“Memé!” Glenn cried.
Led by the boss, Glenn entered what was referred to as the prototyping room.
“She’s here, Dr. Glenn,” said the boss.
“Memé, are you okay?” Glenn ran over to where the one-eyed girl was lying down. The cyclops craftsmen all thought of Memé as a daughter and cleared the way for Glenn.
There was no response even as Glenn called out her name. He quickly checked that she was breathing.
“She’s breathing,” he said.
“Her pulse is weak, but it is there, Doctor,” said Sapphee.
“Memé, can you hear me?! Answer me!” Glenn called out to her as he placed his hands on either side of her cheeks. Her big single eye opened a little and there was an ever-so-slight movement in her lips.
Glenn couldn’t understand what she was saying, but there had been a response.
“She’s conscious. Sapphee, I’m going to get her undressed.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
Sapphee used her tail to grab a pair of scissors nearby. Glenn took the scissors and began cutting up Memé’s outerwear. While her undershirt was thin, it was made of a material that absorbed sweat well. Shearing it open with the big workshop scissors was a simple task.
Her breathing was rough, so Glenn cut her clothes to put less strain on her chest. With her chest exposed, her breasts—big for someone her age—came bouncing out.
“Nh…………les,” Memé said, but Glenn couldn’t catch what it was. Part of it was because Memé’s voice was low, but the environment inside the workshop wasn’t conducive to picking up her words either. Inside the prototyping room, there were loudly roaring machines Glenn was unfamiliar with. The rumbling noises intruded upon his thoughts.
A colossal machine powered by the Waterways. Glenn surmised that Memé had been in the middle of some sort of work when she collapsed.
“She’s still conscious. Let’s have her rest somewhere quiet,” said Glenn.
“Doc, what’s happened to Memé? Is she sick with something…?” the boss asked.
“I don’t know. However, I don’t believe she has any chronic diseases, so it’s hard to believe that it’s any sort of life-threatening illness. The workshop is hot, so it might be dehydration.”
Glenn put his head against Memé’s forehead—her temperature was a little higher than normal. He contemplated whether this was the result of light dehydration or heatstroke. Yet, he knew that a cyclops should be tolerant of the heat. If she truly had gotten heatstroke, then that meant she had been pushing herself beyond her limits for a considerable amount of time.
“Either way, she shouldn’t stay here. Let’s transport her elsewhere,” said Glenn. The inside of the workshop was hot—he was drenched in sweat. Memé was too, but not to a degree Glenn considered abnormal. In which case, he thought, this collapse had been brought on by something else
“You know I told her… I told Memé to make sure she gets plenty of rest,” the boss muttered.
“It can’t be… You’re saying she had been working all day and night?” asked Glenn.
“No—I was sure she wasn’t pushing herself so hard that she’d collapse, but… This might my fault. I should have supervised her better.”
Working in the workshop was unforgiving. A cyclops’s body was sturdy, but every species has their limits. Glenn wondered if Memé had stretched her body to the breaking point. In that case, there was a high possibility that her collapse was the result of overworking.
Cyclops, being so serious and honest, were reliable when it came to their work, but sometimes unintentionally overworked themselves. There were many species of monsters who were serious about their work, but when it came to cyclops, Glenn found their solemnity was a little excessive. Memé might be the perfect example. No matter how weak to pressure she was, she still embraced her nigh-impossible task.
The other craftsmen brought a stretcher over. The clinic wasn’t far, and Glenn thought it would be best to have them carry Memé back. Sapphee used her tail to pick up Memé’s body and deftly lay it on the stretcher.
Memé’s lips moved. The humming of the revolving machine was loud, but for some reason this time Glenn was able to hear her words. He thought her consciousness might be returning.
“Needle…”
Okay, Glenn thought, she was talking about needles.
“Needles…I have to…make them…”
To the last, Memé’s words were devoted to her work.
