“Will Miss Skadi be okay?” Sapphee asked.
“I’m worried, but I’m sure she’ll be fine… I hope,” Glenn replied.
The ceremony had been at noon that day. Skadi had collapsed and was carried to the Central Hospital that afternoon. Glenn had given her emergency first aid, but all the follow-up treatments had been under the Central Hospital’s jurisdiction, and he hadn’t been allowed to participate. This was because Skadi’s regular doctor was her old friend—Cthulhy Squele.
Once the sun went down, Glenn and Sapphee made their way toward the Central Hospital once again. Although Skadi’s primary doctor was their teacher, Glenn was the one who had happened to be present when Skadi collapsed. It was natural for him to be worried about her condition.
Glenn also wanted to see the teacher who had taught him medicine, and who he hadn’t seen in close to a year. Of course, as the patient, Skadi was the top priority, but Glenn thought it was okay to take the opportunity to enjoy a reunion with his teacher. Despite living in the same city, they were both so busy that they had almost no opportunity to see one another.
“Dr. Glenn, I’m just going to say this now, but…” Sapphee said with a grim look on her face. She had been in a foul mood ever since they arrived at the hospital. “Don’t get carried away just because you’re reuniting with Dr. Cthulhy. Got it?”
“I’m telling you, it’s fine, Sapphee. Dr. Cthulhy isn’t interested in me anymore, and besides, she’s worried about Skadi right now. We’re not going to be able to have a nice long chat or anything,” replied Glenn.
“I certainly hope that’s the case.”
The hospital director’s room was at the end of a corridor. Glenn hadn’t seen any patients in a while, so he assumed this area had been portioned off for the clerical and administrative functions of the hospital. The number of employees at the hospital dwarfed their small clinic, managed by just the two of them.
From the hallway, they had a good view of the courtyard. It was well maintained, and even equipped with a fountain. It was smaller than the fountain in the central plaza where Lulala sang, but Glenn thought it must have been built to try and improve the atmosphere inside the hospital’s walls.
Not only that, he thought, the water was essential. Even for Cthulhy.
“Are you in, Doctor? It’s Glenn… Saphentite is here with me as well,” Glenn said, knocking on the hospital director’s office door. It was high quality, made from oak.
“Please, come in,” said a voice from beyond the door.
“Thank you,” Glenn replied. He was seeing his mentor for the first time in a long while. With a mixture of nervousness and excitement, he opened the heavy wooden door.
The first thing he saw was tentacles.
“Oh my, it’s been so long, Glenn…!”
The tentacles stuck themselves to Glenn’s face. They were unmistakably the arms of an octopus, but these sprouted from the scylla’s lower body, and as such it was more accurate to call the long, sucker-equipped tentacles legs rather than arms.
Whether they were referred to as arms or legs, the long tentacles tightly stuck themselves to Glenn’s arms and face. The suckers began sticking themselves all over him, starting with his shoulders, then feeling his neck and face. Despite his best efforts to get used to the sensation of the suckers squeezing up against his skin, he had never quite managed to do so.
He thought she must have just been in the water, as her tentacles were slightly damp. The suction power of the suckers was extraordinary—enough to leave red marks on his skin even when Cthulhy made sure to restrain herself. Although he could say the affectionate physicality was nostalgic, Glenn still felt it was a little much.
“Dr. Cthulhy…!” Sapphee shouted. “You’re such a terrible teacher… Knock it off and stop coiling yourself around Dr. Glenn this instant!”
“Oh, Saphentite, you’re here too? You can just leave now. I’ve got something to say to my brilliant pupil here,” Cthulhy replied.
“Absolutely not!” said Sapphee. With a look of anger, she tried to rip off the tentacles that had stuck themselves to Glenn. However, Glenn himself knew very well how frivolous it was to try. The tentacles that grew out of the scyllas’ lower bodies were a mass of pure muscle, and very powerful. Once the suckers were stuck to something, they didn’t remove themselves very easily. It was something he had come to understand very well during his time as Cthulhy’s pupil, when she would stroke him with her tentacles without mercy.
