I Had a Feeling I'd Arrived Too Late

"This really is... unexpected."

Kraft finished reading the letter in his hands and casually passed it to Lucius, who had been eyeing it curiously.

They were sitting in Professor Calman's room—the same one where the three of them had shared barley tea and biscuits the first time Kraft visited. While Kraft read the letter, Lucius had boiled a kettle on the little stove and poured two fresh cups of barley tea for the table, but he hadn't been able to find the professor's honey jar.

After spending a month cooped up in the castle, Kraft had finally been sent back by his grandfather to officially take up his post. He'd arrived the previous evening and rested at an inn. The next day, he planned to visit the Academy to ask about the details before looking into a long-term place to stay.

He hadn't been inside the Medical School for long when an unfamiliar student stopped him, saying he was a friend of Lucius. Seven days earlier, Lucius had told them to notify him if they saw Lecturer Kraft.

Kraft followed the student along the Medical School's winding corridors, up a spiral staircase and through several archways, until he found Lucius in the professor's private room, fretting over a table covered in papers.

The Medical School building was certainly complicated. It wasn't Kraft's first time there, but perhaps because of all the pointless decorative pillars and partitions, and because each floor had a different layout, it felt as if he took a different route every time.

After showing Kraft in, the student took his leave. Lucius set down the papers he'd been sorting and pulled a formal letter, sealed with wax, from the inner pocket of his black robe. With all the excitement of someone who'd waited a long time, he handed it to the bewildered Kraft.

"Professor Calman has great faith in your talent and enthusiasm for this kind of work." Lucius's impatience was written all over his face. "Now that there are two of us, we can follow the professor's instructions and continue refining our research on Black Fluid before he returns."

"Thank you for Professor Calman's trust, but I still have some questions." Kraft reached into the bottom of the envelope and felt a copper key. It seemed he wouldn't have to worry about finding a place to stay for now.

They hadn't known each other long, but Professor Calman seemed to think highly of him. He was willing to share something so important and had even entrusted Kraft with precious samples and experimental results. Kraft was deeply touched. Helping out to the best of his ability was only natural.

Based on the letter's description, it was difficult for Kraft to imagine what this substance, which had more or less been identified as "Black Fluid," corresponded to in his own system of knowledge.

White Fluid could be considered cerebrospinal fluid; Yellow Fluid was more or less certainly bile; and Red Fluid was obviously blood. But what the hell was Black Fluid? That left him completely baffled. And from the letter, it seemed they had extracted it from some kind of human tissue. Even after extraction, it could be stored for a long time without losing its properties.

Even more outrageous, Kraft wondered whether the container was incredibly sturdy or the substance itself was unbelievably stable. Had they really sent someone carrying it in a pocket all the way from Dunling to Wenden Port? This supposed "suppressive" property was another mystery. He'd probably have to see the detailed experimental records to understand it.

"So, according to the letter, this thing we're tentatively calling 'Black Fluid' really was extracted from a human body."

Kraft found it hard to picture what it meant to "extract" something from a human body. Here, the word was generally used for separating one liquid from another—such as extracting a liquid from medicinal mixtures or alcohol through heating and distillation, or by letting it settle. The latter part of Humoral Theory used the term more often, but it referred to taking certain components from medicinal juices and decoctions for people to drink and "regulate their humoral balance."

Something about this just didn't seem right.

"I remember the professor said the Church over there kept a tight rein on things, so there probably wouldn't be many opportunities to do this sort of thing." Kraft spoke. The professor had complained to him before that Anatomy in Dunling was at a standstill, all because of the Church's enormous influence there.

"I'm not sure either." Lucius wasn't concerned about that. He'd studied in Wenden Port all along, and under Professor Calman, so secretly finding a corpse to dissect wasn't an issue. "The professor's professor—I mean, Professor Morrison—isn't exactly an ordinary person at Dunling University. He must have had some connections, right? The professor hasn't been back to Dunling in a long time, either. They probably found a way in the years since."

