“……Mother, you should rest a little.”
Cinderella brought over a small basin of warm water to Ye Tang, letting her wipe her face.
“I’m fine. Now is not the time to rest.”
Ye Tang, with a massive bruise under her eye, smiled and placed the wet towel by the basin.
“But your complexion—”
Cinderella was truly too worried about Ye Tang.
When Ye Tang had returned, the moon was already high in the sky, yet she still wanted to continue writing letters.
Before the Hedelin Medical Team arrived in Bastia, they had been subjected to Pulheli’s human flesh cannon fodder attacks, and over forty percent of Bastia’s population had already been infected with the Spanish Flu.
The elderly who fell ill first in the city had not one survivor from the torment of high fever, diarrhea, and headaches; they all died one after another.
The next to fall ill were the children.
To separate the infected from the healthy and prevent the army from catching the Spanish Flu, the young and strong men proposed throwing the children into mud pits to fend for themselves.
But how could the women, as mothers, tolerate their children being tossed into mud pits to die? Many women snatched their children back from the mud pits and took them home, barricading the doors and refusing to open them, willing to die together with their children. Some women, upon discovering they themselves had caught the Spanish Flu while caring for their children, walked straight into the mud pits, holding their children and waiting for the Death God to take mother and child away together.
In just half a month, Bastia had lost over a thousand people. But for a city of medium-to-large size, this was already a quite minimal cost.
After the Hedelin Medical Team arrived, the forty-one members immediately split into different squads to carry out their tasks. Claudia’s squad was responsible for correcting everyone’s mask-wearing habits in Bastia. Gloria’s squad began instructing people on disinfecting masks and making new ones from available materials. Cinderella’s squad headed to the military camp to disinfect and bandage the wounded. Charlotte’s squad started procuring supplies.
Ye Tang was a squad by herself. She negotiated with the governor, hoping to use the winery to produce alcohol.
The winery owner had fled with his wife and children the day before Pulheli’s army arrived, abandoning the winery. Over ninety percent of the winery workers were young and strong men, who were quickly conscripted into the ranks defending Bastia. The winery had shut down as a result, and even dust had gathered on the machines.
The “winery people” the governor’s subordinates found for Ye Tang were a fourteen-year-old boy and a woman in her fifties.
The boy was an apprentice who hadn’t yet graduated from the winery. His constitution was tough; though he had contracted the Spanish Flu, he survived it. The woman wasn’t a formal winery employee; like the other women, she only handled miscellaneous chores. For example, picking weeds and chaff from the grain used for brewing. Or stuffing the grain for brewing into the distilling machines.
In this era when distilling equipment wasn’t fully automated, many brewing operations could only be done by hand. Though both were familiar with the process of making distilled liquor, neither had the confidence to actually produce a bottle of it.
Moreover, the two couldn’t operate all the machines. And what Ye Tang wanted wasn’t ordinary distilled liquor, but alcohol with a proof exceeding fifty degrees.
The governor clearly wouldn’t lend her any young and strong men to make alcohol. After leaving the governor, Ye Tang immediately asked the woman to take her to find other women who had previously worked at the winery.
Ye Tang spent a great deal of time explaining the importance of alcohol to the women workers, earnestly requesting them to return to the winery. She promised them alcohol as compensation.
Ye Tang’s proposal was a complete godsend for the women workers—during wartime, money was as useless as waste paper. Only tangible supplies were real payment. Alcohol could curb the Spanish Flu and was a consumable that one could never have too much of. Whether kept for personal use or bartered for food or money, it was excellent hard currency.
But the women workers didn’t believe that Ye Tang, a newcomer, would honor her promises.
So Ye Tang went to the governor once more. She had him stand in for the fled winery owner and sell her the winery at a rock-bottom price. After obtaining the deed to the winery, she gathered the women workers again and showed them proof of ownership.
—The winery owner fleeing Bastia meant he had abandoned his property, so the governor did have the right to reclaim ownership. Ye Tang needed ownership to win the workers’ trust; without workers, the winery couldn’t operate. Without operation, there would be no alcohol. Without alcohol, the medical team couldn’t perform sterilization and disinfection. Without that, the Spanish Flu couldn’t be contained.
There was another crucial point: if Bastia successfully defended against Pulheli, the winery owner might return. If Ye Tang didn’t hold the deed, he could bite her back, demanding fees for use, materials, and other damages.
Ye Tang didn’t want to leave such a loophole for someone to backstab her.
Admittedly, this wasn’t fair to the winery owner, as he got not a penny. But if Bastia failed to hold, forget the winery—whether Bastia would still be called Bastia afterward was uncertain.
The women workers didn’t know Ye Tang had acquired the winery for next to nothing. Seeing the ownership deed, they began to be tempted by her terms.
The beginning is always the hardest. Ye Tang believed that once the machines started and the women got their alcohol payment, more would flock to the winery.
Ensuring the winery could run wasn’t enough. Distilled liquor was made from grain, and in wartime, grain was a critical military supply with strictly restricted uses.
The half-finished materials left in the winery weren’t enough for sustained alcohol production. Ye Tang still needed to secure grain.
She began to pick up her pen and write letters.
“……”
Unable to dissuade Ye Tang, Cinderella went out to find Claudia and Gloria, hoping her big sisters could convince their mother. Who knew that Claudia’s voice had been overused for days, damaging her vocal cords so she couldn’t speak. Gloria was so exhausted that she fell asleep while sewing masks in her chair.
Heartbroken, Cinderella covered Gloria with a blanket. Not wanting to burden Claudia further, she stepped out of the low hut, gazed up at the new moon in the sky, and wiped the tears from the corner of her eye.
