Monster Girl Doctor Vol. 3

by Yoshino Origuchi

  The symptoms were dizziness and vomiting. Yet, the color in Memé’s face now that she was sitting up in bed didn’t appear to be all that worrisome. Glenn thought there might be a possibility she was just overworked, but—

  “Eeeeeeeeek!”

  —or at least, he was thinking that up until Memé let out a scream.

  “M-my clothes… They’re…c-c-cut up…” she stammered.

  “Sorry—it was an emergency, so I had to cut them. I’ll be sure to compensate you for it,” Glenn replied.

  “Th-that’s not what I mean!” Memé said, desperately hiding her chest.

  Memé’s shirt was a simple garment that was tied around her neck and only really concealed the front of her. She had nothing on underneath, so just cutting the shirt at her chest left her breasts exposed. She had been immediately transferred to the clinic, so Glenn thought it only natural that she would still be naked.

  “Arrrrrrrrrrrgh! I can’t take it anymore!” Memé stuck her head under the covers as she screamed. She had always been quick to start crying, but now she seemed truly upset. “Everything’s been seen! Everything, everything, everything!”

  “…Memé, just calm down a little, okay? I need you to come out,” Glenn said with a sigh.

  “Bleeeeerrrrg!”

  As soon as he spoke, Glenn handed the washbowl to the vomiting Memé, exasperated.

  “It’s going to be all right, okay?”

  “It’s not okay at all! No way!”

  “Well, can you at least take your head out from under there for me?”

  Memé squirmed about under the covers for a moment before finally poking her teary-eyed face out.

  “I want to get a good look at you. Can you bear with it for a bit?”

  “O-okay…”

  “Thank you. Now first, can you show me your eye?”

  “Unghhh…” Memé said, giving a sniffing reply.

  Glenn peered into Memé’s pupil.

  In this world, there were researchers who would observe the movements of the heavens and track the paths of the stars in order to discover the truths of the world. Glenn couldn’t even imagine such ideas, but it was said that by looking at the far-off stars, one could understand the nature of the world that he lived on.

  There was a massive state-of-the-art telescope that these astronomers used for just such a purpose. One time,when Glenn was visiting the Kuklo Workshop, he had seen one of the lenses for that telescope. It had been obvious that the skills of the Kuklo Workshop were indispensable for observing the stars in the far-off skies.

  Looking at Memé’s eye, Glenn thought of that telescope lens.

  “Nhhhg… Don’t, look at my eye. It’s embarrassing…”

  “It’s okay—relax your muscles.”

  “I c-c-can’t do it… D-don’t look at my face,” Memé said, covering her eye and shaking her head.

  “Just relax. Take some deep breaths.”

  “Haaa, fwaaah.”

  Glenn worried that if she got too flustered she might vomit again and tried to speak to Memé as gently as possible. The girl was the very manifestation of an inferiority complex, and if he didn’t deal with it properly, he wouldn’t be able to examine her as he would like.

  When he examined a monster’s body as a doctor, there were times when Glenn felt that the natural beauty of a monster body was much greater than any work of art: a pure, untouched piece of glasswork.

  For example, the beautiful construction that allowed centaurs to specialize in running. The elegance produced from a mermaid’s curves, befitting their swimming and diving. The patterns and feel of a lamia’s scales, sometimes even sensual in their appearance.

  “Nhggg…” Memé groaned.

  “Bear with me for just a moment,” Glenn replied.

  “Hng… You’re too close!”

  The eye of the cyclops was a biological peculiarity that possessed this beauty of form and function. Rather than peeking at far-off stars through a telescope, Glenn felt that peering into the deep, abyssal hue of their eyes might actually bring him closer to the cosmos.

  There weren’t any abnormalities in Memé’s eye. Nevertheless, Glenn thought it had something to do with her collapse.

  “U-um…? D-Doctor…?” asked Memé

  “Oh, forgive me. I sort of spaced out on accident,” responded Glenn.

  Glenn knew he couldn’t tell Memé that he was fascinated by her eye. If he said that to her, the embarrassment of her self-deprecating spirit might cause another collapse.

