un: Bachelor | text

[thantagonist]

Attention Fellow People of Etraya,

I am Doctor Daniil Dankovsky, Bachelor of Medicine. As I understand it, few of you have seen a doctor lately. That simply won’t do! Please, don’t wait to get sick to establish care. I am situated in the hospital, ready to take consent forms and make updated medical histories. At least a few of you have unaddressed concerns, I just know it. The average person comes to see the doctor when it’s too late! Though we cannot die here, there is no reason to suffer unduly.

And if you are otherwise healthy, perhaps think of it as helping me out. In the event of an outbreak, it is far more helpful to have complete clinical pictures of the inhabitants. Especially, as I understand it, there are many biological differences in this population.

Please come visit me during my clinic hours, every day from 10am to 6pm.


[What Daniil really wants is to meet more of the unusual inhabitants of Etraya more quickly as well as conduct casual interviews of the sort of people who are slated to save the universe. But he can’t just say that completely outright.]

Comments

[fend]

[ When Hinako arrives, she's armed with two plastic shopping bags. In the end, she thinks she has guessed what Daniil was asking for, but when everything is somehow free, it seemed like a good idea to bring her second guess too.

And something for herself, but look, she hasn't eaten lunch either. ]

A lot of this does seem very...western.

[ Not that Hinako has much exposure to the world beyond her home, but they did have radio and television. ]

It's easy enough to get around this area though.

[thantagonist]

[He gives the shopping bags a brief smile. Thorough when unsure. A mark of a good assistant.]

Except for the food. There are three markets here within a couple of kilometers, all Eastern foods.

[He pulls a chair out for her, then moves to sit across from her.]

Have you had the opportunity to explore the islands much yet?

[fend]

[ She first sets the bags on the table, then sinks into her seat with a sigh, only mildly dramatic. ]

Beats having nothing at all familiar, although it seems like someone just smashed unrelated places together.

[ As Hinako speaks, she busies herself with removing containers from the bags and setting them out. Sure enough, she did pick up salmon onigiri, with round fish cakes as a backup just in case that wasn't what he was referring to. Atop the two containers she sets one sakura mochi. While he didn't specify this, it's a nice treat, and it can be saved for later.

For herself, an egg sandwich. She got another mochi too, just in case it's anything like the teacups. ]

Maybe that's because we all come from such different places, not that I could say for sure.

[thantagonist]

You’re right. It makes no sense, and it doesn’t feel planned at all. At least it’s clean.

[He perks up as she doles out the food items.]

Yes, perfect. This is exactly it. Thank you, Hinako.

[He’ll try those fish cakes too. Sounds promising.]

What’s this? [As he points at the mochi with his pen.]

[fend]

That's sakura mochi. Since this midway through your day, you can try it later.

[ If he didn't bring himself lunch, odds are he doesn't have something set aside if he gets hungry later. Hinako reasons it won't hurt him to have a snack at hand. Besides, if he hasn't tried it before, it's a novelty at least.

It wasn't so long ago that Kotoyuki tried a common snack for the first time on her suggestion. She remembers his letter well. ]

I'm guessing you haven't had one before.

[thantagonist]

Sakura mochi. [he repeats her, sticking the words in his brain.] This is something you like and are familiar with, then?

[He is absolutely unprepared in this area. His usual go to was to work until his brain started to give up, then drag his feet to a cafeteria for a ladled bowl of something.]

It doesn’t appear too unusual. I’m no stranger to dumplings…

[fend]

They're seasonal, something associated with spring.

[ Hinako doesn't know whether that holds true in this place, of course, so she can only speak for how it is back home. Whether Aurora's city operated the same way remains to be seen. ]

It's made with rice and has sweet bean paste inside. The leaf on the outside is pickled, so it's salty-sweet.

[ Not exactly a dumpling, but the concept isn't different enough to argue that point when she thinks about it. ]

[thantagonist]

Sweet beans… a pickled leaf… [His mind conjures something strange. But this sweet, young woman introduces it in a way that makes him not want to disappoint her.]

It is spring here, isn’t it? It was fall where I was from. What about you?

[Daniil takes down that onigiri in 4 bites. It’s not in an impolite way, but he has realized he’s truly hungry. He cracks open the fish cakes and eats them as well. They seem to agree with him.]

[fend]

It was early April, back home. So this would've been the season for it.

[ Though until very recently, she was seized by such dread that she'd hardly paid it any mind. Even her birthday had felt as though it slid by while she fought rising panic.

Now that that's all behind her, she can think about things like this, simple and mundane. She starts on her sandwich, reassured that the food she'd chosen passed muster. ]

What's it like, where you're from?

[ She asks after swallowing a bite of her own food. ]

[thantagonist]

I’m from a big city, but that’s not where I was brought from. Part of me is relieved to be here, though it shames me to say that as well. I feel like I have abandoned some amount of my duty. Though to be clear, it was never meant to be my job. Not once.

But I stepped up and took control of that cow-stinking backwards dump of a town. [He rubs his forehead. He went a little off the rails there.]

The city I am from is great and beautiful. Sprawling, with over a million people. And inside it lived my laboratory, Thanatica. It was me and my two assistants, and we worked together all the time in the morgue. I miss it terribly.

[fend]

You worked in a morgue then?

[ Yet he is a doctor, not an undertaker. Hinako chews on this thought as she does another bite of her sandwich. Maybe his world is different in that way, or maybe it's another way in which her town is different from the world beyond it. She has no way of knowing. ]

Where you're from sound huge, compared to my hometown.

[thantagonist]

I am a thanatologist. I study death. But you have to be a doctor to know what you’re looking at, or even for them to allow you near the bodies anyway.

Is that so? How small? A few thousand… a few hundred?

[The Town he was plagued by had like, 17,000 people and that was a total rinkydink joint to him.]

[fend]

Hundreds, counting people out on farmland. It might've ended up bigger, had things worked out differently.

[ The population had only dwindled as individuals and families moved away for opportunities over the years. ]

So what do you study death for? [ The question seems too pointed, and the thought visibly occurs to her, so he rephrases. ] What does a thanatologist aim to learn?

[thantagonist]

A truly small town. Sounds like little more than farm houses and crops. [Sounds really depressing, honestly.]

[Daniil perks up.] Why, the inner workings of death, of course. This can cover many things, like disease and anatomy. But I intend to learn the secrets to defeat death itself.