Kraft's First Lecture

The next day, Ryan saw Kraft emerge from his room looking exhausted.

"Didn't sleep well?"

"No, I spent half the night reading. I wanted to fulfill my duties as a lecturer before I left." Kraft yawned. "Ryan, could I ask you to go look for the things we need to buy by yourself today? I can entrust my money to you."

As the saying went, you shouldn't accept a reward without doing anything for it. It felt a little embarrassing to take the benefits and then leave, so Kraft still wanted to make some contribution before he went.

He pulled out his purse, took a few silver coins from it, then handed the rest, purse and all, to Ryan.

"No problem. Before that, shall we go find something to eat together?" Ryan had been wondering how to come up with an excuse to go off on his own. Now Kraft had made the suggestion himself, which suited him perfectly. He could go meet the stonemason alone. The rune-carved stone hand he'd ordered yesterday should be ready by this afternoon.

After breakfast, the two of them went out and split up. Ryan rode off on his horse and quickly disappeared from Kraft's sight again. Kraft couldn't help feeling a little puzzled. He had the impression that his cousin had already picked out a destination.

But he soon put the minor concern out of his mind, pinned on his badge, and decided to walk to the nearby Academy. He could use the journey to review the material he'd planned to teach the day before.

He'd already had a few ideas for his lecture while reading the book Humoral Theory. When he saw that Human Anatomy had already illustrated Yellow Fluid—that is, bile—traveling from the liver and gallbladder to the intestines, the whole structure of his lecture fell into place.

Logically, even within the constraints of the current framework, it was possible to explain why a patient could show signs of "excess Yellow Fluid"—yellowing skin and whites of the eyes—yet still be emaciated, swollen, and suffering from indigestion. The information in Human Anatomy was already enough for him to explain it.

In the soft morning light, Kraft walked toward the Academy in his black Medical School uniform, a silver badge pinned to his chest and three books tucked under his arm. He blended in among the various scholars' robes not far from the entrance, feeling as though there was little difference from going to class back in college.

Once he'd finished organizing his outline, he began actively filling in more knowledge that might be relevant, rehearsing questions and objections he might face. From the third porta hepatis down to the first, then along the common hepatic duct until it joined the cystic duct to form the common bile duct, the location and contents of the cystic triangle—even the blood vessels, lymphatics, and ligaments he'd never carefully memorized—were added to the anatomical diagram in his mind.

That same strange sensation that had come over him several times before descended on him again. His memories were so clear that his mind barely felt like his own.

Kraft could no longer remember the name he'd had in his old world, but he still recalled the misery of memorizing textbooks. If he'd really had memories like these, there would have been no reason to stay up late studying for exams. What was more, he'd only skimmed these topics at the time, and the rather rudimentary Human Anatomy he'd read yesterday certainly couldn't have contained this information.

Almost frightened, he continued searching his mind for more details, trying to confirm his suspicions. Things he'd thought had faded away long ago had been neatly laid out there, though he didn't know when. It was as if someone had broken into his most private storeroom while he was unaware, repainted the faded murals, and put the scattered books back in order.

The lost things he'd thought he could never recover had appeared in the very place he'd just checked, the moment he thought of them.

He couldn't understand how this was happening. He even recalled the page numbers in the book. The black-and-white illustrations were right before his eyes, with numbered labels on the diagrams and the names of the corresponding parts neatly arranged beside them.

Kraft was finally certain that something abnormal was happening to him. If he wasn't mistaken, then after that inexplicable high fever, it was as though the walls had been torn down and his consciousness released from a cramped, restrictive space, freed from some innate limitation and able to expand without restraint.

Its expansion wasn't under his conscious control. Once triggered, it went searching, digging up more information wherever it could. The signals gathered by his eyes, ears, sense of touch, and every other sensory organ, along with things sealed away in the depths of his memory, were all within the territory of this liberated monster.

There was only one thing it could never find, no matter what: where it had come from.

After the fever, the strange dreams, and his instinctive avoidance, his consciousness had begun to expand without limit. Yet it could never touch the origin of it all. He knew it existed, but not what it was.

His consciousness uncontrollably focused on that one point. The light before his eyes dimmed, the clamor of the crowd receded, and a violent feeling of weightlessness washed over him. He understood that this was the price of the meager benefit he'd gained. He would never be free of an existence he couldn't even explain.

He'd thought he'd left that place the next day, but now he wasn't so sure. Even with a consciousness that had exhausted everything he knew, he still stood in the unknowable, immeasurable darkness, gazing into a long night his eyes couldn't pierce. The unseen thing was right before him, yet he could never touch it. Even sensing its existence was already the limit of what he could do.