  “It looks like your pupil’s movements are a little slow. Is your head a little cloudy?” Glenn asked.

  “Hng… I-I’ve felt dizzy since trying to get up…” Memé replied.

  “Look at this for me,” Glenn said, taking his pointer finger and holding it up in front of Memé. “Can you follow my finger with your eye for me when I move it?”

  Glenn then moved his finger left to right. Memé’s eye began following Glenn’s finger, but—

  “…Ugh-huuurrrrk,” Memé once again clasped her hand over her mouth.

  “There you go, there you go.”

  It seemed her nausea still hadn’t subsided. When she hunched forward, her cleavage—extremely developed for a girl her age—was exposed by the sheets and stared Glenn directly in the face. He tried as much as possible not to look and rubbed Memé’s back.

  “Dr. Glenn…”

  “Please don’t look at me like that. You can go back after you get some rest.”

  Tears had welled up in Memé’s eye from the nausea. The eye of a cyclops was built to easily gather tears, as they protected it from damage. Thus, one of their unique traits was a propensity to quickly become teary-eyed.

  “Uh, u-um…”

  “Yes, is something wrong?”

  “Can I, um…you know…clothes…”

  “Oh, yes, right. Sapphee, is there anything that Memé could wear?” Glenn said, calling out beyond the curtain. No matter what happened, he couldn’t let Sapphee know that his gaze had been on the breasts of a tender young girl.

  Then—

  A single layer of cloth came flying in, as if it had been thrown over the top of the curtain. It was a shirt with a plain design. They did have a change of clothes prepared in the clinic just in case, but Glenn couldn’t recall this particular shirt.

  “Why, please, use that.” The voice belonged to Arahnia. “I improvised. Now the size might be a little off, but please do forgive me.”

  On the other side of the curtain, Glenn caught flashes of her segmented spider legs. He couldn’t believe she had been able to complete a piece of clothing in such a short time. It was unexpectedly quick work. But he was thankful that she was such a caring woman.

  “Th-thank you… Miss Arahnia,” said Memé.

  “Please talk to me any time you want to order more of those gothic lolita clothes, okay?” Arahnia replied.

  “Th-that’s supposed to be a secret!”

  “Oh my—I shouldn’t have said anything.”

  It seemed to Glenn that Memé and Arahnia were somehow familiar with one another. Judging by Arahnia’s words, she seemed to have something to do with Memé’s casual clothes, but even ignoring that fact, they seemed to be close. That was very rare for Memé.

  If Glenn had to pinpoint what the two of them seemed to share in common, he’d have to say it was that both of them weren’t very sociable. Arahnia was amiable enough, but because of her personality problems, she didn’t appear to have many friends. Glenn wondered if that had anything to do with why the two had hit it off so well.

  “You too, Doctor!”

  “Y-yes!”

  Just as he was thinking unpleasant things about her, Arahnia’s piercing voice came flying over the bed curtain. “You need to show more consideration after cutting up a young girl’s clothes like that! Clothes are a woman’s best friend, so I’ll ask you to be more careful!”

  “F-forgive me,” Glenn replied.

  Arahnia spoke harshly when the
topic turned to clothing. Glenn unconsciously sat up straight at her words.

  Memé happily put on her clothes. Despite how embarrassed she had just been, she didn’t pay any attention to Glenn’s gaze as she put on her clothes—no, he thought, it was probably more that she was so embarrassed that all of her focus was on getting dressed. Thanks to this, Glenn was given a good look at her white back. Even from behind, he could identify her ample breasts in front. Flustered, Glenn quickly averted his eyes.

  The shirt Memé put on was plain, but constructed well enough that it was hard to imagine it was made in such a short time frame. He was sure Arahnia had used her own personal silk to make it. Glenn was speechless after being aided by Arahnia’s impossible-to-imitate craftsmanship.

  Though judging by the short length of the shirt, and the way Memé’s lower abdomen peeked out slightly, showing her well-toned abdominal muscles, there were defects that Arahnia couldn’t do anything about. Memé herself didn’t seem to mind it at all.

  “Shall I make some eye droplets, Doctor?” asked Sapphee, but Glenn simply shook his head.