She slapped her cheeks hard with both hands. Hearing the Pa! sound, Cinderella felt the stinging pain on her face.
She let out a light breath.
Don’t cry.
Don’t cry, Cinderella.
With the time and energy for crying, you should do more helpful things for people, like Mother and your sisters!
Clenching her fists and raising them toward the moon, Cinderella was about to return to Ye Tang when she heard a commotion nearby.
—Probably thinking night offered an advantage, Pulheli’s army always launched attacks at night. Every evening, Bastia endured two or three waves of corpse catapults.
In recent days, with guidance from the Hedelin Medical Team, Bastia’s soldiers handled the corpses flung over the walls with practiced ease, no longer panicking as before.
Cinderella thought the commotion would soon pass. But it not only didn’t, it grew louder.
What was going on?
Instinctively, Cinderella headed toward the source of the disturbance.
Ye Tang heard it too. She set down her steel pen, opened the door, and walked out.
“—This is the enemy! Do you understand what ‘enemy’ means!?”
A soldier bellowed aggressively at a member of the Hedelin Medical Team.
“I know what you’re trying to say! But is this the time to talk about ‘enemy’ or not!?”
The lady, intimidated by the soldier, didn’t back down. Noel, once the third daughter of a baron’s family, stood in front of the boy soldier flung into the city by the catapult and roared back at the aggressive Bastia soldier: “This person is still alive! He’s still breathing!”
Just now, Pulheli’s army had started hurling corpses again. This surviving boy soldier had been mixed in with a pile of bodies and thrown in.
It was clear the boy soldier was infected with the Spanish Flu; his nose was a mess from runny discharge, he was burning with fever, twitching or shivering faintly. He was still breathing only because the surrounding corpses had cushioned him, and being small and light, he luckily hadn’t been smashed to death.
“Get out of my way! I’m a soldier! My duty is to kill enemies!”
The Bastia soldier raised his rifle butt at Noel, clearly intending to strike her too if she didn’t move.
“Then saving people is my duty and mission!”
Noel spread her arms wide, refusing to budge: “I don this white garb to save people!”
He had thought joining the battlefield would bring chances for merit and escape his lowborn status. But after real war began, it was endless wall-guarding, without a single chance to kill an enemy.
Now, a chance to prove his bravery lay before him. At the same time, fear spread that the enemy would spread the Spanish Flu. The soldier swinging the rifle butt at Noel’s head couldn’t tell if he felt excitement or terror.
“Then go die with the enemy! Anyone helping the enemy is the enemy!”
“Foolishness and arrogance are humanity’s greatest enemies.”
The icy words sliced through the air. In the instant Noel closed her eyes in fear, Ye Tang swung a stick like a baseball bat, directly smashing the soldier’s nose askew.
Dropping the bloodied wooden stick, Ye Tang stepped on the forehead of the soldier, who was gushing nosebleed and trying to crawl up: “Helping the enemy makes one the enemy, right? So you want to kill this female doctor helping Bastia’s people fight the Spanish Flu because you’ve betrayed humanity and are aiding the Spanish Flu’s rampage?”
“!?”
The soldier started in shock, but Ye Tang’s foot on his forehead pressed harder.
“Every beast who kills doctors, nurses, and medical staff deserves to die. Do you know why?”
“I-I…”
The soldier clutched his endlessly bleeding nose, suddenly trembling like a chick in an eagle’s claws.
“Because every doctor, every nurse, every medical worker could have saved more people. Those who didn’t get medical aid, those who died because aid came too late… Aren’t they indirectly slaughtered by the beasts who kill doctors and nurses? They all had a chance to live—as long as there was one more doctor, one more nurse, one more medic to staunch their bleeding—”
Under the dim moonlight, amid the flickering firelight, the white-clad lady looked like a female warrior in silver-soft armor.
She was utterly ungently, her purple eyes emitting a ruthlessly cold gaze. But her majestic posture made even stepping on a man’s head while speaking evoke no disgust.
“What are you lot standing around for? Take this thing away!”
Releasing the soldier’s forehead, now bearing a shoeprint, Ye Tang frowned and ordered the stunned surrounding soldiers to carry off the one whose nose she had smashed: “I told you to wear your masks properly. Are you unafraid of the Spanish Flu, or so confident your vitality won’t lose to it? Noel must have reminded you. If you fall, that’s on you.”
The soldiers froze, then hurriedly put on their masks.
Ye Tang helped Noel up from the ground, half-reproachful and half-sighing as she said, “Don’t be so reckless in the future. You have to know that if something happens to you, you won’t be able to save the patients you could have saved. Next time something comes up, tell me first.”
“Yes… Yes! Mrs. Hedelin!”
Noel answered lightly, looking not at all like she was reflecting on her actions. Ye Tang could even imagine the sweet smile of the blossoming young girl beneath the mask.
Cinderella, who had arrived a step late, had been watching since the moment Ye Tang swung that stick. The little girl was now covering her face and letting out excited “Woo woo~~” sounds.
‘Mother, so cool!’
The one making strange noises along with Cinderella was a pigeon.
The stunned Cinderella had just begun wondering how a pigeon could make sounds like a human when her mind blurred for a moment.
“—Fian, Hope!”
Where were there any pigeons in front of her? The people right in front of her were clearly the very familiar Fian and Hope!
“It’s been a while, Cinderella.”
Fian waved his hand, while Hope nodded at Cinderella.
“You’re here for Mother?”
Fian smiled. “Yeah.”
Upon hearing this, Cinderella looked knowingly toward Ye Tang, who had pulled Noel up. She quickly ran over to Ye Tang and Noel. “Mother! Leave the patient to me and Noel! Fian and Hope are here! They’re waiting for you!”