Chapter 12: Baron Rat - Ratlord①

"And that’s how it went, you see."

"You shouldn’t follow strangers, you know?"

"I just picked him up since he was lying around."

"Don’t eat things you find on the ground either, okay?"

Apparently, Professor Tsukishima thinks I’m a toddler.
That’s his takeaway from me telling him I picked up Ironclad. Good grief.

The man idly swishing a test tube around is Tsukishima Souichi.
Round glasses, a distinguished middle-aged gentleman, and a bit of a celebrity professor at my university. He even pops up on TV sometimes.
He’s a licensed physician too, and spends part of each week seeing patients at the hospital. Busy guy.

On top of that, Professor Tsukishima’s lab receives government funding—pretty prestigious. And I’m part of it.

His field is molecular genetic medicine: gene repair, cellular reprogramming.
Fixing genetic mutations so cells can regain normal function—think cancer treatment, stuff like that.
He’s the professor I owe the most to, and the only ordinary person who knows about my ability.

"The drug did pretty much what I expected, but what I really want to know is the difference between using it on a mutant versus a normal human. How about it, Professor, wanna take a shot?"

"Ahaha. Nooo thank you."

He turned me down with a goofy smile. Cute old man.
Well, sure, it’s human experimentation—of course he’d refuse. But come on, it’s a clinical trial. Totally a trial!

Pausing his work, Professor Tsukishima gave his hip a light thump with his fist.

"Maybe if I throw my back out, I’ll consider it~"

"Professor, how about starting a little home garden? Gardening, you know. Growing veggies for yourself sounds fun, right?"

"Stop trying to get me to hurt my back."

"Your glasses are pretty thick, huh? Must be terrible eyesight."

"Hmm. With the drug you’ve made so far, I don’t think vision correction’s on the table."

"Damn it, this guy knows my medicine better than I do. Can’t trick him."

"Don’t use bad words."

His specialty’s gene therapy, mine’s regenerative medicine—close fields.
My thesis is on stem cells and regenerative induction substances.
I pretend my ability is just the effect of a “randomly discovered self-healing gene” and frame it as developing “regeneration-promoting substances.”

"Someday I’d like to branch into rejuvenation, that kind of thing. But first I gotta get an actual leg grown."

"Ahaha. Sounds like a tadpole’s problem."

"Maybe I should expand animal trials to amphibians… With the diversity of mutants, plenty are way different from mammals. Ironclad’s basically half inorganic with all that metal—made me worry my floor would cave in."

"You’re a girl, so don’t do anything too dangerous, okay?"

Professor Tsukishima’s pushing sixty, so his gender outlook’s old-fashioned. But he’s not a bad guy.
Always calm, always smiling—it’s actually pretty great.
Probably a skill polished from making patients feel at ease.

"Even lately, I heard there’ve been suspicious folks around… Villains, right?"

"That’s nothing new."

"Some kind of rat-man, I think it was."

"A cosplayer, maybe?"

"Anyone cosplaying in the streets is a suspicious person, don’t you think?"

"True, but still, cosplayers with no sense of time and place aren’t the same level of threat as villains. Danger-wise, anyway."

"Either way, danger’s danger~"

Seems Professor Tsukishima really does see me as some frail little girl.
Honestly, I feel more like a mad scientist.

Using a villain as a guinea pig, developing a drug from my own cells—that’s a big ethical mess.

I mean, I wouldn’t want to be a guinea pig myself. That’s why I hide my power.
We learned in moral education: “Don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want done to you.” But just because I hate it doesn’t mean they hate it too.
We did have an agreement. Jin didn’t really have any options, though.

"I get why you’re rushing, though~. Your dad’s still fairly young, right? Cancer in the young tends to progress fast."

He hit the mark. I am impatient.

Developing a drug doesn’t happen overnight.
Even with Professor Tsukishima’s huge help—equipment, funding—the road’s still long.

I’ve been at it since I entered university.
Three years already. Just three years, really.
There’s so much I couldn’t have done alone, and leaning on the professor got me this far. But it’s still not enough.

My dad lost a leg in an accident.
I want to give it back to him. And time is short.

Then came the cancer diagnosis. I want to cure that too.

I thought about telling Raiden—about Dad, right after he told me his mom died in a traffic accident. But I figured it’d crush him completely, so I didn’t.

The reason I took interest in Professor Tsukishima in the first place was Dad.
He’s a leading authority on cutting-edge cancer treatment.

When I first enrolled, I was relaxed. But Dad’s diagnosis gave me a ticking clock.

If it’s just regrowing Dad’s leg, I think my current drug could do it.
But the cancer… I don’t think so.

No matter how much I refine the drug, I don’t see a path to curing cancer.
Worse, it might even stimulate the cancer cells, speeding things up.

Maybe I need to change approaches and start fresh with a new drug.
But that would take three years or more.

I don’t know how long Dad has.
I don’t even know if he was given a prognosis. He didn’t tell me, and I didn’t press. I was too scared.
Numbers make things too real. Make death feel too close.

Anyway—I’m in a rush.
I’m desperate. Right now, this drug feels like my only hope.
But I don’t have the power to finish it alone. Without a miracle, it won’t be done.

And miracles aren’t something you wait for—they’re something you make.
If the drug is about the supernatural, then I have to use more supernatural power to advance it.

I’m really desperate.
So desperate I’d take help from a villain I found lying on the street.