WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

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◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈

Chapter 11: Limbus Pit Ecology Report (3)

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Today’s Patient Summary

Vaginal deliveries: 3 cases

- Two first births, one subsequent birth. One case involved a second-degree perineal tear requiring sutures.

Preterm birth: 1 case

Estimated at 35 weeks. Weight approximately 1,900 g. Admitted to the nursery on the second floor.

Breech delivery: 1 case

A case the midwife had been unable to handle and put off. An external cephalic version was attempted, followed by a successful vaginal delivery.

Suspected puerperal fever: 2 cases

Persistent high fever after childbirth. Endometritis suspected. Disinfected with an herbal decoction and placed under observation.

Wound treatment: 4 cases

Two knife wounds, presumed to be from fights. One burn caused by a kerosene accident. One contusion.

Sexually transmitted diseases: 3 cases

One suspected case of primary syphilis, two cases with gonorrhea symptoms. Prescribed experimental antibiotics and herbs.

Malnutrition and dehydration: 2 cases

Starvation patients from the period of heavy snow. Given oral rehydration and nutritional treatment.

Gout follow-up: 1 case (Wangcho)

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Mm. Another peaceful day in the red-light district.

For the record, I had not included the final patient.

They had gotten a foreign object lodged in an embarrassing place while engaging in that sort of play at a brothel. I did not particularly want to document it.

‘Right. This is average for the Limbus Pit.’

I had lived too long in the upper district and forgotten how endlessly low humanity could sink.

I wondered if someone as delicately raised as me should even be seeing this sort of thing.

I closed the medical journal.

When I set down my pen and turned my neck, a crack echoed through it, followed by a wave of stiffness and pain.

It was not good to get into habits like this at my age.

“Phew...”

The consultations were over.

Only after sorting through the day’s patients did I remember everything that had piled up over the past six weeks.

I needed to organize the report Wangcho had handed me that afternoon, containing the information I had asked for.

Though calling those scraps of notes a report would have been generous.

I took the folded paper from my pocket and spread it open.

Then, in my own way, I translated those notes into a proper report.

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[Six-Week Death Report]

Deaths from freezing and starvation: 42 bodies

Notable details: Heating costs surged due to the heavy snow. Includes three cases of entire families freezing to death.

Infant deaths: 18 bodies

Twelve stillbirths, four congenital anomalies, and two abandoned immediately after birth.

Maternal deaths: 9 bodies

Four difficult deliveries, three cases of puerperal fever, and two cases of excessive bleeding.

Accidents and other causes: 11 bodies

Caught in factory gears (excessive bleeding after amputation), sewer gas poisoning, stabbings, suicides, and more.

= Total processed: 80 bodies =

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My fingertips trembled as I turned the paper.

Eighty people in six weeks.

And those were only the people within this clinic’s reach, those under Wangcho’s supervision.

There had to be even more bodies piling up where I could not see them.

I folded the paper and put it back in my pocket.

In the twenty-first century, this would have been a disaster severe enough to set emergency alerts ringing nonstop, bring up breaking-news reports, and trigger National Assembly hearings.

But Wangcho’s comment when he gave me the notes had exceeded even my imagination.

- “We got off lightly.”

Wangcho added with a snicker.

- “The ground was frozen, so burial was a pain, but the bodies did not rot as much, so there was no smell. We were short on firewood, so we cremated a few to help keep the heating going. The living have to live, after all.”

- “...You used them as firewood?”

- “Once they’re dead, they’re just lumps of meat, aren’t they? The ones ground up in the gears were impossible to recover anyway, so we just washed them down the sewers.”

- “...Wangcho.”

- “Yes, Doctor.”

- “Do not burn bodies for heating from now on. The smoke is bad for the living people’s lungs too.”

- “My goodness, Doctor, you truly are merciful. You even respect the dead.”

- “...”

I thought it every time, but I could not get used to this world’s morality.

That said, I had no intention of adapting to it.

A protagonist did not adjust to the world. The world adjusted to the protagonist.

I calmly finished the record and put the report into the safe.

“Urgh.”

With that, my clinical work was done.

But my day was not over.

A protagonist always had a lot to do.

* * *

A year after I began selling quinine through my father’s trading company, I introduced a new medicine to the company.

Insulin.

Thanks to that, the pharmaceutical trading company was preparing for a second boom after quinine.

“Wangcho. Is what I asked for ready?”

That was also why I had formed such a close relationship with Wangcho.

Quinine needed tree bark, while insulin needed pig pancreases.

The amusing part was that slaughterhouses were undesirable facilities, so they were located in the Limbus Pit.

And Wangcho controlled the slaughtering business there.

‘So this is how it all connects.’

Maybe it was only natural.

In the Middle Ages, it had been undertakers and information guilds.

In modern times, slaughtering and garbage disposal.

In the present day, construction materials and scrapped cars.

No matter the era, undesirable industries that were bad for one’s health, seemed cursed, yet could not be done without were all sources of income for criminal organizations.

In that sense, Wangcho and I might have been destined to become close even without gout.

“Wangcho. Are the pigs ready?”

“...”

“Wangcho?”

“...”

