Multiple Disease Factors

"Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock, knock."

Early in the morning, a series of loud but unhurried knocks sounded at the door.

"Hello, is Mr. Blade home?"

"Just a moment, I'll be right there." The young woman, wearing a soot-stained apron, set down the half-sliced loaf of bread, wiped her hands on her apron, and went to open the door. "You are..."

"Oh my God! What is this?!"

The sight outside the door terrified her.

In the faint light of dawn, two bird-headed men in black robes stood at her door, carrying wooden cases. Their metallic beaks gleamed, and red lenses reflected a chilling light.

She instinctively tried to shut the door, but a black-gloved hand shot out and braced against it. "Please don't do that, ma'am. We're doctors! Don't close the door."

It was a rather bizarre situation. At the hour when night gave way to day, two figures resembling the devils from legends had appeared at her door, spoken to her, and claimed to be doctors making a house call.

Realizing he'd been mistaken for something else, Kraft hurriedly explained why he was there. "We're here to see Mr. Blade, the baker. He came to the clinic before and said he'd been sleeping too long, so we've come to check on him."

Seeing the woman's expression shift from terror to suspicion, Kraft withdrew his hand from the door and pointed to the badge on his collar.

"My name is Kraft. I'm a lecturer at Wenden Port Academy. Don't mind this ridiculous headpiece. I don't like it either." He automatically put on a polite smile, but unfortunately, the mask concealed it, hiding the advantage of his youthful, handsome face.

"Uh?" The woman remained wary. This bird-headed man knew her husband's name and occupation, and wore an unfamiliar badge on his collar. None of that was enough reason to let them inside so easily.

Especially when her husband hadn't woken up yet.

This was a tricky situation. Kraft reached up to scratch his head, but his hand bumped into the red lens. He reorganized his thoughts, trying to persuade the woman.

"Are you Mr. Blade's wife? You see, we think that being unable to wake up in the morning and carry out his work normally is a rather serious problem. You wouldn't want your husband to keep suffering like this, would you?"

The woman seemed to waver. Kraft tried a different approach. "We're very busy, and if we miss today, we'll have to wait another half a month. Could you tell Mr. Blade to make an appointment for half a month from now?"

"Oh, that's not what I meant. Please, come in. It's just that my husband is still asleep, so you'll have to wait a while. It's getting harder and harder to wake him." She opened the door and let Kraft and Lucius into the house.

"Thank you for being so understanding, ma'am. Mr. Blade is lucky to have you." Kraft offered a polite compliment, and his friendly manner put Mrs. Blade a little more at ease.

Things were going smoothly, but the conversation and situation gave Kraft a strange sense of déjà vu, as if he'd experienced something similar before.

With that feeling lingering, he and Lucius stepped into the Blade home, and Mrs. Blade led them to the table.

"I'm sorry, my husband hasn't woken up yet. He's been getting up later and later recently, so you'll have to wait a bit before you can see him."

"That's all right. We can take a look around and see if there's anything wrong with the house first." Kraft looked around. Everything seemed unpleasant through the faint red tint, and the air smelled of nothing through the bird-beak filter.

"You're up very early, ma'am. Has your husband's condition affected you at all?"

"Why do you ask?" She sliced two thin pieces off the loaf and placed them on a wooden plate. "Sleepiness isn't contagious. We've always gotten up early, but lately Blade has been waking up late."

Lucius and Kraft exchanged a glance, then shook their heads. They hadn't expected their theory to be disproven right from the start.

If this were an infectious disease, his wife, who had the most contact with Blade, would have had plenty of time to catch it. It made no sense that she showed no signs at all.

The theory that their living environment was the cause had also been shaken. They lived together and shared the same food and daily routine. That didn't add up.

"Do you know if anyone nearby has been having similar problems lately?" Kraft continued.

Mrs. Blade paused with her knife and thought for a moment. "No, at least I haven't heard of anyone on this street. You could ask Blade. He knows more people than I do."

"Thank you. This may be a bit presumptuous, but could we try waking him up?"

Kraft was curious about what "hard to wake" meant. How bad did a patient's condition have to be for him to describe it that way?

"I'd say you're doing me a huge favor. Waking him up every day isn't easy. His room is over there."

Mrs. Blade pointed toward a door with her knife.

Kraft and Lucius pushed open the door and entered. A slightly chubby man was sleeping soundly in bed.

Kraft took hold of the pudgy hand protruding from under the covers and squeezed gently. "Mr. Blade, wake up."

"You won't wake him up like that," Mrs. Blade called from outside the door. "You need to be louder and use more force. Just don't squeeze until he turns purple."

Kraft gradually increased the pressure on Blade's hand, gripping it firmly and squeezing hard.

That would have caused noticeable pain to most people who weren't expecting it, but Blade remained fast asleep without the slightest reaction. His chest rose and fell steadily, unchanged.

Kraft pressed a hand to the side of his neck. Without a timer, he could only estimate that Blade's pulse was around fifty beats per minute, within the normal range.

