Page 16 of The Tainted and the Tamed
“It’s nothing I can discuss. My patients deserve privacy, Chairman.”
“Just tell me this,” Haruki said, a high note of pleading in his low voice. “Is it something you are able to treat?”
Setouchi squinted at him. “Isshethe one? The new maid—she’s the one who has caught your eye?”
Haruki forced himself to maintain a stern affect, though he feared he was as transparent as a cold mountain stream. “Can you help her?”
“A little,” Setouchi admitted. “But not as much as she requires. I’m afraid she’s all too typical for a former factory worker.”
She worked at a factory before this?Perhaps that was the mystery smell. Machine oil and acids—and that trace of smoky, acrid aroma all city dwellers carried with them.
“Will she survive it?” Haruki asked the physician.
“Attacks may arise swiftly. I’ve done what I can to reduce their possibility, to soothe the inflammation in her airways. I’ve also prescribed diluted oils for her to breathe in. I’m sure you’ll catch their scent. They can be quite potent, even to a human nose.”
Haruki waited a fraction of a second too long to say “Hmm” in reply. Setouchi shot him a forbidding look.
“What are you plotting?”
“Nothing.”
“Chairman.”
“Vampire ichor has been known to have healing properties.”
“For vampires.”
“For humans, too.”
Setouchi eyed him sternly. “That’s highly unscientific, and almost assuredly a rumor.”
Haruki turned away, unwilling to meet the doctor’s gaze. “If there’s a chance I can undo even a little of the damage done to her by this industrial plague, I owe her that.”
“Because she interests you?”
“No,” Haruki answered quickly, “because I’m a chairman, and I’m responsible for the polluted mess this country’s become. It’s literally the least I can do.”
“Then perhaps you should consider doing more. For the country, not for your new maid.”
“Not a psychoanalytic psychologist,” Haruki reminded him.
“Certainly not.” Setouchi made a noise of disdain. “But I am something like a friend.”
Haruki held in a wince. Deep down, he knew it was impossible for someone beholden to him to be his friend. He wished it could be so.
Haruki rose abruptly. “Send along more herbal medicine for me—tonight, if possible. And give Momoko my regards.”
“Such a considerate monster,” Setouchi said under his breath.
With nothing further than a slightly raised brow, Haruki took his leave.
Chapter 8
Murasaki
Murasaki emerged from the room Ms. Tanabe had set aside for her prescribed treatments in a cloud of potent smells: peppermint, eucalyptus and bitter orange, each added by dropper into a kettle of hot water. They clung to her hair and skin long after she left the room. This was a ritual Murasaki carefully went through each and every night for the past two weeks.
Ms. Tanabe always left the kettle waiting for her, along with a towel used to keep in the steam. She could not be sure whether it was this or the end of typhoon season, but Murasaki’s nighttime troubles were finally easing.
