This Might Be That

Two hours later.

Vandel and Lord Marder led us into the building where the patients were being quarantined.

Before entering the room, each of us covered our mouth with a scarf, and Lady Shitoen had told us, “Try not to touch anything if possible.” Apparently, infectious diseases could be transmitted through the mucous membranes, and one could even fall ill from rubbing one’s eyes. So once we left the building, she said we ought to wash our hands with distilled liquor.

“Then your husband ate dried fish as well, did he?”

In one room were Lady Shitoen, me, Vandel, Lord Marder, and a young woman named Natalie.

Her husband was an exile, and apparently they had married last year.

He had come down with symptoms similar to the other patients and had taken to his bed, so he was being quarantined here. She apparently came every day to look after him.

“Does your husband’s stomach still hurt? Can he not eat anything?”

Lady Shitoen and Natalie sat facing each other in chairs.

Natalie was answering Lady Shitoen’s questions, but honestly… halfway through, Natalie had done nothing but cry, and it was taking quite a lot of time.

Even I was getting fed up, but Lady Shitoen was admirable. She listened patiently.

“He only drinks the soup I make…”

“Do the other sick people only drink soup too, I wonder?”

Natalie raised her tear-streaked face, then shook her head and said she did not know.

“I heard that when people in the settlement upset their stomach, they make rice porridge from karis, but… I do not know how to make it…”

She wiped away her tears with the back of her hand and sniffled.

“Karis porridge is a traditional food for the sick.”

Lord Marder whispered that in my ear. Natalie was still newly married, so she likely did not know those sorts of things that had been “passed down through the generations.”

“So I made the pork and onion soup my mother taught me from my parents’ home… with a little garlic added, and I have been giving that to my husband.”

“I understand. Then let us go and meet the patient.”

The moment Lady Shitoen said that, she stood up.

She turned around to face us and stressed it once again.

“All right? Do not rub your eyes with hands that have touched anything. It may feel stifling, but do not remove your scarves either.”

She too had covered her mouth with a scarf, so only her eyes could be seen.

Even so, her seriousness came through.

That tension made us pull ourselves together, but then— quite suddenly, Lady Shitoen’s eyes softened.

“Still… this may not be an infectious disease after all.”

Murmuring that, she urged Natalie on.

“Now then. Please take us to your husband.”

Natalie wiped her tears with the hem of her apron and stood up.

Then the three of us left the room for the moment and walked down the corridor. A number of similar doors continued in a row, but Natalie stopped at one particular room and knocked.

“Ligo. I am coming in.”

When she opened the door and stepped inside, there was a pale young man with his upper body propped against the backrest of the bed.

“…Huh…?”

Seeing the faces in our group, his eyes widened. Though even that was subtle. His swollen eyelids only lifted a little.

“Lord Vandel and Lord Marder brought these people here.”

Natalie ran to the bedside and said that to the young man. Even so, he probably still could not grasp the situation. He simply stared at us blankly with his mouth hanging open.

“Pleased to meet you. I would like to ask you a few questions.”

Keeping a gentle smile on her face, Lady Shitoen spoke to the young man. He nodded shakily.

“My name is Shitoen. And you are?”

Lady Shitoen tilted her head. “Ligo,” the young man answered hurriedly, giving his name.

“She is apparently well-versed in medicine. Ligo… you might be saved…”

Crying, Natalie clung to Ligo. While stroking his wife’s back, Ligo still looked up at Lady Shitoen anxiously.

“Let me check your pulse for a moment, all right?”

When Lady Shitoen spoke, Natalie moved away. Lady Shitoen immediately touched Ligo’s right wrist. Then she furrowed her brow.

“It is tachycardia… Now then, could you show me your legs?”

Ligo nodded timidly, and Natalie pulled back the blanket. Then she rolled up the hem of her husband’s nightclothes.

“…That looks painful…”

I ended up grimacing without thinking. That was how terrible the swelling in his legs was. They were stretched tight. I glanced at Vandel and Lord Marder, but they were making the same face I was.

“Do your legs cramp often?”