“Glenn,” said Cthulhy.
“Yes?” Glenn replied.
“You’ve gotten kind of old,” Cthulhy declared in a somewhat appalled tone of voice, as her tentacles separated themselves from Glenn with a pop. Still only seventeen, Glenn would never have expected to be told he had grown old. But then again, that was the kind of person his mentor was.
Cthulhy Squele, the authority on monster medicine. She was without rivals at the Academy, but one could say that she had a little problem—or rather, a big problem—with her personality, her attitude, and her behavior.
“It’s been some time, my cute and darling little pupils,” said Cthulhy.
“It’s been…quite a long time, Doctor,” Glenn replied.
Cthulhy was still a very beautiful woman. Molting species of monsters never showed any aging in their skin in the first place. Perched on her intelligent-looking visage was a high quality pair of glasses. Paired with her white coat, she had the appearance of a genuinely brilliant woman doctor. The truth was that she was indeed quite a clever woman.
Then there were the eight tentacles that poked out from under her short skirt. Her tentacles had a striking resemblance to those of an octopus and wriggled at will to help Cthulhy’s movement, working both as arms and legs. Those that had just released Glenn slapped and stuck to the floor as if to make sure it would support her, carrying Cthulhy’s body along.
The tentacles were the scyllas’ most distinctive characteristic. The scylla were a combination of a human-like vertebrate with the distinctive characteristics of the invertebrate octopus, something rarely seen even among the many species of monsters. There were many mysteries surrounding how their bodies were constructed and no complete explanation for how they came to be. Because of this, they were often the subject of ridicule and said to be descendants of a malevolent god.
While Glenn wouldn’t say that she was the descendant of a malevolent god, Cthulhy herself did have a malicious side to her.
“Yes, yes, allow me to give you a proper greeting as well,” said Sapphee. “It has truly been quite some time, Dr. Cthulhy. It appears you have your sights on Glenn just like always… You’re a middle-aged woman and you still haven’t fixed your bad habit of trying to seduce young boys? Don’t you think it’s about time you get that checked out? That cradle-robbing sickness of yours, I mean.”
“Oh, be quiet. Don’t go nitpicking at other people’s propensities. I can see that you still haven’t fixed that crafty, overly-jealous personality of yours either, have you?” Cthulhy replied.
“If someone didn’t make passes at him, I wouldn’t have to be so jealous.”
“Oh my, please do forgive me. I just want to cherish my cute little pupils, you see.”
“I’m pretty sure that I’m one of your cute little pupils too, you know.”
The two of them were smiling, but their relationship was the absolute worst. Glenn believed they had had a normal student-teacher relationship when they were at the Academy, but once Glenn arrived at the school, things grew oddly complicated between them. Glenn was an old friend of Sapphee’s, and Cthulhy had had her eyes set on the young fourteen-year-old, so he imagined it would have been more unusual if they had gotten along.
Despite all of this, Cthulhy had effectively taught them medicine, and Sapphee had inherited Cthulhy’s knowledge of pharmacology. They may have had a complicated relationship, but there was no question that Sapphee respected Cthulhy as a doctor.
One would have never known it from the attit
ude she took toward Cthulhy, however. Even now, Sapphee’s snake tail and Cthulhy’s octopus legs seemed on the verge of coming to blows with one another. They’d always gotten into quarrels with each other during their time at the academy.
“Even so, you were so cute back then, Glenn, and now you’re all grown up, aren’t you?” Cthulhy remarked.
“It’s been three years since I first entered the Academy, after all,” replied Glenn. Although still young, he was an adult. For someone of Cthulhy’s disposition, this was something to lament, but Glenn realized that Cthulhy was just the type of woman to mourn his maturation at their long-awaited reunion.
“Well, I’ll still welcome you in, at least. How is the clinic?” Cthulhy asked.
“Not so bad, we’re getting by somehow… The two of us,” replied Glenn.
“I’m going to remind you that I didn’t give you that clinic just for you two to enjoy some lover’s tryst, you know. If the two of you neglect your duty to treat your monster patients and carry on with one another, then I’ll ask you to leave,” said Cthulhy.
