Wasn’t This a Night Game

Explosion

Rumors are a dreadful thing.

Just as I had healed nearly all the injured vagrants residing around the river, an enormous crowd of the sick and afflicted swarmed my vicinity, turning it into a chaotic frenzy.

“Saint! Please, heal me!!”

“I can’t see!”

“Help me!!”

Now, I’ve done this so many times, I’ve got a feel for it.

“Those who have been healed, help me! Form a line! Bring the critically ill and young children to me first! Confusion will only lead to more injuries!!”

“Yes! We will!!”

“Peter!! Anna!!”

Calling out while frantically healing people, the first family I healed approaches.

I stroke Jim and Amy’s hair, then issue instructions to the couple.

“You know my house, yes? This is the key. Go inside and get the pouch I put under the bed. There’s gold inside.”

“G-gold?”

“Use it to buy food and distribute it amongst the people.”

Gold, I can always ask for more.

The deed is already done.

It won’t be long before the Imperial Household and the Pantheon hear of my actions and come flying to me.

I can always ask for more gold then and run, so I plan to distribute the gold I already have without holding back.

“Understood.”

I smile at the couple, who blankly receive the key from me.

“And with that gold, make sure your family eats well and get Amy and Jim some rest. They’ve suffered enough, so they need to eat well and sleep well. Understand?”

At my words, the couple seemed to be overcome, clenching their fists and trembling.

Don’t tremble like that.

It only makes me feel guilty.

I could have saved you sooner, but couldn’t due to my own circumstances.

“Y-Yes, I will.”

“You two, go get some rest. You haven’t been well for long; don’t overdo it. Understand?”

“Thank you. Saint. I will never forget this.”

After Peter’s family vanished with my keys, I continued to strain myself healing people.

“Those who have been healed, sort the incoming patients and bring me the most critical and the young children, first!”

“Order! Form a line! Forming a line will allow us to treat you more efficiently!”

One week.

Just one week, and I leave.

I absolutely will not heal beyond that.

I can’t let the power within my soul devour more faith and grow any larger.

So I had to heal as many as possible in a short period of time.

I healed day and night.

When my body became unbearably weary, I cast a body modification on myself to eliminate the exhaustion. And when it wasn’t my body, but my mind that grew too weary, I’d lie down for a brief catnap.

But no matter how much I did that, for some reason, I felt increasingly depleted.

“Saint! Please heal my daughter!”

“My son is ill!”

“My seven-year-old daughter is sick! Saint! Saint!”

Children.

I don’t know why there were so damn many children.

Children with severed legs.

Children with eyes burst open.

Children without arms.

Children whose muscles had melted away, unable to even walk properly.

The reasons their parents, choked with tears, gave me were all equally appalling.

“After toiling for sixteen hours, exhaustion led to them being sucked into the machinery…”

“He inhaled toxic fumes cleaning the chimney, and now he cannot see.”

“Despite the child’s injury, the factory hasn’t paid a single penny in compensation. Holy man.”

I healed the children frantically, relentlessly.

An era where even three-year-olds were forced into labor.

An era where those children, working sixteen-hour shifts, were too tired to resist being swallowed by the machines.

Losing an arm or a leg was almost a blessing, comparatively.

Because the children were so small, I heard it was common for them to be completely sucked into the machines, leaving no trace.

Children working in textile mills were often so overworked that their bones twisted, growing into deformities, causing them to limp; and there were children who, deprived of sleep and subjected only to labor, became exposed to chemical products and lost their sight, turning blind.

The more I healed, the more sorrow and fury slowly bloomed within my chest.

Earning money?

Important, yes.

I know that well enough.

But even so, there is a line that must not be crossed.

This was clearly a situation where the line had been crossed to an outrageous degree.

And what made me even sadder was the attitude of the workers, unable to fully rejoice even after being healed.

“Will you be staying here long, Holy One?”

“Now that my body is healed, I must return to the factory and labor again, though my hand may be severed once more, or my sight stolen.”

“I feel as though I will need treatment again soon. Will you remain here long? I have no money, even if I were to strike it dead, but I will labor as I do today to aid you, Holy One.”

Repugnant.

So repugnant it churns the stomach.

The avarice of those who mass-produce human beings, not one or two, but in entire cities, only to see them wounded and suffering—it is repugnant.

To thrust children, who should be playing and growing, into backbreaking labor that even Korean loaders would refuse, to exploit them without proper wages—that behavior is utterly repugnant.

Now I understand why those who carry the red book are born endlessly.

I understand too, why the police seek to beat them down.

It was a mad era.

And the most monstrous, consumed by avarice more than anyone, were the upper echelons of this city.

The factory owners they called themselves.

I did the best I could.

Cutting back even on the hours I ate and slept, I desperately healed, and healed again, those wounded by their greed.

But no matter how I struggled, there were limits that could not be overcome.

“Holy One!! My daughter!! My daughter!!”

A mother rushes toward me, clutching her young child.

“Her fever won’t break after she was injured at the factory!! Please, save her!!”

A child, one arm crushed, is thrust before me.

Hastily, I lay my hands upon her.

[Skills, including bodily modification, can only be used on living organisms!!]

[Can only be used on living organisms!!]

Dead.

Again, I couldn’t save it, another life extinguished.

I couldn’t bear to see the mother’s devastated face, and turned away.

“It’s already too late.”

“Ah!………aaah!!”

“Please, give them a proper burial. They have passed.”

“P-Please!! Please, a miracle! Work a miracle, I beg you!! Just this morning, they were alive!! Holy one! Please, a miracle!!”

There was no way to resurrect a corpse already gone.

Seeing the mother’s desperate face as she thrust her child’s body towards me, clinging to hope until the very end, made me feel like I, too, would collapse.

