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ArabicArknights: How Did I Actually Become the Doctor? — Chapter 37
Chapter 37: Unofficial Histories and Petting the Fluffy Bears
The fish Elysium had carefully selected and hauled all the way back from his hometown was of exceptionally premium quality. Tender, succulent, and supposedly completely free of those annoying little pin bones, the meat sizzled with a mouthwatering layer of oil the moment it hit the grill.
The Ursus girls, much like Patriot half an hour prior, had been utterly blinded by the sheer weight of the Doctor’s legendary exploits. They sat in a rigid row, stiff and overly reserved, their hands nervously twisted behind their backs. Their eyes darted hungrily toward the grilled fish, then snapped back to the masked man sitting across from them.
Rhodes Island had just been rebuilt from the ashes of war. They would never let the children go hungry, but fresh meat was still a rare luxury. The only reason these ravenous bears were resisting the urge to snatch up their chopsticks was a desperate fear of leaving a bad impression in front of their idol.
Seeing the tension, the Doctor didn’t know whether to laugh or sigh. He picked up a piece of the fish first, waving his chopsticks. “Why are you all just staring at me? Eat, eat, eat! You can ask for my autograph after you’re full!”
Then, the very first bite of fish lodged itself violently in his throat.
“Cough, cough, cough… Patriot… assassination!”
Patriot, who had just been wallowing in the depths of melancholy over his ruined fearsome reputation, snapped to attention. He promptly handed over a small cup of vinegar and thoughtfully patted the Doctor’s back—with a force he considered as light as a feather, but which nearly sent the Doctor’s soul leaving his body.
The Doctor finally understood a grim reality. The people of Terra possessed esophagi forged from pure steel. These tiny, insignificant bones wouldn’t even register to anyone else, but they would mercilessly skewer his fragile, pre-civilization throat every single time.
A distinct crack echoed in the minds of the little bears. The glorious, imposing, all-powerful image of the Doctor had fractured.
That crack rapidly widened into a canyon as the Doctor enthusiastically began regaling them with the “unofficial histories” of Terra.
Zima furrowed her brow, though she leaned in, listening with genuine interest. She didn’t forget to slide a plate of carefully deboned fish toward the Doctor—the shameless adult who accepted the pampering with absolute peace of mind—and retorted, “The legends you told us before were weird enough! Like how Ulpianus’s glutes evolved into a natural Seaborn trap, or how Ms. Saria got divorced from her researcher partner, was taken to the cleaners, couldn’t even see her child, and went bungee jumping without a rope from ten thousand meters with her first love in a fit of rage! I could barely force myself to accept those, but they just keep getting more and more absurd!”
She crossed her arms, scoffing. “We barely swallowed those tall tales, but this ‘unofficial history’ claiming that the Sarkaz and Sankta were the exact same family thousands of years ago? That’s just way too wild!”
The Doctor sighed inwardly, wringing his hands. This kid had zeroed in on the only actual truth hidden in his barrage of nonsense. Her luck was astonishingly terrible.
Adopting a testing tone, he leaned forward and dropped another lore bomb. “Then, what if I told you that the Sarkaz’s immortal Lord of Fiends, Theresis’s closest accomplice, the Confessarius, had a child with his own sister?”
Zima spat out a mouthful of sparkling wine with a violent pfft. “Doctor! You don’t have to resort to this kind of garbage just to make fun of me!”
Very good. Confirmed: she had the mental fortitude of a gullible Liberi.
As for the future—when Zima would inevitably witness the truth of those two “absurd” unofficial histories and shoot panicked, terrified glances at Ulpianus and Saria—well, that wasn’t something the Doctor needed to worry about right now.
Gummy, who had been quietly munching on the sidelines, finally spoke up. “Although it’s hard to believe, Gummy still believes in you, Doctor.”
The other girls stared at Gummy in utter astonishment. Zima couldn’t hold back. “Gummy, isn’t your filter for the Doctor a bit too thick? If he told you he was The Holy Fool, would you believe that too?”
The Doctor, however, looked at Gummy with a strange, calculating expression. This little girl was truly not simple.
Gummy smiled brightly, patiently explaining to her friends, “He is such an amazing Doctor. Gummy feels that the Doctor wouldn’t lie about such an obvious, important thing. Perhaps the previous stories were just jokes to tease us children.”
Very good, the Doctor thought. Next time I run into an emergency, I’m listening to Gummy’s opinion first!
Was it because he had brought her along too often in the roguelike mode, and the Inspiration load had overflowed onto her? What a terrifyingly accurate intuition!
“Old man, what do you think?” The Doctor turned his head, only to find Patriot engaged in a life-or-death struggle.
The towering Wendigo was trying to debone a piece of fish, but due to his severely Originium-crystallized limbs, his fork was shaking like he had late-stage Parkinson’s. He trembled violently, nearly mashing the delicate fish meat into an unrecognizable paste.
Patriot had never seen such a fragile creature in his long, blood-soaked life. Even an Ursus child who had just contracted Oripathy could swallow this kind of fish whole. Yet this legendary tactician had actually choked on a tiny bone?
After the initial shock of the Doctor’s fragility wore off, Patriot belatedly realized just how pitiful the physique of a pre-civilization human truly was.
When a man gets old, he simply can’t bear to watch such helplessness.
A surge of fatherly love—a warmth that even Frostnova hadn’t fully experienced—began to burn fiercely within his massive chest. His chopsticks moved on their own, completely out of his control!
Patriot stared at the Doctor with deep, deep kindness.
The Doctor, meanwhile, stared nervously at Patriot’s violently shaking chopsticks. He immediately suspected that the old Wendigo was harboring deep-seated resentment over being captured, and was currently using the fish meat as a voodoo substitute to vent his murderous rage.
Internal meme titles flashed through the Doctor’s panicked mind: Why the Patriot at home keeps making noise. Is Kal’tsit rubbing her head against me because her head itches. Is Wis’adel bringing me dead Reunion members as a threat.
The two men stared at each other for a long, agonizing moment, their trains of thought running on completely opposite tracks. In the end, Patriot felt too embarrassed to admit that this mangled mush of meat was lovingly prepared for the Doctor, so he awkwardly dumped it into his own bowl.
The Doctor let out a long, silent sigh of relief. Thank God. The innocent fish must have satisfied his bloodlust. He’s temporarily abandoned the thought of murdering me.
Given Patriot’s honorable character, he wouldn’t actually betray their truce and kill him, but getting punched by a Wendigo would still hurt like hell!
At Rhodes Island Headquarters, Kal’tsit was curled up in her office chair, her feline ears pinned back and her tail completely puffed out into a bristling bottle-brush. She looked ready to hiss fiercely at the PRTS terminal right this second!
How does he remember what every single operator is good at?! There are even code names in his deployment logs that I don’t even recognize!
Theresa, did you really wipe his memories?
Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth!
This familiar, terrifying style of secretly monitoring the entire battlefield and manipulating every variable… it was even more like that woman whose name could not be spoken!
Kal’tsit currently felt like an incompetent husband in a hyper-realistic AAA game, pacing anxiously outside a closed door, terrified to uncover the truth—like watching her ‘wife’ flawlessly debate Middle Eastern politics and UN policy with her boss.
Theresa, are you okay? Because this cat feels like she’s dying…
[Rhodes’s Note: When the Doctor chokes and yells “assassination!” (行刺 – xíngcì), it is a phonetic pun in Chinese for an “impassable thorn/bone” (行刺 – xíngcì). He is jokingly accusing Patriot of trying to assassinate him via fishbone.]