X779
The Matron blearily opened her eyes.
It was still dark outside as she got up and stretched her arms. Her arms cracked and popped as she let out a small groan. Certainly, it was much too early, but she didn't even think of complaining. Many people around the world had to get up early after all, and she just happened to be one of them.
With a sense of purpose in her movements, the Matron briskly washed her face and hair, changed out of her sleeping wear, and grabbed the basket she used for grocery shopping before stepping out of the orphanage.
She had to get enough groceries to feed all of the children for the day as well as other essentials such as toiletries. The earlier the better since the markets tended to get glutted with people after the early morning.
Due to the large number of people living in the orphanage, she always needed to buy a lot, but the people in the town were always kind enough to give her generous discounts. Truly, there was still good in the world despite all the dark guilds running around.
After an hour or so, she finished shopping for everything and headed back to the orphanage, shivering as a slight chill came over her.
As she set down the groceries and began preparing breakfast, the Matron covered her mouth as her body was wracked with coughs again. Jerking away from the table so that the fresh ingredients wouldn't be covered with whatever she coughed out.
She slowly took her hand away from her mouth and as she expected, the volume of blood of mucus was beginning to add up, signs that the cough was getting worse with no end in sight. To add on to this already miserable state of affairs, her chest was constantly hurting—no doubt from the ceaseless coughing—she was always tired, and generally very very terrible.
She sighed as she continued cooking. Death from disease didn't sound pleasant, but it wasn't that she was afraid of. What she was truly worried about was leaving the children alone without anyone to take care of them.
The Matron stifled another cough as she swept the floor. She looked at her hand, now speckled with blood and mucus.
Well, this was not good.
She immediately hid her bloody hand behind her.
"Mom, mom!" two kids ran towards her and tried to hug her. The Matron stretched an arm out to prevent them from getting any closer.
"Sorry children, but mother is feeling a little unwell today." She gave an exhausted smile. "I wouldn't want you two to get sick as well."
"Oh… Okay." the pair slouched in disappointment before shooting back up with a smile. "If mom needs help with anything, we can do it!" one of them chirped enthusiastically.
The Matron smiled. "Go have fun, and return when I call you two for breakfast!"
"We will!" The two started running around with the other children in the backyard again, all of them involved in some game of tag.
The display of the children, her children, having fun brought a warm feeling into her heart, one almost warm enough to drive away the chills. With renewed vigor, the Matron thoroughly washed her hands under the running lacrima water, making sure that her hands were clean before continuing with breakfast making.
A frown set itself upon her face. She knew that if she didn't do anything about this soon, the children would be all alone without any warmth, food, shelter, and most importantly, guidance.
As she finished cooking, she thought about who would be the best person to take care of the orphanage, ranging from the butcher in the village to the old farmer on the outskirts. But she knew deep in her heart that none of those people could take care of the children and know them better than she would.
They wouldn't know about the secretly rambunctious Anna, Matthew's mischief brought out by his insecurity, or that under Erigor's cold demeanor was a warm and shy boy, and they certainly wouldn't know that Liliana was much more than just a quiet toddler.
She could feel her chest constrict in another wave of pain. Nobody was good enough to take care of the children other than herself.
She had to get better.
For the sake of the children.
…
Lili's POV
…
Another day, another couple of hours I had to spend socializing before I could go and practice. Since I made a bunch of friends—or acquaintances I suppose would be more accurate—in my scheme to stop Matthew and The Boyz, it would be suspicious if I suddenly reverted back to my old behavior.
Besides, keeping a good relationship with my peers might get me out of sticky situations in the future as well.
But enough on relationships! That was secondary to what I was planning to do today.
After I found out that I could 'see' all the parts of plants a year ago, I was curious on whether I could 'manipulate' the cells I saw.
And as it turned out, I absolutely could! One small step for mankind, and a giant step for me.
How I figured out that I could, started when I saw a potted plant with a broken branch. Seeing as there weren't any ethical consequences with failing, I tried to mend it together. Since everyone told me that visualization was key, I did exactly that and imagined the plant's cells lining up with each other before splitting and filling in the gap where the branch snapped.
To my surprise, that worked. I was sure that it would have been much more difficult than just 'think and it works!' given the amount of difficulty I went through to simply access magic at all.
Just like that, I healed the broken branch.
Just remembering that fact made me giddy with excitement. It was difficult to explain exactly what happened which bothered me a little, but the most I could say was that the cells did what I wanted as long as I could provide the mana.
If I could manipulate plant cells, surely I could do so with animal cells as well? And if I could?
The possibilities were almost endless.
Imagine all the surgeries I could perform just by touching someone. My magic allowed me to comprehend whatever aspect of an organism I focused on, so I would have a perfect view of my patients already. Fifty percent of surgeries were already won by virtue of good vision. But this? This magic I had did that and much more.
