It had begun to snow lightly outside.
Kiryu Kazusuke turned and walked in the opposite direction. He had not gone far
when, beneath a streetlamp, he saw someone he knew.
A tall, slender silhouette, head lowered slightly, short hair blown a little disheveled, revealing a long, fair neck.
Imagawa Ori had not gone to the “after-party” like the other doctors, nor had she so much as offered everyone a token farewell. She stood there alone, shrinking slightly in the cold wind.
At that moment, she was looking toward the end of the road.
That was the direction from which the car sent by “Kagura Club” was supposed to appear.
But ten minutes had passed, and her field of vision remained empty.
“Damn it.”
Imagawa Ori cursed under her breath and stamped her foot, her high heel making a crisp sound against the asphalt.
The tip of her nose was red from the cold, and the white mist of her breath was especially distinct beneath the streetlamp.
Kiryu Kazusuke slowed his steps.
Before his eyes, the familiar pale-red screen of light surfaced once more.
[Imagawa Ori: Nakamori-san should spend lots and lots of money on me tonight, right? Too bad nightclubs aren’t open over New Year’s. Good thing I can go on duty at Nishi-Agatsuma Welfare Hospital. Best if all the rich people there suddenly get fractures.]
[Convergeable Worldline—]
[Branch One: Go with her to attend “Kagura Club’s” year-end champagne awards and spur Nakamori Sachiko into spending. (Reward: 10% sales cashback)]
[Branch Two: The snow begins to fall harder. With no other choice, the two of you can only spend the night at a nearby hotel. (Reward: External Fixator Application Technique · Advanced)]
The cold wind swept snowflakes into his collar.
Kiryu Kazusuke glanced over Imagawa Ori’s inner thoughts and understood.
At a university hospital, a specialist’s annual income was around seven million yen. To make up for that income, everyone usually took part-time jobs at outside hospitals.
On ordinary days, working a night shift at an outside hospital would only bring in a few tens of thousands of yen.
But the year-end and New Year period was different. Full-time doctors also needed time off for the holidays, and remote hospitals, in order to keep operating, could only offer cash checks several times higher than usual to ask for help.
Especially Nishi-Agatsuma Welfare Hospital, backed by a famous ski resort.
Going on duty at a time like this meant a “token of thanks” starting at no less than two hundred thousand yen for one night, with surgical fees calculated separately.
After that,
Kiryu Kazusuke’s gaze swept back and forth between the two worldline branches.
Tonight, the night of December 28, was the once-a-year decisive battle for nightclubs like “Kagura Club.”
The year-end champagne awards.
This was the crucial moment that determined the annual rankings, and also the peak of the shop’s revenue.
It was not yet ten o’clock. The atmosphere in the club had probably only just begun to heat up.
If Imagawa Ori could arrive before ten, she would be just in time for the most intense second half of the battle.
The empty and lonely Nakamori Sachiko would definitely be there.
Speaking of which, he wondered whether Imagawa Ori had later fulfilled Nakamori Sachiko’s wish.
She probably had not been fingered yet, right?
Otherwise, Nakamori Sachiko should have already lost interest in her.
If that were the case, on a night like tonight, that lonely woman would probably very much want to have Imagawa Ori. She would absolutely throw money around like a madwoman.
If he then provoked her a little with words...
Twenty million yen?
Thirty million yen?
Even if it was only 10% sales cashback, that would still be quite considerable.
That sum was equivalent to the total annual salary of a bottom-level resident like him, perhaps even more.
Kiryu Kazusuke took a deep breath and ordered himself to shift his gaze onto Branch Two.
“External Fixator Application Technique · Advanced.”
Compared with the other skills he possessed, this reward seemed somewhat outdated.
In the orthopedic world ruled by the AO school, which advocated “rigid internal fixation,” external fixators were regarded as an “unseemly” technique.
Many orthopedic surgery professors had criticized it in public before.
They called it a “field-hospital folk method,” an “inferior technique” that did not conform to the aesthetics and biomechanical requirements of modern medicine.
That was indeed true.
In a university hospital equipped with sterile operating rooms, C-arm fluoroscopy machines, and all kinds of imported titanium alloy plates, external fixators basically had no place to be used.
Bulky and ugly.
Several thick steel pins pierced through skin and muscle, nailed into the bone, then locked in place with external connecting rods, like an ugly scaffold.
They inconvenienced patients in daily life, pin tracts were prone to infection, and the precision of reduction was inferior to plates.
Kiryu Kazusuke raised his head and looked at the snowflakes swirling through the sky.
After thinking for a few seconds, he finally gritted his teeth and decided to converge the worldline of Branch Two.
In any case, Nakamori Sachiko was not going to run away. There would always be opportunities to fleece her in the future.
External fixators had many shortcomings, but at present, they were practically the only option for high-energy trauma, battlefield injuries, or cases with extremely poor soft-tissue conditions.
In a few days, it would be 1995.
This was extremely important.
So to Kiryu Kazusuke, this was a skill he absolutely could not afford to miss.
Once he had made up his mind,
“Doctor Imagawa.”
Kiryu Kazusuke exhaled a breath of white mist and stepped through the accumulated snow, walking toward the figure beneath the streetlamp.
At that moment, Imagawa Ori was staring blankly at a private car passing in the distance.
Hearing a voice, she was startled and spun around abruptly.
Seeing that it was Kiryu Kazusuke, her tense shoulders relaxed slightly, but the irritation on her face did not lessen.
“Oh, it’s you. You didn’t go to the after-party?”
She asked casually, then immediately turned her head back toward the road, afraid she might miss the car she was waiting for.
“Didn’t Doctor Imagawa also not go?”
Kiryu Kazusuke stood beside her and also glanced at the empty street.
“I have proper business.”
Imagawa Ori snapped back unhappily and turned up her collar, trying to block the cold wind that kept pouring down her neck.
“Are you waiting for the car from Kagura Club to pick you up?”
Kiryu Kazusuke asked despite knowing the answer. This woman was probably thinking of nothing but money right now.
For every extra minute she stood here in the cold wind, Kagura Club might end up opening one less bottle of Dom Pérignon.
Imagawa Ori froze for a moment, then put on an expression as if she had no idea what he was talking about. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“There’s no one else here.” Kiryu Kazusuke smiled.
Imagawa Ori looked around and saw that there really was no one else, so she stopped denying it. “So what if I am?”
“Nothing. Just asking.”
“Boring.”
Imagawa Ori rolled her eyes at him, then focused her attention on the road again.
Half an hour had already passed since the agreed time. Why had the car coming to pick her up still not arrived?
This was not normal.
By convention, “Kagura Club” treated its top hostesses extremely well.
Especially at a crucial moment like tonight.
The club would usually send its best car, a black Nissan President, to wait here half an hour in advance.
The driver would certainly be Uncle Yamamoto, the taciturn man in white gloves with first-rate driving skills.
The heating inside the car would be turned up fully, and warm wet towels and mineral water would have been prepared in the back seat. They would even turn on the seat heating ten minutes early to accommodate her fear of the cold.
But now, there was only cold wind and snowflakes.
Oh, and Kiryu Kazusuke.