“As if we even had the time for that…” said Glenn. Just that winter they’d been frantic in trying to deal with the cold epidemic. Though Sapphee and Glenn had been able to get through the busy season, to be perfectly honest, they hadn’t had the time to get involved in anything that wasn’t related to their primary jobs.
Perhaps Glenn had wanted Cthulhy’s praise at their long-awaited reunion—to hear her say that they had done well or that they had really worked hard. But his strict mentor only cast a sharp, penetrating glare from behind the lenses of her glasses.
Even now, it made Glenn feel like he was back in class and taking one of her pop quizzes.
“Dr. Cthulhy, as for why we’re here…” Sapphee said, moving the conversation forward.
“I know. You’re here about Skadi, right? I wasn’t able to attend the ceremony, but it was lucky that the two of you happened to be there. She was carried here immediately,” said Cthulhy.
“You couldn’t make it? I’m sure you just thought it was a pain to go,” Sapphee responded.
“Well, after all, the ceremony’s got nothing to do with me, does it?” sighed the honest Cthulhy. Her tentacles squirmed, making a sort of shoulder-shrugging motion.
“Miss Skadi… What kind of illness is it?” Glenn asked.
“A very serious one,” replied Cthulhy.
“Can you give me any more detailed information?”
“I’m sorry, Glenn. As Skadi’s primary physician, it’s not something I can talk about lightly. However, it is an extremely rare case, and there isn’t anything else like it. Yes, rather than serious, perhaps I should say it’s…strange,” said Cthulhy.
She was the leading, most prominent authority when it came to monster medicine. Originally, she’d researched the evolution of monsters, to try and clear the stigma associated with her species—that the scylla were the descendents of a malevolent god. Through that process, she ended up conducting research on each species’ stages of evolution and how their bodies were constructed. The scylla were a species that were covetous of knowledge to begin with, enough to be known as the “sages of the deep ocean.”
Now that Glenn thought about it, she had researched dragons as well. Glenn thought that dragons might possess the most primitive bodies of all monsterkind. In any event, although there were many things about the origins of monsterkind that weren’t clear, Cthulhy’s duty was that of a researcher—a scholar.
She had become a doctor because she gained extraordinary knowledge of medicine and biology through her research, but despite medicine not being her actual specialty, that she had been able to become the director of the hospital proved just how capable of a woman she was.
And yet, this disease was rare enough to make a woman like her say she’d never seen anything like it.
“I heard Skadi collapsed in the middle of the ceremony. Is that right?” Cthulhy asked.
“Y-yes,” replied Glenn.
“Her disease is already eating into her entire body. The biggest danger is her heart. This time, she just fainted from low blood pressure, but…there’s a high possibility that next time, the drop in blood pressure could induce heart failure. No, if anything I’d say it’s a miracle she hadn’t collapsed in front of anyone before this.”
“Heart failure?! So it is some disease of the heart, then?” Glenn asked.
“That’s right,” Cthulhy replied. “She’s had it for years. Dragons are troublesome creatures. Even if they come down with illnesses that would kill a normal species, their bodies are so strong that the disease can’t quite kill them. Conversely, that only serves to make the time they spend suffering even longer.”
Up until just recently, Skadi had been quite active in her work as the council’s representative. Glenn wondered how it was possible for her to do everything she had done while her heart had such a disease. Even if she was a dragon, she shouldn’t have been able to be so reckless—but no, Glenn thought, it was precisely because she was a dragon that it was possible.
Be that as it may, Glenn was sure it had been tough for her. Just as Cthulhy had said, she must have been in considerable pain.
“Ah, Miss Cthulhy?”
“What is it, Saphentite?” Cthulhy replied.
“Could it be that the reason Miss Skadi is covering her face…is because she doesn’t want those around her to become aware of her illness?”
Cthulhy gave no answer. Her silence only confirmed that Sapphee was right on the mark. Cthulhy scowled and began chewing on the end of a tentacle. It was something she would do when she was irritated. Just like humans chewed their nails, scylla chewed on their arms.
