“Nevertheless, Dr. Glenn,” Skadi began.
“Y-yes.”
“You had no difficulty telling me to see the city into the future, but… Living for a long period of time just to watch over something is surprisingly boring. It’s not as if there will only be fun and interesting times ahead. Sometimes such boredom can claim a life far more easily than war or disease.”
“I-I see…” Glenn imagined this was a real concern for creatures that had such long lives.
“What is there to stave off the boredom?” Skadi asked.
“W-well I think it’d be best to live freely… Miss Dionne and Dr. Cthulhy both seem to do whatever they want to do, however they want to do it. Wouldn’t it be best to live a leisurely life similar to those two?”
“It wasn’t my intention to line myself up with them, but… For a while now, I’ve spent all my time on managing the city, you see, and it’s been so long I’ve forgotten what one would do to enjoy oneself.”
“I see, I see… What about eating delicious food? Or sweet things?”
“A new candy shop went up in the Waterways, didn’t it? What else?”
“Indulging in fashion, maybe… It might be a bit expensive, but what about collecting jewels or something similar?”
“Oh. I see. Jewels, is it? Precious metals are a good idea. The shinier, the better,” Skadi said, nodding repeatedly. It was said that dragons loved treasure, and it didn’t seem that Skadi was any exception.
“What else? What is there besides that?”
“R-right, let’s see now…”
Skadi’s tone of voice had the dignity befitting the city council representative, but her demeanor suited her outward appearance. Glenn couldn’t help but think that she resembled a child, pestering her parents for more and more of what she wanted.
“M-maybe love?”
Confectionery. Clothes. Jewels. Love. Glenn desperately gave Skadi examples that he thought a woman would like, picked out of his meager experience with the opposite sex. However, when he gave it a second thought, he was sure that they were all things such a long-lived dragon would have experienced before. He doubted these things would suddenly make Skadi’s boredom bearable.
“I see… Let me give it some thought… Also, you can put me down now,” Skadi said, flapping her legs about.
“Oh, r-right, right,” Glenn replied, flustered. He tried to set her down, but Skadi used her own strength to hop out and escape from Glenn’s arms.
Glenn thought that maybe the hug had been unpleasant for Skadi, but that didn’t seem to be the case after all—Skadi once again faced him and gave a deep bow of her head. The horns on her head that reached up into the sky moved with her, and pointed themselves toward Glenn as though they were singling him out.
“I’ll leave the rest up to you, Dr. Glenn,” she said.
“Yes, I understand,” Glenn replied.
She had begun to want to live. Even with her body’s transformation into something half-dragon, half-human, she still held the energy in her to live.
“Somehow, please. I’m begging you.”
As soon as she said this, it appeared. Skadi’s smiling face looked like a blend of her hopes and anxieties, a complete change from the dreary expression she had worn up until that moment. It looked so innocent, it made it hard to believe that she had lived for such a long, long time.
***
The memory flashed through his mind like a kaleidoscope.
Glenn couldn’t forget the smile Skadi had worn when she decided to keep on living.
He asked himself why he had remembered it in the middle of her surgery. The operation was still not over. As a final finishing stroke, Glenn sank his scalpel into Skadi’s second heart.
He was positive he’d be successful. With this confidence in his heart, Glenn began the final excision.
The night of this major operation would soon welcome its end.
***
Memé Redon was at a loss.
Walking quickly along the side of the canal, she kept wondering how things had ended up this way.
That night, the town of Lindworm lay sleepless. It was the day of the beloved Skadi Dragenfelt’s operation. Everyone in the town was too concerned with the results of the surgery to even think about sleep. It was a matter of great importance to the city, and everyone fluctuated between hope and despair at the rumors that flowed through Lindworm, as though it were a personal affair for them all.
Memé’s large eye was also wide awake, and sleep was entirely out of the question.
She wondered what the results of the surgery would be.
More precisely, she wondered if the tools that she and the other craftsmen had made would fulfill their roles properly.
She had confidence that the surgical needles that she had made would be useful, but Memé had completely painted over that confidence with her pitch-black anxieties. No matter how many times she tried to erase them, her abject thoughts that nothing she had made could ever be good enough began to overflow within her. Normally, during times like this, she would cower under the covers of her bed and eventually find sleep as she tortured herself with her self-deprecating thoughts.
But just for tonight, she wondered why she was walking toward the central plaza.
“Come on, come on, hurry up!”
“Ah, uh, w-wait!” Memé replied. She thought she was walking quickly, but the young girl running—or rather, swimming—next to her didn’t slow down for Memé at all. The girl would sometimes poke her head out of the water and urge Memé on.
That girl was Lulala Heine. She was a songstress who used the fountain in the central plaza as a stage for her performances.
“Jeez, Memé! I even told you that you absolutely had to come! It didn’t seem like you would in the end! You may not think so, but I’m really busy, you know! You gotta keep your promises! Why the heck do you think I’ve been singing every night?!” Lulala shouted.
“Um, no, it’s j-just, there’s a lot of people, at the, um, central plaza,” Memé replied.
