A Quiet Day

Over the next few days, Kraft seemed to return to the student life he'd loved best.

Each morning, as a faintly salty mist hung in the air and the Academy's Clock Tower rang six times in the distance, he would slowly haul himself out of bed.

He would take his two-handed sword to the inn's backyard for some morning exercises best avoided by idle onlookers, keeping himself in shape. His future work had little to do with splitting heads, but staying healthy was still important—if nothing else, it might prevent him from dropping dead.

After working up a light sweat, about half an hour would have passed. Then he could go downstairs, order grilled fish at the inn's counter, and finish his breakfast with some bread.

As a young man who exercised regularly, Kraft generally needed two servings to fill himself up. An Otherworld Soul usually only ate that much when faced with an all-you-can-eat buffet.

After breakfast, he would return to his room and change into the Academy's black robe, use its hem to cover his sword, pin his lecturer's badge to the left collar, then check the lesson plans he'd prepared the night before. With his books tucked under his arm, he would head to the Academy to teach his students.

At times like these, he would miss the convenience of PowerPoint. The Otherworld Soul had been born in an age of rapidly developing electronics. When he was young, he'd still seen classrooms with walls of chalkboard writing, but as he grew older, those were replaced by electronic whiteboards. By the time he reached university, all that remained was PowerPoint.

Most people, himself included, had long since lost the ability to write on vertical surfaces. He'd never expected that he'd have to use chunks of chalk to write on painted wooden boards.

Fortunately, years of sword practice had given him strong arms. Otherwise, drawing diagrams on the blackboard and explaining them every day would have been nearly impossible.

Even so, after a morning of lectures, he would feel a dull ache on the outside of his elbow. It was a common complaint among teachers in his other world, especially math teachers who liked writing proofs on the blackboard. They could fill several boards in a single class.

Looking back, it was probably lateral epicondylitis, commonly known as tennis elbow. With so much strain on his elbow, if he didn't take care, it was only a matter of time before he inherited the same affliction.

Unlike the other lecturers at the Academy, who rarely did anything hands-on, Kraft couldn't stand explaining without illustrations. As chalk dust drifted through the air amid coughs and sneezes, he recreated one anatomical drawing after another on the painted boards.

To mark the distinguishing features, he had to break the chalk into pieces and grind them to a fine point before class, so he could write in a clear, delicate hand.

Part of the Otherworld Soul was enjoying every minute of it. Here, he'd found a new sense of purpose.

Times had changed. The modern drugs that had once filled half his textbooks were gone, and all he had left were a few manual reduction techniques and physical examinations. Anesthesia, hemostasis, and aseptic technique—the essentials of surgery—were all beyond his reach.

The complicated biochemical mechanisms he'd once spent whole nights memorizing made him feel like a clown here. He was like a phone with a dead battery: no matter how many things he knew, without the support of modern society, he was only good as a brick.

It was the students at the Medical School who lifted his spirits.

Kraft's painstakingly prepared lectures were a huge hit with the students. His packed classroom was full of black-robed attendees who'd come to hear him, some of them with badges pinned to their collars too.

On the second day, someone brought in several new painted boards. He asked Kraft to fill them up and switch to a fresh one instead of erasing the writing, so that the students who couldn't attend would still have a chance to learn.

The student was rather short. He and a friend carried the boards into the classroom and made the request in an apologetic tone.

For the first time, Kraft saw clearly the value of what he was doing. He felt that he might truly have a chance to push medicine one step forward, even within the constraints of this era.

He gladly accepted, then announced to the whole class that they could raise any questions or suggestions whenever they liked.

And so, Kraft added a question-and-answer session to his schedule after class. The students soon grew close to their knowledgeable, easygoing lecturer.

After getting to know them better, Kraft found that few were around his own age. Most were two or three years older, and some were nearly thirty. Most were unmarried.

Most came from families of small merchants or scholars. A few came from impoverished urban noble families, and none of them were eldest sons.

Given the state of medical care, the Medical School was not a popular choice at the Academy. Those from wealthier families tended to choose theology or law, with history and literature as their next choice.

In those days, no one spoke of graduation rates or job placement rates. Forget scraping through at the end of the year—even whether there would be final exams was uncertain.

The curriculum was rather loose. Students only had to take a final examination for their bachelor's degree. If they failed, they kept studying until they passed. Many students without much talent might spend most of their youth at the Academy.

Given the dismal ratio of men to women at every school, and the fact that "bachelor" was associated with being unmarried, there was some truth to the term. Sweet campus romances were nowhere to be found, not even in their dreams.

Oh, speaking of which, Kraft suddenly remembered that he'd never been in a relationship himself. He was in no position to pity them.

