'Should I have just let him die?'
'Is that something to say about a person?'
'Well, we didn't tell him, did we?'
'Ah... That's true. Anyway...'
Liston momentarily took his eyes off the chef and looked around the interior of the monastery—no, the prison camp.
He looked quite shocked, which was only natural.
Although I've never been to notorious places like the Aoji Coal Mine, the Gulags, or the Yodok Prison Camp...
This place seemed worthy of having its name listed proudly alongside them.
"Um... I think that person over there has passed away?"
"Hmm? So they have. Hey, drag them out."
"Yes, sir!"
There were even neglected corpses.
It wasn't like they couldn't tell...
Decomposition had already begun.
Yet the body was just left among the living.
I don't know if it's fortunate or not, but at least when told, they did remove it...
"I'm curious, are these people prisoners?"
"Haha."
Prisoners in London don't receive this kind of treatment either.
Ah, well... Since I've only been to one jail cell, I can't say for sure.
From what I've seen, being imprisoned for over a year is pretty much equivalent to a death sentence.
It's not 21st-century people being locked up, but 19th-century people—and those bad and vicious enough to be jailed—so they must be incredibly tough, but seeing them drop like flies, it's clearly a mess.
'The trainee barracks I saw as an army medic were shocking enough...'
Even just that level of filth and overcrowding could cause otherwise healthy young men in their twenties to contract untimely pneumonia and even die in some cases.
Humans are creatures that seem strong but are actually fragile, that's what I mean.
Anyway, looking at these people receiving punishments equal to or worse than those of prisoners, I asked the monk.
Whether these people had committed crimes or something.
The monk chuckled and replied.
"Before the Lord, we are all sinners."
"No, that's not what I meant."
"And these are greater sinners. How else could they have become so possessed by demons?"
"Ah."
Possessed by demons.
Hearing that, I finally understood.
With this mindset... no wonder they can torment people like this. Was it a moment of realization?
"So do you also perform exorcisms?"
"We do."
This time Liston asked, and the monk answered by tapping the club he was carrying.
Madness...
So, the so-called 'treatment' for the people here is locking them in this shack and beating them?
I looked back at the chef; despite having barely eaten anything, he was vomiting violently.
The monk patted the chef's back and smiled benevolently.
"The bad stuff is already starting to come out!"
Judging by his expression, he was completely sincere.
'Is reformation even possible?'
Could it work?
No, it couldn't.
If handled clumsily, we could be branded as heretics.
Of course, unlike my prejudice, witch hunts no longer occur in 19th-century London...
But that doesn't mean we wouldn't die.
Death was entirely possible.
A monk of his stature could probably save quite a few devout people who wouldn't think twice about taking a life.
'Let's just get this one man out, for now.'
'Yes, that would be best.'
With Liston on our side, we could get the chef out.
How?
Liston is the one who breaks stone walls.
A wooden shack like this...
Making a hole without completely destroying it might be tricky, but destroying it outright wouldn't be difficult.
Having agreed, we followed the monk, half-listening as we looked around the remaining space, then got back into the carriage.
We firmly declined the offer to stay the night.
"Good. The night is deep."
"Good."
Of course, we didn't head for London.
It wasn't a distance we could cover in one night anyway.
We left the carriage with the armed coachman and headed back toward the monastery.
There was no security force.
First of all, would 19th-century people even consider robbing a monastery?
Wouldn't they be cursed by God?
Moreover, it was obvious that everyone associated with or supporting this monastery didn't think they were doing anything wrong.
They were just treating the possessed free of charge—what could be wrong with that?
'But if you ask if there's an alternative... that's not it either.'
Prejudice against mental illness exists even in the 21st century.
And it's not just pure prejudice...
It's also true that patients with delusional disorders like schizophrenia can be dangerous if left untreated without care.
So, is there medicine?
No, not right now.
I'm not a psychiatrist, so I'm not exactly sure, but it probably won't appear until the mid-20th century.
How do I know that?
Because they performed lobotomies on mentally ill patients until the early-mid 20th century...
You can learn this just from watching the movie Shutter Island.
"What are you thinking so hard about?"
"Ah... It's just hard to look at those people."
"Besides the chef?"
"Yes."
Apparently, Liston only felt pity for our chef.
Well, I suppose that's the 19th-century understanding of mental illness.
So what can I do?
Let's just save the chef for now.
And...
'The consumptive patients...'
Their situation seemed slightly better.
But that didn't mean it was much better.
For starters, the population density was too high.
No, I mean, people coughing were swarming right next to other people coughing?
In that case, even if they got better, they'd just get sick again.
'Should I try to establish a sanatorium for consumptive patients...?'
Consumptive patients mean tuberculosis, tuberculosis.
Its nickname is the White Plague...
And rightly so, as an enormous number of people are dying from it.
Ironically, people in 19th-century developed nations, where the Industrial Revolution was quite advanced, are suffering even more.
