“M-Memé, you’re too close,” Glenn said, cutting her off.
“Ah!”
Glenn was happy to have things explained to him, but somewhere along the line Memé’s face had gotten right in point-blank range of his. Memé stepped back in a panic and cast her eyes to the ground. The way she leaned in as soon as she started talking about her work was very much the nature of a craftswoman.
Glenn had to agree that she did have a point—this was way more efficient than forging them one at a time.
As far as strength was concerned, he expected that as long as Memé was responsible for the needles, they would be fine. After all, even he hadn’t gotten the idea to use wire for the surgery—that was how Memé’s creative power had manifested itself.
Giving a meaningful cackle, Memé took out several of the needles. Glenn figured they were prototypes. Memé handed the wire to him and Arahnia. He thought to test it by trying to bend the needle, but it was harder than he expected. With his slender arms, the needle wouldn’t bend even when he tried putting more power into it.
“They’re surprisingly…durable,” he concluded.
“R-right?”
Glenn thought that since Memé had referred to it as a wire, it would easily bend, but that didn’t appear to be the case. He could imagine it bending if he used all of his strength, but that showed just how sturdy the needle was. It appeared that Memé had perfectly followed the conditions laid out in the order form after all.
“Hmm. Well, this seems fine to me, does it not?” Arahnia said, staring fixedly at the needles. All of a sudden there was a thread attached to the back of the needle. Even without an eye to pass through, the silk of the arachne was adhesive and stuck to the needle. “Having no eye not only seems to simplify manufacturing, but this could pass through smaller spaces. And my silk fastens on just fine. Dr. Glenn, with this, could it be possible to skip piercing through the dragonscale and slip it between them instead?”
“It’s a possibility. For how durable lizardfolk scales are, they do have gaps in between them. If dragonscales are similar, then…” Glenn pondered. Scales appeared to uniformly cover the entire body, but there were a surprising number of gaps. Lamia and lizardfolk had spaces in between their scales, so it was possible that dragonscales might be the same.
“We’ve got some hope in our sights now, don’t we?” Arahnia said. “How truly spectacular little miss Memé is. It looks like we have a future woman workshop boss in our midst.”
“P-please don’t compliment me—I know you just have ulterior motives. You’re planning on demanding something from me later, aren’t you?!” Memé said, looking down at the ground and growing more and more embarrassed. “I-I still need to make the finishing touches, but with this, your surgical needles are finished. All that’s left is for you to inspect them, Dr. Glenn.”
“Okay. We’ll need Dr. Cthulhy to look over them, too, but…I think this is good, Memé,” Glenn replied.
Memé once again mumbled something in a voice too quiet for Glenn to hear properly, but for now her first assignment had been finished. She had done it all without incident—well, Glenn couldn’t exactly say that, but whatever the case may be, she had completed the job.
“You’re just adorable, Memé. Truly precious,” said Arahnia.
“Yes…but I don’t want you fainting any more, okay?” Glenn remarked.
“Why, Dr. Glenn is here for her, are you not?” Arahnia replied.
“I can’t be everywhere at once… It’s best you avoid collapsing again.”
Glenn stared up at the machine, groaning as it rotated. Memé had collapsed from looking at this machine. In order to observe the wire-making process, she had sat unmoving in this prototyping room, watching the hexagonal machine spin around. Judging from the large amount of gastric juices in Memé’s vomit, she had not eaten anything at all while she had been monitoring it.
Memé’s eye, spinning around in circles—Glenn felt like he could perfectly imagine it all.
“U-um, w-well, Dr. Glenn…” Memé began.
“What is it?”
“Th-th-thank you…for entrusting th-this job to me…” For Memé, these words were a rare occurrence—truly rare words that lacked any sense of self-deprecation or servility. She always hid her true feelings by putting herself down. Seeing her true self behind her timidity wasn’t difficult, but it was very rare to hear it straight from Memé’s mouth.
“You even helped me when I collapsed… Um , I’ll do my best not to collapse again,” she continued.
“That’s right, it’s important that you rest properly, okay?”
“I, um, understand, and, well, one other thing.” Memé hesitated, but still tried to say something to Glenn. “B-but don’t get the wrong idea! Don’t think that I’m a good worker just because of this! I’m still just a totally useless newbie, got it? Don’t even think about trying to ask me to do any more work!”
Glenn wondered if it was just his imagination that Memé sounded like she actually wanted him to give her work again.
“I’ll have to consult with the boss about that. But I really think it’s incredible that you were able to pull this off so well at your age.”
“Hehehehehe,” giggled Memé.
“Also, you need to lift your head up properly and look in front of you. Tripping and bumping into things is bad enough, but it would be really serious if you got hit by a cart or something like that, you know.”
Memé gave a startled gulp.
She had even fainted this time, so Glenn assumed that she had learned the risks her body faced. He thought that saying she might get hit by a cart was a little too frightening a threat to make, but nevertheless, there were many centaurs pulling carts and carriages in Lindworm. Such an accident wasn’t an impossibility.