***
Memé felt that her giant eye was spinning in circles.
She didn’t know where she was looking. Reflecting in her eyes was the figure of her former self.
Again and again the world spun. Around and around in circles.
Memé Redon had heard it a lot ever since she was a child: “But you’re a girl.”
Even when she was still an infant, Memé was captivated by her father’s work. Her cyclops father worked as a craftsman. A cartwright of everything from small wagons to massive carriages, he could make anything that had a set of wheels on it. She had heard that during the war, he even gained experience making chariots.
She had admired the massive, rustic carriages he made, particularly their decorations—the small details like the glass windows and the gold work furnishing the carriages’ roofs. One time she had even borrowed her father’s tools without permission and fixed some poorly fitted metal fixtures on a carriage’s door. Her mom had scolded her by telling her that some tools were very dangerous, but her father only praised her for her efforts.
Traditionally, cyclops craftsmen had always been men. Even now, there were some among the more elderly craftsmen that would scowl if a woman even got near a forge. Memé’s father was different. He picked up on her talent immediately and began to train her as a craftsman. It had been several years since Memé was left in the hands of his longtime acquaintance—the boss of Kuklo Workshop—as an apprentice.
There was no arguing that Memé had an interest in glassworking and metalworking. But with her natural timidity and unsociable disposition, she didn’t have the confidence necessary to get used to the unknown city of Lindworm. The craftsmen in the workshop were nice, but she was scared of the humans and other monsters. Everyone has two eyes, she would think to herself—it was something she never would have imagined, having come from a village of only one-eyed inhabitants.
As she began learning the skills and techniques needed to become a craftsman, she only managed to make her social skills worse. By holing herself up in the workshop, she never got outside to speak with other people
The boss worried about Memé, and purposely gave her delivery jobs that would lead to lots of opportunities to meet other people, but he didn’t see much improvement. On the contrary, he got the feeling that contact with humans and other monsters only made Memé’s inferiority complex worse.
There was a reason Memé’s hypersensitive mental spirit had withered.
It was the grim realities of the craftsmen’s lives.
In the long continuing war, the cyclops were never put on the front lines. They were a mild-mannered race not cut out for battle. However, they were first class craftsmen and served the monsters’ side of the war by making weapons. While they previously had made a wide variety of tools, as the long war continued on, crafting weapons became the highest priority. The skills that they maintained only pertained to war. As a cartwright, even Memé’s father had participated by producing chariots.
When Memé had come to the Kuklo Workshop, most of the craftsmen were weaponsmiths, including the boss himself. In order to live through the war, the cyclops had had to make weapons. Before any of them knew it, their skills and techniques had become specialized to creating tools of war.
In fact, the jobs that the Kuklo Workshop got the most often were those that involved making cutting tools. Kitchen knives, normal knives, and hatchets were all necessary for everyday life, but all of them were made by applying methods of weapons production. For the former we
aponsmith cyclops, it was very familiar work.
No matter what they created, it had the stench of war on it. Memé picked up on this acutely. She was more sensitive than other people to begin with. She was timid and cowardly. Nevertheless, the work at Kuklo was harsh, and the techniques used to make weapons were applied to the creation of the tools they produced. This fact was too much for Memé’s overly gentle heart to endure. The work Memé sought to do involved creating accessories and ornaments—things that had nothing to do with war.
She thought that it would be better if the workshop could just make sculptures and statues instead, and she wasn’t the only one. The vestiges of war that Memé felt were also sensed by many of the craftsmen in the Kuklo Workshop. These peace-loving cyclops did not intend to work only with the skills and techniques they fostered during the war.
The craftsmen of the Kuklo Workshop were always thinking—
Give me work. Give us work. No matter how hard the article, we’ll definitely be able to make it. We’ll make products that’ve never been seen before. No matter how impossible the conditions are, we’ll surpass them. So please, give us work. The war is over. Give us work that doesn’t involve weapons. Give us work that won’t hurt anyone.
