People around the world called my father the ‘Clown.’
In my opinion, that was slightly inaccurate.
My father was a terrorist.
My father had exquisitely altered the face of the Emperor's statue in the heart of the capital.
He made it look as though it were grinning grotesquely and greedily.
And what it held in its hand had been changed from a sword to a leash.
The other end of that leash was attached to the Capital Taxation Office.
It portrayed the Emperor as though he were a demon sucking the lifeblood from the people of the Empire.
It happened overnight, and no one saw who had done it or when.
On another day, my father tampered with the fireworks for the Mage Tower's 100th anniversary celebration.
He put drugs inside the thousands of fireworks they launched into the sky.
Everyone attending the Mage Tower's event wandered around completely dazed.
The problem was that the drugs were a specialty product the Mage Tower itself manufactured and sold on the black market.
On another day, he released 2,300 cockroaches inside the Taxation Office.
On yet another, he detonated more than 10,000 fart bombs inside the castle of a corrupt lord.
The Imperial Family, the nobles, and the press kept silent.
But word of those incidents spread little by little to people all across the continent.
Nobody knew who had done them.
But everyone knew who it was.
There had already been too many similar cases.
And one afternoon on another day, he held out flowers to my mother.
Mother firmly refused him again and again.
But by nightfall, Father somehow managed to get a kiss out of her anyway.
“Why don't you divorce him?”
At my question, Mother sighed.
“Good question.”
A man who twisted the whole world around however he pleased.
How was that a clown?
He was a terrorist.
EP4 ― Somehow, a Doctor (1)
When I came to, I was inside a huge cavern.
A group of men and I had been loaded onto a wagon and dumped here.
The Spider Society coat was gone.
So I was left in my underwear.
“Take off your clothes!”
“…….”
“Hey, cripple! You too! Strip!”
After a brief physical examination, we were given clothes to change into.
Afterward, a guard began the briefing.
“This is the underground Herb Mine! From now on, you will live here and gather medicinal herbs according to the rules of this place!”
He added various explanations.
What time breakfast, lunch, and dinner were.
What hours we had to sleep.
How much work we were expected to complete each day.
I frowned.
It was similar to how the Guard put prisoners to work, but no matter how I looked at it, this wasn't a workplace affiliated with the Guard.
What is this place?
Who are these bastards to treat prisoners like this?
They weren't the Guard.
But it also felt slightly strange to call this the inside of a criminal organization.
It almost seemed……
somewhat humane.
“Don't fuck with me, you bastards!”
That was when one of the prisoners(?) who'd arrived with me shouted.
“Why the hell should I gather medicinal herbs? I am Coffin, a vassal of His Excellency the Grand Count! No one can treat me like this! Where's your warden?!”
He kept shouting after that.
“You know your Warden Kirish, don't you? Me, you bastards! Just yesterday, I even……!”
He rambled on about something, but the moment a blade appeared in front of his throat, his mouth snapped shut.
Afterward, the guards closed the iron-barred door to the cavern and disappeared.
That was where it began.
A group of sinister-looking prisoners came walking toward us from deeper inside the cavern.
“Count's vassal.”
“Wh-What?! Who are you bastards?!”
“You messed with a kid, didn't you?”
“Yeah! I touched one slave girl! The young thing was soft and tender. So what? You want to make something of it?”
When he barked at them, the prisoners remained silent.
“His Lordship the Count made a mistake too! How could he do this to me over something like that?! After all the years I served him…!”
SMACK!
“Ghk!”
That was when the huge prisoner beside him slapped the man across the face.
His mouth split open, and teeth flew out and scattered across the floor.
“Ghk! Uugh! Wh-Why are you doing this?!”
“Boss. What should we do with this bastard?”
The especially vicious-looking man whom the other prisoners called Boss spoke.
“We don't breathe the same air as bastards who touch kids.”
Then he jerked his chin.
“Kill him.”
Someone brought over a rock and beat the Count's vassal to death.
THUD, THUD.
THUD.
A human skull was being smashed apart in real time.
At the sound, my body seemed to twist in on itself.
Afterward, the Boss approached me and asked,
“What are you in for? You're not on the prisoner list.”
I swallowed dryly.
“I was brought here unjustly.”
“Unjustly?”
“I was mistaken for a spy. I've never committed a crime. I'm just an ordinary civilian.”
The prisoners exchanged glances among themselves before speaking to me.
“Are you a cripple?”
“Yes.”
“I don't like that. If you fall behind, don't expect anything good.”
Then I was struck hard on the back and shoved in among them.
All those eyes pouring onto me.
People looking at me and my cane and sighing.
This felt bad from the very beginning.
***
Early in the morning, we were given some bread and a little water for breakfast.
After eating, we followed the prisoners and began gathering medicinal herbs.
The terrain here was unusual.
Although it was an underground mine, there were many openings in the ceiling.
The entire area was enormous, about the size of 10 or 15 athletic fields put together.
‘From above, I guess it'd look full of holes.’
Weeds grew in the gaps where sunlight reached.
Our job was to dig up the ones that looked like the medicinal herbs in the photographs and put them into baskets.
‘At least I'm alive….’
As I sat there blankly plucking what looked like medicinal herbs and placing them into my basket, my thoughts settled.
I was alive.
I was alive, but….
‘Am I going to be trapped here from now on?’
I was confused.
People said life was impossible to predict even one inch ahead.
As someone whose life had already had its fair share of twists and turns, I agreed with that sentence.