“Th-that’s a little too much…” Memé protested.
“Still, it’s dangerous,” Glenn insisted.
“Hnnng, d-do I really have to?”
“There are already a lot of accidents involving cyclops to begin with.”
With one eye, cyclops had no sense of distance. While most had no trouble walking through a town they were unfamiliar with, going around with their head down like Memé only increased the risk of injury.
Finally giving up, Memé brushed up her bangs and raised her head. Her single eye aimed straight at Glenn’s face.
“There we go—see? Your face looks great,” Glenn replied.
“Ah, um, eep!” Memé repeatedly opened her mouth to start talking, then immediately closed it. It appeared that she really was unused to looking directly at a person’s face. Her cheeks turned red.
“You’re a cyclops,” Glenn said, “so it isn’t strange for you to have only one eye, okay?”
“But I… My eyebrow.”
“Your eyebrow?”
“I-it’s weird right?”
Now that Memé mentioned it, Glenn noticed that her eyebrow leaned to the left a little.
Just like their eye, cyclops had only one eyebrow. However, there was individual variance in where the eyebrow sat on their face. Memé’s eyebrow leaned noticeably to the left. But the lean itself didn’t indicate any issues with her overall health.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s just some individuality. Not just your eyebrow, but your pupils and iris are totally healthy. You should have more confidence in yourself.”
Being sick had a completely different meaning to it from being “weird,” but Glenn feigned ignorance of this variety in meaning.
With her face still raised, Memé gave a blushing smile. Whether it was because of the shape of their massive iris, or because of the light reflected in their eye, Glenn didn’t know, but when a cyclops smiled it seemed like their eye was sparkling. It wasn’t a just a figurative feeling—their eye did indeed hold a mysterious, beautiful tint to them.
Then—
Memé’s face quickly grew even redder, and she let her bangs fall back in front of her face.
“Y-y-you pe
rvert doctor! M-making eyes at me, th-this is sexual harassment!” Memé cried.
“H-huh?”
“I’ll, I’ll sue you! Got it?!” Memé ran away, her face beet red.
While he knew it had come from embarrassment, Glenn could only stand dumbstruck by the brutal parting words that Memé had left as she escaped.
“…I guess my treatment was a little too drastic.”
“I do wonder,” Arahnia said. “Even if it was too much, it goes without saying that that girl’s submissive attitude is quite the serious condition.”
Glenn wondered how long it would be before Memé made her name known as a craftswoman. At the very least, it would be difficult until she fixed her personality, so he imagined it was still a while off for her. He imagined the next time they met she’d have some kind of self-deprecating comment for him. Either that or she really would accuse him of sexual harassment.
But there was just one thing Glenn thought about it all.
Her eye really was beautiful. It resembled a shiny decorative ornament—like the kind of work that Memé Redon would someday make with her skilled and dexterous fingers.
Glenn wished with all his heart for that day to come.
CASE 03:
The Arachne with Bad Habits
This is my medical record. A re cord that I, Saphentite, will never show anybody. For example, even if my beloved Dr. Glenn were to see this, then, well…
That would be quite a problem.
At any rate, this is somewhat like my personal diary. The clinic operations are all left in public record. Why then, you ask, am I leaving these personal records separately? That would be because, while I don’t want them to be seen by Dr. Glenn, I have a variety of things that I want to write down.
It’s as simple as that.
I do know that Glenn isn’t the type of person to take a peek at another person’s secrets, but…
Just in case, what would I do if he saw this? Poison him? Even I think that is a bit excessive, so if he does peek at my diary, I’ll have to settle for seducing him. Seduction is a kind of poisoning of the mind, after all. Having inherited all the assassination techniques of my family, the Neikes, I am ever prepared to seduce the person closest to my heart, if necessary.
Of course, even I feel embarrassed at the thought of seducing him, so it will be a last resort at best.
***
Dr. Glenn has become remarkably busy as of late.
It’s only to be expected.
This spring, the Litbeit Clinic began making preparations for Miss Skadi’s big surgery. Thanks to the efforts of Miss Memé from the Kuklo Workshop, we were able to meet our delivery deadline for the large quantity of surgical tools we ordered. But this also means there are fewer reasons to put off Miss Skadi’s surgery. The more our preparations continue forward, the more real the operation becomes. There is no backing out now.
Dr. Glenn’s work includes Arahnia’s special training and meeting with Dr. Cthulhy. On top of all that, he needs to convince Miss Skadi, but it doesn’t seem like things are going very well on that front. Because of how thin he’s stretched himself, I am left more and more in charge of the essential clinic business.
Taking care of the clinic while he’s gone is, in a word, lonely.
I don’t mean to complain about my work, but we’re supposed to manage this clinic together, yet I don’t spend any time with him.
Though it’s not like I’ve even had time to feel lonely. I have to soothe and humor Arahnia—who whines whenever I say anything to her—and prepare the reagents for the anesthetic using the Aluloona herbs I ordered, all while examining every patient that visits the clinic every day. Even with the fairies, I don’t have enough hands to do everything. I find myself wondering—if I were multi-legged like Arahnia, would I be able to work a little more?