“Wangcho!”

“Gah!”

Wangcho, who had been dozing off by the entrance, jolted awake.

“Huh? Ah, yes! Of course. I set aside only the pancreases from the healthiest ones slaughtered today.”

“Thank you as always. Let us go.”

Wangcho guided me with an ingratiating attitude.

There was not the slightest trace of the red-light district ruler’s swagger in that appearance.

Still, considering the relationship between Wangcho and me, it was only natural.

Our trading company accounted for half of Wangcho’s slaughterhouse sales.

“Hehe. Doctor. No, should I call you Director from this hour onward?”

Once the time came, Wangcho brought up how our relationship was no longer that of patient and doctor, but of a major company director and the head of a business partner.

I shook my head.

“It would be confusing, so just call me Doctor.”

“Understood, Doctor.”

That was how the underworld worked.

It might seem terrifying on the surface, but without money flowing in from aboveground, it would ultimately starve to death.

Even if Wangcho owned a hundred slaughterhouses, without trading companies to buy the meat, the unsold meat would just become piles of rotten flesh.

Wangcho understood that well, which was why he behaved so humbly before me.

“By the way, Doctor. It has been a year now, so couldn’t you speak more casually to me? Your formal speech is far too much for someone like me.”

“Wangcho is not my subordinate.”

Separate from that, I did not speak down to Wangcho.

I had been building this persona since I was four.

If I started flinging casual speech around, I would look terribly cheap.

What I sought was to be a dignified young nobleman with an air of mystery, not some nouveau riche drunk on power.

“And courtesy does not distinguish between people. I will continue to speak formally, so please understand that.”

“Tsk. Talking with you always makes me ashamed of myself, Doctor.”

“Then let us go, Wangcho. You, me, and Mr. Otto all need to rest at night.”

Wangcho awkwardly scratched the back of his head, and we set out for the slaughterhouse.

When we left through the clinic’s back door, I saw Otto, my guard and driver.

Otto stood against the wall with his arms folded, his hat pulled low as he passed the time.

I wondered why he needed to remain outside in weather like this, but he stubbornly insisted that guards had to do things this way, so I decided to leave him be.

“Good work, brother.”

Wangcho greeted Otto easily.

Otto returned the greeting with a slight nod.

Wangcho led the way, and I followed behind him.

Otto followed us from far behind, like a shadow.

“This way. The snow is starting to melt, so the stench may be rather bad.”

Our destination was the warehouse behind the slaughterhouse beside the waste-processing plant.

The ground was slick with liquid that could have been rainwater or blood.

Squelch.

Avoiding the puddles, I stepped beneath the eaves.

Faded strips of red cloth danced beneath them, welcoming me.

‘It never gets easier to see.’

Perhaps because it was nighttime, the place felt especially eerie.

Among those strips of cloth hung a blackened, rotten wooden sign.

< Slaughter (Do) >

The letters were so soaked in blood and grease that they were difficult to make out, but they still made it clear what this place was for.

“Here we are, Doctor. It is dark, so be careful not to trip over the threshold.”

“Thank you.”

Two pig heads skewered on hooks hung on either side of the doorframe like guards.

They were supposedly talismans that brought good fortune, but I still could not understand the appeal.

...Damn it. I made eye contact.

I should have something other than pork for dinner tonight.

I passed between the pigs’ empty eye sockets and headed toward the warehouse.

The moment I opened the door, the sharp smell of blood and rotting entrails penetrated my mask.

I thought this every time I came here, but if I had not been wearing a mask, I might have broken character and retched.

In contrast, Wangcho only sniffed the air and showed no further reaction.

He strode deeper inside.

Then he pointed at a drum that should have been full of pancreases.

“They should still be warm... Huh?”

Wangcho, who had been leading the way, abruptly stopped.

“Is something wrong?”

“Well... Wait a moment. Doctor, did you not hear that?”

“I did not hear anything.”

I was not beastfolk. I was an ordinary human.

I could not even use mana yet.

Wangcho gestured for silence and beckoned me over.

He led me toward the area where the blood buckets, used to catch blood, were gathered.

As we got closer, I understood what he had meant.

Slap. Splash. Gulp.

Something was quenching its thirst.

Wangcho frowned and picked up a torch from the wall.

“What kind of crazy animal bastard dares touch someone else’s property...!”

Once we were close enough to the source of the sound, Wangcho muttered a vicious curse and rolled up his sleeves.

The torch in his hand split the darkness.

And at the sight revealed, I could only let out an exclamation.

“Huh.”

“Well, well.”

The thing greedily devouring blood was not an animal.

It was a small child.

The child had their head buried in a bucket full of pig blood.

With their face submerged in the red liquid, greedily consuming rotten blood, I had to wonder whether they could even be called human.

Wangcho shouted in alarm.

“Th-That crazy bitch again!”

Startled by the shout, the child jerked their head out of the bucket.

Ruby-red eyes appeared through hair clumped with blood.

Those eyes gleamed like an animal’s in the torchlight, and there was not a trace of reason in them.

“Craaah!”

The child hissed and ran for the exit.

But those skeletal legs, weakened by days without food, had no chance of escaping a strong adult man.

