WeTried Translations

Translator/Editor: Haruto

Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried

◈ The Dark Fantasy Doctor Was Mistaken for a Saint ◈

Chapter 12: The Blood Demon’s Illegitimate Child (1)

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The child’s name was Erika.

Eri, for short.

I only learned that after Wangcho’s rough hands forcibly escorted her into the examination room and I gave her a few pieces of bread.

“Munch, munch. It’s not candy, but it tastes good, so I’ll let it slide.”

“So, Doctor. You’re saying this brat isn’t really a Blood Demon?”

Wangcho asked skeptically, arms crossed.

Eri sat on the examination table, still gnawing on bread with wary eyes.

“She isn’t a Blood Demon. She’s a patient. Her condition is paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria, PNH.”

“Is that some kind of magic term?”

“Something like that.”

I assembled several explanations for PNH in my head.

An autoimmune hemolytic condition where mutations in red blood cell membranes make them vulnerable to complement, and so on...

Hmm.

No matter how I thought about it, they would not understand.

So I gave them a straightforward comparison instead.

“It’s an illness where the blood breaks apart inside the body.”

“Blood can break apart?”

“Just understand it that way. That’s why she passes black urine when she wakes up in the morning. Blood is passing into her urine, leaving her deficient.”

I pointed at Eri, who was diligently eating her bread, with my chin... no, my beak.

“Just as animals instinctively lick rock salt when they lack salt, this child instinctively sought pig blood because she lacked blood.”

This symptom was called pica.

When people lack iron, they want to put anything in their mouths. Usually dirt, ice, or uncooked rice.

For this child, that thing happened to be blood.

“Huh... Tsk, tsk. And I didn’t even know.”

Wangcho clicked his tongue.

Learning that the child he had thought was a monster was actually a pitiful patient seemed to have touched what little conscience remained in him.

Then Eri, who had been chewing bread, asked me a question.

“Mister.”

“Call me Doctor Schnabel.”

“Doctor.”

This kid really could not settle on a form of address.

I sighed and answered.

“Yes. What is it?”

“How did you know the color of my pee?”

Eri’s red eyes stared straight into mine.

“Can healers tell the color of someone’s pee just by feeling their stomach and pulling back their eyelids?”

Oh?

I was impressed inwardly.

She had accurately caught the leap in my diagnostic process, which Wangcho had simply accepted without question.

‘She’s smart.’

Diagnosing PNH immediately from anemia, jaundice, and splenomegaly was practically a logical leap.

It could have been cirrhosis, leukemia, malaria, or any number of other things.

“You’re clever.”

I reached out and stroked Eri’s messy hair.

She flinched and hunched her shoulders, but she did not avoid my hand.

“The truth is, I got lucky.”

“Eeh. What a letdown.”

“Deduction is simply the repeated act of throwing darts at the high-scoring spots on the target most likely to be the right answer. In the end, it never escapes the realm of luck.”

Anemia. Jaundice. Pica.

Those three clues alone could not narrow down the possibilities perfectly.

But I had another clue.

“Wangcho told me.”

The one who reacted to my answer was not Erika, but Wangcho.

“Me?”

“You said she comes every night to drink blood.”

‘She comes every night to drink blood.’

That meant her anemia was likely worsening at night.

Once I formed that hypothesis, everything fit together.

There was no obvious contradiction in it. So I made the call.

That was deduction.

“Well?”

After hearing my explanation, Eri’s mouth fell open.

Of course she would be amazed. I was describing her condition as though I had watched it happen beside her.

Seeing her expression made the risky deduction worthwhile.

‘This is why taking a medical history is important.’

There was a reason doctors needed to listen carefully to their patients.

A minor remark could become a decisive clue.

Well, I was a trauma surgeon, so I rarely had a reason to listen to patients.

‘Honestly, it was luck.’

If her morning urine had been normal, I had planned to move naturally on to another question.

I probably would have asked whether her stomach hurt.

Maybe it was the power of a misunderstanding story, but I got it right on the first question.

“Has that answered your question?”

Silence fell after I finished explaining.

‘How’s that? Pretty amazing, right?’

I seem like a genius, don’t I?

Like Sherlock Holmes.

As I indulged in those thoughts, Eri blankly nodded.

Wangcho voiced the admiration Eri could not.

“Huh... As expected of you, Doctor. Now that I hear it, everything fits perfectly!”