Especially because of Memé’s sensitivity to the gazes of others, and her ability to understand the emotions of those around her better than anyone else, she felt like she could hear the silent voices of the senior craftsmen around her. And this was also what Memé wished for herself.
She liked pretty things. She liked glass and metalwork. She liked beautiful ornaments. She also liked clothes dyed with lace and frills, but that was the work of the arachne. It was fine for others to make cutting tools with their uncouth hammers, only concerned with practical beauty, but she wanted to make delicate, colored ornaments with her tools.
That was why she wanted to sweep away the vestiges of war that still remained in the workshop. Of course, a workshop built in a former fortress town was itself one of those vestiges, but that motivated the cyclops even more to seek opportunity in the rebuilding of the city of Lindworm to display their prowess. They watched without saying a word, patient and still. Just as when they made weapons for the war, hiding and waiting was their specialty. Hiding and waiting for what they longed for—an era of peace.
Sure enough, their opportunity to showcase their skill eventually arrived.
Memé distinctly remembered what happened.
“A new director has come to the Central Hospital,” Kunai had said. It was a little while after Memé had become an apprentice at the Kuklo Workshop. The city council representative Skadi brought her bodyguard Kunai with her and visited the workshop. Kunai was raising her voice as Skadi’s interpreter, but the words she spoke were unmistakably Skadi’s.
“The new hospital director holds progressive ideas and will have this city’s hospital provide comprehensive medical care for monsters. What I have written here is a list of the goods she requires. Cthulhy has said she won’t accept the position unless, at minimum, this list of items can be prepared.”
Every one of the craftsmen in the workshop opened their big eyes wide and looked at Skadi. Even with the gazes of all the cyclops washing over her, Skadi’s leader-like posture never broke. At the very least, that was how it seemed to the young Memé. She wasn’t good at dealing with others, so whenever someone she didn’t know came into the workshop, it was her habit to hide herself in the back and peek out at the visitor.
“Therefore, I would ask all the capable craftsmen in the workshop to complete these items.”
The adults all checked the order form and spoke among themselves. The boss scowled. With her skills and technique still unrefined, Memé didn’t know exactly what the order form entailed. All she knew was that until this hospital director or whoever came, the workshop would have to work all day and all night.
“It seems that in the past you cyclops gentlemen made weapons.” Skadi borrowed her bodyguard’s mouth to speak to the wavering boss and his craftsmen. “The items on this list aren’t weapons, but medical equipment. I’m sure you will use the same techniques you used to manufacture weapons to make them. However, all of these tools will be used in order to save other people’s lives. Let me promise you this—the skill that all of you possess will help someone. You will save lives—far outweighing the blood that was spilled in wartime.”
It was the big job that the craftsmen of the Kuklo Workshop had been looking for. Encouraged, they were happy to display their talents to their heart’s content.
The work they received from the hospital was especially good for them. For the gentle cyclops, it was using their skills to save others—not for war—that suited them the best. Besides, being the only ones able to do the work, it was only natural for them to take it up with some enthusiasm.
Thus, the Lindworm Central Hospital became a client of the Kuklo Workshop.
Naturally, with the Litbeit Clinic operating independently from the Central Hospital, they also turned to the workshop for their supplies. The Kuklo Workshop became widely known as the biggest in the city and was so busy that even an apprentice like Memé fainted from the amount of work.
With just a small speech, Skadi had inspired the craftsmen. Memé could still remember their excitement back then. She wanted to someday become a craftswoman with skills the world needed, just like the craftsmen had been needed that day. Skadi’s words became a major motive behind Memé’s goal to become the ideal craftswoman.
Manufacturing tools necessary to save that Skadi—there was no way Memé wasn’t going to give it her all. Several years had passed since she had first set eyes on Skadi that day. After having said the workshop’s skills would help people, Skadi herself was now one of the people who needed their help.
