Imagawa Ori blinked.
Happy birthday?
Why did those words sound so unfamiliar? When was the last time someone had said them to her?
Was it three years ago?
Was it that day when her mother came home from work, carrying a tiny cake box in her hand?
She remembered now.
When they opened it, the cream inside had collapsed a little, and the sponge was very dry.
All she tasted when she put it in her mouth was the cheap tang of saccharin and the greasy feel of vegetable cream; she could even crunch on grains of sugar that had not dissolved.
It tasted awful.
It was the worst cake she had ever eaten in her life.
The next year, just like her mother had, she went on the night of December 23rd, right before the cake shop closed, and bought the exact same cake.
She deliberately waited until after midnight before taking a bite.
Soft, fragrant, sweet, melting the moment it touched her tongue.
And so, carrying the cake, she stood guard outside the cake shop for the entire night.
When the manager came to open the shop the next morning, she caused a huge scene.
She shouted herself hoarse, questioning the manager—why had the taste changed? Had they cut corners? Why didn’t it have that awful taste from before?
The manager said she was insane.
In a fit of rage, she smashed the cake into the manager’s face.
Of course, the manager did not indulge her. He immediately called the police.
Fortunately, the police officer who arrived knew about Imagawa Ori’s circumstances. He persuaded the shop owner not to pursue her responsibility, considering that her mother had only just passed away.
It was also after that year that she never celebrated her birthday again.
To her, December 24th had no special meaning other than being Christmas Eve.
Imagawa Ori did not speak, nor did she reach out to take the cake Kiryu Kazusuke held out to her.
Bang—
She slammed the door shut hard, pressed her back against the cold door panel, and gasped for breath in great mouthfuls.
After a while.
She heard footsteps in the corridor outside gradually fading away. Her whole body began to slide slowly down along the door until she ended up crouching on the floor.
Imagawa Ori hugged her knees and buried her face in the crook of her arms.
Why remind her?
Why remind her that she was still alive, that she still had to keep struggling in this world filled with the stench of money and disinfectant?
……
Thirty minutes later.
Imagawa Ori lifted her head. Her eyes were already rimmed red.
She took a deep breath, composed her expression, and opened the door again.
There was no one in the corridor. That detestable resident had already left.
Her gaze moved downward.
On the floor by the door, the crude little cake box sat there all alone.
Imagawa Ori crouched down and picked up the cake that was only the size of her palm.
On the side of the packaging, the discount label had not been torn off—[Half Price, 50% OFF, December 23rd]
It was a clearance item sold at a discount by the convenience store to get rid of products nearing their expiration date.
Imagawa Ori bit her thin lip.
It had been the same in the past.
Her mother would always go out on the night of the 23rd, right before the convenience store or supermarket closed, to buy a cake.
Because after midnight, these fresh foods with only a one-day shelf life would become discarded goods, and the clerks would mark them down.
Back then, her mother always said it was to save money, that it was a housewife’s wisdom.
In truth, they were simply poor.
They clearly lived in Bunkyo Ward, where every inch of land was worth its weight in gold, guarding the old house her grandfather had left behind, yet they lived like beggars.
Every year, just scraping together enough money for the fixed asset tax exhausted all the savings her mother had earned from part-time jobs.
But at least they could still get by like that.
Until later, when the bubble economy reached its most frenzied years, and everyone went mad.
As long as you mortgaged your house to the bank, you could exchange it for a huge sum of cash, then invest it in the stock market. Even if you bought with your eyes closed, you could make money.
At that time, anyone who didn’t buy was a fool.
Her mother thought the same way.
She only wanted her daughter to live a better life, so they would no longer have to get up early and line up at the supermarket just to fight for discounted eggs.
And so, the house that held all the memories of mother and daughter became NTT stock.
Then, the bubble burst.
The Nikkei index plunged from its high of nearly 39,000 points, and the stocks became waste paper.
Then, the people from the bank came knocking.
Those bank employees in suits, smiling with kind faces, took away the house and drove them into a cheap rental apartment in Adachi Ward.
They were also saddled with a debt they could never repay in their lifetimes.
Her mother worked three jobs every day, and in the end, she died of exhaustion in a restaurant kitchen.
The house was auctioned off by the bank.
Imagawa Ori fought desperately to make money, fought desperately to climb upward, even going so far as to drink with empty, lonely women, all for the sake of saving up one hundred million yen.
