The Immortal's Personal Doctor Is an Internal Medicine Physician

Prologue.

"You're fired."

So announced the silver-haired beauty sitting across the table from me.

"I'm sorry—why?"

"The beauty of a contract position is that you can invent any number of reasons to cut someone loose. Don't tell me you didn't know that?"

And here I'd thought the union was somebody else's problem, since I was, after all, 'just a contract worker.'

"That said, if you'd like to stay on as my personal physician, we could arrange a new hire as of today."

While I was calmly reviewing my options under unfair-termination law, my employer, Duke Carseido, slid a fresh contract across the table.

The moment I took it, my jaw dropped.

"But this is a full-time employment contract? And the salary's been raised two hundred percent—"

A pay raise, a private examination room, paid vacation, even travel expenses covered.

Just as I was reading through terms so perfect they practically gleamed, one clause jumped out at me.

"Then what is this? 'When required by the employer, the employee shall perform the duties of the Duchess.''"

"As you know, I periodically announce marriages to the public. This occasion will be no different."

It sounded like lunacy, but to him it was perfectly routine.

He was an Immortal—a man who neither died nor aged, playing at passing the title from heir to heir down generations of his own descendants.

"You mean to make me your fake wife?"

"Yes. When I need you, you'll simply stand beside me and play the part of my wife. That's all there is to it."

I studied the contract, deep in thought.

The phrase 'when required' did nag at me... but it had to be better than being fired outright.

Above all, I had fled to this estate for one reason: to avoid marrying a seventy-two-year-old count. If I went home, that man might well come pestering me again.

'Besides, it's easy on the eyes, isn't it?'

Someone once said the finest benefit of working at the Carseido estate was the employer's face.

I agreed with that statement one hundred percent.

"So—will you sign, or won't you?"

"Regarding the duchess duties, please add a clause that you'll only make use of me within a nine-to-six workday. Any hours beyond that require overtime pay."

The duke picked up his pen. A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth.

"I'd be happy to."

Illegitimate children in storybooks were always miserable in exactly the same way.

Seven-year-old Lionel, who had shown up on her baron father's doorstep clutching nothing but her mother's will, was no exception.

"Where did this gutter rat crawl in from...? You should be grateful we've taken you in at all. Don't you dare call me Mother."

The family worked Lionel to the bone. Watching her cracked, blistered hands, she believed this misery would last forever.

That is, until the day her stepmother, Lavienne, suddenly collapsed, pale as a sheet.

"Oh—this looks... like hypoglycemia, doesn't it?"

Fifteen-year-old Lionel moved before her brain could catch up with her body. In her past life, she had been a second-year internal medicine resident, killed instantly in a freak traffic accident.

"Orange juice! Candy! Sugar! Bring me anything, now, hurry!!"

In the space of a heartbeat, the despised bastard child became the savior of a life. There was something delicious about the very people who used to throw rags in her face now glancing nervously at one another and begging for medical advice.

From that day on, Lionel set about overhauling everything—her stepmother's lifestyle, the whole household's habits, all of it.

"Mother. What did I tell you? Broccoli first, then the egg, then the bread."

Now twenty, Lionel was haranguing her stepmother over breakfast once again. Five years had been more than enough time for the girl to awaken as a demon of a drill instructor.

Lavienne hastily set her rye bread back down on her plate. The Baron Frencia, seated beside her, slithered into the conversation.

"Lionel, Lavienne's fasting blood sugar was only 100 this morning. There's no need to be quite so strict—"

Lionel, as if she'd been waiting for exactly this, drew a small device from her pocket. A custom-built reader, specially commissioned from the Magic Tower.

"You can fake a fasting glucose, Mother, but you can't fake your HbA1c—the metric that shows your average blood sugar control over the past two to three months. Shall we test it right now, just to be sure?"

"F-fine. I understand."

Lavienne put broccoli in her mouth and chewed dutifully. She ate the egg as instructed, and the very moment her hand reached for the rye bread—

Thwack!

Lionel snatched her wrist. Something dropped from Lavienne's sleeve and landed with a soft pat.

A single-serving packet of strawberry jam.

"Cease movement. That's card-counting under the table, Mother."

"C-can't I spread just a little?!"

"Absolutely not. Will it take a diabetic amputation for you to come to your senses?"

Her half-brother Ruen, who had been silently chewing his rye bread, shook his head slowly from side to side. Lavienne's fists trembled—then she abruptly changed the subject.

"Lionel, you do remember your promise, don't you? If you couldn't repay your medical school tuition within a year of graduating, you'd marry whoever I chose. And now you've already quit two jobs... I suppose practicing medicine was too much for you after all?"