Memé would absolutely follow through on her work.
Her enthusiasm was excellent, but her desperation to accomplish her task shifted into an obsession with the fact that she absolutely couldn’t fail. The needles she made would decide the success or failure of the surgery. With this, her hand trembled as she worked. Her face grew pale.
She only ever thought the worst. She knew this negative mindset was probably connected with her habit of looking down at the ground, but she couldn’t help it—the eyes of others scared her. They had two eyes. And having two eyes, their gaze was twice as terrifying. Arachne even had six eyes. She wondered why they all had so many—one was more than enough, wasn’t it? It was incomprehensible to her. She felt like she was going to collapse.
In actuality, she had collapsed. She couldn’t even lift her head. The world spun around her—around and around it went. Her desire to complete the surgical needles and her fear of failure combined like coffee and milk into a spiral that seemed to spin about Memé’s head.
***
Memé’s large eye opened wide.
When looking at it up close, the massive eye of a cyclops was truly powerful. Glenn had heard there was a superstitious custom among big farms to employ cyclops women. Their big eyes protected the crops from the birds, and their natural diligence and hard-work was always useful on a farm. It was said the reason they employed women was because all the cyclops men end up becoming craftsmen.
“……Dr. Glenn?” Memé said.
“Oh, you’re awake?” Glenn replied.
Memé was in a bed at the clinic. Sapphee, Arahnia, and the helper fairies were all standing by on the other side of the bed curtain. The cyclops stared vacantly for a moment, but before long she gave a surprised gasp. It appeared she finally understood where she was.
“Oh, I-I, have to make the needles…” Memé pushed aside the sheets and went to get out of bed when—
“Bleeeeerg…” She bent over and vomited in agony.
“Now now, slow down. You still need to rest.” Glenn calmly caught Memé’s vomit in the washbowl he had prepared. Fortunately, it was a light ejection, and only a slight amount of gastric juices collected in the bowl.
Glenn rubbed Mem
é’s exposed back. The combination of her delicate, young girl’s frame and the muscularity unique to cyclops gave Glenn a strange feeling as he rubbed.
“Ugh…? I-I feel awful…”
“There, there, you’ll be fine, but you can’t move quickly like that.”
“Nhggg…”
It seemed that Memé didn’t realize how bad a condition her body was in. Her pupil seemed to be swirling around in circles. Of course, that was nothing but an illusion, but the sincerity of emotion displayed in the cyclops’s eye seemed to express just how sick she was.
“Dr. Glenn is so kind,” Sapphee said.
“Why, he seems even nicer than when he’s talking to us, now doesn’t he?” Arahnia replied.
“Th-that’s not true…!”
“Hardworking girls sure are popular, now, aren’t they?” Arahnia added.
“I-I’m a hard worker, too, you know.”
“Yes, well, you do drink a lot, Sapphee.”
“What’s that got to do with anything, Arahnia?!”
The voices on the other side of the curtain were loud and bothersome. Sapphee had become more agitated and flustered ever since Arahnia started coming and going from the clinic. But Glenn still had a feeling that Arahnia’s presence wasn’t necessarily a bad thing for Sapphee. They had stopped peeking in because it would be harmful to the patient, but Glenn wished that at the very least they’d keep quiet.
“Aaaauuuggh… Why, why do I always get like this…” Memé said. “It’s probably just because throwing up suits me… I told myself this time would be different and worked hard… though I obviously wouldn’t be able to do it…!”
“Memé, calm down. You’re okay,” Glenn replied.
“I have no idea what’s going on…”
“You collapsed at the workshop.”
“Huh? I-I-I did? W-Why?”
“I’m going to examine you now to figure that out.”
While it was premature to come to any conclusion, Glenn had already arrived at an approximate cause for Memé’s collapse. In order to make the surgical needles, she had neglected her health to a considerable degree.
Monster Girl Doctor Vol. 3 Page 12
