Krafft's Notes on Anomalies

"Craft, Kraft, are you there?"

Liston held a stack of medical records and knocked on the occupied professor's room. He tapped his knuckles on the thick solid fir wood, making a dull echo.

A vague echo came from the other side of the corridor, as if another door had been visited at the same time, and an invisible visitor was walking with him. The architectural style of the college is based on the church. The building has many long corridors and rooms, with winding and spiral passages and stairs in between, which also inherits the effect of open space and echo.

The lights of St. Simon's Church are always lit, hymns are chanted, and nature echoes layer by layer, which is extraordinary and holy. But moving to the college seemed too large and inappropriate. Every time at dawn and at night, when there were fewer people, the echoes changed far and near, as if someone was following them, and when they turned around, it was empty again, creating the opposite atmosphere.

Liston didn't like this kind of atmosphere. It always made him think of some ghost legends floating in his subconscious, especially when he left alone after an autopsy in the middle of the night. He was distracted and took the wrong path. The echo came from behind and could take his hand. The tool was scared to the ground.

Except for the necessary lectures, most of the time was spent in the clinic outside. Unless he was dissecting with Kalman, he would not be willing to stay in the academy. If Lucius hadn't come for two days in a row, he wouldn't have come in person in the evening.

There was no response from behind the door, and he hesitated for a while. He knew that Kraft was very busy, and sometimes he might fall asleep at the table. If that was the case, it would be the wrong time.

Just as Liston was hesitating, the door was suddenly opened from the inside, and a brown-haired head poked out from behind the door. It was Lucius.

"Lecturer Liston?" Lucius stepped aside, let Liston in, and closed the door behind him, "Please come in, you came just in time."

Liston put down the medical records on the table. The manuscripts on the table had not been cleared away, and the person who was supposed to be sitting on the chair was not here either. He turned around to ask about Kraft's whereabouts, but saw Lucius bolting the door, with a hint of nervousness in his expression, and asked the question he wanted to ask.

"Have you met Lecturer Kraft?"

"What?" Liston was confused. If there is anyone in the college who should know the answer to this question, it is definitely Lucius himself, not him, a lecturer who has been away for a long time.

I came today to hand over the medical records with detailed information in the new format. Unexpectedly, I was robbed of my words as soon as I walked in. I was not prepared for this puzzling question.

Based on the conversation two days ago, he still vaguely guessed what might have happened, "You guys really went to the salt tide area?"

"Yes, we confirm that a well in the salt tide area is contaminated, but we are not sure why."

"Then what? Don't tell me that Kraft is missing inside." This is the most likely possibility that Liston can think of, but in this case there is no need to close the door and tell him alone. According to his long-term experience in communicating with patients, this means that the key has not been found.

The manuscript on the table has not been sorted yet, and there is still half a page left to be continued, as if that person will soon open the door and continue working at the desk.

"No, of course not. Kraft came out together. We originally agreed to go before noon today, but it's already evening..." Lucius unconsciously rubbed the leather of the beak mask in his hand and walked back and forth in the room. Move around.

Something is wrong, this description is completely inconsistent with the expression of restlessness and nervousness. Liston pulled up a chair and sat down, assuming a conversational posture. He concluded that this kid must have only spoken half of his words, and the hidden half was not simple.

Kraft has always been a rigorous person and would not let others go, but he was so anxious after missing an appointment. Who could he lie to by making things so simple?

He pulled out another chair and gave it to Lucius, sat down on his shoulders, and took the beak mask that was about to be rubbed. What I was thinking about was what was going on. There was something that I had to hide from other people, not even myself.

"Lucius, did I do anything wrong? To make you distrust me so much." Liston stared into Lucius's eyes and looked at him, as if forcing a patient who was concealing his travel history to tell the truth.

"Of course not." Lucius quickly denied, avoiding his eyes. This guilty move could not be hidden from Liston's eyes.

"Well, I can't help you if you're like this. If Kraft just misses the appointment for half a day, I suggest you wait until tomorrow. After all, who doesn't have something urgent?"

It was impossible to force Lucius to speak out through his status as a lecturer. Liston knew very well that if he put some pressure on him and then said that he did not want to participate, Lucius' inner uneasiness and desire to express would make him take the initiative to find someone to share the situation with.

Liston did not get up, but leaned back in the chair and looked at Lucius with a troubled expression, "If there is nothing else, I will go back first. When I see Kraft, remember to remind him that I have brought a rewritten medical record. "

Lucius crossed his fingers, almost twisting them into knots, and squeezed out a few words from his mouth, "We have made some strange discoveries."

"Um?"

"It's impossible for him not to come. We found that it might be a problem with a water well, causing the surrounding residents to wake up later and later." After opening his mouth to talk, Lucius seemed to relax a little, and it was hard to hold this matter to himself. It's uncomfortable.