  “No, I don’t think those will be necessary this time. Memé, does the smell of mint make you feel sick or anything?”

  “N-n-no…”

  “All right, then. Sapphee, could you bring over a mint potpourri? I think it will make things much easier if we can calm her down with herbal fragrances.”

  There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary with her eye in the first place. Wearing her shirt now, Memé had calmed down. Her face was still a little pale, but her symptoms weren’t life-threatening.

  “What is wrong with her, then?” asked Arahnia.

  “It’s simple. She just had a bout of nausea,” replied Glenn.

  “Nausea? Like a hangover?”

  Glenn had heard Arahnia loved to drink. Hearing the word nausea, it seemed she immediately associated it with being hungover.

  “I-I didn’t drink any alcohol or anything…” replied Memé

  “It isn’t from being drunk or hung over… It’s the same in principle to what we call ‘carriage sickness,’” Glenn explained.

  “A carriage…?”

  In Lindworm, carts were generally pulled by centaurs, but across the rest of the continent the main method of transportation was still horse-drawn carriages. Practice was required to ride horseback, but riding in a carriage didn’t require any special skills. As a result, those not used to riding in carriages often got sick.

  “B-but Dr. Glenn, I haven’t ridden in a carriage or anything either…” Memé protested.

  “Yes, I’m sure that’s true. But the principle is the same.”

  “P-principle…?”

  “Your semicircular canals. Inside your ears, you’ve got organs that sense motion and gyration. This is true both of humans and cyclops. Almost all monsters possess these organs.”

  In lamia, the semicircular canals had developed abnormally. As such, they could move freely through the tops of trees, and even be active upside down without any issue. Sapphee often hung from the ceiling, and it wasn’t particularly difficult for her to do so.

  Glenn tapped on his own ears. “Cyclops are actually weak here,” he said.

  “W-we’re bad at moving, is that what you’re saying? I guess it’s true that I’m not great at exercising…” Memé replied.

  “It’s a little different from that. The function of the semicircular canals is normal. It’s just that a cyclops’s vision is too good. They have a wide field of vision, and they have good eyesight. However, with only one eye, they are incapable of binocular vision, and if they fix their gaze on something, then nothing else can enter their vision.”

  With one eye, they were very skilled at intently fixing their gaze on something. But their wide field of vision wasn’t good at capturing a lot of things at once. It was hard to say that their kinetic vision was particularly excellent either.

  “For example, if a cyclops stares at a windmill, or is in a space similar to a carriage that simply moves up and down, because of their extremely good vision, their eyes and semicircular canals stop being able to work together properly. Just standing up will feel like the room is spinning around them, or conversely, they’ll feel like they’re standing still when moving…”

  “Oh…” Memé said, her eyes widening to tell Glenn that she had remembered something.

  “The cyclops are a race that can get carriage-sick even without riding in a horse carriage.”

  The link between the semicircular canals and one’s vision was extremely important, but cyclops had specialized vision. With their lack of binocular vision being their key weakness, it was easy for the connection between their eye and semicircular canals to break down.

  “Depending on the circumstances, there are some cyclops who start to feel like they’re having a hallucination. Their consciousness grows vague and hazy… It’s a phenomenon that happens due to how good their vision can be.”

  “Yeah…”Memé replied.

  “You seem to remember something.”

  If Glenn was dealing with a human, they wouldn’t collapse just from nausea. However, there were times, such as after nearly drowning, a human would lose function in their semicircular canals and lose the ability to tell up from down because of the water getting into their ears. For cyclops, even a simple case of nausea—when severe enough—was sufficient for them to lose their sense of equilibrium and collapse.

  “What in the world happened?” Glenn asked. “Unless you had been gazing at something massive rotating around for a long time… something like a water wheel or windmill… I wouldn’t think you’d become nauseous.”

  “Th-that’s, um, probably because I had been making the needles,” replied Memé.

  “I see, so that was what did it.” Glenn had been able to guess that much. What he was curious about was exactly how she had been making them and what connection that had to a cyclops experiencing carriage sickness.