One hundred million yen.
That was the price to redeem her home.
Imagawa Ori sat by the doorway and opened the cake box.
Using the plastic fork that came with it, she scooped up a bit of cream and put it into her mouth.
Very dry.
Very greasy.
The vegetable cream would not melt on the tip of her tongue, like a lump of low-quality fat.
Although it was not the taste from her memories.
It was still just as awful.
As Imagawa Ori ate huge mouthfuls of the expired, discounted cake, her tears fell onto it in large drops.
Salty.
……
First Surgical Department, duty room.
Kiryu Kazusuke was sitting in a chair, flipping through tomorrow’s duty roster.
A faint red glow suddenly appeared before his eyes.
[Imagawa Ori’s worldline has been converged]
[Reward: Joint Dislocation Reduction Technique · Basic]
As the words faded away, a stream of information that was not particularly vast poured into his mind.
It was knowledge concerning the anatomical structures of the major joints of the human body—shoulder, elbow, hip, knee—as well as the most basic reduction techniques.
For example, Kocher’s method for anterior shoulder dislocation used the principle of leverage: traction, external rotation, adduction, internal rotation, allowing the humeral head to slide back into the glenoid cavity.
Or, for posterior hip dislocation, Allis’s method—lifting the thigh and using gravity and traction to achieve reduction.
Kiryu Kazusuke flexed his wrist.
That’s it?
He could not help complaining inwardly.
The worldline convergence plan had first given him “Kirschner Wire Fixation Technique · Perfect,” then it became “Surgical Incision Suturing Technique · Advanced,” and now it was “Joint Dislocation Reduction Technique · Basic.”
Was this consumption downgrade?
As an orthopedic surgeon, joint dislocation reduction was already a required skill.
He had studied it in medical school, performed it during his internship, and in his previous life in the emergency department, he had reduced countless dislocated arms and legs.
This “basic” level skill reward did not bring him any qualitative leap.
If he had to make a comparison, it was like raising an exam score from 69 to 70.
There was definitely a difference.
The understanding in his mind regarding angles of force and the direction of muscles had become somewhat clearer. A joint that might originally have required two exploratory attempts to reduce would now likely succeed on the first try.
His foundation had become more solid.
But that was all. Tasteless to eat, a pity to discard.
Kiryu Kazusuke shook his head.
Whatever.
In any case, that half-price cake had only cost him a few hundred yen.
In orthopedics, where everything was high-intensity physical labor, mastering one more stable reduction technique could also save some strength.
After all, reducing the hip joint of those construction workers covered in brute muscle, or some three-hundred-jin fatty, was absolutely physical labor.
Kiryu Kazusuke shook his head, climbed onto his bunk, and prepared to catch up on sleep.
Tomorrow was Christmas, and also the weekend. It was foreseeable that there would be no shortage of drunkards coming to the emergency department, as well as young people injured from fights.
He had to conserve his energy.
However, just as he was thinking this, the duty phone on the desk suddenly rang.
“This is Kiryu.”
“Doctor Kiryu, there’s a patient in the ER with a dislocated shoulder, screaming in pain. Please come down and take a look.”
“Got it. I’ll be right there.”
No, was it really this coincidental?
He had just received the skill, and now work came knocking?
Let me explain something here, since it’s not very easy to write into the book.
To give an easy-to-understand example, it’s like an old, rundown tiny apartment in downtown SH or in a hutong inside BJ’s Second Ring Road. The market value of the house is tens of millions, but in reality, the household consists only of an elderly person and an unemployed daughter. The toilet clogs often, the roof leaks on rainy days, and they don’t even have the money to repair it. Fixed assets only mean that you don’t have to pay rent to live in this city, but day-to-day life still requires money.
If you think this is unreasonable, then all I can say is that reality is like this. There are relevant videos on video platforms as well.
Then why not just sell the house directly?
1. Japan has a huge “capital gains tax.” For land transfers after long-term holding, the tax rate can be as high as 20%–39%. Who could bear that?
2. Many people have an obsession with “protecting the family property,” especially the older generation.
3. In the late 1980s, banks had already gone crazy in order to issue loans. For a housewife with no financial knowledge, this was an irresistible temptation—after all, money was being picked up off the ground in the stock market. A mortgage loan could let her keep the home and get rich at the same time.
How was Imagawa Ori able to afford medical school? Because there were student loans.