“It’s nothing that I can talk about.” There was a tone of refusal in Cthulhy’s words. “It’s not an illness that is easily cured. Furthermore, a rare dragon disease is beyond even my ability to treat. For the time being, she’ll manage, as long as she drinks plenty of nutrients and gets a good amount of rest. She should be waking up soon. But in order to cure her completely, I need to strike at the source.”
“Are you saying…you don’t know what the cause of her disease is?” Glenn asked.
“Not at all—the cause is clear to see. After all, that’s—” Cthulhy started and covered her mouth with a tentacle. A clear signal she was about to carelessly let a secret slip out. She heaved a big sigh and straightened her glasses. “Whoops—that was close. My cute students have gotten me saying too much.”
“Dr. Cthulhy, we want to know more about Skadi’s condition… We came because we thought we might be of some help.”
“Just forget about it and return to your clinic. Listen, the real problem isn’t the disease. That’s why there just isn’t anything I can do about it. As long as that stubborn Skadi doesn’t change her thoughts on the matter, there isn’t any sort of treatment you or I could give her,” Cthulhy said, her tentacles smacking and sticking themselves to the floor as they carried her body further into the room to her director’s desk. Piled on the desk was a mountain of documents. Becoming the director of a major hospital meant her job had become enormous and encompassed many different things. There was an octopus pot installed in the corner of the room. Cthulhy didn’t even have time to go home and was sleeping here in her office.
Glenn wasn’t the only one who was busy. He should have known her absence at the ceremony wasn’t simply because of laziness.
“Listen, this much I’ll tell you. So after I say this, I want you to leave.” There was an affectionate tone to Cthulhy’s voice. “The biggest problem is that Skadi has absolutely no intention of trying to treat her illness,” she declared as she locked eyes with Glenn. While she may have appeared to be a strict, very hands-off mentor, in her heart Cthulhy thought very tenderly of her pupils. She couldn’t neglect her students and was a very caring teacher.
Glenn looked Sapphee in the eyes. She silently shook her head. There wasn’t anything the two of them could do. Skadi had no intentions of
getting better—Glenn wanted to ask what Cthulhy had meant by that, but it didn’t look like she intended to talk about the subject anymore. He concluded that it was meaningless to try and press the issue.
“Thank you for your time, Dr. Cthulhy. I’m very glad I was able to see you,” said Glenn.
“Work hard at the clinic, you two,” Cthulhy replied, waving a tentacle at them while continuing to sign documents.
Sapphee immediately left the office, as if she had finished all of her business there. Glenn followed right after her but couldn’t clear his mind of gloomy thoughts about the rare disorder of Skadi Dragenfelt, and the meaning behind Cthulhy’s telling them that Skadi herself had no intention of trying to get better.
As they left the Central Hospital behind them, Glenn grabbed the nurse they had passed by earlier and asked if they could visit Skadi, but sure enough, visitors weren’t allowed to see her.
“Even Dr. Cthulhy is grasping at straws, it seems.” Sapphee’s quiet words as they left the hospital were telling. “With all those tentacles of hers, you’d think she’d be able to grasp at a lot more of them, too.”
“That’s not the point,” Glenn retorted. Sapphee’s sarcastic reply was very like her, but he knew it didn’t mean she was okay with this situation. To be a doctor, and yet unable to plunge into treating a patient, was bound to be a painful, bitter pill to swallow. When Glenn thought about being in Cthulhy’s shoes, his heart ached.
Suppressing his desire to see more of his mentor, Glenn continued down the road to return to the clinic. Sapphee was just as reticent as she walked beside him.
Glenn unconsciously bit his lip as he thought about how, despite being a doctor, he was powerless to help. His frustrations hung over him, heavy as lead.
***
A few days had passed since the ceremony. Glenn’s days were filled with work at the clinic as usual, but even without going outside, he knew about the uproar in the city. Skadi’s collapse at the inauguration was in the city paper that Illy delivered to him. They wrote that although her condition looked serious, no one had a grasp on the actual situation.
Monster Girl Doctor Vol. 3 Page 4