Even so, I'd never imagined I'd suddenly end up imprisoned in a Herb Mine.
What was going to happen to me now?
“I'm finished.”
“What?”
By evening, when I held out my basket, the prisoner nodded.
“Hmm. Not bad. Guess you're not completely useless. Done this kind of work before?”
“No.”
Still, my experience inspecting things at the magic-tool factory helped.
My eye for detail had improved, so finding medicinal herbs was easy.
“Go rest.”
“Yes.”
After that, the same routine continued.
2 days.
3 days.
5 days….
Wake up, eat, work.
Eat, work.
Eat, rest.
By the fifth day, I realized something.
Surprisingly, it wasn't bad.
‘Huh? Something's strange….’
It was manageable.
It wasn't difficult.
Both my body and my mind were comfortable.
‘How is a place like this better than the Guard….’
Because at the very least, a proper 9-to-6 workday was guaranteed.
As long as you completed one person's share of work, there was no overtime here.
Unlike the Guard.
“Today's a day off. Rest however you want.”
Even days off were completely guaranteed.
There was even a dormitory with running water, poor as the facilities were.
Unlike the Guard!
And so, at noon on my day off, I lay on the cavern floor where sunlight poured in all day.
I began to feel strangely conflicted.
Slave labor is better than the Guard?
‘Samael Bitroshun…. Just what kind of battle were you fighting….’
But there was one disappointing thing about this place.
I was isolated.
Except when work required it, I couldn't exchange even a single word with the other prisoners.
“Haha. I'm telling you, that bastard got one of his teeth pulled yesterday.”
“Good grief. That's why I kept telling him to watch how much he ate.”
The sound of the prisoners chatting among themselves.
For some reason, my ears stubbornly kept picking up every word.
Then our eyes met.
They awkwardly turned their heads away.
‘This is embarrassing.’
It was the same everywhere else.
If our arms bumped while eating, they'd click their tongues, get annoyed, and stop paying attention to me.
At the urinals, they'd deliberately avoid the spot beside mine.
I was used to it.
No matter what organization I entered.
No matter what group I belonged to.
My relationships always began with me being subtly excluded.
School.
The magic-tool factory.
The Guard.
And now here too.
Whenever that happened, there was a question that always tormented me.
「 Who am I? 」
Since I didn't know who I was anyway, perhaps the question could be changed into this.
「 What should I be? 」
Not a clown like I was at school.
Not a fighting dog like I was at the factory.
Not an obedient junior like I was in the Guard.
Then what?
Here in the Herb Mine, what did I need to become so I wouldn't be isolated?
What could I do to become one of them?
I was pondering that when—
“Mm…….”
One of the prisoners suddenly opened his eyes while sleeping and clutched his chest.
It was a man who normally disliked me.
Whenever I approached him for no reason, he grew uncomfortable or frowned.
“Um… are you all right?”
“…….”
He grimaced and waved me away.
Still, he looked like he was suffering, so I watched a little longer.
“Should I call someone?”
“Enough. I said enough! This isn't the first or second day this has happened, so mind your own business!”
He snapped at me and rejected my help.
But—
Maybe because I'd recently watched someone suffer and die, I couldn't help wondering.
I activated the magic tool.
The aperture opened.
The 「All-Seeing Eye」 analyzed the suffering man's chest, and I discovered a problem with the coronary arteries inside.
This is that disease called angina or something.
“Are you still here?!”
“Ah, sorry.”
Come to think of it, this was a Herb Mine.
There were plenty of baskets filled with gathered medicinal herbs nearby.
The problem was that slaves like us didn't know what the herbs were actually used for.
Even the person who had worked here the longest could only distinguish several hundred kinds of medicinal herbs and roughly describe their uses.
He didn't know their exact applications.
The entire basket was too much.
It was simply too large.
So I removed about half the contents and tried analyzing it again.
Information flooded into me.
I could sense the medicinal components and the range of their effects.
This one was for colds.
This one for high fever.
This one for nausea… vomiting, fever, bleeding, hallucinations, pain relief, chills…
And…….
I took out one medicinal herb and held it toward him.
“What?”
“This. It's Badran Root. Crush it and drink the juice, and it should help with the pain in your heart. Only temporarily, though.”
SMACK―!
He struck my hand away.
“Don't need it! What the hell do you know? I'm already in pain, so stop getting in my way and leave!”
“…….”
If he was going to be that stubborn, there was nothing I could do.
“Still, try it if you get the chance.”
THUD―
The herb flew straight into my face.
“Fuck off!”
If he was going to act like that, I had something to say too.
“Yes, sir!”
***
It was the next morning.
When I opened my eyes, 5 or 6 herb-gatherer slaves were standing around me, staring down.
My heart dropped.
I knew it.
They must be planning to beat me to death because I got cocky yesterday.
I was getting ready to beg until my hands became feet when one of the slaves asked,
“You…. Are you perhaps a doctor?”
A doctor?
I froze.
Then, in that instant, my eyes shifted toward the slave named Arad who'd been in pain yesterday.
He was looking at me with an extremely friendly expression.
Before I could even organize my thoughts, my mouth started talking on its own.
“At one point, I did earn a similar qualification.”
It wasn't a lie.
I'd placed first in first aid.
And I had a Grade 2 Emergency Rescue Certificate.
At that, the slaves' eyes began to shine.
“Could you perhaps… take a look at what ails us?”