"Ah."
Why was I so serious?
No, why was I even curious about that?
I blamed myself for a moment.
"Ugh."
A groan unconsciously escaped me. The coffin that the gravedigger had shown us was horrifying.
"Uwek."
"Uweeeek!"
Even Joseph and Alfred, who thought they were already used to such sights from anatomy practice, nearly collapsed.
"Urgh."
Even Blundell was grimacing, yet he still reached into the coffin.
"Does everything end up like this?"
He even opened his mouth to speak while doing so.
The air inside must have been filled with an unbearable stench.
As I was thinking that, the gravedigger nodded.
But I couldn't tell for sure.
He had turned his back to us, so I could only guess from his trembling shoulders and the situation at hand.
"Yes, yes."
"Oh... so this is essentially meaningless, then?"
"Yes. Actually... I feel bad saying this, but that's correct."
Blundell looked like he had lost a country as he stared into the bloated, decomposing corpse inside the coffin.
Inside, there was a string meant to be pulled in case the person had been buried alive, but the swelling corpse had pulled on it instead.
Following Blundell's gaze, I noticed a bell at the end of the string.
Now that I looked closer, there were a lot of bells attached.
Ding-ding!
One of them began to ring again.
"Ugh."
The gravedigger shook his head with a truly reluctant expression.
But his body was already moving.
The chances were slim, but what if there really was a living person inside?
After all, just yesterday, he had seen someone being buried alive because of me.
Cursing every deity imaginable, the gravedigger picked up his shovel.
Thunk! Thunk!
Then he began to dig up the soil.
Only then did Blundell approach Colin.
That guy, too, looked like he had lost his entire country.
Blundell and Colin—what a hilarious pair.
They'd never lost a country before.
If anything, they had only ever taken them.
Wasn't the British Empire still out there, plundering nations in real time?
"Hey, Colin. Are you alright?"
Colin was completely out of it.
And understandably so.
That brat—he was still just a kid, after all.
He had been excited to open the coffin, thinking the ringing bell meant there was a living person inside, only to be greeted by... this.
It was no surprise his soul had nearly left his body.
'He's gonna get shadow PTSD.'
If he suffered this kind of trauma at such a young age, would he even be able to continue as a doctor?
Who knew?
And I certainly wasn't going to try and fix it.
I had wielded a scalpel against countless bodies, but I had never dared to touch the human heart.
And I wasn't about to start now.
I had no intention of becoming a quack.
Especially not in this era, where everyone else was already a quack.
If I joined them, wouldn't that be the death of all hope for this time period?
"Are you okay?"
"Huh? Ah... Professor. I..."
"I misspoke. Of course, you're not okay."
"...Oof..."
"You must be shocked. I'm sorry. Hm... I was the one who suggested we implement this system in London, but... I didn't expect this kind of issue."
Blundell clicked his tongue.
"AAAAH!"
Meanwhile, the gravedigger had finished digging and opened another coffin—only to scream in terror.
Another false alarm, it seemed.
Although, "false alarm" probably wasn't the right term...
My brain wasn't functioning properly at the moment.
Between the stench and the grotesque corpse, my mind was struggling to process it all.
The face of the body looked almost like Acala, the Immovable Wisdom King.
The gas buildup from decomposition must have caused that expression—I could deduce that much with my limited forensic knowledge.
But there are emotions that knowledge alone cannot conquer.
Instinctual fear crept over me, too.
'Hah. I suppose no one in this era truly understands what happens to a corpse.'
Some people must have witnessed what happens over time.
After all, human history was filled with war.
But had anyone ever tried to study it scientifically?
That would have been an incredibly difficult leap in logic.
New ideas always seem simple in hindsight, but most people never think of them in the first place.
'So this was the Rust Belt's...'
I stepped away from the corpses and moved toward the gravedigger's watch area.
Dozens of bells were strung up, each connected to a line leading into a grave.
If someone was buried alive, this system might have been somewhat useful...
But then again, how much help could it really be?
It would be pitch black inside the coffin.
Would a trapped person even be able to find the string?
The unfortunate victim might have desperately groped around in the darkness, only to die without ever ringing the bell.
And then, only after death, their swelling body would move the string.
Why was I thinking about this?
Inside one of the open coffins, I saw deep scratch marks on the lid.
All of the corpse's fingernails had been ripped off.
Of course, fingernails can fall off naturally during decomposition, but...
Still.
'There needs to be a much more precise method.'
Burying someone and leaving it up to them to prove they're alive?
That's just cruel.
If people had any conscience, they'd make sure someone was truly dead before burying them.
'Wait... Don't these people even have funerals?'
That thought briefly arose before quickly fading.
Even around the cemetery—where no one would willingly live—poor people's homes were packed tightly together.
Even in the 21st century, people avoided homes with a cemetery view.
Yet here, in an era filled with superstitions and real horror stories like this, they still lived here.
Life was so harsh that even in death, these people had no dignity.
Human rights? That concept didn't even exist yet.
'They probably can't afford funerals. But the nobility... they must have them, right? Actually... maybe that's where the fear of premature burial came from in the first place?'
Back in my past life—should I call it that?—when I was in South Korea, I attended a traditional three-day funeral.
Three days was enough time to correct most mistaken death diagnoses.
And our sense of hearing, which remains active the longest, would be constantly stimulated during those three days.
Mourners never sat still.
And in older traditions, they even wailed loudly.
Even the process of preparing the body—cleaning and dressing it—could serve as a way to check for signs of life.
In practical terms, it was a reliable way to prevent premature burials.
But saying, "Let's hold proper funerals for everyone!" was easy.
Actually implementing it was another story entirely.
London was practically one giant slum.
This was a place where pregnant women sometimes ended their own lives out of despair.
The idea of a proper funeral for every deceased person was laughably idealistic.
What kind of empire allows death itself to be a privilege?
Shame on you, British Empire!
"You seem to be lost in thought."
Just as I was about to start ranting against England, an Englishm
an approached.
Since it was my professor, I quickly put on a smile.