Another Perspective

"That was... harder than I expected."

Kraft lay on the floor, his words coming out in fits and starts. The frustration of his blurred vision, the panic of not being able to find the right spot, the fear of infection—all his emotions burst forth at once the moment he finished the last step.

While he'd been focused on the work in front of him, he'd shut all of that out. His mind had been occupied with nothing but how to overcome the challenge at hand.

Exhaustion and the violent rush of emotion overwhelmed his mind and knocked him to the floor. Only now, with the hardest part behind him, could he let himself relax for a while.

Kraft pressed himself against the cold floor, letting his body cool down and unwind. He felt as though he'd just finished a peculiar exam. The cruel examiner had hidden all the necessary information, leaving the sole student to scratch his head over a question with no clear method.

He'd pieced together what he could from the few scraps of information available and written the solution he believed in, with a little help from some special means. He'd only just managed to submit an uneasy answer that met the minimum requirements.

He looked at the stone table as if it were the examiner, gathering and sealing away his test paper before sending it off to some grader to be judged by the most objective, strict standards.

The grader would scrutinize the crude conditions, deduct points because the instruments hadn't been properly sterilized, then take off more for leaving the wound open too long. He'd shake his head at the section of intestine whose viability he hadn't been able to check further.

The patient's body was the strictest grader of all. It never lowered its standards because of limited conditions; it only made unreasonable demands.

Kraft had no control over this "grading" process. All he could do was wait quietly for the results a few days later.

Come to think of it, the one with the most to worry about now was certainly not Kraft himself, but Gris, anxiously waiting outside. He couldn't lie here for long.

"Could you give me a hand? Her family's still waiting outside for news." Kraft reached out to the two men beside him, both beaming with excitement and admiration. "Wipe those smiles off your faces. This is far from over."

"It's not over?"

"Once Lis wakes up, we'll have to monitor her for six or seven days. After the wound heals, we'll remove the stitches. Save the celebrating until then." Kraft took Lucius's outstretched hand and stood up, then put his black robe back on and straightened himself in the metal mirror nearby.

He still felt a little dizzy, but every extra minute he spent lying there meant another minute of anxiety for Gris outside.

"Don't move Lis yet. Let's go out and let Gris in to sit with her for a while. We shouldn't move her right away."

Kraft refused Liston's help and made his way toward the door, his head light and his feet heavy. Lucius hurried ahead and opened it for him.

The first people they saw weren't just the anxious father, but a whole corridor full of people in black robes.

Gris was the first to come forward. He grabbed Kraft's hand, but his eyes darted past Kraft's shoulder toward the classroom. Just as expected, he asked anxiously, "My daughter..."

"For now, she's all right. The operation's finished. She may not wake until tomorrow, or even later. Go in and sit with her for a while, but don't move her." Kraft stepped aside to let him in, then closed the door behind him, giving him some privacy.

The students had already guessed the outcome from the relief on Lucius's face when he opened the door. Kraft's words confirmed their suspicions, and cheers erupted from the crowd.

Kraft tried to get them to quiet down so he could explain everything, but they didn't give him the chance. As the man who had accomplished something without precedent, he received a hero's welcome without precedent.

"Pioneers needn't concern themselves with the words of those who lag behind." Lecturer Romolo pushed through the crowd and was the first to give him a hearty embrace.

Then came the enthusiastic students. They surrounded Kraft, taking turns hugging him and offering the highest praise they could think of.

In their eyes, the operation was already a success. Whatever the outcome, it was the first of its kind in history, and knowledge contributed by the dead had proven its value in the living.

Whatever the method—Family Secret Medicine or some other aid—the first abdominal operation, from diagnosis to treatment, had been performed right there at the Academy, right there among them.

The Wenden Port Medical School and Kraft would go down in the books as names marking a milestone, and they were witnessing that historic moment.

A joyful river formed in the corridor, sweeping Kraft through the Medical School and carrying the good news to every corner.

Students who hadn't known yet were told the news and joined the river of celebration. Their numbers grew and grew, until they carried Kraft all the way around the Medical School.

As for Kraft himself, he went from startled, to embarrassed, to completely numb, paraded around like a float in a procession.

He had no idea how to deal with these delirious students. They were like die-hard sports fans watching their team win a championship, caught up in a mindless collective celebration.

Everyone in the Medical School who heard the news was amazed, then rushed to spread it. It traveled at an incredible speed, soon reaching beyond the school. By tomorrow, every tavern in Wenden Port would probably know that the Medical School had a legendary figure who could open someone's abdomen to treat an illness, then sew it back up.