At Lady Shitoen’s question, Ligo and Natalie looked at each other.

“Quite often, in the middle of the night… he wakes up saying his leg cramped.”

It was Natalie who answered.

“If you put a cushion under your ankles and lie down with them a little elevated, the swelling will feel better too… Would you like to lie down?”

At Lady Shitoen’s suggestion, Ligo hesitantly shook his head.

“When I lie down, it gets hard to breathe… It is easier like this, keeping my body propped up.”

Ah. So that was why he was sitting up.

Somehow, that surprised me. If someone were seriously ill, I had pictured them lying down.

“Orthopnea…”

Lady Shitoen murmured.

“Diarrhea, stomach pain, a characteristic pulse, swelling, orthopnea, cyanosis… This, perhaps… might be that.”

Lady Shitoen turned and said that to us, but the three men only looked at one another like fools.

What in the world did she mean by “that”?

“Excuse me. Is there any karis here?”

Lady Shitoen turned to Natalie. When Natalie nodded timidly, Lady Shitoen told her, “Please show it to me.” Natalie hurried out of the sickroom.

“Have you all been eating karis all this time?”

Lady Shitoen asked Ligo, who still looked as though he had not grasped the situation.

“Yes… ever since fleeing into exile, all along. The way other people eat bread.”

Ligo answered haltingly.

“When we have no money, there are times when it is nothing but karis… Until I married Natalie, I hardly ever ate meat.”

I see. Just as Lord Marder had said.

“Um, milady.”

As if steeling himself, Ligo looked up at Lady Shitoen.

“That… am I going to die? Like the others?”

Swallowing hard, Ligo spoke rapidly while glancing nervously at the door Natalie had gone through.

“The people who have been put in here keep getting worse and worse… and some of them have died. If I was put in here, then that means that is what this is, does it not?”

Cold sweat beading on his forehead, Ligo gripped the blanket tightly.

“To leave Natalie behind… I cannot… I am still…”

“I do not want to die,” Ligo trembled.

“Yeah. You cannot die.”

Before I knew it, I had dropped to one knee beside the bed and was peering up at Ligo’s face from below.

“You have such a cute wife, after all. Even if you died, there would be no way you could rest in peace.”

I would be the same. If the unexpected happened and my heart stopped,

my soul would not be able to go off to the next world or anything.

Above all, I would worry about Lady Shitoen.

After her engagement was broken off, she had finally come to this country and found relief, and then next her husband—me—dies.

If that happened, no talk of remarriage would come up, and more than that, she would probably sink into despair, thinking, “It is my fault.”

It would not be.

It would not be your fault.

Even if I wanted to tell her that, without a body, I could say nothing.

“So then, let’s stubbornly survive no matter what.”

I lightly patted Ligo’s hand. The back of it, where the veins had stood out from how tightly he had clenched it, relaxed just a little.

“Do not think about dying. Think only about living.”

The moment I said that, he suddenly started shedding tears in great drops, which startled me.

“Hey, hey. Your wife will be back any moment. Stop crying.”

With a wry smile, I stood up and gave him a light hug. “S-sorry,” I heard Ligo mumble tearfully in my arms, but then I heard Vandel clear his throat and turned only my gaze toward him.

“Back away. Do not touch him. You were told not to.”

He ordered me quietly, and I thought, Ah, damn it, then looked at Lady Shitoen.

Our eyes met.

I thought she would scold me, but the corners of her eyes softened ever so slightly.

W-well. Lady Shitoen had touched Ligo too when she checked his pulse, I thought to myself, and hurried away from him. In fact, Lady Shitoen said nothing. Maybe it was because my mouth was covered. If I had hugged him with nothing covering it, she might have gotten angry.

“Um, here it is.”

As if breaking the strange mood in the room, Natalie returned. She opened the burlap sack she had been holding in both hands in front of Lady Shitoen. In the meantime, Ligo hurriedly wiped away his tears with the edge of the sheet.

After asking permission, Lady Shitoen put her hand inside.

She scooped up a handful of the grain packed within.