The dean of Vitlil Medical College, Sir Eddie Lante, called the guards and had them throw out the pair of girls who claimed to be sisters but looked nothing alike.
“You girls either don’t understand the Osnabrock language or you don’t understand human speech?”
Speaking in the accent unique to the upper class, he adjusted the monocle on his nose bridge. Sir Eddie Lante stood loftily on the second-floor corridor of Vitlil Medical College, hands clasped behind his back, and sneered down at them. “Haven’t I said it many times already? You’re women. Women who want to study medicine can only become nurses!”
“If you aren’t willing to be nurses, then get out of Vitlil Medical College! This isn’t a playground for girls like you who lack perseverance and patience, can’t even understand human speech, and have no proper upbringing! Or are you causing this disturbance here just to get noticed by these promising young gentlemen?”
“If that’s your scheme, forgive my rudeness, but you’re worth even less than street whores. At least street whores know how to cater to men’s tastes, while you’re just hindering the gentlemen’s studies!”
“Snort.” “Snort.” The sounds drifted out from classrooms all around. Gloria and Cinderella were grabbed by the medical college guards and dragged outside.
They watched helplessly as the doors of the medical college building slowly closed before their eyes. The last words they heard from Sir Eddie Lante were:
“Get out! You filthy women!”
Gloria couldn’t understand it. She just wanted to study medicine—how had she become a “filthy woman”? Just because the medical college was full of men? Just because, after studying nursing courses, she refused to become a nurse who could only learn basic care procedures without access to the latest medical techniques?
But why could women only become nurses?
…No, if nurses could learn advanced medical techniques too, being a nurse wouldn’t be so bad. But why did Vitlil Medical College’s nursing program only teach trivial things like bandaging superficial wounds, taking patients’ temperatures, recognizing medicine names, and recording them? What they cultivated here weren’t really “nurses” but specialized maids for doctors and medical students—on call, hardworking, and complaint-free!
“Sorry, Rela… It’s all because of me that you got kicked out too.”
Cinderella shook her head as she supported Gloria. “This isn’t Senior Sister Lia’s fault.”
She had been insulted with the same ugly words from Sir Eddie Lante, yet Cinderella felt far less hurt than Gloria. After all, there was another soul in her body. Kim Hora cursed people far less subtly than Sir Eddie Lante—when she splashed cold water on someone, it was ten times dirtier.
Sensing that she had unknowingly been tempered by Kim Hora into having an ironclad heart, Cinderella thought of “a blessing in disguise” and suddenly realized that Kim Hora, who usually loved to mock her during her misfortunes and kick her when she was down, hadn’t said a word today.
‘—?’
Feeling Cinderella’s confusion, Kim Hora rolled her eyes irritably.
What was wrong with this Cinderella? She ignored the scolding usually, but now that she wasn’t bothering to curse her, Cinderella put on a puzzled face. Did she want to be cursed? What kind of masochistic hobby was that?
‘That dumbass principal is a real chauvinist pig-brain. Gets a bit of power and starts dick-swinging like an idiot. Thinks he’s so upper-class? Just a pure dumbass frog in a well. If I were cursing today, it’d be him a motherfucking… What, you expect me to curse you? I’ve already cursed everything you deserved.’
‘—“What’s the point of a woman learning all that? After marriage, you’ll just be at home popping out kids and raising them. You studying medicine is a total waste of money, youth, beauty, time, and energy!” I’ve said shit like that to you how many times? You don’t listen, and now you want more? You think I’m an idiot, or do you just like getting cursed?’
Cinderella didn’t fully understand Kim Hora’s curses at Sir Eddie Lante—the really filthy ones she didn’t even want to. Out of habit, she automatically skipped the cursing parts and summarized what Kim Hora meant.
“…So, you’ve given up trying to stop me from studying medicine, right?”
Kim Hora was speechless for a moment. Only after a while did she toss out, “Waste your life however you want! I’m not wasting my effort on something pointless anymore!” Then she went silent and ignored Cinderella.
The reason Cinderella was so close to her half-sister now, the reason they got along well enough to want to study medicine together, was simply that the prince hadn’t appeared yet. The foolish Cinderella had no idea how quickly so-called sisterly bonds could shatter over a man.
Kim Hora told herself: She was done cursing Cinderella’s blockhead because she wanted to watch the comedy of Cinderella turning against her two half-sisters over a man. It wasn’t because she had been even slightly moved… Hah, a villainess like her, with a heart of stone and eyes only on climbing up, how could she still harbor any shred of kindness?
—She absolutely didn’t pity watching Cinderella and her half-sisters bump into walls everywhere in this patriarchal society. A smart person like her would never foolishly abandon the easy path like Cinderella and smash headfirst into a wall marked “No Entry.”
…
Ye Tang had just sat down and sipped half a cup of tea brewed by Hope when she heard Gloria and Cinderella return from Vitlil Medical College.
In this era, nobles saw work as shameful. Lawyers, doctors, and news editors were middle-class professions. Only a few nobles treated middle-class jobs as hobbies or specialties to dabble in.