  “Th-this will work out perfectly. I’d like Dr. Glenn to take a look at them anyway… And Miss Arahnia, too.”

  “…Show me? ” Arahnia said, cocking her head to the side. But Glenn also felt that since Arahnia would be using the needles in the operation, it would be a good idea for her to look them over.

  A mint fragrance floated in from the other side of the curtain.

  Knowledgeable when it came to medicine, Sapphee was also well versed in preparing medicinal herbs and plants. Glenn assumed the herbs she was currently using were those she had harvested from the Aluloona Plantation—a place Sapphee was on very good terms with. It was a pleasant fragrance, and mint was effective at calming the mind.

  “Well, I’m a useless cyclops anyway, and honestly I can’t do anything well, but…this time, this time , I really did try my best.”

  Memé’s face no longer looked pale or flushed. Glenn imagined it was because her symptoms had been relieved, thanks in part to the minty smell.

  It appeared there was a glimmer of hope in sight for Memé’s needle production. Reflected in her large eye was a confidence in her own work—the confidence of a craftswoman.

  ***

  Rumble, rumble . The colossal machine groaned as it spun around and around.

  It was so massive that it was difficult to figure out what the machine was, but it seemed to be some giant hexagonal contraption that spun horizontally. The power it possessed was the pride of the workshop and came from currents flowing in from the large water wheel. Glenn couldn’t even imagine how many centaurs worth of power the machine could demonstrate.

  Around and around it went.

  It was situated in the prototyping room where Memé had collapsed. Even looking at it, however, Glenn had no idea what was what.

  Having brought the now completely healthy Memé back to the Kuklo Workshop, Glenn was once again visiting himself, this time with Arahnia in toe.

  Memé constantly apologized to the cyclops they met as they passed. She bowed her head a great number of times in apology
to the boss as well. She was more regretful that she had caused trouble for the workshop than about having collapsed. Her loyalty was admirable, but her overzealous apologies had the opposite effect and made those she spoke to unsure of how to react to them. The boss looked like he had been forcing a smile as she bowed to him.

  But that was neither here nor there.

  “A spinning wheel…” Arahnia muttered as she looked at the machine.

  At her words, Glenn realized the horizontal rotation of the machine did appear similar to a spinning wheel used to wind thread. The wheel looked just a bit bigger than Memé. The fact that the craftsmen were able to operate such a machine reflected just how skilled the cyclops of Kuklo Workshop were.

  Yet, it wasn’t winding thread. With the power of the water mill, the machine thinly stretched and stretched the raw materials it used to make one thing—steel.

  It made threads of steel.

  “A-at first I tried to temper iron to make the needles…” Memé explained. She faced the ground and mumbled her words, so it took some effort to hear what she was saying. “B-but they were too brittle to use on a dragon’s body… I changed the material and tried all sorts of different things, but a sturdier needle would be as expensive as the materials I was using to strengthen it, and it would take a lot of time to manufacture, so I couldn’t mass-­produce them…”

  “That makes sense,” Glenn replied. Memé’s problem was balancing both the quality and the quantity.

  “That’s when I used this machine!” Memé proclaimed, proudly puffing out her chest. Her large, healthy bosom sprung up and down. Although she had gotten changed, she was wearing nothing below her undershirt. Despite how easily she got embarrassed, she was careless with these other details.

  “This machine…what exactly does it do?”

  “By rotating, it stretches out materials. This time I stretched out steel and made wire. That’s right—not a needle, but a wire!”

  “Ooh…” Glenn said unconsciously, in admiration. It was attacking the problem from a different angle.

  “By stretching out wire like this, cutting it short and using it in place of a needle, it can be mass produced, and it’s made with quality steel so it should hold up to practical use. As far as the strength of the materials, I’m sure they’ll only hold out ten or so uses when stitching up a dragon’s blood vessels, but by manufacturing them this way, I can make sure there’s enough made that there isn’t any problem with them being disposable! This way, I’m positive it’ll prove useful for the dragon operation, though I’m sure nothing someone like me would make is going to be used anyway, but I thought that if I could do at least this much then maybe Dr. Glenn would even use them for me, even if you were reluctant about it, so I—”