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CHAPTER 03
“Ka…yl.”
I was startled.
“Patient, how old are you?”
“Fif…teen.”
Kyle barely spoke and let out a weak cough.
“I’ll help you sit up. Drink slowly.”
I slid my arm behind Kyle’s back in a practiced way, lifted him, and brought the cup to his lips.
“Fifteen?” I thought.
His shoulder blades were sharp under my hand.
Kyle sipped slowly, but he was so thirsty that he emptied the cup at once.
“Now, you also need to take this.”
Kyle flinched when he saw the brown glass bottle.
“Does he have some bad memories about this?” I wondered.
I gave him a reassuring smile.
“This is medicine from the doctor. He said you should take it as soon as you wake up.”
I waited while Kyle hesitated. Soon he nodded.
After I helped him take the medicine and lie back down, Kyle let out a sigh.
“Where do you live?”
I kept asking questions so he would stay alert.
“Nowhere.”
“You’re… not a slave, right?”
In this world, in most countries, slaves weren’t considered people. They were treated as property.
At the orphanage, abused and abandoned children sometimes arrived, but even they were not slaves.
If Kyle was an escaped slave, there would be nothing I could do to help.
“Slave?”
Suddenly, Kyle’s voice grew stronger. His eyes blazed with anger.
“I am…” His voice was tight, as if swallowing down fury. “…not a slave.”
“That’s a relief.”
I flinched a little. If he’s not, then fine. Why get mad?
Slaves carried a brand on their right arm—a mark proving they weren’t human.
I only asked because his arm was wrapped in bandages.
“Do you have parents?”
If he had no home, I wondered if he also had no guardian.
“They’re both dead.”
As expected.
Losing his parents, wandering without a place to stay…
His black hair was greasy and stuck together. His face was marked with skin patches.
And though he was a boy, his body was so thin his bones showed.
The fact he had survived even after losing so much blood was remarkable.
Looking at his miserable state, I felt grateful again that I had opened my eyes in the temple orphanage.
If luck had been worse, I might have ended up like him.
I stood up.
“Where are you going?”
The boy looked uneasy.
“To get some water.”
“Where is this place?”
“This is Doctor Vincent’s clinic in Snidel.”
Out in the hallway, I sighed.
“What did they do to that kid?”
The wounds on his body would scar forever.
Even as a nurse, used to seeing injuries, it was horrible to see signs of child abuse.
I knocked on the examination room door.
“Vincent. The boy woke up.”
“Oh? Really?”
Vincent, who had just finished with a cold patient, handed over a prescription and stood up.
“Can he talk?”
“Yes. A little.”
Vincent smiled at the boy.
“What’s your name?”
“Kyle.”
As he wrote it down on the chart, Vincent asked,
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen.”
The boy glanced at me suspiciously.
“Where do you live?”
“I already answered that.”
Vincent gave me a playful flick on the forehead.
“Suella, you were pretending to be a doctor again, weren’t you?”
“I couldn’t help it.”
I stuck out my tongue a little, playfully.
It was true. I couldn’t hide my habits.
Especially since the medicine in this world was so far behind compared to the world I came from.
Sometimes, when Vincent was treating patients, I couldn’t resist giving advice.
Here, doctors had to study on an island called Narkim in the southern continent. Graduating from its school was as good as having a license. Vincent always teased me as a quack without one.
But he had an open mind. Sometimes he accepted the medical tips I shared, and once even sent a big box of sweets to the orphanage, saying I had helped save a patient.
We had a very good relationship.
In fact, one of my possible paths was to become his apprentice.
I was already a licensed nurse in my own world, and Vincent recognized my skills.
“I’m not licensed, but can’t you just call me an apprentice?” I asked.
“Not in front of patients.”
Vincent was serious. He didn’t want people doubting his skills. It stung a little.
“Suella.”
At that moment, Sabrina came into the room.
“Oh my. He’s already awake?”
Earlier, she had looked horrified at Kyle’s bloody state, but now she seemed relieved and walked closer to his bed.
“What will we do about the treatment costs?” Vincent asked.
Sabrina’s face fell.
“Kyle says he has nowhere to go.”
Both Vincent and Sabrina looked at me.
I widened my eyes and made the most pitiful face I could.
“He’s so unfortunate. He’s so thin, he weighs less than me, even though I’m a girl.”
“Hmm. What should we do?”
Normally, if an orphan from the temple came here, guardians covered the costs. But Kyle had no guardian and no home—he couldn’t pay anything.
“I’ll go to the orphanage and talk to the headmaster,” Sabrina said.
