TMIAP Chapter 29

Luis Berfeil had been a medical student. He asked in a note, as though it were a joke:

< Did you take the 'green medicine'? >

Enrique Solivén had taken the 'green medicine' when he was wounded. Back then, he couldn't sleep without it. He had a vague memory of an unfamiliar nurse feeding him the 'green medicine' and calming him down when he couldn't see. Was this a side effect of the 'green medicine'?

It was the moment he dimly grasped the cause of his insomnia. Around that time, Andrei brought a second doctor.

The middle-aged male doctor seemed very discreet and cautious. He said he had treated people with symptoms similar to Enrique's during the war.

'Your brain is showing you hallucinations, my lord. There's something called the frontal lobe—are you familiar with it? If we remove it, you should be fine.'

'How would you remove it?'

The doctor took out a very impressive medical bag and placed it on the table. To anyone's eyes, it was the perfect doctor's bag. Anything that came out of that bag looked as though it could cure a patient instantly.

From inside, the doctor extracted a long awl. It was nearly the length from Enrique's wrist to his elbow.

'I insert this awl through the nostril or the inner corner of the eye to pierce the brain, and then...'

Before Enrique could say anything, Andrei kicked the doctor's rear and sent him packing.

When he returned after closing the townhouse door, Andrei said sheepishly before the flabbergasted Enrique:

'He seemed perfectly sane when he talked to me.'

Enrique rubbed his face dry. Andrei left the city again in search of a third doctor.

While Andrei was gone, he ransacked the La Spezia library.

Among the advantages of a city untouched by war was this: the records remained intact.

Among La Spezia's newspapers, Enrique eagerly searched for articles about the 'green medicine.'

People who had taken the 'green medicine' and set fires after seeing hallucinations, people suffering from murderous impulses... there were many.

Enrique increasingly felt like rubbish that should never have been released into this world.

"This is serious."

Instead of self-flagellation, Enrique muttered, "To think my mother's most expensive commodity would turn out to be rubbish."

The La Spezia library clerk kindly approached with a smile and guided him.

'You mustn't make noise in the library.'

Enrique was seized by an intense impulse to shout at the clerk right then and there, since he was a madness patient anyway.

Of course, Enrique Solivén was a conscientious and reputable gentleman, so he only thought it and didn't act on it.

Luis Berfeil had a talent for being infuriating with his gentle manner of speaking. He said in a note:

< La Spezia is a truly beautiful city. You seem like an arrogant idiot who thinks he doesn't need to meet women at all. Since I got slapped by Rose thanks to you, I'm borrowing some of your clothes. >

Below that, something else was written:

< Damn it, La Spezia? >

After nearly three days and nights without sleep, he had collapsed into unconsciousness and was just opening his eyes on the bed.

Enrique brought his throbbing right hand up to his face. It was covered in scabs. It was absurd.

He could understand without explanation. He had been asleep for several days. And during that time, two personalities had taken over his body.

What the hell are you doing with someone else's body?

But instead of getting angry, Enrique pulled the bell cord. And a while later, he realized: he himself had dismissed all the servants from the Solivén townhouse.

So Enrique dragged his aching body directly to the commercial district and bought several books of quality stationery. Stationery engraved with the Solivén family crest was dangerous.

He hoped that from now on, what he—or the other personalities—would write on the stationery would be dismissed as useless doodles or the plot ideas of an idle aristocrat.

He made demands of the other two personalities:

< If you're going to use my body, at least keep a diary. So I can properly understand the situation. >

< How welcome those words are! Truth is, I'm sick of pretending to be you on a moment's notice. >

< Too much trouble. >

Below that, one more thing was written:

< Hello. >

Enrique's eyes widened. There was a fourth besides Luis and Garcia. It was outrageous, but he couldn't waste any more time asking the fourth who they were.

The first ball of the social season was right around the corner.

And Lady Solivén, having overcome the shock of her last parting with her son, had belatedly sent her late-blooming adolescent son several portraits.

『These are the young ladies with the largest dowries.』

Slipping Liella Mollette among those portraits had been entirely Lady Solivén's idea.

It was because there was a possibility that her rebellious son might deliberately choose a young lady not in the portraits just to defy her. Of course, it was a fact that hadn't crossed Enrique's mind at the time.

