This Thing Looks Familiar

When Kraft went in, his hands were empty. When he came out, he was carrying a brand-new Medical School uniform, three books tucked under his arm, and a badge pinned to his collar. Professor Calman and Lucius came out with him to see him off.

By the light of the lantern in the professor's hand, Ryan got a good look at the badge. It showed an open book: on the left page was the Winged Ring, symbolizing the Church's involvement; on the right was the Clock Tower, framed by spruce branches. It was the emblem of Wenden Port Academy.

As far as he could recall, he had only ever seen badges like that on teachers at the Academy. Teacher Anderson had one, too. It was baffling. He knew what Kraft was capable of—he could probably read all sorts of books without difficulty, and that was about it. How had he ended up with an Academy badge after just one afternoon?

"This must be Lecturer Kraft's cousin. The Wood Family's profound expertise in medicine truly makes me ashamed of my own title as a professor." Calman came over, wearing the kind of eager smile a street vendor gave when trying to get money out of someone. "So I took the liberty of asking Mr. Kraft to serve as a lecturer at our Medical School. If you have some free time in the future, please be sure to visit the Academy. Whether you give lectures or not doesn't matter."

"?"

Ryan couldn't make sense of a single part of that. His face showed nothing but confusion. With all due respect, it was hard to imagine the word "medicine" having anything to do with the Wood Family. And putting "lecturer," "medical expertise," and "Wood Family" together in one sentence would be difficult unless you added a negation.

"Sorry, Cousin Ryan. I'm late." Kraft promptly admitted his fault, then quickly mounted his horse and gestured for Ryan to join him. "Thank you for your hospitality, Professor Calman." After a brief farewell to the professor, Kraft hurriedly took the bewildered Ryan away into the night before he could ask anything that would leave everyone at a loss for words.

"So when did our family acquire expertise in medicine?"

The two found an inn that was still open. It wasn't hard to find one in the middle of the night. In Wenden Port, there were only a few kinds of buildings still lit at night. Apart from bars and certain establishments—or places that combined the functions of both—the remaining eight out of ten were probably inns.

Before they went back to their rooms to sleep, Ryan finally asked the question. It wasn't that he was too curious. The whole thing was just too bizarre. It was like a kid who always came last in class suddenly acing the college entrance exams and getting into a top university's most prestigious program.

A parent's first reaction definitely wouldn't be delight. They'd wonder where the kid had found someone to pretend he'd gotten in and fool them.

Technically, Ryan was of the same generation as Kraft, but he was a few years older and had matured early. He had also been raised as a "backup" in case Kraft died young, and had spent so much time with Old Wood that he was practically like a son to him. He had even been responsible for looking after Kraft at times. He knew both the family and Kraft inside out.

Now he felt like a parent who'd gotten up early and found an acceptance letter from a top university waiting where the milk was usually left at the door.

As half a parent to Kraft, Ryan was of course delighted. But as a de facto core member of the Wood Family, how could he not know what the family was made of? Praising the Wood Family's scholarly heritage was about as sensible as complimenting a blind man on his eyesight or discussing music with someone who was deaf. It was practically asking for a fight.

If Kraft had been praised by some great noble for his superb martial skills, Ryan could have understood that. But claiming the Wood Family had academic credentials was a minor insult to his own intelligence and a major insult to the entire family. And yet this professor seemed serious. He had actually given Kraft a badge.

"Um... You might not believe this, but I found an old book in Grandfather's collection. I was interested, so I read a bit more about the subject." Kraft knew it would be hard to explain, so he used the old books collected by his grandfather as a convenient excuse. Anyway, given Ryan's reading ability, there was no chance he'd ask to borrow one.

"Really?" Ryan felt his intelligence had been insulted for the second time. "You've taken up reading those books?" It wasn't that he didn't believe Kraft; it was just that whenever anyone had tried to make Kraft study in the past, Old Wood had needed to resort to a little physical persuasion.

"Really. People's interests change a little as they get older."

Ryan didn't believe a single letter of that, but it wasn't a bad thing. Kraft wasn't a child anymore, and Ryan was willing to respect his secrets. There was no need, and no reason, to keep pressing him.

"All right." Ryan sighed, glanced at Kraft, and turned back to his own room. He looked like an old father watching his child grow up and become independent, pleased but a little wistful.

Now it was Kraft's turn to be confused. He had expected to spend a while convincing Ryan, but Ryan's sudden old-father attitude left him at a loss.

"All right. Sleep well, Ryan."

After watching Ryan go to bed, Kraft returned to his room, took a candle from his bag, and lit it. He planned to look through the three books he had gotten that day and learn about the current state of medicine.

Honestly, as someone whose academic performance had been rather mediocre, he had never imagined he would one day be teaching. To the original Kraft, this was a wonderful opportunity that would bring honor to the family. To the part of him that had come from another world, it was a chance to continue a career that had ended almost as soon as it began—and a way to find his purpose here.

Filled with the excitement of a newly appointed teacher eager to make a difference, and a little curiosity about medicine in its infancy, Kraft took out the first book.

Like other hardbound books, this manuscript had a painted wooden cover. Its title was written in a neat, solemn script resembling early Gothic lettering, with broad, straight strokes. It was usually written with a broad-nibbed pen and was used by the Church for copying stories from the Holy Scripture. It also appeared in formal documents and works that demanded a certain degree of solemnity.

To someone who had never studied it, the script looked like a jumble of long and short vertical lines, more or less alike, ending in squares and diamonds. But to those who knew it, it was fairly distinctive. To reduce wear, the letters had been carved into the wooden cover and inlaid with metal foil. Years of oxidation had dulled its shine.

This was a book on Humoral Theory.

For a hefty tome, it wasn't very reader-friendly. The person who had made it hadn't added page numbers or a table of contents, and there was no preface, either. To find out what the book actually said, readers had to go through it from cover to cover. Anyone with a poor memory might need to take notes.

So Kraft took out the paper and pen he had bought that afternoon, opened the ink bottle, and prepared to read and take notes at the same time.

On the first page, at the very beginning of the book, the author laid out his view of the human body. The body's various functions, he explained, depended on different fluids within it. He believed that these fluids were interconnected and could transform into one another, together forming a balance. Ultimately, all diseases were caused by internal or external factors that disrupted this crucial balance, producing various symptoms.

In other words, by examining the symptoms, one could deduce which humor had fallen out of balance and then treat the condition accordingly.

And what were these fluids? There were four...

Ah, the familiar feeling washed over him. It was steeped in history. Kraft finally understood what this was: Humorism.

It seemed history did develop along similar lines. Although there was no Hippocrates here—and thus no very practical method for setting dislocations—the broad direction of the theory had still led to a remarkably similar skill tree.

Of course, he couldn't rule out the possibility that another transmigrator had come here before him and plagiarized the idea.

As he read on, he learned that the four fluids were named by color: Red Fluid, White Fluid, Yellow Fluid, and Black Fluid. Their differences went far beyond their colors; each performed different functions within the body.

Red Fluid, for example, was easy enough to understand: it was blood. As the most widespread fluid in the human body, it flowed ceaselessly through blood vessels large and small. The author believed it had an active, mobile nature, and that it connected the various fluids and drove change.

Kraft nodded. Yes, that was the stuff. He'd heard of this before. It felt like being back in class, in the first lesson of every semester, when the history of medicine was briefly touched on in the introduction.