“I am sorry.”

When I declared, with a trembling voice, that there was nothing more I could do, a beast-like wail erupted.

They call it *chamcheok*, don’t they?

The inconsolable screams of parents who have lost a child were almost unbearable to hear.

“If only…if only you had come a little sooner. Why……..”

Something inside me swelled, about to burst, at the mother’s words, croaking and trembling as she spoke.

After the mother, who had fainted from weeping, was supported away by those around her, I continued to stare at the place where she had stood, long after she was gone.

“Why… why are there no hospitals? In this city?”

Those whom I had treated gave hollow laughs at my words.

“Listen. The Empire’s best doctors, they’re probably here. It’s a neighborhood with a lot of people who naturally dislike religion, so medicine has developed quite a bit.”

“Then why…”

“It’s expensive. The medicine is expensive, and the doctors are even more so. It’s not a place laborers like us can even think about going.”

Right.

That’s probably right.

Why wouldn’t it be?

Seriously, if they torment and make life so difficult for people to this extent, won’t they turn strange and start reading the red book?

I know all too well how this current will end.

Magic, faith, when a society that rejects religion rots away because of endless greed, I know too well how it ultimately ends.

They’ll split into a red camp and a blue camp and fight to the death, and as a result, both the red camp and the blue camp will become places where the socially vulnerable can barely survive.

Eventually, the blue camp will win, but the immense amount of blood that will be spilled in the process made me feel a momentary dizziness.

What am I saving people for, anyway?

There needed to be a solution at a more fundamental level.

If not, my healing would be nothing more than a meaningless waste of effort.

These people will get hurt again, and then eventually, the festering social conflict will explode, and they’ll struggle for paradise, but only an ending where they roll down into hell awaits them.

What should I do?

With nothing but skills from a trashy game, what can I possibly do to make these people’s lives a little bit better?

The thought of healing them for just a week and then running away had half vanished from my mind.

To heal them briefly without responsibility and then run away… the sadness and anger I saw in them in such a short time was too immense and terrible.

I had to do something.

Lost in such thoughts,

Or, more precisely, precisely two days after I began my healings,

“Out of the way! Get out of the way, you lot! You insect-like things!”

The city’s constables, shoving aside the afflicted, arrived before me.

They roughly pushed away the young girl I was attending to and, armed with pistols and batons, encircled me.

“Jericho Amael. Are you the one they call the Saint of Healing in the capital?”

Hair disheveled from two days without proper sleep or food, I slowly looked up at the constables.

“Yes. That is me.”

“One question for you. Do you possess a medical license?”

“No, I do not.”

“Then you are practicing medicine without a license, and for free? This is strictly illegal, Amael. And furthermore, your actions infringe upon the interests of the city’s pharmaceutical companies and the Medical Guild.”

“……..”

“This is a grave violation of Imperial Law. Causing severe damage to corporations without authorization is punishable by Imperial Law, and the level of punishment is delegated to the local magistrate, so states Imperial Law.”

“And what are you intending to do about it?”

“Leave the city. Otherwise, we will have no choice but to interrogate you for causing severe damage to corporations. You are currently under suspicion of being a Labor Theorist. I would prefer not to interrogate someone so favored by the Pantheon and the Imperial Family as a Labor Theorist.”

A hollow laugh escaped me.

A Labor Theorist?

These very people who created this multitude of the sick and afflicted are trying to drive me out under that pretense?

“Will you submit to interrogation? Or will you depart the city quietly?”

At the constable’s words, the gathered patients began to murmur amongst themselves.

“Ah, but my daughter hasn’t received treatment yet!!”

“Heal me, please!! I’m blind, I can’t see a thing! Blessed Saint!!”

“Heal my son!! Don’t leave us!!”

The policemen’s eyes narrowed into inverted V’s at the cries of the patients.

“Do you all want to be arrested as ‘labor theorists’ and dragged away? Do you desire a life in the camps?”

The palpable terror etched into that brutal roar made the patients flinch, backing away.

“Free treatment and welfare guaranteed by society!! Those are all things the labor theorists babble about!! Your state of mind, wanting to be treated for free, is deeply suspect. All of you, step back if you don’t want a taste of the camps!!”

Having subdued the patients so easily, the police turned their gaze toward me.

“Leave quietly, Mr. Amael. Don’t incite this city’s garbage and cause disadvantages for the corporations and factories. That’s a strict violation of Imperial law.”

Their irritated faces, urging me to disappear quickly, made me burst out laughing.

The rage had crossed its threshold.

The pharmaceutical companies and doctors’ alliance, responsible for producing these sick people in the first place by neglecting their treatment, are trying to chase me away for their measly, insignificant loss?

That, I can accept.

Their condescending tone with me?

That, I can accept.

Their attitude of not forgiving even an ant’s tear’s worth of loss for the rich, while not caring whether the poor die out or not?

That too, I can accept.

But you see…

“Garbage, did you say?”

Calling those desperate people there, garbage.

“To not incite the city’s refuse, to not cause chaos?”

That, I cannot abide.

That, truly, I cannot abide.

I placed a time-stop around the neck of what appeared to be the police head, the one who’d been blustering on.

And slowly, I began to raise the frozen space upward, until the fellow floated into the air, as if seized by telekinesis.

“Gah!! Wh-what is this trickery!……”

Wriggling, flailing about in the empty air, I unleashed the fury I’d been holding back for far too long.

Refuse?

No.

“These are the people I have healed. The people I *will* heal, the people I have resolved to care for!”

*You* are the refuse.

“Dare not call those I have shown mercy filthy!!!!!!”

The anger that had been festering inside me for two days exploded in a tremendous roar.