Lavienne kept prodding at Lionel's nerves.

"Don't worry, dear. Life as a nobleman's wife is quite pleasant, you know. So what if he's a bit older? They say love knows no age—or borders."

His age had better be quite a bit older than 'a bit.' Would you like to try marrying a seventy-two-year-old man yourself, Mother, and see how you fare?

Men like that are all ancient but randy as stallions—they'd be screeching at you to pop out heirs before the ink on the marriage certificate dried!

"I'll find a new position promptly, Mother, so that you may devote yourself fully to managing your own blood sugar."

Lionel replied quietly, gritting her teeth.

"Ohohohoho! Yes, do hurry and find one! Not that it matters to me either way!"

And so the tense standoff between the blonde middle-aged baroness and the black-haired young lady came to an uneasy close.

The baron, who had sat quietly through all of it, spotted an article and showed it to Lionel.

"This is St. Louis Hospital, where you used to work, isn't it? It says they were fined twenty million gold for fire-code violations. Did you know about this?"

"...I couldn't say? People did flick cigarette butts around wherever they liked even back when I was there."

That was her answer—but Lionel knew all about that incident.

Naturally.

She was the one who had reported the hospital to the fire department.

Lionel had realized she'd been reborn, but she had no idea which novel she'd landed in. No event so far had jogged any memory of an original plot, so she'd simply resolved to put her skills to use, practice medicine, and live comfortably.

Then, the year she turned seventeen, she raised the subject of money with Lavienne for the first time.

Medical school was a prerequisite for practicing medicine here, just as it had been in her modern life.

Lavienne, who managed the barony's finances, was stingy in exactly the way Lionel had predicted.

"Let's say I lend you the tuition. How, then, do you intend to repay it?"

"By earning the money. I'll pay interest, too."

"You think finding work is that easy? Very well—here are the terms. If you can't repay the tuition within a year of graduating, you'll marry the man of my choosing."

In other words: marry a rich man, collect the bride-price, and settle the debt with that.

Frankly, she hesitated. But Lionel wanted, more than anything, to become a doctor.

She needed the financial means to stand independent of this family, of course.

But more than that—she never wanted to repeat the experience of helplessly watching a precious person slip away, the way she had with the mother who was no longer at her side.

"All right. Let's do it that way."

And so Lionel entered medical school on borrowed money.

Three years of coursework later, she graduated at the top of her class and went job hunting.

The trouble began after she was hired.

"A mere child dares to form a union? Does the world look that soft to you? You're fired!"

She had been trying to organize a labor union to improve the abysmal treatment of the cafeteria ladies at the hospital. She'd been caught in no time.

"That's fine. I'm not soft, either."

Lionel photographed the doctors smoking by the emergency exit, sent the pictures to the fire department, and then resigned—one week before her own conversion to permanent employment was due to take effect.

Her second job was as the personal physician to a viscount's household. On the one-month mark, the viscountess presented her with an absurdly meager salary.

"You weren't working around the clock, were you? So I calculated it as five days of two and a half hours each. Naturally, I excluded the weekends."

So split shifts—the stuff of legend—actually existed!

Lionel packed her bags and left that very day. The viscountess shrieked at her back.

"You have to submit a written resignation, Doctor!"

"We never even signed an employment contract—what resignation?!"

Then she mailed back—by registered post—the letters the viscount had sent her, each one dripping with innuendo. She attached a postscript noting that the undergarments he'd stolen from the maids could be found in his study.

In the end, all that remained was Lionel, having quit—twice, spectacularly, and with zero honor to her name.

"...So this is the last option left."

After dinner with the family, Lionel picked up the job listing from the table.

It was the card she'd been saving for a last resort.

Up to that point, it was all perfectly ordinary. What made her eyes go round was everything underneath.

And yet Lionel hesitated to leap at even these extraordinary terms.

For good reason—

The Carseido Dukedom, shield of the Empire: every duke in its history had been blessed with breathtaking beauty from birth until death.

And the reason, so the rumor went, was that they drank human blood to preserve their youth.

'And in the middle of all that—thirty-two applicants, thirty-two resignations. Doesn't that just mean every single one of them ran away?'

Nah, impossible. There was no way she'd ever get a place at somewhere like this. Lionel raised the paper to toss it aside—then checked the contents one more time.

"...Whatever a dump this place might be, it's still better than marrying a dirty old lecher, isn't it?"

Right, let's go for it. You can't win the lottery if you never buy a ticket!

Having made up her mind, Lionel reached for her traveling bag.

The benefits were far too good to turn down.