In the morning fog of Wenden Port, Kraft finished his morning exercises as usual, ate breakfast, then tucked his books and lesson plans under his arm and headed for the Academy.
"Good morning, Lecturer Kraft."
As his courses grew increasingly popular at the Academy, he was always greeted by students in black robes along the way. Most were students who had gotten to know him well, though some were students he had never even seen in class.
"Good morning, Charlie. And Green." Kraft nodded in reply.
Thanks to his excellent memory, he had learned the names of all the students who had come to him with questions. One of these two had asked him about the structure of the skull; the other had asked him three days ago about the anatomical explanations for various kinds of abdominal pain.
Hearing him call their names, they looked surprised. They had heard that the new lecturer had an unusually good memory, but recognizing them among so many students who had asked questions was almost unbelievable.
Returning the students' greetings as he went, Kraft hummed to himself and made his way along the street in high spirits.
It was a pleasant feeling to have his work recognized. Even getting up early and going to work seemed less like a painful ordeal.
Teaching eager students was definitely a better experience than teaching sleepy ones.
There was no doubt about it: he was talking about himself. Back in college, he'd stayed up late and struggled to get up early. Whenever the teacher started a lecture, they'd be faced with a room full of listless students as they read through the slides. It was hard to tell whether the students slumped over their desks had been tired to begin with or had been lulled to sleep.
And now he actually had such high-quality students. What a happy occasion! Of course, the high cost of studying here was also a factor. Neither the time nor the money involved was something students could afford to waste.
Kraft's good mood came to an abrupt halt at the Academy gates.
Everyone knew there was an important rule for people on duty, especially those working the night shift: never say out loud that things were quiet.
Even if you were so bored on the job that you were about to burst, and your phone had run out of battery, you still shouldn't go around saying things like "quiet" or "nothing's happening."
People who broke this ironclad rule were usually punished for it. One moment, life would be perfectly peaceful; the next, everything would take a sudden turn, and all sorts of unreasonable trouble would land right in front of them.
That was exactly how Kraft felt now. He'd just been thinking how peaceful life was, and the next moment, the commotion at the Academy gates jolted him out of it.
He could see a crowd gathered in the distance, and the noise of their argument carried across half the street.
Worst of all, most of the people in the crowd were medical students in black robes. A few wore the brown robes of the Law School, and others wore the white robes of the Theology School. There were also a few blue-robed Literature School students watching from the edges.
The crowd had blocked half the Academy entrance, so anyone going inside would have to walk right past them.
As he drew closer, Kraft caught the subject of their argument.
"We can't pray for her. You'll have to go to a church and find someone."
"What are we supposed to do, then?"
"Does the Medical School not even have a bed?"
"We can't just take her back like this!"
"It won't hurt to try..."
"That's no way to do things! Is this how you, the representatives of God, behave?"
"You're not qualified until you graduate!"
"Am I even allowed to try?"
The crowd was packed so tightly that Kraft couldn't see what was happening in the middle. Thanks to his height, he could only make out the heated argument between the different colored robes. He couldn't tell who was speaking to whom, and the onlookers nearby seemed powerless to help.
The key words he'd picked out were "Medical School," "bed," and "prayer."
The scene immediately triggered Kraft's medical-trouble PTSD. Was this really a case of a patient causing trouble? Had this kind of thing been happening for that long? Why was the gatekeeper just standing there? Why wasn't he calling security?
A few thoughts flashed through his mind in quick succession. Then Kraft remembered that he wasn't in a hospital or at his old college anymore. There probably wasn't a dedicated department to deal with this sort of trouble.
The person in charge of the Academy gates wasn't a security guard. His job was just to open and close the gates. Resolving this would have to wait until someone with real authority at the Academy showed up. Kraft had no idea who there could handle it, let alone how to resolve it.
Kraft frowned. He planned to follow the example of a certain Korean man and "retreat behind the crowd when things looked bad," go around them, and get to the classroom to prepare for his lesson.
But he had greatly underestimated how well-known he was at the Medical School. Before he could take more than a few steps, he heard someone calling his name from behind.
"Lecturer Kraft? Good morning!" The sharp-eyed black-robed student at the edge of the crowd immediately recognized the popular new lecturer. His mouth moved faster than his brain, and he greeted him before thinking. "Could we borrow a little of your time?"
That call drew the attention of every student there, including several of those arguing heatedly in the middle. They all turned to look at him in unison.
"Lecturer Kraft?"
"Ah, Kraft, you're just in time."
Among the faces that turned was one he knew particularly well: a man with a mop of brown hair. It was Lucius. He was at the very center of the crowd, beside a white-robed Theology School student whose normally pale face had flushed red. The argument must have been intense.