If I could control any kind of cell, this meant I could, in theory at least, manipulate white blood cells to attack foreign agents and eradicate them in the span of a few hours at most.
I was almost mind blown. Wasn't I now the walking cure for everything?
There were so many things I could do. Elated at the thought, I jumped around the garden excitedly.
But baby steps. I took a deep breath to calm myself down. It would be bad if I messed up and accidentally gave someone cancer instead of curing them. Therefore, the next logical step would be to practice until I got it down pat.
The reason why I was going to the garden instead of my usual spot under the tree was because of a certain flower that the Matron had once grown.
I looked at the wilted flower in front of me. Flowers were fragile beings and were easily killed by lack of care. Not that I blamed the Matron, she was way too busy taking care of kids who were obviously much more important than flowers.
Now, I didn't know my flowers, so this could either be a peony or a rose or neither. But I knew for sure that this flower had wilted.
Loss of rigidity in the stem, decaying petals, and a loss of color throughout the entire plant. All telltale signs of decay.
Now my homework for today was to try to revive this flower. Thinking back to my high school classes, a shriveled up plant didn't mean it was dead. Rather, the lack of water caused it to lose volume in an attempt to conserve resources.
Of course, if it was dead, I wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Magic was great, but I doubted it could do something like bring the dead to life. With that in mind, my plan was to regrow the living parts and recycle the dead shriveled up bits in the process.
I gently put a hand on the flower, extending my magical sense throughout it. I quickly diagnosed which parts were dead—the 'cells' that I couldn't see—and which parts were alive. I opened my eyes for a moment and took in the shape of the flower.
My sense didn't extend to objects that weren't alive, so the image I received of the plant was somewhat spotty with black spots. Thus, I first needed to memorize how the plant was supposed to look before filling in the negative space with living cells.
After I was confident that I had a general idea of what a healthy flower would look like, I began forcing the cells to undergo mitosis via my magical energy.
As I kept my eyes closed, I focused on the image of a healthy plant. The roots would take water and nutrients from the soil, pass it to the stem, and feed the entire plant with those nutrients. Then more cells will grow and divide and grow and so on.
When I opened my eyes, I saw dead leaves scattered around the soil. It seemed that the flower had cut off the dead parts of the plant and used its remaining energy to focus on regrowing itself.
Furthermore, the soil was noticeably dryer than before. Luckily, I had prepared for this and poured some water into the dirt.
I smiled as my eyes trailed up and saw a green bud at the top of the flower.
"Hell yeah!" I exclaimed happily, "It worked!"
I hugged the potted plant, making sure not to ruin my 'work'.
I gave the bud a small kiss, "Grow healthy and well, missy! I'll make sure to water you every single day!"
Since I now confirmed how my magic worked, a new experiment was in order.
I grinned.
But first, I needed to convince the Matron to let me keep a pet rat.
…
"Please, please, pleaaaaaseeeee!" I begged pitifully.
"No! Absolutely not!" The Matron scowled. "I have no idea why you want one of those horrid creatures, but I will not allow it!"
"But why!"
"Because a rat is a rodent, a pest that eats our food and brings its friends too. There will be no end to them!"
"But I'll keep it in a cage so it won't reproduce!"
The Matron gasped, "How do you know that word, young lady?"
"Uh...A book…?"
"You're only four! You shouldn't read something about…that!" She looked at me as if I had seen the forbidden text or something.
Hm. Seemed that the Matron was a bit of a prude. Well, to each his own, I suppose.
"About what?" I asked innocently with my eyes wide, my grin widening.
"You know exactly what I'm talking about." She hissed.
"I don't know, I'm only five ma'am… would you please kindly explain what you mean?"
"You're impossible!" She threw her hands in the air, "Either way, the answer is no!"
My grin fell. "Then can my next birthday present be a pet rat?"
"Absolutely, not!" The Matron said sternly. "No rodents in this house, now or ever!"
I pouted. "Fiiiiiinnneeeeee." I moaned loudly.
I turned around and left her office. It's not like she will notice if I kept one secretly, right?
"And if I find you hiding a rat anywhere in this house, I will not give you any chocolate for a year." the Matron's voice filtered through the door.
Darn it. I spun around so fast that my neck cracked. "B-But—"
"No buts! You can either have a rat, or you can have chocolate!"
There went my plan of keeping rats secretly. Knowing how meticulous the Matron could be, she would definitely check every nook and crevice of the house to make sure.
If I knew it was going to be like this, I should've just kept my mouth shut and raised one in secret.
Unless…
I hummed to myself as I concocted another idea.
If I kept a rat outside the orphanage, then it wouldn't violate her rules, right? I smiled. Perhaps I could ask Erigor to cage me one.
"Oh and before you leave, if you ask Erigor or any other kid in this house, I will make sure that chocolate will be banned from this orphanage." I jolted as the Matron put a hand on my shoulder from behind. "And I will make sure that everyone knows who's fault it is."