That was even more impossible when the opponent was a beastfolk who had subdued the red-light district with his fists.

Wangcho caught the child by the nape in an instant.

“Got you, bitch!”

“Let go! I said let go!”

The child struggled, trying to bite Wangcho’s arm.

Wangcho wore a vicious expression as he moved to throw the child to the floor.

Then he remembered I was watching. Rather than throw the child down, he put the bucket over their head and forced them to kneel.

“I am sorry, Doctor! I made sure the place was locked up, but I do not know how this damned thing crawled inside...!”

“Do you know this child?”

“Yes. They are famous around here. A Blood Demon’s illegitimate child.”

“A Blood Demon’s illegitimate child?”

Blood Demons.

That was the term used for fiends beyond the walls that drank human blood.

The Blood Demons here were not elegant creatures like vampire counts, sipping blood from wineglasses.

They were monsters that tore open human chests, shoved in their heads, and sucked up blood. Dignity was nowhere to be found in them.

Wangcho was saying that this child was the illegitimate offspring of such monsters.

“They sneak in like this every night and steal animal blood. On unlucky days, they try to lick drunkards’ wounds, get caught, and get beaten for it. A blood-crazed vampire brat.”

- “That part, at least, is a misunderstanding!”

The child shouted from inside the bucket.

Even then, they clutched the bucket tightly with both arms, as though afraid someone would take even the remaining blood away. They looked like a starving wild dog guarding a bone.

“Shut up, bitch!”

Wangcho raised his foot toward the child.

The child could not have seen it, yet their shoulders flinched.

They instinctively knew a kick was coming.

“Wait.”

At that sight, I broke my neutrality and stepped between them.

An obviously unusual named character from the red-light district had appeared and disrupted my daily life.

No matter how I looked at it, this was an event.

Whether it was a companion event or a foreshadowing event.

Either way, I could not simply stand by and let this child get beaten.

“Wangcho, calm down. You were not about to hit a child in front of me, were you?”

“...My apologies, Doctor.”

Wangcho lowered his foot.

I crouched in front of the child.

Then I quietly placed a hand over the child’s hands around the bucket.

Noticing that I was about to remove it, Wangcho urgently tried to stop me.

“It is dangerous, Doctor. That thing might be after your blood!”

“Dangerous? You do not truly believe this child is a Blood Demon’s illegitimate child, do you?”

“What?”

“If they truly were a Blood Demon’s illegitimate child, you would have killed them long ago. The fact that you have not means that, instinctively, you know this child is actually human.”

“...”

Wangcho closed his mouth.

Humans were truly contradictory creatures.

They called someone a witch so they could throw stones, even when they knew they were not a witch.

They called someone a monster so they could hate them, even while knowing they were human.

“I will give you something tastier than blood, so will you take off the bucket?”

The strength drained from the child’s hands.

I moved those hands aside and gently lifted off the bucket.

The sudden flood of light must have stung, because the child frowned.

I brought myself to the child’s eye level.

The child trembled with terror, yet still licked pig blood from around their mouth.

It was grotesque, yet somehow pitiful at the same time.

I put a hand into my pocket and moved closer.

The child flinched and lowered their head.

“I will not hit you, so look up for me.”

“...”

The child still would not raise their head, so I took out a star candy and waved it in front of them.

It was my secret weapon when treating children.

If I gave something like this to children in the twenty-first century, I would probably be asked whether this was the military, but it worked remarkably well in this world.

Now I suddenly wanted hardtack and milk.

Anyway.

Interested in the star candy, the child slowly raised their head.

I used that chance to carefully examine the face revealed beneath the torchlight.

The child’s messy short hair was clumped with pig blood, making its original color difficult to determine, but the strands caught in the torchlight had a dark red hue.

They wore a beige shirt and brown overalls.

The outfit looked boyish overall, but upon closer inspection, she was a girl.

I looked at her face again.

Beneath the blood, her skin was pale and bloodless. Her lips were blue.

Anemia, check.

“Let me see your eyes.”

I raised her chin with one finger and pulled back her eyelid with my other hand.

The whites of her eyes were yellow.

Jaundice, check.

“I am going to feel here.”

Finally, I looked at her abdomen.

Without waiting for permission, I felt along her left flank.

Before she could twist away, my fingertips detected a firm mass.

An organ bulging beneath her protruding ribs.

Her spleen was enlarged.

“That is enough.”

I withdrew my hand and put the star candy into her mouth.

“You.”

“Munch...”

“When you wake up in the morning and go to the bathroom for the first time, what color is your urine?”

“...”

She did not answer.

But her silence was already an answer.

“Black urine does not mean you are a monster, so do not worry.”

“...!”

Her breath caught.

“Cough! Cough!”

She coughed out the star candy.

When she tried to pick it up and eat it again, I kicked the candy away and handed her a new one.

“This one is dirty, so do not eat it. I will give you a new one.”

I placed a handful of star candies in her hand and took hold of her wrist.

“But before that, would you like a checkup?”

* * *

Footnotes:

Star candy is a small Korean hard candy strongly associated with military-issued snacks, often served with hardtack.

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