Lucius reached out to part the crowd, trying to make a path for Kraft. "Make way. He's a lecturer at our Medical School."
Needless to say, most of the medical students there knew Kraft. The crowd quickly parted, opening a path for him to the center of the trouble.
This was just perfect, Kraft thought. The unlucky one was him after all. It made sense, he supposed. He was already a lecturer at the Medical School, and he was the only person there who wasn't a student. At least for now, it was his responsibility to take charge.
Besides, with everyone watching, his plan to slip away had fallen through. Under their gazes, Kraft could only walk over reluctantly.
"Is there anything I can do to help?" Kraft reached the center of the crowd. The scene was more or less what he had imagined.
An anxious middle-aged man held a child with tear-streaked cheeks, looking utterly helpless. A Theology School student stood nearby with a book in his arms. Lucius was watching the child, wanting to help but unsure how to handle her, while a Law School student stood off to the side, apparently unsure what to do.
Good grief, a textbook case of a medical dispute brought right to the gates, wasn't it? Based on his past experience, what happened next could vary depending on the circumstances, leading to all sorts of complications. But there was no way he'd be teaching class today.
When the middle-aged man saw Kraft approach, he started to drop to his knees with the child in his arms. Lucius hurried to stop him, afraid he'd hurt the child. The Theology School student was knocked off balance and stumbled backward. For a moment, everything descended into chaos.
Kraft reacted quickly. He rushed forward, gripping the man's shoulder with one hand and supporting the child in his arms with the other. The child was already fairly big, and her weight made his shoulder dip. He nearly failed to hold them up.
"Gris, what are you doing here?" He looked up at the man, somewhat irritated, only to realize that he was the owner of the tavern beside the Academy. Gris looked so disheveled that Kraft hadn't recognized him at first.
"Please, I beg you, help my daughter. I really have nowhere else to turn." The tavern owner's voice was hoarse and indistinct. His sorrowful, weary words seemed to vibrate in the air, full of exhaustion and helplessness.
He must have run a long way. Sweat covered his face, his hair was disheveled, and his throat was dry and raspy from lack of water.
Kraft couldn't make sense of what was happening. The Academy had a Medical School, but it generally didn't provide treatment.
Only now and then, when they needed to demonstrate something, would they find a patient who couldn't afford treatment and use them for a demonstration. At its core, it was still a school.
Whenever people fell ill, even students at the Academy went to outside clinics. More often, they went to a church to pray. If they were lucky, a priest might give them holy water or a blessing.
Saint Simon Church did quite well in that regard. After all, there were no licenses or anything like that in those days, and small clinics weren't exactly clean or well run. A church might even be cleaner.
And then... that was it. Those were your only two options. Surely no one would actually seek help from the Medical School, with all its strange rumors? Even the other students at the Academy never went into their building.
Confused, Kraft looked at Lucius, hoping he could explain how things had come to this.
"We've tried the church and a few clinics. They couldn't help." Lucius summed up the situation in one concise sentence. He looked anxious too. As a friendly, outgoing man, he couldn't possibly have been unfamiliar with the tavern owner he saw so often. "Gris is an acquaintance of ours, so we had to come here and see if there was anything we could do. Even a prayer would help."
"It's not that I don't want to help, but we're not qualified to take on a priest's duties yet. And the church said all they could do was leave it to God's will." The Theology School student patted his white robe helplessly.
After he graduated, he'd have the chance to exchange that robe for an official priest's robe bearing the Winged Ring Holy Emblem. No one might arrest you for practicing medicine without a license, but taking on a priest's duties without permission was a serious matter.
"Surely it's all right to try? It's just a prayer for a sick person. You know Gris too, don't you?"
"That really isn't allowed." The Law School student chimed in, lowering his voice. "It might be all right in private, but it wouldn't accomplish anything. The Theology School is strict about this too."
Kraft understood now. Prayer hadn't helped, the clinics couldn't do anything, and they were desperately grasping at straws.
"Sigh." Kraft sighed. A patient had come to their door with nowhere else to turn, and there wasn't even a higher-level hospital he could refer them to. "So, Lucius, what are you waiting for?"
"A case this serious needs a lecturer's approval." Lucius looked at Kraft expectantly, staring hard enough to make him uncomfortable. "It's not like that student from the Law School last time."
That rule didn't surprise him. If they took in a critically ill patient, they had to consider the consequences if something went wrong. Someone with enough authority would have to take the blame. It couldn't be a student, anyway.
Kraft understood that perfectly well, but it didn't affect his decision. Or rather, he had never considered this a choice.
"Let's go inside." Kraft handed his books and lesson plans to Lucius, then took the child from Gris, whose hands were trembling. "Leave her with me for now. Go drink some water. I'll have a lot of questions for you in a moment."
Before you continue