"Lecturer Kraft?"

"Kraft!"

Light returned in an instant, as if everything that had just happened was nothing but a hallucination. A faint thought even tried to convince him that he'd only fainted from low blood sugar.

Kraft rejected the thought, blinked, and readjusted to the light. A brown-haired head appeared before him, its owner looking down at him with concern. A sharp pain throbbed in the back of his head. He realized he was lying on the ground at the entrance to the Medical School.

"Lucius?" Kraft found that he didn't seem frightened. It was as though his emotions were still floating somewhere above him, not yet returned. Only a faint trace of fear remained. His voice sounded so calm it hardly seemed to come from him, just as it had when he'd woken from his dream last time.

His instincts were trying to erase what he couldn't accept, but this time they'd failed. Kraft had grasped the truth—or at least one corner of it, a terrifying corner he had no choice but to face.

"Just call me Kraft. It's only low blood sugar. Could you give me a hand?" He made up an excuse without a moment's hesitation and held out his hand to Lucius, asking him to help him up.

"Uh, what do you mean by 'blood' 'sugar'?" Lucius pulled Kraft to his feet. The concern hadn't left his face, but the unfamiliar compound word had caught his attention.

"Nothing, just a new term. We'll have plenty of time to talk about it later." Kraft brushed the dust off his clothes. "I seem to have forgotten to schedule a time today. Could you tell me when it would be convenient for me to fulfill my duties as a lecturer?" He even smiled at Lucius, putting his worries at ease.

"Of course. If you don't mind, please wait in an empty classroom for a while. I'll go tell the other students."

The strange, uncanny feeling lingered, but at least today Kraft thought he could finish his lecture first and worry about these baffling things afterward.

"I'm glad so many people came to hear my lecture. I bet my teacher never thought I'd have a day like this." In a formal classroom, a little larger than yesterday's dissection room, Kraft opened with a self-deprecating joke. A faint ripple of laughter came from the audience.

"Today I'd like to discuss a theory proposed by one of our predecessors. Naturally, I confirmed it for certain reasons I can't explain.

"You should all be quite familiar with the book Humoral Theory by now. It mentions the yellowing of the complexion caused by excess Yellow Fluid, as well as symptoms patients experience at the same time: loss of appetite, weight loss, and diarrhea after eating greasy food.

"The prevailing view has always been that this condition contradicts Yellow Fluid's role in digesting food. But in fact, it was already explained in Human Anatomy. The author simply didn't realize it." He turned around and used a small piece of chalk to draw the path bile took from the liver to the descending part of the duodenum on the dark wooden board behind him.

"The point is actually quite simple. You have to realize that this yellow fluid has only one narrow route from the liver to the intestines.

"So why couldn't it simply fail to reach where it's supposed to go? It could be blocked somewhere along this passage, or even fail to leave the liver at all, never being discharged into the intestines. Naturally, its ability to aid digestion would then be greatly reduced.

"Of course, I should point out that more complex mechanisms are at work here, and the causes of these symptoms are by no means so simple. But today, all we're going to do is discuss these two possibilities...

"...In short, once we understand that a variety of causes can lead to Yellow Fluid stagnating in the body instead of entering the intestines, the apparent contradiction between jaundice and weight loss or loss of appetite is easily resolved.

"I believe understanding the structure of the human body is an extremely important part of medical progress. It will explain and overturn countless existing theories. To gain a deeper understanding, it's acceptable to break with some traditions.

"Thank you, everyone. That's the end of my lecture. I hope you found it helpful."

Kraft finished his lecture. The classroom was unusually quiet. None of the questions or objections he'd imagined had come. All he heard from the audience was the scratch of pens taking notes. Applause wasn't customary here; students showed their respect for those who imparted knowledge through solemn silence and diligent writing. Kraft did spot Professor Calman in the audience, looking thoughtful.

When he noticed Kraft looking at him, Professor Calman carefully stood up, making sure not to disturb the students around him, who were still thinking and taking notes.

"Perhaps a lecturer's position is a little meager for someone like you. I've never seen a family with someone of your ability remain unknown." He came closer and spoke quietly. "But this is all I can offer for now. Perhaps you'll become a professor yourself someday."

Calman paused, checked that none of the students nearby were paying attention, then lowered his voice even further. In a near-whisper, he asked in Kraft's ear, "When you said 'break with some traditions,' did you mean that?"