Chapter 18 (2/2)

“Whatever. By the way how am I supposed to take the choyu leaves? Do I make it into a tea?”

Isaac looked closely at the herbs. It was a circular leaf about the size of his palm. There was a hint of blueness, suggesting it had been processed in some way. If it weren’t for its leaf-like texture, Isaac wouldn’t have considered it to be a plant just by looking at it.

“What you do is you roll it up and light it on one end while sucking up the smoke from the other.”

Reisha took one of the leaves to show Isaac what she meant. She rolled up the leaf into a cylinder and placed one end of it in her mouth.

“Once you light it, you have to breathe in the vapour. You have to breathe deeply, or it won’t reach far enough. Do you get it?”

… That’s just a cigarette.

Smoking was a taboo for patients with an injured lung, not to mention that this was the extremely toxic, unfiltered kind of cigarette that was used in the old days. Isaac remembered that cigarettes were once considered a medicine in history and believed that this world had yet to find out what devastating health issues cigarettes caused.

Cigarettes are devastating poison to those suffering from lung disease. But that wasn’t stopping Isaac from taking them. How could the possible chance of death stop him from smoking when he enjoyed it to its fullest back in the old world?

His heart began to pound with anxiousness and excitement as took back the cigarette and took his first breath.

There wasn’t any dizziness from the nicotine in the cigarette, which is commonly experienced when someone smokes for the first time. Instead, it tasted like menthol cigarette. The only difference was that it didn’t just taste like mint, but actually felt like the lungs themselves were being cleaned by the smoke.

“Huh? This is pretty good.”

The dull ache in his chest disappeared immediately. There wasn’t any bad breath that typically came after smoking a cigarette but rather a refres.h.i.+ng feeling in his mouth.

“Really? Most people find it quite strong.”

“Strong? This? It feels really good for me.”

It felt like a breath of fresh air was being directly injected into his lungs. No, it didn’t just feel like it. His chest truly did feel clean, and his mind felt like it had just awakened from slumber. With his brain now fully active, the name Kaizen came to his mind.

“What happened to Kaizen?”

“We caught him of course! I made sure to turn him into a b.l.o.o.d.y pancake so you can go and hit him yourself if you’d like!”

“Where is he now?”

“Hehe, he’s in the infirmary.”

“You really did turn him into a pancake.”

If a suspect who should have been detained was in the hospital, it truly meant that he was injured to the point where he couldn’t move on his own will.

“So what are they saying at the top? I’d imagine the Campus is in a bit of a ruckus?”

“Um… they say it will end as requesting him to drop out willingly.”

“Just to drop out when he tried to kill me?”

Dropping out from the Campus meant he was officially dead within the society of n.o.bles, but it was still too light of a punishment for someone who attempted murder.

“… Isaac isn’t enrolled in any school.”

Kunette’s words explained everything to Isaac. He was well aware of his lack of rights when he became the Campus’ official punching bag a few years ago, but he didn’t think it would carry on to this extent. Then again, who in the right mind would try to murder someone in the hub of intelligence that is the Campus?

In the history of 300 years of the Campus, there had been 5 cases of murder between students, and they were closely related to the feudal wars that had been going on within the continent. It was like a b.u.t.terfly effect.

The fight between children soon became one between adults, and since they were all children of high standing families, they began gathering their allies, friends, in-laws and cousins until the Empire nearly succ.u.mbed to a civil war between 2 factions.

That’s how serious this incident could have become, but all he was getting was a request to drop out from Campus because Isaac wasn’t enrolled to a school. It seemed both this world and the old found people’s lives to be less than expendable.

“B, but everyone was mad about it. They were saying how the youngest son of some nameless family called Rondart… Ah! I , I mean they were writing to their parents that the members of the Rondart family are a group of depraved… N-no! I mean, that’s…”

With each attempt at comforting Isaac ending in failure, Reisha’s eyes were starting to swell up with tears. Isaac quickly put a stop to this by patting her on the head.

“I know, I know. You were worried about me. Thanks.”

“Eheh!”

A few gentle pats quickly changed Reisha’s expression to a smile.

The palm sized leaf quickly turned to ash after a few puffs. Just when Isaac finished his first bundle of leaf and began rolling up a new one, Kunette placed her paws on Isaac’s knees.

“Hm? What, you want me to pat you too?”

“…I healed Isaac.”

“Yes, thanks. You did well. You saved my life. I’ll let you have all the honey you want.”

Kunette’s cheeks flushed red. Isaac wasn’t sure if it was because of his patting or the fact he mentioned the word honey.

“By the way, how much do these cost?”

“They aren’t that expensive. It was originally developed for the poor who couldn’t afford proper treatment, so they sell for about 1 Giga each.”

There were 4 types of currencies in this world and arranged from the smallest to largest, they were the Bit, Byte, Mega and Giga. It was simple to just think of them as 1 U.S. dollar for a Bit, 5 dollars for a Byte, 10 dollars for a Mega, and 100 dollars for a Giga. Therefore, Isaac just smoked a hundred-dollar cigarette. You could try saying it’s cheap for some, but is it really affordable to the commoners?

“Isn’t it too expensive?”

“Why? Even the most heavily damaged airways can be healed after 5 of those.”

Reisha’s reaction made Isaac realise that this cigarette wasn’t just a consumable.

“It’s really medicine?”

Isaac looked at the cigarette in between his fingers. Can he really quit after his lungs have fully healed? Maybe if he was never fond of smoking, but how can he when he was a chain smoker in the past? Plus! Unlike the old world’s cigarette, this thing is actually beneficial to the body. He could already feel his body becoming lighter and his mind clearer. Could he truly quit after this? Impossible.

“So where did you get these from?”

“We asked Mr. Gonzales to bring them.”

“I thought I was unconscious for 3 days? The supply s.h.i.+p only comes once every 2 days, so the time doesn’t seem to match there. The day I got hit by the knife wasn’t the day the supply s.h.i.+p comes either. So how did you do it?”

“Mazelan Sunbaenim helped us for that. He personally authorized these goods to be transported for emergency purposes, disregarding the original time schedule so Mr. Gonzales could pick them up on his own.”

“Well, man. If he’s helping me out already, I’ll have a harder time getting his help later in the future.”

It must have been possible for Mazelan who worked in the Capital’s Department of Supplies. He was a valuable a.s.set for the department since he was selected from the College to be one of the managers. His royal status must have helped in some ways as well.

“But what about the money for this?”

The bundle that Kunette gave to Isaac held about 100 leaves in total. It wasn’t that significant of an amount of money for Isaac, but there was no way Kunette or Reisha held that much money themselves.

“Eheh, the truth is we didn’t have any money on ourselves. So we just gave the safe that was in your room to Mr. Gonzales so that he can give it to Mazelan Sunbaenim.”

“…!”

That safe held Isaac’s entire savings; an estimated 20000 Giga was stored in it. Would Mazelan give back the change to Isaac? Probably in an emergency, but he’ll most likely slowly leak it back to Isaac like drops of water from a faucet that wasn’t shut off properly and tease Isaac with it for a long time while nothing else was happening.

Meanwhile, Reisha seemed to be expecting some words of praise, her eyes wide with antic.i.p.ation like that of a puppy.

“Do I have to quit smoking now…?”

Isaac knew that wasn’t happening any time soon.

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