Kraft put his powerful memory to work and thought it over again, but still couldn't figure out how they could get a liquid like this from a human body.

He strongly suspected an issue with the equipment had led them to accidentally produce some kind of toxic liquid. Maybe the raw materials for the glassware had contained heavy metals that got mixed in during heating. Then Professor Morrison, who had no sense of lab safety, fed the sample to an animal—or simply tried a taste himself, in the spirit of fearless self-sacrifice.

That would explain it. Swallowing heavy metals or some other neurotoxic substance would cause central nervous system depression. The symptoms—dizziness, weakness, and the like—would soon show up in both animals and humans.

There you had it: a powerful depressant.

"Uh, Lucius, before we go look at it, I'd like to ask how much of it there is and what it's stored in." Kraft studied Lucius's face, assessing his mental state. Aside from being a little overexcited, he seemed fine for now.

Lucius held up his hand and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger. "It's a little round glass bottle about this big, brown in color. There's only enough inside to cover the bottom. When the professor experimented, he'd dip a little out with a small stick and dissolve it in water.

"Why don't I take you to see it? The sample's in the basement of the Academy. We dissolved a tiny bit in a cup of water. After drinking just a small sip, a person falls into a very deep sleep."

"You gave it to people to drink?!" Kraft was utterly shocked. He'd heard of people deliberately swallowing H. pylori, but compared with this, that was child's play.

"No, only the professor and I took turns trying it. Nobody else knows it exists." Lucius was clearly focused on something completely different from Kraft. He excitedly held out his hand, showing Kraft the several red dots on it. "It's incredible. Even that tiny amount puts you to sleep immediately after you drink it. Your heartbeat and breathing slow down, and even a pin prick won't wake you. You only wake up after about a day, with no idea what happened in the meantime."

"Huh?!" This was completely beyond Kraft's imagination. The boldest thing he'd ever done in either of his two lives was try to smell a gas his group had made out of curiosity during high school chemistry.

Personally trying a sip of an unknown liquid that would make you sleep for a day—and taking turns at that—was on the same level as betting on a misfire in Russian roulette, if not worse. If he'd done something like that, he could have bragged to Granny Meng while waiting for her soup at the Bridge of Forgetfulness. Even the devils in hell would have looked at him with newfound respect.

"Sit down. Now." Kraft shoved Lucius into a chair. "I'm going to examine you. Don't ask why."

As he felt and tapped various parts of Lucius's body, he questioned him thoroughly. "How long ago did you drink it? How many times? After you lost consciousness, were there any changes besides your heartbeat and breathing slowing down? Did you feel unwell after waking up? How have you been feeling lately? Has your appetite changed? Are you sleeping well? Any changes in your bowel movements or urination?"

"No, everything's normal." Lucius was startled by Kraft's sudden seriousness. "According to Humoral Theory, as long as the fluids in the body aren't showing a tendency to turn into Black Fluid in large quantities, a small, temporary increase in Black Fluid is just a passing change. The professor was fine, so how could someone as young as me have a problem?"

"Don't be ridiculous!" Kraft gave him a thorough examination from head to toe. He couldn't find anything obviously wrong, but the simple check didn't put him at ease. If anything, it made him even more wary.

A tiny amount, taken orally, worked quickly, and rendered someone unconscious for a whole day. Pain couldn't wake them. Already somewhat paranoid, Kraft even began to wonder whether Lucius's current excitement came from looking forward to more experiments—or whether it was a sign of mild personality changes and mental disturbance.

Kraft took two steps back and studied Lucius again, sweeping his gaze from head to toe. He looked from Lucius's brown hair and slightly pale face to the hands pricked with several red dots, then finally to the papers Lucius had been sorting when he arrived.

Pale yellow pages covered most of the table. The handwriting was mostly a little messy, yet still elegant, and the layout was rather casual. The writing varied in size from one page to another, so they probably hadn't all been written at the same time. Some had already been stacked together, while the rest were scattered haphazardly around them. The cups of barley tea had been relegated to the edges.

"What are these?"