Kraft couldn't carry out the usual trick of shouting right into someone's ear while wearing the bird-beak mask, so he shook Blade's body as hard as he could. Even with all that shaking, Blade only stopped snoring for a moment. He showed no sign of waking up.

"He really is hard to wake. I have an idea, though I don't know if it'll work." After watching Kraft try for a while, Lucius pulled out Blade's other hand.

"What?"

"I don't think someone with plenty of body hair would mind losing one, right?" He pinched one of Blade's arm hairs and yanked hard.

"Don't!" Kraft tried to stop him, but it was too late.

"Hiss." The result was immediate. That hurt more than a needle prick would have. Blade let out a faint gasp in his sleep, showing signs of waking.

Kraft seized the opportunity to shake him even more violently. After enduring this wake-up routine, Blade finally opened his eyes.

"Who are you?!" He sat up and scrambled backward until he hit the wall.

"Relax, we're doctors." Kraft spread his hands to show he meant no harm. "Dr. Liston told us you were hard to wake, so we decided to come by and take a look."

Waking up to find two bird-headed men in his house had given Blade such a fright that he was wide awake almost instantly. Clutching his chest as he tried to calm his racing heart, he got dressed and sat at the table.

"Thank you, but next time, just let my wife wake me up." Blade still felt shaken.

"I'm very sorry. We wanted to get a firsthand sense of what 'hard to wake' meant. Honestly, I don't think this is normal." Kraft took the wooden plate of bread and set it in front of Blade. "If you don't mind, we can talk while you eat."

"Would you like some?" Eating breakfast while chatting with two bird-headed men clearly did nothing for his appetite.

"No, it doesn't have that function yet." He tapped a knuckle against the mask, producing a hollow clack.

The eyes behind the red lenses carefully examined Blade. Now that he was awake, Blade seemed perfectly alert—he might even have been in better shape than Kraft had been lately. He hadn't even yawned.

Leaving aside the fact that the condition seemed to be getting worse, it was hard not to envy the quality of his sleep.

"Have you been sleeping well lately? Have you had any dreams?"

"I have been sleeping well. Too well, in fact. I can't wake up." Blade tore off a piece of bread and put it in his mouth. "Dreams... I don't think so. Or maybe I just don't remember them. I only remember the moment I woke up."

He rubbed his arm. He could still feel a lingering sting. "Come to think of it, it's strange. I've been sleeping so well, yet I haven't dreamed once."

"It's as if the whole period of sleep had been erased, and you have no idea what happened during that time?" Lucius chimed in.

"Yeah, exactly. That's a good way to describe it." Blade agreed with the comparison. "It's not like falling asleep used to be."

Kraft wrote that down, then glanced at Lucius. "You have no idea what happened during that time"—those were the exact words Lucius had used to describe how he'd felt after drinking the diluted solution.

All Kraft had to do was deliberately recall the moment, and he could picture the excited expression on Lucius's face and hear the fervor in his voice.

The mask hid Lucius's face, but Kraft imagined it wasn't looking too good.

"Have you heard of anyone nearby having a similar problem? Waking up later and later, being hard to wake, or both?"

"No. I know half the people on this street, and none of them have ever mentioned anything like this." Blade stuffed the last piece of bread into his mouth, swallowed it, and continued, "It's not a big deal, is it? Once I got used to it, I actually thought it was nice to get some extra sleep."

"This makes no sense. None of it makes any sense."

Kraft and Lucius left the house and returned to the street.

"I still think it has something to do with Clear Clarity. Even if it doesn't make logical sense, I'm sticking to my opinion." Lucius was growing frustrated by the conflict between his intuition and the facts.

He felt sure the diluted solution was responsible, but based on the information they had, this was the only patient with these symptoms who had taken the Clear Clarity Potion. Kraft, meanwhile, had at least two examples of people who hadn't been exposed to the diluted solution.

"Actually, I have the same feeling, Lucius." Kraft stopped and ran a hand over the metal bird beak. He had no beard to stroke, so when he was thinking, he had to make do with the beak.

"If an assumption conflicts with reality, reality can't be the thing that's wrong. One possibility is that we've overlooked something in our observations. The other is that our theory is incomplete."

"What do you mean?" Lucius asked, puzzled.

"I think it's the latter. This assumption is too simple. There may be more than one risk factor. Clear Clarity is just one of them."

Kraft recalled the map from the day before and compared it to how far he'd walked along Elm Street today. "If my sense of distance isn't wildly off, and Liston's scale drawing is accurate, then the dotted line I drew yesterday..."

He made a rough calculation. "It would only take five to ten minutes to walk in a straight line."

"I need to go back to my original theory, too. There's a factor that can have an effect within a certain radius. It might not be an infectious disease, but it affects a much wider area than the few houses I first suspected."

Kraft spread his arms, indicating a large circle.

"The center isn't here. Its influence is already very weak by the time it reaches here, so it only shows up when combined with another risk factor—in other words, Clear Clarity."

"In that case, to find it..." Lucius mused.

"The Salt Tide District." Kraft picked up the wooden case. "We need to take a look around the Salt Tide District."