Tuberculosis is a respiratory disease that also spreads very slowly, so it's inevitably more fatal in industrial societies with high population density than in sparsely populated agricultural societies.
Of course, far more workers are sacrificed, but even nobles aren't exceptions.
Because it's a respiratory disease.
"Look there. No guards either. It shouldn't be too difficult."
"But... they're shackled. How do we handle that?"
"We make/cut the shackles."
"Aha."
Lost in thought, we reached the building where the chef was imprisoned.
The door was firmly shut, but...
Crunch.
Liston threw a jab, and the barred part shattered.
"Ooooooh!"
"Uuuuugh!"
The moans and screams of the patients who hadn't yet fallen asleep, which we could hear even from outside, grew even louder.
If this continues, the monks will come.
Not that anything bad would happen to us if they did...
But what crime did the monks who might get beaten by Liston commit?
"I didn't think of this."
"Should we just run?"
"We came all this way and you want to leave? Why are you so heartless?"
"No, it just looks dangerous... Ah."
I was nervous, but as expected, it was needless worry.
Liston drew the sword he carried at his waist and swung it; the bars were cleanly severed.
Shackles?
The shackles were also cut through with a single stroke.
"Ugh..."
The chef had already lost his mind in less than a full day.
It was only because I saw where they locked him up earlier that I recognized him; otherwise, I might not have.
Anyway, Liston swiftly hoisted the chef, who was fairly well-built, onto his shoulder and started to run.
"Hmm, Brother?"
"What."
We ran wildly for a bit, and when I looked back, surprisingly, nothing was happening.
No one had come out from the monastery.
"No one's following us?"
"Really? Well... It's not like these people are paying us anyway."
"Who's paying... Ah, we paid, didn't we?"
A donation, I suppose?
Thinking they were doing good work, and considering it a fee for taking in the chef, we had paid a not-insignificant sum.
"Right. We shouldn't have paid before seeing the place. Well, it turned out for the best."
"Huh? But we just got scammed out of cash?"
"No. They'll probably think we broke him out... but we already paid, right? They won't make an issue of it."
"Ah... But how would we know that?"
"When you made a fuss earlier and I had to use my sword, I put my usual strength into it."
"What does that...?"
"I'm the only swordsman in this world who can cut through iron that cleanly."
"Ah..."
It's a bit of a strange thing for a doctor to say, but...
He is the Sword Saint Liston, after all.
If he says so, then it must be so.
"Ugh."
Anyway, we set the chef down near the carriage.
Whether he had come to his senses during the journey, he kept thanking us profusely.
In a way, since we were the ones who locked him up, I wondered if we deserved this thanks...
'I'd be grateful too.'
If you think about being locked up there and then freed, it wasn't excessive.
"But what do we do with this person?"
"Indeed. Aish... He will spread Miasma though..."
"Shall we just send him on his way here?"
"That..."
If it had come from anyone else, I'd understand it as letting him escape, but this was Liston.
Moreover, he was currently looking up at the sky.
Holding the sword he had sheathed earlier at some point.
Somehow, it seemed like he had cut through metal at least twice, yet the blade hadn't chipped at all.
"Hee, heeek! P-please spare me! I'll do anything! Really! Anything!"
I wasn't the only one thinking of death.
The chef was too.
In that short time, he had become haggard and was crying, tears and snot running down his face.
I felt sorry for him, but the thought that typhus germs might be there made me feel even more uneasy.
Then Liston approached the chef and knelt down.
He was still holding the sword.
"Can you really do anything?"
"Huh? Yes! Really! I have no family anyway!"
"When we return to London, you must not be seen by anyone... Is that still okay?"
"Yes!"
I feel like I've seen this somewhere before.
In noir genre films like Crime City or Infernal Affairs.
Liston is clearly a doctor...
And a famous one at that, so why can he create this kind of atmosphere?
"Looks like we got a new recruit, huh."
And why does our coachman uncle speak like such a gangster?
No...
'Could we actually be a gang?'
Come to think of it, Liston has a few people he employs privately...
They all had not-so-great impressions.
The coachman too.
He carries a gun...
'Huh?'
While I was lost in these thoughts, Liston continued his frank conversation with the chef.
"Good, your resolve is impressive. Then I'll accept you."
"Th-thank you!"
"Hey, Pyeong."
"Uh, yes."
He suddenly turned to look at me.
I didn't understand what was happening and was a little scared, so I answered immediately.
"We did need someone to manage the dissection lab. We need to draw blood and guard the corpses."
"Ah, that's true."
There are corpse thieves in London.
Until now, I, Liston, his disciples, or Blundell took turns guarding them...
It would be good if the chef could do it.
"Since corpses don't catch Miasma anyway, it should be fine for him to handle them, right?"
"Right."
"Since he's a chef, he probably knows how to handle a knife too. It'll be useful if thieves come."
"That... that's true."
And so, our household increased by one.
His position would probably be something like a Corpse Guard.