No—it won’t change anything to ask for the impossible. All I can do is somehow endure this with the fairies’ help. These thoughts had been on my mind when—
“Are you tired?”
One of the fairies touched my finger, looking as if they were worried about me.
The fairies are about big enough to fit in the palm of my hand. With their big heads, they look somewhat childlike, and have androgynous features. It’s difficult to distinguish whether they are men or women, and I can’t quite tell them apart individually. Similar to social insects like ants or bees, they don’t have much individual personality, and they are known as a race of monster that prosper by living together in colonies.
“It’s okay,” I replied to the fairy at the time. I squished their head as I spoke, and it seemed like that tickled them.
The helper fairies and I don’t have any sort of mutual understanding. We are simply employer and employee, connected by one singular condition—a plate of milk for their payment. Yet this one fairy actually showed personal concern for me.
I still had a number of different anesthetics that I wanted to test out, so I couldn’t afford to relax and take it easy. As a pharmacologist, it is my job to puzzle over the medicine I make.
But more than my medicine, what had me troubled and puzzled were the habits of my close friend Arahnia. It was truly such a waste of my brain power.
Why was I troubled? Because her habits were one more thing that I couldn’t consult with Dr. Glenn about. I didn’t want to hide things from him, but women do have their own secrets.
“Huuh?”
This happened around the time the fairies were comforting me during my busiest days. Dr. Glenn spoke up, distressed, as he peered at the clinic’s shelves.
“Hey, Sapphee, do you know what happened to the antiseptic solution I left here?” he asked me.
“No idea—could the fairies have put it away for you?” I replied.
When Dr. Glenn left medicine bottles lying around, the fairies were often sensible enough to clean up and put them away for him. This was the least of the work that the hardworking helper fairies did in the clinic.
“No, I was sure that I put it properly away in here…” he continued.
Dr. Glenn thought long and hard about where it could be. I surveyed the small clinic. Now then, wherever could it have gone?
If it was in the clinic, then I knew I’d get my hand—or rather, my tail—on it. Casting my gaze around, I immediately found the medical bottle in question. It was on the shelf right behind where Dr. Glenn was standing.
“Here it is, Doctor,” I said.
“Huh? It was there ? Whoops—my mistake—but I really didn’t remember leaving it there at all…” he said.
“Please be a little more attentive, Doctor.”
I coiled my tail around the medicine bottle and carried it to Dr. Glenn. Sometimes I feel like my long tail is quite a nuisance, but I always end up coming to the conclusion it is convenient compared to other two-legged or four-legged species.
“Didn’t you mention recently that you lost your stethoscope, too?” I asked.
“P-probably… In the end I found it in another spot when I went looking for it,” Dr. Glenn replied.
“You should at least understand where you place your tools. This is your clinic, after all, Doctor.”
At my words, Dr. Glenn scratched his head with a distressed look upon his face.
He is totally unreliable.
Well, that’s only natural—even I am apt to forget the fact that Dr. Glenn is still seventeen years old. The other day he was so happy at Miss Memé’s remarkable personal growth, like he was actually her guardian and not her doctor, but from my perspective both Dr. Glenn and Miss Memé looked as though they were the same age.
Since he is managing his own clinic at such a young age, it would be stranger, if anything, if he were reliable. He is still Cthulhy’s junior pupil, and it doesn’t seem like these chances to scold him for his mistakes will be going away any time soon.
Although this makes me a little happy, in its own way.
“Sapphee, you haven’t asked the fairies to do anything weird,
have you?” Dr. Glenn asked me.
“…Huh? What do you mean?”
“It’s just, well, I was just thinking maybe my tools are going missing because the fairies are putting stuff away in the wrong places…or something like that.”
“You’re overthinking things. Neither myself nor the fairies have done anything of the sort.”
Well, well, well. I had thought he was unreliable, but it appeared that unbeknownst to me, Dr. Glenn had matured somewhat. They say that men can mature greatly when you stop watching over them for a while, but it seemed he had improved his abilities of perception somewhere along the way. “More importantly Dr. Glenn, I believe it’s time for you to head out, isn’t it?” I reminded him.
“Wait—already?” he replied.
“You’re heading all the way to the Council Hall, right?”
Dr. Glenn started preparing to go out in a panic. Recently, it seemed like his head was always filled with thoughts about his discussion with Miss Skadi.
I hadn’t seen it directly, but a second heart had grown on Skadi’s chest. Miss Cthulhy, and Dr. Glenn and I all barely had time to sleep as we prepared for the surgery to excise the tumor. The tools had been all gathered, and our outside assistant Arahnia’s surgical skills were getting better and better by the day, without any problems whatsoever. All that was left was, well, convincing Miss Skadi herself.
However.
This seemed to be what was puzzling Dr. Glenn the most. I don’t know exactly what conversations the two of them have been sharing, but it seems like she isn’t being very receptive to his persuasion.
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