Aurora Over a Dead World

"You seem really tense, Edith. Is something wrong? You can tell me. I won’t tell the higher-ups if you’re badmouthing them," Charlotte asks Edith after finishing her conversation with Nadir and finding Edith again. She hadn’t known Edith would be here too until she ran into her earlier.

However, she thought Edith was acting a little different than usual. She’s normally more talkative, with a more playful and lively expression. Charlotte thought she was dissatisfied with Nadir, but even now, away from the others, she still has that same expression.

"Come on, talking to me isn’t going to hurt you. We’re all colleagues, right? And we’ve got some free time. Work doesn’t start until tomorrow because the people who were already here will be adjusting the routines. So if you’re feeling bad about something, talking to me might help." Charlotte follows Edith to her room.

"...Haa... okay... just don’t tell the others." Edith lets out an exhausted sigh and eventually gives in because she needs someone to talk to about everything. As soon as Charlotte enters, Edith locks the door and sits down on the floor, putting a hand over her head from the stress as she lets out a long sigh. Charlotte sits in a chair and waits for her to say something.

"..." Charlotte seems to realize that it’s more serious than she thought because not only does Edith say nothing for several minutes, but her expression also seems to grow dejected. This makes Charlotte’s expression become more serious.

"Something wrong?" Charlotte drops her more casual tone, feeling that treating the situation casually would be a bad idea. Edith gives Charlotte a brief sideways glance before opening her mouth to speak.

"...The medical team is terrible..." Edith vents in an extremely tired tone. After working on the medical team for a month and two weeks, she’s already exhausted by everything involving her job.

"Did they bully you or something? If someone hit you, I can—" Charlotte immediately assumes that Edith was bullied.

"No! No!! It would’ve been so much better if they had hit me or bullied me!!! But that’s not it. I was accepted into the medical team without any problems!! The problem is the work!! I hate working on the medical team!" Edith speaks in a loud voice.

"The work is terrible in a way that’s almost impossible to describe!! It’s nothing like I thought it would be... the healing powers are disgusting, horribly disgusting. It’s repulsive to see how they work, and people come in with horrific injuries every single day." Healing powers of various kinds can’t create things out of nothing.

So, because they depend on biological vectors, they’re visually horrifying to watch in action.

"H-Hahaha, I think I’ve seen more corpses in one week than I have in my entire life on television!!! Three days ago, I had to treat a girl whose head had been split open. You could see her brain!! And the worst part was my colleague’s power being used in that situation."

"It was disgusting to watch the wound close. I felt sick and ran to the bathroom to throw up after I finished helping. And on top of that, all the girls are super paranoid!"

"When I tried flirting with one of them, she threw a knife into my arm!! Even though she apologized for it and seemed hurt that she’d injured me, it’s still something that’s reflective of most of them!!!" Edith’s expression is extremely disappointed. Not only was the job nothing like she expected, but the girls aren’t what she expected either.

"I can’t even try flirting!!! Living with the medical team is a complete hell. Everything reeks of blood—the people, the common areas, the dormitories. Dead people are commonplace, and horrific wounds are something I have to treat all the time."

"And the atmosphere is completely insane!! There are patients who have panic attacks or other problems, and since most of them have powers, that itself becomes a problem. To deal with that, the medical team is taught to knock out any ’threat’ as quickly as possible or defend themselves, even if they hurt the ’patient’ in the process."

"But that means even carelessly touching someone from behind can trigger a reaction from members of the team. There are only two moments of peace!!"

"When they’re sleeping, or when they’re eating in the cafeteria!! And I saw the cook putting medication in the food that I’m almost certain is some kind of sedative!!" Thanks to Edith’s powers, she was able to tell to some extent.

"Everyone is constantly under maximum tension. It’s nothing like what I thought a medical team would be!! E-Even though the teacher explained that it was difficult and that members of the medical team also went into combat."

"M-Maybe I didn’t know it would be this much of a hell!! I literally reek of blood right now!! No matter how many times I shower, there are so many injured people I have to take care of that I can’t get the smell off me."

"Besides, they don’t let me just make medicine. Because the medical team is understaffed, they require everyone to work on all kinds of things. So while I’m responsible for producing medicine, I still have to assist with surgeries and other things at the same time." Every person on the medical team has to perform far more functions than they normally should, which is exhausting and difficult.

"No matter how important this job is, I don’t like it anymore... and I can’t even leave now that I’ve already chosen it..." Edith vents in a tired and exhausted voice. She doesn’t deny that it’s an important job, but it’s far more mentally exhausting than she ever imagined it would be.

"...But isn’t it safer? Doesn’t it have any advantages? There can’t possibly be only bad things, right?" Charlotte tries to get Edith to see the positive sides that must exist.

"...It’s a little safer than the battlefield, but it’s not better... It’s easy to see more people dying in the medical area than on the battlefield. In one month of service, I had to embalm and pack up more than 50 dead soldiers!! And that’s because I’m an assistant!! I’m just a helper!!!"

"The only advantages are that it’s a little safer—and not by that much, because a panicked patient can attack us unintentionally or lash out during an episode—and the money. I make an absurd amount even as an assistant, and I heard that higher positions earn almost ten times as much as a commander. But money doesn’t help at all when the place is fucking with our minds!!"

"It’s an exhausting, disgusting, time-consuming job that’s still considered the bare minimum. Anyone above an assistant has to do much more than that! On top of that, my boss is unbearable! She only talks by shouting." Edith hates her boss, not because she does anything bad. Overall, she’s actually fairly kind, but her attitude would irritate anyone.

"I know there’s a reason for it. The place is noisy, and if she doesn’t shout, there’s no way she can command the team. But she shouts so much, and her voice is so damn irritating that it makes me want to be deaf whenever I have to listen to her talk."

"Sometimes I’m standing right next to her somewhere that’s completely quiet, and she still shouts!! And whenever she shouts, several of the people nearby shudder because everyone is already on edge. So it’s unpleasant. There are days when I’m sleeping and suddenly I hear her yelling at someone, which makes me wake up." Edith herself has already noticed that her body has started trembling whenever her boss shouts near her.

"...That..." Charlotte doesn’t know what to say. Her own job isn’t nearly as stressful as this. Even though it takes a long time to get done, the vice commander Charlotte assists is very responsible, and the work is divided between the commander, vice commander, and herself, which ends up breaking the workload down and making it much less exhausting.

"..." Charlotte stays quiet. The silence in the room is uncomfortable as Charlotte struggles to decide what to say. She tries hard to think of a response, but it’s a situation she can’t fully understand because she hasn’t experienced it herself.

And Edith knows she can’t leave. There is no such thing as resigning. Under the army’s current circumstances, if they were ordinary soldiers, they could leave. But as Kairas, they can’t. No one with powers can resign. They can only retire for certain reasons or be removed from service.

"Do you need some time off? I can say you’re sick, so you wouldn’t have to go to work for at least a day..."

"...No... you don’t have to... just, don’t tell anyone about this... especially Professor Zenith... I don’t need her sarcastic comments about this..." Edith makes it clear that she doesn’t want help. She only spoke up to vent.

"...All right, I won’t tell anyone, and I won’t do anything about it either. If you ever need to talk to me, you can always let me know." Charlotte does everything she can, which is leave the door open for another conversation.

"Okay... can you leave now? I’ve already told you what I wanted to say."

"Of course..." Charlotte approaches the door, opens it, and leaves in somewhat of a hurry, feeling a little strange about what she has discovered and heard.