Time Healer Ceres
Chapter 9
A rift opened in the empty air, and a black hole manifested.
“Oh, it works?”
It was a subspace created by Artia, her long-time friend and the Master of the Magic Tower.
‘It doesn’t even require mana.’
‘No mana?’
‘Nope! You can open it whenever and wherever you want. From now on, keep your medicinal herbs in here. That way, you won’t have to carry a separate bag when you go out to treat patients.’
‘Oh.’
‘What do you think? Do you like it?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I’m much more useful than that Kainel fellow, aren’t I?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Hee-hee!’
It was such a wonderful gift that she had given him the exact answer he wanted without hesitation.
Above all, there was no limit to its storage capacity, making it perfect for Grace. She could store countless herbs with ease.
It even had preservation magic cast upon it, making it all the more useful.
“He did say it was connected to the soul.”
Those were Artia’s words when he first gave her this space.
He said that because the space was bound to her soul, it required no activation word and could be opened with a mere thought.
As if to prove those words true, it remained connected to her even though her body had changed.
“There should still be a few of those left.”
Ceres reached into the black void without hesitation.
A moment later, her hand emerged holding a single sheet of paper rolled up and tied with string.
This was also a magic item created by Artia, designed to instantly teleport the user to a desired location once the paper was torn.
‘They are rare, after all.’
She didn’t know how things were now, but back then, the mana required for teleportation varied wildly depending on the distance.
Kainel had also been quite envious of these teleportation magic items.
‘Sell them to me. I will pay whatever you ask.’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Because then you’d come to see Grace even more often. I can’t stand the thought of that, not even if I were dead.’
‘Why don’t we see if you truly can’t stand it after you’re dead? I’ll help you find out.’
‘Try it if you can, you human popsicle!’
‘You two! Kai, put that sword away this instant! Alti, if you use magic here, you’re banned from entering for six months!’
‘Ugh! Six months is too harsh, Grace!’
‘Be quiet! Both of you, get out! Stop disturbing the patients!’
“Strangely enough, they fought every single time they met.”
Was it because one was too cold and the other too energetic?
She had heard that opposites attract, but that didn’t seem to apply to those two.
Regardless, the result was that Kainel never got to use a single one of those teleportation magic items.
“Gur Village… Gur Village…”
Ceres checked the coordinates of the village several times before tearing the paper.
Flash!
A brilliant light poured out, and her figure vanished from the spot in an instant.
“Aeri, are you finished with the meal distribution?”
A woman in her mid-thirties approached Aeri, a woman in her early twenties who was coming down the stairs.
“Yes, I just finished.”
“Everyone was happy to have meat for a change. We’ve been serving mostly vegetarian meals lately.”
“I see.”
“By the way, that meat… it’s the same as before, right? The lowest grade that’s hard to distribute to the markets…”
“Aeri, watch your mouth.”
“Ah! Right!”
At Julie’s sharp rebuke, Aeri quickly covered her mouth with her hand.
“Our sanatorium always uses only the finest ingredients. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
The Arnold Sanatorium sat at the edge of Gur Village.
The luxurious, white building housed quite a number of people staying for recuperation.
The Arnold side advertised that everything from ingredients to medicines was provided at the highest quality.
Of course, the reality was quite different.
Using expired ingredients was standard practice, and unlike what was written on the invoices, they had never once prescribed top-grade medicine to the patients.
It was a sanatorium that was only polished on the outside.
The reason it could continue operating without any issues was that most of the residents were elderly people with limited mobility and significantly diminished cognitive abilities.
Furthermore, another commonality among the patients allowed the sanatorium to be managed with impunity.
Namely, they had no visiting family.
No one objected to the recommendation to refrain from visiting for the sake of the patient’s stability.
On the contrary, the guardians were quite pleased that they could blame the sanatorium’s regulations for the burden on their conscience for not visiting.
“What about the child in the end room?”
“I gave it to her.”
“Did you confirm she ate?”
“Well…”
“Aeri!”
A loud shout finally burst from Julie’s mouth.
“N-No, I was really busy too. I did almost all the distribution by myself today.”
Aeri pleaded her case with an aggrieved tone, but the fierce glare in Julie’s eyes did not easily fade.
Among the many patients, there was one person the staff paid particular attention to: a seven-year-old girl named Yulia.
The problem, however, was that “paying attention” did not mean taking good care of her.
“Tsk, follow me.”
“Yes.”
Julie walked ahead, seemingly intending to check for herself if the child had finished her meal, and Aeri followed behind her, scurrying to keep up.
“But, Julie-nim.”
As she followed quietly, Aeri found the situation impossible to understand.
Eventually, she tentatively asked the question she had always been curious about.
“Why do we have to watch to see if that child finishes her meal every single time? You don’t do that for the other patients.”
Of course, it was their job to check if patients were eating well and to care for them.
But when had they ever cared about such things?
‘So why that brat?’
Not only did they always check if she finished her meals, but they also strictly blocked any contact from her family.
The child’s letters were never sent to her family either; they were just collected separately.
‘Why on earth?’
They didn’t go this far with other patients.
They did check the letters of other patients, just in case they wrote anything bad about the sanatorium.
But they didn’t block things as thoroughly as they did with Yulia, ensuring her relationship with her family was completely severed.
“You just do as you’re told.”
“Yes.”
Under Julie’s sharp gaze, Aeri couldn’t ask any more questions and quietly followed behind her.
After all, what did it matter to her if the child was isolated or if she grew distant from her family? She just needed to get paid and do her job.
Click.
“Yulia, did you finish your me—”
A moment later, as Julie and Aeri entered the room located in the furthest corner of the building, they couldn’t finish their sentence.
“W-Who are you?”
“…”
A strange woman standing next to the sleeping child slowly turned her head to look at the two of them.
In her hand was the soup bowl the child had left unfinished.
“What do you think you’re doing right now?”
Realizing this, Julie rushed toward the woman, unable to hide her agitation.
“W-Whoa!”
But as Julie reached out to snatch the bowl, the woman lightly stepped back, leaving Julie grasping at thin air.
The woman briefly caught her as she stumbled and nearly fell.
Faced up close, the woman’s violet eyes shone with a particular coldness.
“This is the food you claim is made with the finest ingredients and top-grade medicine?”
“That…!”
At the woman’s words, Julie and Aeri’s faces flushed with embarrassment.
The food in the bowl was in such a pathetic state that the word ‘finest’ was rendered meaningless.
As if she hadn’t expected an answer, the woman’s gaze returned to the bowl.
“Interesting.”
…Her face didn’t look like she found it interesting at all.
Why was the way one corner of her mouth curved up so chilling?
Julie and Aeri swallowed hard instinctively.
“I asked, who are you?”
Only after a long moment did Julie regain her composure and repeat the same question.
She definitely wasn’t someone who worked here… Was she an acquaintance of this child?
Perhaps family?
‘That’s impossible.’
The director had said so clearly.
That there would absolutely be no one coming to look for that child, Yulia.
So they just had to manage her well.
He had boasted that unless the heavens and earth were turned upside down, nothing they did would ever become a problem.
“…”
As if teasing the anxious Julie, the woman did not react for a while. She just stared intently at the child, who was still sleeping as if dead.
“…Her sister.”
“What?”
At the woman’s answer, which came after a long pause, the eyes of the two staff members shook restlessly, as if they had nowhere else to look.
“I’m this child’s older sister.”