And of course, the story would continue to grow and mutate. After passing from one person to the next, then the next, and who knew how many more, it would become something even more outrageous.

Even a few lecturers joined in, cheering that they should rent out a tavern. They hadn't even figured out how many people would be going, let alone which tavern could fit them all.

Liston and Lucius had been swept away from the start as participants. They were probably somewhere in the celebrating crowd now, bragging up a storm.

By then, Kraft could no longer concern himself with any of that. He'd finally managed to escape the crowd and flee to the professor's room. He alone felt out of place amid the celebration, weighed down by concerns only he knew about.

Postoperative infection loomed overhead like the darkest cloud. It could strike at any time, and the only way to deal with it was to tough it out.

He hoped there weren't any sections of dead intestine he'd missed. Given that terrible view, it was entirely possible.

He hoped the Black Fluid wouldn't have any adverse effects on a child as young as Lis.

He also hoped the intussusception wouldn't recur after the operation. He had no idea what he'd do if it happened again.

He had too many hopes and worries, and once again, helplessness came over him. There were so many things Kraft wanted to do but couldn't in the present. If the situation had been even a little more complicated, everything could have become utterly irreparable. Even risking the use of the Black Fluid wouldn't have helped.

It couldn't be helped. Every effort came back to this fundamental problem: the methods he knew couldn't be put to use in this era. He could only watch the illnesses he knew how to treat continue to ravage people, then turn around and write books for an age that could make use of them.

He wasn't willing to stop here. Even if he became a professor, even if he passed on his knowledge to later generations, he would still have to watch countless people die within his limited lifetime.

It was a kind of torture.

Kraft slapped Lis's case file down on the desk. Completing the operation hadn't satisfied him at all. Instead, it had made him realize things he'd barely paid attention to before.

Just one intussusception, one of the most common causes of Acute Abdomen in infants and young children, was enough to leave people helpless.

In a city as large as Wenden Port, how many children were there? How often did intussusception occur given the current sanitary conditions, and how many died from it?

He wavered, beginning to think that the words he'd written in his notebook—"Avoid contact unless necessary"—seemed ridiculous. The Black Fluid was strange, impossible to understand, but was it really less frightening than so many people losing their lives to disease?

He thought of the Black Stone Pillar he'd been unable to take with him, and of the villagers who continued living on that land despite knowing about Fever Disease.

Anomalous Phenomena were dangerous things he couldn't understand. Disease and material deprivation also brought the people here unknown horrors and death.

To them, there was no real difference between those things. In fact, the pillar might have affected fewer people over the decades than even a fraction of those suffering from ordinary illnesses.

Kraft realized something more terrifying than any indescribable entity: he was the one with the problem, rejecting something of infinite value over a danger that might be limited.

Lucius's attitude was the one suited to this era: to pursue every opportunity that could advance technology, no matter the cost, amid the infinite unknown.

That meant challenging both the Church's ban on dissecting corpses and social convention. It even meant experimenting on himself. Things couldn't get any worse than being helpless.

As long as he could prove the Black Fluid could be used more widely, the operation would become repeatable. He could spread it throughout Wenden Port. Even if it couldn't be done to the same standard as today, it would still be a qualitative leap.

Once his thinking opened up, more ideas came one after another.

So far, aside from the instinctive sense of danger, Anomalous Phenomena had brought him nothing but benefits. His expanded awareness and the successful operation had given him the chance to apply knowledge far beyond this era.

Did that mean they could, under certain circumstances, actually be put to use?

It was a shortcut he couldn't refuse. If he put aside his unaccountable fears and added a little caution, he could go straight to his goal.

The pillar's Dream of the Giant Serpent had broken through the limits of his awareness, allowing him to make full use of every bit of information he'd acquired. The Black Fluid had broken through the limits of his vision, letting him look at Anomalous Phenomena from another perspective.

Kraft felt something already fragile deep inside him shatter. He opened a brand-new window and reconsidered the things he'd labeled dangerous. Their meaning was being redefined, and the scales were beginning to tip the other way.

The emotional upheaval drained what little energy he had left. The exhaustion he'd been building up all morning washed over him, and his boiling spirits gradually cooled.

At the last moment before losing consciousness, he contentedly grabbed the copper bottle that had held the diluted solution, then fell asleep with his head on the desk.