The Doctor of Monster Town - Chapter 6

One half was piled with all manner of books. The other was Tuyu’s living space.

Judging by the degree of chaos, he had clearly lived here for a long time.

He wasn’t lying.

Monster Town had no laws, so naturally it had no such thing as property deeds. Monsters generally claimed territory with their scent.

Ghost cats were unusual, however. Tuyu’s innate gift was a total lack of presence, which meant people kept mistaking the building for an abandoned house and moving in.

“Stay if you want. I live alone, so I don’t need all this space. But eating some of your food as rent isn’t too much to ask… right?”

“Of course not. You’re the owner. Help yourself to whatever you’d like.” I gave the books he’d accumulated a quick look. “But may I ask one more thing? Would you like to come upstairs and live with us, or do you simply prefer the basement?”

After we released him, Tuyu transformed into a boy of fifteen or sixteen. He stared at me with both cat ears flattened sideways, wary yet unable to hide his loneliness.

“What are you trying to do? Everyone who moved in before was afraid of me. I don’t believe you don’t mind me being here.”

“Wait, I remember. You’re a doctor…”

His feline eyes widened into circles. “You want to use me for live experiments, don’t you?!”

Of course I didn’t!

I really didn’t run an evil laboratory, damn it…

Helplessly, I bent until we were eye to eye. “If you’ve always lived here, you should know I’m just an ordinary doctor. All I do is make potions. When have you ever seen me conduct an experiment?”

Tuyu turned his head and said nothing.

He was like a solitary stray cat, every defensive spine bristling, yet his eyes betrayed a faint longing for a warm little home.

“How about this?” I offered him a graceful way out. “Come upstairs and live with us, and I’ll pay you a salary. In return, you’ll help me like Miss Bran does. All right?”

Tuyu hesitated. Finally, unable to restrain himself, he asked, “Help you with what?”

I pointed at the open books on his desk. “Are you good at math?”

He wasn’t reading novels or poetry. The pages were filled with mathematical formulas complicated enough to make my head spin.

Tuyu presumably wanted to become a mage. After all, only someone who drew magic circles would need to master so many complex formulas.

“If you’re good at math, come keep my accounts.”

Tuyu, who had expected some tremendously difficult demand: “…”

I calmly pointed out, “You must have seen my ledger. You know I get the figures wrong all the time.”

That was precisely why I hadn’t discovered him for so long: whenever I made a bookkeeping mistake, he stole a potion.

Guiltily, Tuyu looked away.

After a long silence, he quietly nodded.

“I understand… I can help you.”

Early the next morning, Parsifal came to the breakfast table and fell silent when he saw an extra person.

He gripped the back of a chair but did not sit for a long time.

“Doctor, who is this…?”

Rather than answer, I asked, “Did you sleep very deeply last night?”

So deeply that even all that noise hadn’t brought him downstairs to check—as if he hadn’t been home at all?

Bran and Tuyu sensed that something was wrong. In perfect accord, both lowered their heads and ate in silence, trying hard to make themselves invisible.

“I wasn’t feeling well yesterday, so I took some medicine before bed.” Parsifal rubbed his temple. “Perhaps it was the medicine… Did something happen?”

Even after hearing the edge in my voice, Parsifal showed no displeasure. He remained gentle and understanding.

He looked so beautiful and harmless.

But Tuyu hadn’t lied.

Which meant someone else had.

According to what Tuyu said last night, Parsifal and I had only recently moved in.

The clinic had first opened during the days after I woke up.

So I wasn’t some monster doctor who had lived here for years, and my amnesia hadn’t come from any supposed violent patient.

Yet after suspicion arose in me, my thoughts began to scatter of their own accord.

It was as though someone had planted a command in my mind: whenever I touched on anything related, I would automatically overlook every doubtful point.

Once I realized this, I clutched my pen and wrote my suspicions on the page over and over. Whenever my mind went blank, I stopped, lowered my eyes, and read everything I’d written from beginning to end.

I struggled like that throughout the night. At last, when morning arrived, I forcibly dispersed the fog in my mind.

Every bit of warmth and peace I’d known until now turned in an instant into a bubble that would burst at the slightest touch.

The strange, fearful looks the neighbors had given me at first. The healing potions that had plainly appeared in town for the first time. The fact that Parsifal, supposedly human, could casually bring home Miss Bran at exactly the moment she could solve my urgent problem…

All the suspicious details I had once “overlooked” now appeared with perfect clarity on the page before me.

Every clue joined into a line and ultimately converged on a single point—

Parsifal.

The gentle young man who had remained by my side from the moment I woke, tending to me with the greatest care.

He was deceiving me.