Wangcho clapped like a seal, his eyes shining.

This was why I liked Wangcho.

His reactions were so satisfying.

Yes. Clap some more.

I was the protagonist. I was Doctor Schnabel.

“Now that we know the cause, can this child be treated?”

At Wangcho’s question, Eri’s head snapped up.

For the first time, hope seemed to shine in the red eyes that had been filled with resignation and distrust.

She seemed to expect that if the doctor had uncovered every detail of the curse tormenting her, surely I would have a solution as well.

Receiving the heated gazes of both of them, I answered casually.

“Impossible. It’s incurable.”

“...What?”

Their expressions froze in an instant.

* * *

PNH.

Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria.

I did not know why I remembered it so clearly despite having been a trauma surgeon in my previous life, but I remembered that the injections used to treat it were incredibly expensive.

Was it Solaris?

I remembered it costing a crazy five hundred million won a year.

Even the cheaper one had cost around three hundred million won a year.

I remembered it because it was supposedly among the most expensive treatments in the world.

Maybe it was even more expensive than anticancer drugs.

Naturally, I did not know the ingredients of those treatments, let alone their raw materials.

There was no way I could reproduce them in this world.

So I told her honestly.

“It will probably be difficult to cure it right now.”

“...I see.”

The light vanished from Eri’s eyes as she nodded.

Resignation returned to the red eyes that had held hope only moments ago.

Then Wangcho urgently tapped my shoulder with a finger.

“Doctor, say more!”

“?”

“Didn’t you do this when I had gout?”

“Did I?”

Wangcho grabbed his forehead at my response.

“That habit of yours! You say, ‘It’s incurable,’ right away, then only much later add, ‘You just need to take medicine!’ It’s a truly terrible habit!”

...Had I done that?

Thinking about it, I probably had.

I vaguely remembered seniors and residents criticizing me for it in my previous life.

“Yoonho! Stop giving the family the bad news first! You’re going to scare the wits out of them!”

“Professor, I think you omitted the object again.”

Tsk.

Was I wrong?

But from a doctor’s perspective, if it was incurable, it was incurable.

Treatment and management were clearly different concepts.

Just as nobody said they were curing diabetes, it was simply an illness that had to be managed.

“I can’t lie to a patient.”

“This is why geniuses are like this! Even so, there’s an order to how you say things! If you state the conclusion first, ordinary people like us can’t keep up with you!”

Wangcho sighed.

But I had plenty to say about that as well.

Back in school, I had been taught not to give patients false hope whenever possible.

People who accepted reality did not sue, but plenty sued because they felt betrayed.

That was why I gave the bad news first. It just happened to be the conclusion most of the time.

Without knowing any of that, Wangcho turned away from me and crouched in front of Eri.

“Kid. Try to understand. That doctor has always been like this.”

With Wangcho’s large body folded down, the golden eyes of the hyena beastfolk came level with Eri’s red ones.

“I’m the same as you. I have an illness that can’t be cured, but as long as I take medicine, it doesn’t interfere with my life at all.”

Wangcho looked back at me.

“This kid will be the same, right, Doctor? There is more to it, right?”

It was phrased as a question, but it sounded more like, There had better be more.

Under that silent pressure, I set aside the one hundred and eighty reasons PNH could not be cured and gave them the conclusion.

“Just as Wangcho said, you’ll probably live with this illness for the rest of your life. But I’ll give you your ordinary life back.”

I could not cure it, but I could manage it.

In fact, it would probably cause fewer problems than gout.

Wangcho looked relieved at my definite answer.

The light returned to Eri’s eyes.

There was also a hint of dissatisfaction.

She seemed upset because she thought I had been deliberately playing with words.

I did not even need to read her eyes. Her lips were sticking out so far that it was obvious.

I pressed her pout back with a finger.

“First, let’s check your blood. Your symptoms are typical, but we still need confirmation.”

I turned around and took out some tools from the examination table drawer.

Wangcho looked puzzled by what I was doing.

“What else needs to be tested?”

“I told you. Deduction ultimately depends on luck. Unless it is one hundred percent certain, diagnosing based on clues alone is dangerous.”

Once you suspected an illness, you had to test for it.

The tools I took from the drawer were a glass, vinegar, and a syringe.

I held up the syringe and signaled to Wangcho.