“If he becomes one of our children today, there won’t be a problem with his treatment, right?”
“Yes. That sounds good,” Vincent agreed.
I followed Sabrina out.
“Suella.”
I turned at the sound of a quiet voice.
“Your name is Suella?”
I nodded. At least his head wasn’t injured.
“Suella. Come quickly.”
“Yes.”
I hurried after Sabrina.
I never imagined that behind me, in the closed room, the boy kept whispering my name.
—
Ten days passed.
My pitiful “Puss in Boots” act had worked perfectly on these adults who had never seen the movie *Shrek*.
Vincent wanted his treatment fees covered, and Paul wanted to save a poor child. So they worked together.
Kyle officially became one of our orphanage children.
“He’s coming today?” Annie asked.
“Yes. Dad said so yesterday.”
Annie and I were working hard. Each of us held a small spade, digging up the cucumber patch that had been ruined by pests.
“I can’t wait to meet him,” Annie said.
She treated my story of saving Kyle like some kind of adventure. At night, she begged me to tell it again. I had already told it five times.
Ever since she heard Kyle would join us, she had been eager to meet him.
“Is he handsome?”
“He’s skinny.”
“What about his hair?”
“Black. But it was greasy. He’s probably washed now.”
“His voice?”
“When I met him, he was so weak, it sounded like an ant crawling.”
Annie’s cheeks turned pink.
“That’s cool.”
“…”
So, Annie was a gossip girl.
While we worked, a cart came along the road toward the temple.
“I bet Kyle’s in there,” I thought.
The orphanage rarely had visitors.
Noble guests heading to the Sanitas Temple usually came in fine carriages, easy to spot.
This cart was the shabby one our orphanage used.
It stopped by the cucumber field.
I brushed off my hands and stood up.
A boy stepped down and waved at me.
“Suella!”
Hearing my name called so warmly made me smile.
“Hello, Kyle!”
I waved back.
Kyle asked Paul something, then climbed over the fence and came toward us.
“What are you doing?”
“We’re clearing cucumbers,” I explained.
“Why?”
“Plants get sick too. If it spreads to other crops, it’s bad. So we have to clear it.”
Kyle looked closely at the dried cucumbers with shriveled fruit still hanging.
“I’ll help.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said quickly.
Kyle had just been discharged from the clinic. It was awkward to refuse, but he shouldn’t overdo it.
“I’ve been lying down too long. I want to help.”
“Hi, I’m Annie!” Annie beamed and handed him a spade.
“It’ll be faster if three of us do it. Let’s work together.”
“Annie, Kyle’s still a patient,” I warned.
“I’m not a patient anymore,” Kyle said firmly, stepping into the row.
“Do I just dig up the soil?”
“Yes. We’ll show you.”
Annie and I stuck our spades under a dead cucumber plant.
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
After three digs around it, the fourth lifted the whole plant so we could bury it back down. A proper cucumber funeral.
“See? Can you do it?” I asked.
“Yes.”
Kyle nodded.
We watched him try.
But…
No matter how he jabbed the spade into the dirt, the soil barely moved.
“Huh?”
Kyle looked confused.
Our eyes met.
“There’s something wrong with this spade,” he said.
“They’re all the same.”
I handed him the spade I’d been using.
But even when Kyle put his strength into it, the blade sank only halfway.
Annie came closer.
“That’s strange. Maybe the soil’s just different here? Let me try.”
Thunk, thunk, thunk.
With practiced ease, Annie flipped the plant out and buried it neatly.
Silence hung over the field.
“Well, you just came from the clinic. You don’t have to help,” I said.
Kyle’s face fell.
“You can help later, when you’re fully recovered.”
“Alright,” Kyle murmured. He brushed the dirt from his hands and stood up.
As I watched him walk back toward the cart, I sighed.
“He must still be really weak,” Annie said.
I nodded.
“After lying down for ten days, you lose a lot of strength.”
Even after just a few days in bed, your grip changes. Kyle had lost a lot of blood, and he had several deep wounds Vincent had almost needed to stitch.
For him to even move like this showed he was recovering fast.
Annie and I bent down again to keep working.
“If Kyle helped, we’d finish so much faster.”
“This was our job anyway.”
“Still… it’s so hot today.”
“Kyle’s fragile,” I said.
“So we have to help him.”
Thunk.
Something dropped beside us.
We turned our heads.
Kyle stood there, having dropped the water jug.
His cheeks were burning red.
“I am not fragile!”
At that moment, I realized I had hurt a teenager’s pride.
—