Enrique Solivén lined up the portraits of those young ladies and tried to make the other personalities memorize them, but it ended in failure. The fourth didn't appear, and Luis and Garcia each gave their own reasons:

< I'm not keen on precious young ladies I can't handle the consequences with. >

< Are you insane? I don't even know how to put on your shoes. >

Enrique slyly glanced down at the shoes he was wearing. They were typical double monk loafers that gentlemen would wear.

Idiot. Enrique clicked his tongue. You only had to fasten the buckles—what a stupid, low creature to have taken up residence inside him.

They used Enrique's body as they pleased. Not only did they roam La Spezia, but sometimes they truly used it.

Enrique warned them in his characteristic cynical tone. If the Solivén family's honor fell to the ground because of them impersonating him, I will kill you.

< I am the person who can kill you most easily. >

All I have to do is reach out and stab my own throat. To his warning, Luis responded in a vulgar yet strangely refined manner:

< I'm not as much of a slut as you think. >

Enrique was shocked that this wasn't Garcia's answer. As for Garcia's answer:

< I can kill you too, you know? >

Even so, Garcia dubiously left one more remark:

< I'll cooperate, so you cooperate a little too. >

He would learn what that cooperation meant later, but at any rate, Enrique at that time was terribly dissatisfied. It was clearly his own body, yet he had to warn these unknown things and even cooperate with them.

Could it be that he was already consumed by madness? Could even my writing these letters right now be a madman's delusion?

No one could know. However, Andrei, who had gone to fetch the third doctor, answered calmly that it didn't seem to be madness.

'How would you know? You're not even a doctor.'

'Where do you think the third doctor I brought is?'

Only then did Enrique look up at Andrei. With his swollen nose wrapped in bandages, Andrei said calmly:

'Someone named Garcia threw a punch at the third doctor who wanted to open up your head. I got hit too while trying to stop it.'

So this was the 'cooperation' Garcia meant. Unexpected, but satisfactory.

Enrique giggled. Though Andrei was fuming, he definitely agreed that the man wasn't Enrique.

The young master of the Solivén family he'd observed for several weeks might humiliate a fool, but he was absolutely not someone who threw punches.

Then what cooperation am I supposed to provide? Enrique paused at that thought but soon shook his head.

'What about the fourth doctor?'

'There is a young doctor from Beril Academy within La Spezia.'

'No.'

Rumors spreading within La Spezia wouldn't do. But Andrei pleaded:

'Searching other cities for competent doctors is only good for a day or two!'

In the end, Andrei visited that doctor living in La Spezia with Enrique's letter.

After ringing the doorbell for quite a while, the doctor who came out repeatedly pushed up his glasses that kept sliding down his hooked nose as he read Enrique's letter intently. Then he answered:

'I'm also very interested in the 'green medicine.' If you get good results, please contact me too.'

Meaning he knew nothing at all about the 'green medicine.' Andrei left for another city in disappointment.

There was one thing that did reassure Andrei. He was the only person who knew of and had conversed with the two personalities, Luis and Garcia, and he had grasped that these two had more common sense than expected.

'In what way are they sensible?'

'Luis says he doesn't touch married women. Oh, and he says paying for women is dishonorable too.'

'...Sensible indeed.'

Enrique groaned. It wasn't exactly what he'd been curious about, but thinking about it, it was an important matter.

Andrei nodded and answered:

'He says he's just enthusiastically making use of your face because it would be a waste, so don't worry. He says the woman he was indebted to last time was just someone he was dating.'

'In what way is that sensible!'

Enrique wanted to grab the paperweight on the desk and throw it but barely restrained himself. Andrei also reported on Garcia:

'He thinks three meals a day are absolutely necessary. He had something he definitely wanted me to tell you, my lord."

"What.'

Just before saying those words, Andrei's lips twitched. Enrique immediately recognized it as an expression of suppressed laughter.

'He says it's his first time seeing someone as scrawny as you, my lord. He says he can't exert any strength...'

Enrique was aghast. He was the son of a military family famous for their large frames, and he was an unusually big man even among them. He'd never heard such words in his entire life.

At any rate, there was no need to find a fifth doctor. Because Luis Berfeil, who was a medical student, told Andrei this:

< If it was caused by the 'green medicine,' there's no remedy except the 'green medicine.' >