Wangcho immediately got the hint and grabbed Eri’s arm.

“Hold still.”

Wangcho covered Eri’s eyes.

I quickly drew blood in the meantime.

“Wangcho, press down firmly. It’s already a disease where bleeding is hard to stop.”

Wangcho pressed cotton firmly against Eri’s arm.

While he did that, I divided Eri’s blood between two glasses.

Then I dropped several drops of vinegar into only one of them.

Ham’s test, or the acid hemolysis test.

It took advantage of how PNH red blood cells burst easily under complement attack in an acidic environment.

The result appeared immediately.

The blood without vinegar remained red and cloudy.

But the one with vinegar...

“Ooh...! The color...!”

It turned the clear, transparent color of grape juice.

Even Wangcho, who knew nothing about medicine, could immediately see the stark hemolytic reaction.

‘Ta-da. Magical.’

If it had not been for my image, I would have made a bigger show of it.

Instead, I stroked Eri’s head and told her she had done well.

Eri stared blankly at her transparent blood.

“What is this... Magic?”

“Rather than magic, let’s call it a trick.”

I prepared for the next step.

The diagnosis was done, so it was time to prescribe treatment.

‘She can be managed with transfusions.’

PNH could not be cured, but it could be managed to some degree through transfusions.

Before giving one, however, I needed to find the most suitable blood.

I pricked Eri’s finger again and collected blood.

Then I took out the blood samples I had stored.

More precisely, samples collected that morning.

Since I had no way to preserve blood, I had made a habit of taking enough from a few people each time they came to the clinic to use until the following day.

“Wangcho, I’ll borrow some of your blood.”

Along with those samples, I added blood from Wangcho and myself, then mixed them with Eri’s blood.

“Hmm...”

The conclusion.

The crossmatch result showed that Eri’s blood type matched mine.

“Good. Once the blood is ready the day after tomorrow, we’ll give you a transfusion. Until then, stay at the clinic and focus on nutrition.”

“A trans... fusion?”

Eri tilted her head at the unfamiliar word.

I left her to think about it and spoke to Wangcho.

“Please look after Eri until the transfusion in two days.”

Wangcho nodded.

* * *

Two days passed, and the promised day arrived.

Using two hundred milliliters of my blood, I had prepared a unit of washed red blood cells.

I had gone through the trouble of making washed red blood cells because PNH patients could suffer a hemolytic attack if they received unprocessed blood.

The process of making it had been a little complicated.

Draw blood, make Wangcho’s subordinates tie it to strings and spin it around to separate the heavy parts from the light ones, discard the lighter portion, rinse it with saline, spin it again, rinse it again...

After working Wangcho’s subordinates hard, I managed to complete it.

‘The pyramids really were built by people.’

Enough labor could replace technology.

And enough capital could buy enough labor somehow.

By that formula, as long as I understood the principle, even twenty-first-century medicines could be reproduced at the level of nineteenth-century civilization.

‘It looks well made.’

Just in case, I held the washed red blood cells beneath a magic stone lamp.

Clear, clean red.

Approved.

“All right. Let’s begin.”

I laid Eri down on the examination table.

After two days of feeding her, some color had returned to her face.

That was only natural after giving her so much iron-rich food.

Any animal became gentler once it was full.

Unlike two days ago, Eri’s softened manner showed as she asked a question.

“...Will it hurt?”

“It will sting a little. Bear with it.”

I inserted the needle into Eri’s arm.

I did not make the beginner’s mistake of having to search for a vein several times.

How many years had I made a living through surgery? I could find a vein while half-asleep.

The red liquid slowly flowed into Eri’s vein.

One minute. Five minutes. Ten minutes.

“...”

Eri stared blankly at the ceiling.

“How do you feel?”

“...I’m not sure.”

No problems. Check.

“If you get dizzy or short of breath, tell me.”

Come to think of it, it had been a long time since I had personally performed a transfusion.

After finishing my residency in my previous life, I had never needed to find veins myself.

The residents and nurses did all of that.

An hour passed.

The transfusion ended safely.

Two hundred milliliters.

It was not much, but considering this child’s small frame, it was enough.

“Get plenty of rest today. We’ll see how you are tomorrow and decide whether to give you more.”

Eri nodded.

As she climbed down from the bed, I asked her a question to make sure.

“How is it? Do you still feel thirsty?”

