somehow.”

“You thought I’d be more of a fool?”

“No, not that. It was more of a concern really, but it seems that sentimentality was unfounded. Sorry for looking at you that way until now, and hey, once you feel up to it, why don’t we have a chat sometime as friends?”

It looks like he’s blatantly trying to get me to talk about Eliza again.

Stopping this here would probably be the best decision.

“Well, for now lets just focus on the dissection.”

Rail responded to my call, “Sure.”

The two of us concentrated on the dissection for a while.

Rail looked slightly queasy, but he cleanly removed all the internal organs nonetheless.

“It looks like you have talent as a doctor, Rail.”

Unlike my motivation, he’s doing this in preparation in become a true doctor.

“Not really, I think people like Kururi-kun who can do such work without any resistance have the real talent.”

“I’m just more accustomed to this, that’s all. You’re the one who’s better at thinking about people.”

“Maybe, but I have a lot of bad parts too. By studying medicine in order to save lives, we could be robbing workers of opportunities they could have had in their lives. Somehow, thinking about the contradictions doesn’t swallow well with me.”

“That’s just the way human beings are, don’t we raise livestock just so that we can consume them later? Some things just need to be done at the expense of others.”

“If it’s because we need to eat, then I think it’s justified. We raised them lovingly, giving them a good life until they had to be used, so there’s no problem with that, but what about things like this? This child whose death came just so its body could be dissected on, whereas after it’ll just be discarded? I can’t help but feel sorry for something like that.”

“I don’t think that could’ve been helped though.”

“Its that, how human beings will ask a doctor for help if they need it, while non-humans won’t.” I continued.

“What do you mean?”

For some reason, Rail seems to seriously want to know my answer.

Again, it’s probably best to just tell him the simple stuff so he doesn’t think too deeply about it.

“I think there’s a fatal flaw with that your of thinking, of why you want to become a doctor.”

“Am I going about this wrong? Should I branch off somewhere else? I guess there are many different kinds of doctors out there.”

“More or less.”

“Yeah.”

“Kururi, you really are something aren’t you? Thanks for seriously listening to my story. Until this morning, all I wanted to do was make fun of your little bout with Eliza, but now I see you differently.”

Aren’t you still making fun of me though?!

I’ll be sure to return the favour someday!

“Now that all the internal organs are removed, now we just need to stitch the body up and we’ll be done.”

“…yeah.”

Rail’s face seems to have cramped up, but he was able to make it to the end. Good job.

After we had finished, I did my best to put up a bold front, letting out a big breath. *Fu~*

“Even so, it sure is hard to use these medical techniques. It’ll probably be even more so once somebody is on the brink of death in front of us. Though this’ll probably become a great skill to have in the future.”

“Then, do you want me to make you something to help you out?”

Even though it might be hard to do, now might be a good time to try it. Let’s try to create our own medical equipment.

“You’ll do that for me? I knew I wasn’t wrong about you!”

“Sure, but first we’ll need to go to my room, there’s something I need to retrieve first.”

“That sounds fun, so sure.”

Once we were finished cleaning up, the class was just about to end.

Among the students which left the class in droves, Rail headed over to the instructor.

“Is it okay if I take these children?”

“May I ask why?”

In Rail’s hands were the corpses of the guinea pigs we just dissected, all newly stitched up.

“Its because I think they deserve a better end than this, that’s the only reason why.”

“If you’ve taken a liking to them then sure, they’re all yours.”

With the permission of the instructor, Rail crammed the corpses into some linen bags.

“People always call me strange, but I think you’re pretty strange yourself Rail.” walking beside Rail, I talked to him about why he did that.

“Really?”

“Well, I guess it doesn’t matter really and hey, now that you’ve followed me this far, help me dig a hole.”

“Sure.”

* * *

After school, there was two people standing around the school gate.

We were in the middle of a vast land, so I don’t think they’ll mind wherever we dig.

We each had our own shovel, but we weren’t going to dig at once because we created a working system.

There weren’t many pedestrians around either, so it looks like the perfect conditions for digging a hole.

“Until I’ve had enough, I think I’ll be able to go along with sort of thing.”

While he was digging a hole, Rail said so.

“I think we can still keep going.”

“…yeah.”

*zakku* *zakku* (sfx: digging) the only thing that could be heard after that was the sound of digging into the soil.

“Is this really helping?”

I heard Rail’s voice call out.

“Oh, definitely so.”

Haha, Rail and I started laughing.

We were done, buried in the hole was all the guinea pigs in their jute bags.

“Now let’s go home-” Rail was about say as he started leaving.

“No, stay here for a minute.”

“Hmm?”

“There’s something that I want to see.”

‘Beyond the basics’, the 3rd grimoire. I wanted to try my ‘New Life’ spell.

Pouring my magic into the soil, I softly whispered “Now open your eyes.”

The soil seemed to bulge for second, before the seedlings of lush flowers sprouted out.

I don’t know what kind of flowers they’ll grow to be, but I certainly created a new life with this.

“…That’s a nice spell you got there.”

Rail smiled gently.