The servants who brought Fuuka’s meager meals to the shed were acting strange. The reason Fuuka came to that conclusion was simple—exceedingly simple.
“Ahem, ahem!”
That reason was their coughing. As they brought her food, clothes, and warm towels to clean herself, the servants suffered bouts of coughing. There could be no clearer sign that they were unwell.
“So, are you all right? Have you seen a doctor?”
“The Count did call for a doctor. He said he didn’t know the cause, so I must be all right.”
“I don’t think that’s the right conclusion to draw!”
“...I shouldn’t stay talking to you for too long, Fuuka-sama. Oh, that reminds me,” she said, handing Fuuka a small glass. “I couldn’t bring you a vase, so please take this instead.”
“That’s plenty. Thank you very much.”
Fuuka took the glass from her and stroked it lovingly.
The servant excused herself and departed in a hurry.
Owing to her long stay in the dark shed, Fuuka squinted when the door opened, but she noticed the same red rash on the servant’s neck as the one on the young maid the day before.
...That rash doesn’t sit right with me.
Fuuka filled the glass with water from a jug. A rash in a line on the neck. Now where have I seen that before? She took the lily—
I know I’ve seen it somewhere.
—and with care, placed it in the glass. When she finished, the light from the window illuminated the white lily in all its purity.
Fuuka thought, That rash definitely spells trouble. This isn’t just a hunch. I’m almost certain. It was intuition grounded in her countless hours of studying white magic and healing.
Before I spent time with Miyako, I might have blotted out this intuition and ignored it, pretending I hadn’t seen anything. But Miyako said she loved me for being a hard worker. She was so pleased that there were people I saved with my healing skills.
Happiness, fun... Miyako taught me that saving someone through my own actions, instead of holding back like I used to, could inspire such warm emotions.
“...Is anybody there?” shouted Fuuka.
After a life of keeping quiet and doing what she was told, Fuuka raised her voice.
“Could somebody please bring me the books from my room?!”
✦ ✦ ✦
What’s the harm in a few books? thought Dan, the head of the Hamilton family. He assented without much thought, paying more attention to the weather outside. He didn’t anticipate that the books in Fuuka’s possession regarding white magic and the related studies of herbal medicines and treatments would amount to around three hundred volumes.
“Is this the last book?”
“Ye—Ahem, ahem—Yes, my lady.”
“You have the cough too... You should go home for the day.”
“But, the Count!”
“Do as I say!”
Fuuka cut the servant’s mumbling short with a blunt order and shut the shed door. She sat down in front of the mountain made of three hundred books.
She read, and turned a page, and read and read, then turned another page. She thumbed the index, read, searched, read.
Infections. Respiratory illnesses starting from a cough. A red rash in a line on the neck.
“It’s likely an infectious disease. It eluded the doctors, so it must be an exceptionally rare case.”
She searched and searched and searched.
“...H-Here it is!”
She found a small entry hidden among the pages of a thick book which told of a plague that spread several hundred years ago. An epidemic of decapitation fever. The initial symptoms were a red rash that circled the sufferer’s neck, coughing, and difficulty breathing. During an incubation period of a few weeks, the disease would dramatically worsen. Fatality rates were high. In the presence of a patient in the late stage of the disease, the infection rates underwent exponential growth.
“I have to do something!”
Fuuka remembered about moonlight grass, the panacea they discovered in the Atika region. That was her ray of hope, but she had none here.
I need to find a way out of here first. I have to tell them about this.
Fuuka jumped to her feet.
Beyond the window, dark clouds hung heavy in the sky.