“Yeah, and that’s why I’m singing there!” Lulala shot back. The cheerful Lulala didn’t seem to pick up on Memé’s distress from her shyness or her fear of areas where large groups gathered. Memé imagined that for someone with Lulala’s personality, her worries must have seemed trivial.
Memé had recently grown friendly with Lulala. It would be more accurate to say that Lulala started conversations with everyone she met, and Memé had been no exception. Memé tried to avoid approaching the bright young girl as much as possible, but Lulala always found Memé and loudly called out to her.
Today had been the same way.
Memé had heard that tonight, Lulala was going to sing all night in the central plaza. To pray for Skadi’s surgery to be a success, she was going to sing a song in an ancient language, loud enough to reach the Central Hospital.
A song wouldn’t change the outcome of the surgery. All that would determine the outcome was the skill of the doctors performing the surgery and the precision of the tools they used. That was how the craftswoman Memé thought of it.
While that might have been her opinion on the matter, she did know that there were people who cheered up at hearing Lulala’s song. Even Memé thought that if she listened to Lulala’s prayer song, it might calm her self-loathing.
However, Memé would never have imagined that Lulala would come directly to her lodging to get her.
“I-I was in the middle of changing…” said Memé.
“You were, weren’t you—you gave me such a shock when you came out in your underwear! More importantly, your boobs sure are big, Memé… I wonder if someday mine will be, too… Wait, just forget that for now!” Lulala replied.
“I thought for a moment that there was a seal outside my house or something.”
When a merfolk came up on land, the way they moved by crawling closely resembled a seal or sea lion. They weren’t able to walk due to the way their body was constructed, so there was
n’t anything merfolk could do to avoid the comparison.
Incidentally, Memé had never seen a sea lion before, but there were quite a number of seals in Lindworm—rather, there were quite a number of sealskin-clad monsters called selkies—but that wasn’t important.
“Anyway, it’s not my fault! You’re the one who didn’t come even though you promised you would!”
Lulala’s blunt words stripped Memé of any means of rebuttal. Memé could only challenge Lulala by saying that she would have liked Lulala to have told her if she was going to come to her house, but she was so shy around other people she couldn’t even manage this basic level of conversation.
“I-I was planning to go, but…” Memé stuttered.
“‘But?’ But what?!” Lulala replied.
“…I-It’s a pain.”
“You always get like that, don’t you, Memé?!” Lulala said, bursting into laughter.
Memé said it was a pain because for someone as scared of strangers as she was, stepping into the traffic of the central plaza meant being forced to consider those around her and to make sure she didn’t startle anyone. What was truly a pain for her to deal with was how she overthought everything out of fear of strangers.
She didn’t intend to imply that getting together with Lulala was bothersome. But Lulala loudly laughed off Memé’s hesitation and indecision. Memé thought that someone like Lulala, as bright as the sun was in the southern countries, didn’t have the troubles Memé did. Memé was both jealous of her and wished she could be the same way.
For Memé’s large eye, the sun-like radiance of Lulala was glaringly bright.
“Well, I guess I can be pretty annoying, can’t I?” said Lulala.
“N-no, that’s not…” Memé replied, completely taken aback. Lulala was cheerful and candid in her relationships with others, but there were times when she could be almost cruel in how readily she spoke her mind. Memé had yet to get a handle on the young girl’s personality.
“Oh, Lulala, they’re waiting—shoot.” Memé began. They were drawing close to the central plaza. There were visitors gathered at the entrance. Standing among them was a harpy with red wings.
It was Illy, an employee of Scythia Transportation. Memé had heard she had been caught up in some of the recent incidents that had made waves through the city, like the slave trader disturbance and the commotion with the giant god, but Memé didn’t know much about it all. She just knew her as the young girl working to deliver the mail. However…
“Oh, h-hello…” Memé begin.
“Eeeeeeeeeeeeeek!”
As soon as Illy saw Memé, she let out a shriek and ran away.
“Ah, uhm, ahh…”
It was the same as always—Illy spread her wings and soared off into the sky. She fled with such speed that she looked like a waterfowl taking off from a lake.
The reason for her escape was simple. Much like birds hate eye patterns, harpies hated the giant eyes of the cyclops. This had less to do with Memé and Illy’s relationship than their racial compatibility. Either way, it meant that every time Illy laid eyes on Memé, she quickly ran away from her.
“Aww, Illy left. Sheesh — there’s nothing for her to be afraid of,” sighed Lulala.
“Y-you’re, um, friends w-with Illy too?” Memé replied.
“Well, we’re close to the same age.”
The three of them—Memé, Illy, and Lulala—were all similar in age. Being friends with someone just because they were close in age was the kind of straightforwardness that was inconceivable to the self-deprecating Memé. Making just a single friend took her an excessive amount of time.
“H-hey, um, Lulala?” said Memé.
“Hmm?” answered Lulala.
“I-I’m gonna go back after all…”
“Huh?! Why?! You’ve come all the way here! Look, see, the plaza is right there! It’s not scary!”
