499: A Doctor with a Bad Attitude and a Villainous Face
During a break, on my way to the large room, a dark elf called out to me.
“Daisy, lend me your face.”
“…Ah, Doctor.”
A bad attitude. Next, a bad look in her eyes. Finally, a villainous face.
It wasn’t for me, who had once taken the name of the King of Disease and Poison, and had been called a heartless monster and the enemy of humanity, to say, but she… the ‘Doctor’… was a woman who perfectly fit that description.
Dark brown skin, and in contrast, a pale, almost white, blond hair and gold-rimmed glasses. She, who was wearing a white coat over a navy shirt and skirt, which was actually a part of a maid uniform, was, as her nickname suggested, the doctor of Lital Hot Springs.
She was a high-level medical mage, and in wartime, the presence or absence of healing magic was a crucial factor that literally decided life and death. Though it was mainly for treatment in the rear, in the last war, she had served as a military doctor in the Seventh Battle of Litalside and the subsequent retreat, and in the Battle of the Itria Plains, and I had heard that she had saved many lives.
“My ‘will to work’ has ‘run out.’ I’m going to get what I’m owed.”
But her attitude was bad.
Her eyes were slanted, and she had deep, dark circles under them. She took a dried herb… commonly known as ‘the devil’s temptation’… from the pocket of her pristine white coat and chewed on it.
It was legal. Even though it had the power to make a dark elf or a beastman drunk, just by putting a single leaf in a barrel, and it was sometimes used as a more reliable anesthetic than a sleep spell.
I had thought that the number of leaves she had in stock was strangely large, but it had been for her personal use. The first time I had seen her chewing on ‘the devil’s temptation,’ the word ‘embezzlement’ had crossed my mind, but since it was her personal property, not a part of the infirmary’s supplies, I had no right to complain… but. Though it was legal.
“…Doctor, do you know the saying, ‘A doctor doesn’t take care of himself’?”
“Of course.”
To know and to be able to do were two different things.
“Now, let’s go to the infirmary.”
She took the dried herb out of her mouth, and a string of saliva stretched, and she licked it up. It was strangely erotic. If you had told me she was the mistress of a criminal organization, I would have believed you. No, in fact, she might even have been the mastermind.
“[Tinder].”
Poof, the ‘devil’s temptation’ between her fingers caught fire and burned away without a trace.
“Alright, let’s go.”
The Doctor shoved her hands into the pockets of her white coat and, as she scattered the lingering purple smoke, she began to walk, as if to say, ‘Follow me.’
She opened the door to the infirmary and beckoned to me, and she pushed me into the room and turned the doorknob behind her and locked it.
I felt like a rabbit that had been thrown into a tiger’s cage.
If it had been a tiger’s cage, then there would probably have been pieces of flesh and bloodstains, but the infirmary was pristine, without a speck of dust. The Doctor strode to the desk and sat down on a stool.
“Shall we pretend to have a consultation? Now, sit down, manager.”
“Pretend?”
“…It’s a pretense.”
I couldn’t say anything more, and I obediently sat down on the stool opposite her. She took my hand and lightly squeezed my wrist.
“Ah, how are you feeling?”
“Not bad.”
“Anything strange?”
“Not really.”
“Do you like maids?”
“I love them.”
“What about your wife?”
“I love her.”
“Alright, okay.”
The Doctor let go of my hand and slapped her knees. Was this really a consultation? It might have been a pretense.
“Alright, let’s go to the bed.”
She stood up and, grabbing my wrist again, much more roughly than before, she took me to the infirmary bed and made me sit down. Her narrowed eyes, through her glasses, looked down at me.
“…Now, give me what you’ve got.”
“…Yes.”
I, who was sitting on the bed, pinched the hem of my skirt.
“If you don’t hurry, someone will come.”
I slowly lifted my skirt.
“Don’t tease me…”
The Doctor’s lips twisted. She was smiling. …I was the only one who knew this happy side of her.
Slither, a black shadow tumbled out from the shadows of my skirt and took the form of a black dog.
The Doctor slowly knelt, as if before a god, and hugged the Black Hound Barghest tightly. And she let out a long breath.
“Ah… this is what I work for.”
If I were to be asked to choose the person with the worst attitude in Lital Hot Springs, I would choose the Doctor. And if I were to be asked to choose the person who loved the Black Hound Barghests the most… I would hesitate. I wanted to say it was me, but she loved the Black Hound Barghests so much that even I would hesitate to make a judgment.
Aside from the person I loved, I liked cute maids, and hot baths, and delicious food, but she had nothing else she could say she liked. She didn’t complain about the food, but she didn’t seem to enjoy it, and the same was true for the hot springs. She spent a long time soaking, but it was a little different from liking it. And surprisingly, for her appearance, she didn’t drink a single drop of alcohol.
Therefore… she was competing with me for the top one or two fluff-lovers in Lital Hot Springs. She was probably a prodigy who surpassed even that Catral-san. Catral-san, who was an ‘extraordinary animal lover’ (according to her subordinates), was the leader of the magical beast division… and her hobby and her work were one and the same.
But the Doctor, though she had other circumstances, had offered a contract fee that was, for a doctor of her skill in both magical and physical medicine, a bargain—almost free. With only one special condition.
That she be allowed to pet the Black Hound Barghests as much as possible.
The Barghest, which had slipped from the Doctor’s hands, jumped onto the bed… and on the white sheets, it rolled over and showed its belly. And it tilted its head at her.
The Doctor, without any hesitation, leaped at the bed and buried her face in its belly fur.
I, too, took out another Barghest and stroked its head.
“…Doctor.”
“Hmm?”
The Doctor, who was answering without raising her face from the belly fur, and who was also reaching for its belly fur and its neck, was quite dexterous.
“Your job satisfaction… how is it?”
She finally raised her face from the belly fur and answered.
“As long as I have a ‘will to work,’ I’ll work here until I die, so don’t worry.”
Incidentally, the ‘will to work’ she was talking about was to pet the Barghests to her heart’s content. The Black Hound Barghests also, for the most part, liked people who liked them, and they seemed to be having fun.
I had once suggested that I should assign one to her at all times, or that she should live with two or three of them and enjoy the feeling of having multiple pets, but she had covered her mouth. I had wondered what was wrong, and I had been worried when she had had a nosebleed and had coughed up blood. She had said, “It’s too stimulating. Are you trying to kill me? And besides, I can’t work properly in that situation.”
Though her skills were undeniable.