During winter, the upper class mostly reveled indoors in warmth. Places like medical colleges, where middle-class people gathered, only had a one-and-a-half-month winter break. The courses were intense; even local medical students often chose to live in the dorms. Nursing courses mainly trained obedience, with relatively little content but long class hours.
At this time of day, Gloria and Cinderella were usually still at the medical college. Seeing them suddenly, Ye Tang immediately knew something had gone wrong there.
Her mother’s questioning tone was even, but the pressure around her made it impossible for Gloria to lie. Stammering together with Cinderella, she told Ye Tang how Sir Eddie Lante had kicked them out of the medical college. Gloria waited for Ye Tang to scold her.
—She hadn’t just defied the teachers but the dean himself, Sir Eddie Lante, who reportedly held a title. It was all too easy for nobles to make trouble for commoners. Even if their family had some money, offending a noble meant not even their heads were enough to chop off. Though her mother rarely lost her temper lately, Gloria had caused such huge trouble today—her mother couldn’t possibly not be angry.
“I see…”
Ye Tang did feel a bit angry as she set her teacup on the saucer. But not at Gloria or Cinderella.
“So, are you giving up on studying medicine?”
“If you don’t, you’ll get cursed like this again. And by more people, with even uglier words.”
A doctor inevitably had to interact with patients. Not only would Gloria and Cinderella struggle to find a place that allowed them to study medicine, but once they became doctors, people would gossip about them endlessly.
With narcissistic patients, even a simple check-up from Gloria or Cinderella might be misinterpreted as interest in him, as some kind of hint.
Those women who prided themselves on being “pure and chaste,” who couldn’t even tolerate sharing a roof or serving the same master with a woman pregnant out of wedlock, would do everything to ostracize Gloria and Cinderella—despite the sisters having done nothing wrong, touching men’s bodies only for professional needs.
Yet female doctors couldn’t treat only female patients. Otherwise, male patients would accuse them of discriminating against men, depriving them of examination and treatment rights. If the discrimination charge stuck, Gloria and Cinderella could end up on the gallows.
In this era, aiming to be a female doctor was like targeting battlefield journalist in later times—it required the courage to place one’s life second, third… or even further back in priorities.
“I… don’t want to give up!”
Gloria gritted her teeth; her two small fists clenched tightly at her sides trembled.
“Dia is still tormented by illness! I don’t want to be powerless on the sidelines anymore, unable to do anything!”
Cinderella smiled faintly. “Just getting cursed? I’m not afraid. …I’m more afraid of being useless, of watching someone important to me slip away while I can only stand by.”
The image of her birth mother on her deathbed flashed before her eyes. Thinking Claudia might fade away just as quietly in bed, Cinderella nearly couldn’t stop her own trembling.
Ye Tang glanced from the corner of her eye at Claudia, who was coming down the stairs wrapped in clothes.
Claudia’s condition had improved since the day before yesterday. But fearing a relapse, Ye Tang hadn’t immediately shared the good news with Gloria and Cinderella, lest they get their hopes up too soon and crumble if complications arose later.
“What if I said Claudia has fully recovered?”
Claudia was touched by her sisters to the point of reddened eyes. Seeing her descend the stairs, Gloria and Cinderella both froze, then Gloria bolted to her like a startled rabbit, with Cinderella right behind.
Claudia had lost a lot of weight, but her eyes shone brightly. Gloria wanted to hug her sister but feared the beauty before her was an illusion; she hesitated to reach out. Cinderella took her hand and Claudia’s, stacking them together. Only then did Gloria confirm the living, breathing Claudia stood there.
“Dia…!!”
Gloria let out a wail and burst into tears. Claudia hugged the sobbing Gloria in her arms and opened her arms to Cinderella.
Cinderella waved shyly, but Ye Tang pushed her from behind, sending her tumbling into Claudia’s embrace.
“Sorry for worrying you…”
Rubbing her sisters’ little heads, Claudia gazed at Ye Tang with tears streaming down.
Ye Tang went over, hugged her, and kissed her forehead. “Good thing you pulled through, my darling. My dear.”
The mother and daughters cried and laughed, fussing for quite a while. Hearing her mother’s question, Claudia this time spoke on her behalf, posing the soul-searching question to her sisters again: “I’ve recovered. Do you still plan to study medicine?”
Gloria and Cinderella exchanged a glance.
“I’ll study! I want to!”
“Even with Big Sister Dia better, I still want to study medicine!”
Violet-pink eyes and emerald eyes burned with the same stubborn passion. Gloria and Cinderella couldn’t say if it was refusal to bow to the rule that “women can’t be doctors,” or to prove that detestable dean Sir Eddie Lante wrong. Perhaps both, or perhaps neither mattered that much. They just wanted to walk the path they’d chosen, to see how far and how long they could go.
Ye Tang loved the sight of light in girls’ eyes. Gloria and Cinderella before her were both adorable and heartbreaking.
“In that case, I’ll pay a visit to Vitlil Medical College.”
“I’m quite interested in meeting that Sir Eddie Lante.”
And give that bastard a beating while she’s at it.