“A little less.”

“Good.”

Pica was easy to correct as well.

Once iron and red blood cells were replenished, it disappeared quickly.

In about a week, she would probably stop seeking blood altogether.

“Let’s keep up regular transfusions like this. You’ll probably need them for the rest of your life, but that alone will not interfere with your daily life.”

Of course, transfusions alone could not make Eri’s illness disappear.

If they could, those injections that cost hundreds of millions would never have been developed.

Besides, PNH was an illness that required further management from a doctor even while receiving transfusions.

But there was no need to bring that up in such a hopeful atmosphere.

‘Managing those risks is my job anyway.’

Living an ordinary life would not be much of a problem.

She no longer needed to stick her head into a bucket and greedily drink blood.

There would be no reason for people to point at her and call her a Blood Demon.

No reason for people like Wangcho to kick her either.

Perhaps it had not sunk in yet.

Eri fidgeted with the bandage on her arm.

As the warmth of blood began circulating through her body, the sensation seemed unfamiliar. The child repeatedly clenched and unclenched her fist.

Then she raised her head and met my eyes.

“...Why are you doing this much for me?”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I don’t have any money.”

Eri muttered in a shrinking voice.

“All I have are these clothes. Mister... no, Doctor Schnabel, I can’t repay what you’ve done for me.”

The child knew the rules of these back alleys better than anyone.

There was no favor without a price.

Especially in Limbus Pit, kindness without a reason usually demanded a far more dreadful payment later.

Distrust and anxiety showed in her eyes.

Usually, what was needed to dispel that was not sincerity.

“Then run errands for me.”

“What?”

Usually, what was needed in these situations was give and take.

I pointed at the clinic floor.

“You need regular care from me anyway. So you’ll work here. I’ll provide food and lodging.”

“...Here?”

“I happened to need an errand runner. Pick up medicine, notify patients, clean now and then. Can you do that?”

“...All right. I’ll accept.”

Her nod was stiff.

It looked like she was stamping a seal on a contract.

But compared to just seconds ago, her wariness had clearly faded.

‘Strange, isn’t it?’

Simply turning charity without a price into a transaction made people’s guard fall so easily.

Whether it cost nothing or merely the price of a coffee.

Compared to the quality of the treatment, it was practically free either way, but simply placing a nominal hurdle that was worse than none changed the response.

It was the same in Korea.

“Wangcho.”

After concluding the transaction, I called Wangcho, who had been waiting outside.

“It looks like this child will be our new errand runner starting today. Can you teach her what she needs to do? The same way the other children did.”

“Understood, Doctor.”

Wangcho lightly pushed Eri’s back.

As Eri crossed the threshold, she looked back once.

When I motioned for her to go with my chin, Eri turned away and left.

Once the two of them were gone, I was left alone in the treatment room.

As I put away the transfusion tools, I thought over our conversation.

‘All I have are these clothes. Mister... no, Doctor Schnabel, I can’t repay what you’ve done for me.’

“Well, I don’t see it that way.”

I muttered to myself, knowing no one would hear.

Erika only valued herself that much, but I thought differently.

Now, let’s organize this.

A rare disease.

A rare disease that only one person in the entire world, me, could diagnose.

To make matters better, her blood type matched mine.

And it was an illness that required regular transfusions.

Here was the question.

Would anyone who had read even a few web novels think this child was an ordinary extra?

Of course not!

‘For all I know, she might even be a polymorphed dragon.’

Maybe she was a future Sword Saint.

Maybe she was a childhood friend destined to become the strongest person in the world.

In other words, this was an event.

A buy-low event.

‘Well, maybe not.’

Of course, this was not the first child I had taken in like this.

A year ago, testicular torsion. Eight months ago, phenylketonuria. Half a year ago, congenital clubfoot. Three months ago, congenital diabetes...

All kinds of children had passed through my hands.

Each time, I treated and hired them, then looked for their talents.

None of them had been the SSR or five-star I wanted.

‘Still, this time feels different.’

It was just somehow different. I could not explain it specifically.

But what if I said all of this and she turned out to be a dud too?

That would be disappointing, that was all.

A rainmaking ritual continued until it rained.

‘For now, let’s start with errands.’

Just as I had with the other children.

Eventually, one or two talents would turn up.

Hopefully, they would be the talents I wanted.

Footnotes:

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