After class, they happily headed to the tavern beside the Academy for lunch. The menu was the same classic grilled fish, served with lettuce, onions, and beans.

Professor Calman had been right. The tavern was extremely popular with the students. The only drawback was that students from other schools were there too, so they couldn't freely discuss academic topics that might be misunderstood.

After lunch, Kraft would go to the professor's room for a nap. Lecturers didn't have offices of their own at the Academy, but Lucius was happy to let him use the professor's quarters for the time being. In return, Kraft gave Lucius a quick checkup there every day.

The results were naturally normal. After getting away from the Black Fluid and related objects, Lucius seemed less interested in conducting experiments too. He no longer brought up the Black Fluid as often, though Kraft wasn't sure if it was just his imagination.

After his nap, Kraft would begin his daily copying work.

The main content was professional knowledge that was of no use for the time being. After thinking it over, Kraft had decided to put everything he'd learned down on paper and preserve it.

Even if he didn't live to see that day, he could donate his work to a university or some other institution capable of preserving it, and wait for technology to advance enough to make use of it.

He could write several copies. Surely at least one would survive through history. Then medicine in this world could develop with fewer detours and fewer lives lost.

To that end, he'd taken some of the money his grandfather had set aside to buy him property and used it to purchase better paper and ink at his own expense.

Kraft gave up his favorite styles of calligraphy, cursive and Gothic, and abandoned all flourishes and joined-up writing. He began copying everything word by word in the plainest, clearest hand.

It wasn't easy work. Although he could clearly remember every textbook he'd studied, localizing the translations still made his progress painfully slow.

The purpose of the work was to convey the information as accurately as possible to people many years in the future. He couldn't simply use contemporary terms whose meanings were vague, and he had to avoid excessive transliteration. Instead, he had to coin words using local vocabulary and affixes.

Every technical term had to be explained the first time it appeared. But those explanations contained other technical terms, which in turn brought up even more concepts and references. Even for someone whose memory had been upgraded to the point of never forgetting anything, this was a tremendous ordeal.

However, Kraft wasn't very good at Norse Language, so he had to ask Lucius to borrow specialist dictionaries from the Academy of History and Literature. He studied the rules of word formation and how to avoid duplicate spellings.

Then he discovered that this dictionary, borrowed after considerable trouble and supposedly the most comprehensive one available, was full of contradictions and errors.

All these factors combined to leave Kraft with less than a tenth of the progress he'd expected when he first picked up his pen. He was still stuck in the first few chapters of Systematic Anatomy and Regional Anatomy, the introductory textbooks for first-year students.

That was only because the material he prepared for his lectures overlapped with his copying work, saving him a great deal of time. Otherwise, he'd probably still be flipping through the dictionary.

And then there were the hundreds of books, each hundreds of thousands or even millions of words long, that he'd have to translate and illustrate word by word. The thought broke a man whom even an Anomalous Phenomenon hadn't managed to kill.

When the two o'clock bell rang, Kraft pushed himself up from his desk, took out paper and pen, and began that day's copying.

He spread out the pages he'd filled with writing to let the ink dry. Sunlight spilled through the window and across the desk, while the shadow of the ink bottle grew longer as time passed. Outside, he could occasionally hear students chatting.

He was immersed in his own world. For a moment, it was as if he'd never traveled through time at all. He was just a student, devoted to his studies, sitting in an afternoon anatomy lab with his freshly finished notes in front of him. If he accidentally brushed them with his hand, the ink would smudge into a blur.

Writing made him lose himself. He didn't snap out of it until the light had dimmed. The Clock Tower had already sounded its sixth chime of the afternoon.

Kraft stood and packed his things, stacking the day's work neatly. Then he tucked his books under his arm and returned to the inn alone, ate cod chowder and bread alone, and went back to his room alone to light a candle.

He spread out some poor-quality brittle paper. It was used for less important daily records and made from coarse fibers pressed together. If left too long, it would snap apart with a crisp crack, like a sheet of roasted seaweed.

But it was perfect for this. Before he got sleepy, he needed to prepare lesson plans for the next day and sketch out the diagrams he'd draw on the brittle paper.

After the last bell of the night, Kraft blew out the candle to make sure he'd have enough energy for tomorrow, ending another day that was repetitive yet fulfilling.

This is good enough, Kraft thought as he lay in bed. For the first time in a long while, he felt at peace in the darkness. He was content to spend his whole life this way, moving from lecturer to professor and, if all went well, becoming famous far and wide and leaving his books for posterity.

As for the Black Fluid and Anomalous Phenomena, he hoped he'd never have to touch them again. When Professor Calman came back, he'd warn him to stay away from that stuff. Wouldn't it be nice if he helped Kraft compile books instead?