"What is the specific problem? The baker I met here will not go to the salt tide area to fetch water."

Liston had a bad premonition that his case had become a small hole through which Kraft could see something extraordinary, and it seemed to be a big bad thing.

"Craft insisted that there was a relationship. He... behaved a little strangely." Lucius found a template in Kraft's words to describe Kalman, and it was just right to apply it to Kraft himself.

There are relationships? Liston's heart sank. It was due to the increased sleep time and difficulty in waking up. If there was a relationship, he immediately thought of Lucius's earliest conjecture, which was also the conjecture that Kraft and he were least supportive of at first.

Lucius didn't know that he had almost revealed the secret with just a few words, and he was still thinking about how to avoid the black liquid as much as possible.

He saw Liston frown and blurted out a question that went straight to the core, "Is it Chengming? Why is it Chengming?"

Lucius' expression changed drastically and he panicked, and then he realized that as long as he said it, he couldn't hide it from Liston.

Seeing his reaction, Liston knew that he had almost guessed it right. He looked at the large pile of medical records on the table and took a breath, thinking that he had performed so many surgeries using clearing, and the pile of all the cases would probably be at least three times the size here.

"I don't know. He just stayed by the well for a while, and suddenly he decided that it was Chengming, and..." Lucius hesitated. He actually agreed that Kraft felt that the professor's behavior was strange, but now that he thought about it, Kraft's behavior was also very abnormal.

"What else?" Liston couldn't sit still. He couldn't care less about maintaining his outsider image and leaned forward towards Lucius.

"You know Kraft has a sword, right? He suddenly slashed back like he was fighting something, but there was nothing but a board."

"Hysteria?"

"Maybe? He was very sober at the time and his logic was very clear." Looking back, Lucius vaguely noticed some kind of coincidence. He was rational and sober, but his behavior was weird.

The ambiguity muddies the logic of the whole thing, as if Kraft went to a well in a salt tide area and went crazy, thinking that someone was going to pour a clarifying potion into the well.

"Lucius, do you know what you are talking about? Are you implying that Kraft is mentally unstable and that the clarifying potion that we strictly control the use of has ended up in the well in the salt tide area?"

A large pile of medical records was still piled on the table, and something like this happened. Liston felt like a clown, performing a comedy for the audience, "Besides the three of us, who can touch Chengming? "

Lucius' eyes averted again, he leaned back and distanced himself, and denied more firmly than before, "No."

Seeing his appearance, Liston wanted to go up and beat him up. As a doctor, the most annoying thing is asking for help and hiding the truth. Over the years of running a clinic outside, I have developed the ability to observe words and emotions.

If you say you don’t have it and don’t dare to look at yourself, then you have it? Liston gave up on digging out more information from Lucius and instead analyzed the relationship on his own.

Apparently, there were only three people in contact with the Clarifying Potion, Kraft, Lucius and himself. According to his inference, it was absolutely impossible. Not only Lucius, but Kraft was also hiding something from him.

The initial explanation for the Clarifying Potion was that it was a family secret. However, Kraft casually changed his story and admitted that there was more than one copy, but did not admit that it was his own work. It seems that it did not leak from Kraft's hands in the first place.

Then there is a fourth person, or even more. Both Kraft and Lucius know him, and there is a high probability that they are familiar with him.

This is interesting. Kraft has just arrived, and his interpersonal relationships are not complicated, and there is even less overlap with Lucius's interpersonal relationships.

Liston felt that he was getting closer to the truth. He liked this process of peeling off cocoons and extracting threads, just like inferring the cause of the disease from fragmentary symptoms during consultation.

First of all, excluding other lecturers, the only lecturer who is closest to these two people is himself; it is possible for students in the college, but it is unlikely, because this person is the one Lucius has to try his best to remove in an emergency. , and very decisive.

Liston knew only one person who met all the conditions, Professor Kalman who had left.

The water is very deep here.

Liston stood up, covered his mouth and coughed to hide his expression, but his eyes stayed on Lucius, making sure that he didn't notice what he had discovered.

"Do you know where Kraft lives?"

Lucius was right about one thing, Kraft's disappearance was abnormal.

Rather than continue to waste time here with Lucius, it is better to find Kraft who has found something. He believes that Kraft will give him an answer, even if he cannot find it, it is an answer.

"Well, I remember I was in a house provided by my tutor, but I looked for it, and the neighbor said no one lived there." Lucius was at a loss. This was the first time he went to look for Kraft outside the academy, and the result was It came up empty.

"Then let's go ask. I don't believe that no one sees which direction Kraft comes to the academy from every day." Liston pulled Lucius up and the sun was setting outside the window. "Let's go, it's getting late."