“W-well, look at me, I’m so cowardly, and I’m not cute, and arriving with the star of the plaza might mean some bad rumors get spread about you, too, Lulala, and Illy hates me too, and I know even you’re just thinking that I’m just some indecisive, gloomy, self-hating, annoying, useless cyclops, aren’t you?! If that’s the case…”
“Yup! That’s all totally how it is!”
“Y-you’re not gonna deny it?! Y-you’re supposed to cheer me up!”
“I don’t want to—it’s tiresome.”
Lulala’s unflinching declaration left Memé in shock. With her plucky, energetic voice, Lulala completely acknowledged all the bad parts of Memé’s personality.
“And? So what?” Lulala continued.
“Huh…?”
“Do not coming to hear me sing in the plaza and your personality flaws have anything to do with each other?” Lulala asked, turning around in the water and rocking herself back and forth as she swam on her back through the night waters of the canal. Memé was impressed that Lulala could make it look so effortless.
“Um, but, I—”
“There’s no ‘buts’ about it! I’m going to sing, so everyone awake is here to listen! And we’re going to pray—pray that Skadi’s illness is healed for good! C’mon, lift your head up! Stop staring at the ground!”
Memé couldn’t tell if Lulala was trying to scold her or just saying whatever came into her head.
As she talked with Lulala, Memé finally found her way into the middle of the plaza, right in front of the fountain. Lulala swam into the fountain and lay down on the marble stage within as if there weren’t anywhere else she belonged. Memé suddenly raised her head.
It was bright. So bright that you wouldn’t think it was nighttime. Lamps made out of the Waterways’ special merrow glass lit up the area. Memé could tell at first glance that all the lamps had been carefully crafted by the artisans of the Waterways. She wondered if they had gone out of their way to bring them all the way from the canals to the plaza.
She wondered why. But the answer was simple. Everyone knew it would be a sleepless night, and had decided instead to fully embrace their sleeplessness. They gathered in the central plaza and lit the lamps. Memé knew that the lamp oil wasn’t cheap. It just went to show just how awake everyone in the city was that night.
All to hear Lulala’s song of prayer.
“Okay everyone, sorry to keep you waiting!” Lulala called out to the crowd gathered in the plaza, who then applauded her appearance.
Even the sidewalk café facing the plaza was open and seemed to have a fair number of customers. Memé had thought Illy had run away, but there she stood on the roof of the café. It seemed she had just fled to try and get away from Memé and was still excited to hear Lulala’s song.
Memé stealthily disappeared into the crowd. Lulala wouldn’t be able to see her from where she was, but Memé found a position where she could still see Lulala. Hiding in a place where she wouldn’t stand out, even in a crowd of people, was one of Memé’s specialties.
“Tonight I’m going to sing straight on until morning, okay?” said the plaza’s songstress with a wink, prompting more applause from the audience.
Everyone had turned up, drawn in by Lulala’s charm.
The crowd was entirely focused on Lulala, and not a single one of them paid any attention to Memé or her one eye. It was a city of monsters anyway, so having a cyclops present wasn’t a problem to begin with. If anything, the one who was most conscious of her one eye was the abject Memé herself.
“——————————♪”
Lulala began to sing.
Because of the light the bright, sunny young mermaid generated, no one was interested in Memé at all. Memé herself thought that dark and gloomy places suited her best. But standing in the shadows cast by places of light was enough to make her feel at home.
Memé lamented that it was going to be a long night.
“———————♪” The song, sung in an ancient tongue, was gentle on the ears.
Memé found an open space next to one of the nearby lamps and
planted herself on the ground with her arms wrapped around her legs. She figured she wouldn’t be able to talk to the singing Lulala for a while, but that was a boon for someone like Memé, who had such a rough time conversing with other people.
I don’t want to. I can’t do it. No way —Memé had said all of these things without end, but in reality, she was happy. She couldn’t help but be happy. She was delighted that Lulala had gone out of her way to come and get her.
“He, hehehe…”
She had made friends with someone who was good at singing—this small, trivial fact made a convulsing, eerie smile appear on Memé’s face. She told herself it was easy enough that even she could do it if she wanted.
Nevertheless, she couldn’t help laughing—she was just too happy.
“Hehehe…” Memé giggled to herself with a smile spreading across her face. She was completely ignorant of the human couple sitting next to her as they put space between themselves and Memé.
***
It was dead.
Kunai Zenow believed that it had finally died off completely.
Her right arm—a piece of her body she had been with for many years. It had been made by connecting the muscle from four different men. Tonight, at long last, she had stopped being able to hear their voices. It was rare for her to stop hearing the voices all at once.
The parts had come from a soldier, a bloodthirsty murderer, a noble from a military family, and a cargo worker. All of them had been men of valor, each boasting an equal amount of strength, and had supported Kunai’s impressive fighting prowess for a long time.
Kunai Zenow was a flesh golem. There were times when she could hear the regrets and thoughts of the corpses that had been used to construct her, almost like voices in her head. Recently, these voices had grown much quieter. Previously they had tormented her by echoing in her head around the clock. But ever since she started having Dr. Glenn suture her together, the voices had become mere whispers, like lightly falling rain.
Monster Girl Doctor Vol. 3 Page 21