With a sweet smile she continued, "Please close the door for me would you?"
I gulped, "Yes ma'am."
I shouldn't underestimate a woman who had beaten a man black and blue with a bat.
…
I kicked a pebble across the ground and watched it bounce as I sighed to myself.
How should I practice, now that I couldn't work with rodents? I didn't feel comfortable subjecting other animals to test trials, and cadavers wouldn't work give how my magic operated.
Train more with plant cells? I supposed that could work.
But my big idea was to use my magic to heal people so that the last decade or so of medical school and residency weren't a waste. Not to be Poison Ivy.
I squat on the ground, rolling the pebble around in my hand.
Perhaps it was the universe telling me that testing my magic on animals would be unethical. Which it was, but what else was I supposed to do?
If I didn't experiment on animals, how would I know that my magic would work properly on humans? As far as I knew my magic only affected cells, not molecules. I could only manipulate that which was alive.
Then a great idea came to mind. I could just test on myself.
This way, no animals or people would get hurt from mishaps, and there wouldn't be any issues with consent since it'll be my own body after all.
Victory flooded through my veins. Ha! Take that Matron.
I skipped over to the kitchen and found a knife. Carefully, I looked around to make sure no one was around. Wouldn't want anyone thinking I was crazier than they already thought.
I pricked the tip of my right pinky with the knife. A bead of red appeared, and I closed my eyes, focusing on the wound.
Immediately, I noticed how my cells were far more malleable than the plant cells were. They were more receptive to my intent and took much less energy to manipulate. Whether it was because plant cells were just more difficult or if my own cells were easier to handle, I didn't know.
First, the hemostasis. I turned my attention to the red blood cells, making sure that they clumped together and clotted, protecting the wound and preventing further blood loss.
Once the wounds were closed, the blood vessels would open a bit so that nutrients and oxygen went towards the wound for healing. Next, I rushed my macrophage to the area to fight off foreign bacteria and ensure the wound healed properly.
Secondly, I pushed more red blood cells towards the injury, carefully selecting ones that were oxygen rich to help build new tissue. The cells then seemed to send more chemical signals that carried instructions to create collagen, which fell in line with what I wanted.
And lastly, make the tissue stronger.
Within seconds, I saw that my skin was closing itself as if I didn't prick it, and I looked at my pinky in awe. There wasn't even any scarring.
A wound that should have taken a few days to heal was closed in mere seconds. A scar that should have stuck around for months faded away in even fewer.
"I did it…" I whispered to myself in disbelief as my voice slowly grew in volume. "I did it!"
I could control animal cells!
Sure, it could use some refinement, but the number of people that could be saved...!
"Heck yeah!" I raised my arms up high in celebration.
"Lili has a knife!" Someone screamed from behind me, and I immediately jerked away in surprise.
Then I realized that it was Matthew's voice.
"It's not what you think it is." I sighed and explained.
"I know exactly what it is!" Matthew argued with a worried look.
Ah, crap.
Worry started to grow inside me. Did he see me prick my finger? Did he see me hurt myself with a knife? I didn't want to mentally scar the children here with my reckless practicing.
"I'm sorry, so please drop the knife!" He panickedly yelled out.
"Huh?"
He leapt towards me and snatched the knife from my hand. He carefully put it back in the knife rack where it belonged and then dragged me to the dining room where he plopped me on a chair.
Then he started checking my skin, especially my hands.
"I told you it's not what you think—"
"Shut up!" Matthew yelled.
"But—"
"I said shut up!" He started crying, and I was astounded. I never expected Matthew to cry, in front of me no less. "I'm sorry alright?! I'm sorry I bullied you 'cause I was jealous!"
"You're…jealous?" I asked incredulously.
"Yeah! It's 'cause mom always talks and gives stuff to you, a-and I didn't know you were just borrowing. I was being mean, so I'm sorry okay?! I promise I won't do it again, so please don't kill yourself!"
"Um, don't worry about it." I awkwardly patted his hand. I didn't really like Matthew, but I did feel sorry for putting him through a traumatizing situation even though it was a misunderstanding. A little white lie was necessary. "I was just trying to cut an apple."
"A-Apple?" Matthew looked confused as he stopped sobbing.
"Yeah!" I lied convincingly as I could, "I ate it already."
"Oh…" Matthew nodded. "Sorry for grabbing you then."
"Mhm!" I nodded. "I told you it's not what you think."
Matthew started blushing, clearly embarrassed that he had assumed the worst. "Good!"
"Mhm!" I nodded again, "The apple was very tasty."
"S-Shut up!" He fled from the room.
But before he left, I called out to him, "Matthew nii-chan!"
He stopped in his tracks and turned around, "W-What!"
"I forgive you. And make sure you keep your promise!"
The boy turned even redder and started running away.
Cute.
Kids will be kids, I suppose. I hope that this would be a learning moment for him.
…
