“You…”
Imagawa Ori’s momentum faltered. Her gaze began to dart away, no longer daring to meet Kiryu Kazusuke’s eyes.
“Senpai, you’re about to go into shock from hypothermia, aren’t you? How is your head still full of dirty thoughts?”
“Can’t you think about how to stay alive?”
“That’s a hotel. It has heating, hot water, dry towels, and can provide active rewarming.”
Kiryu Kazusuke looked at her face, already bluish from the cold, his voice carrying undisguised mockery.
“No, no, no!”
“Absolutely not!”
“Even if I freeze to death, even if I die out here, even if I jump into the Tone River from here, I will never go to that kind of place with you!”
Imagawa Ori resisted instinctively, shaking her head, even trying to back away.
But before her heel had touched the ground, an even fiercer gust of cold wind, mixed with pellets of snow, lashed viciously across her face.
“Then you can wait here for the body collection van to pick you up tomorrow morning.”
“If that’s the case, please tell me your last words. If you still have money in your bankbook, you can tell me the password too. I’ll pass it on to your family for you.”
“Or donate it to the hospital for you. Whether it’ll get you a bronze statue, I wouldn’t know.”
With that, Kiryu Kazusuke shoved his hands back into his pockets, putting on an utterly indifferent attitude.
The moment she heard “bankbook” and “money,” Imagawa Ori immediately steadied herself.
Her gaze fell once more on that pink sign.
She had not earned enough money yet. She had not redeemed her family home yet.
If she died here, then all the years she had worked so hard, all the time she had stood at the operating table, all the alcohol she had drunk in nightclubs…
Absolutely not.
As long as she could survive, let alone go to a love hotel, even if she had to spend the night in a garbage heap, she would accept it.
Besides, this did not necessarily mean anything had to happen.
And anyway, they could book two rooms.
Taking another step back, even if there weren’t that many rooms, in weather like this, taking shelter from the wind and snow was a legitimate reason.
But Kiryu Kazusuke had already turned and started walking away.
His direction, however, was not toward the hotel, but toward the train station.
Imagawa Ori immediately panicked and hurriedly called out to stop him.
“W-where are you going?”
“Back to write a report explaining why my supervising physician froze to death by the roadside.”
Kiryu Kazusuke stopped and looked back.
Imagawa Ori was momentarily speechless.
She bit her thin lips, already turning blue-purple, as if she were still hesitating.
Seeing this, Kiryu Kazusuke turned once more as if to leave.
“I-I’ll go with you to get a room…”
In the end, her survival instinct overcame everything, and Imagawa Ori squeezed out the words with difficulty.
But Kiryu Kazusuke did not move.
He did not walk toward the station, nor did he walk back. He merely stood amid the wind and snow, looking at this shivering woman.
“Then beg me.”
“You…”
Imagawa Ori’s eyes went round at once, her face filled with disbelief, humiliation, and anger.
Beg him?
Imagawa Ori, a specialist who had cursed countless junior doctors bloody in the medical department, was actually supposed to beg a resident who had only been employed for half a year?
She clenched her teeth, her jawbone creaking from the force.
“Kiryu Kazusuke, don’t go too…”
Before the rest of the words in her throat could leave her mouth, a violent wave of dizziness struck her. Her knees went weak, and she nearly collapsed into the snow.
Her brain was starved of oxygen, and her limbs were going numb.
And Kiryu Kazusuke remained standing by with folded arms.
She drew in a deep breath of icy air, as if swallowing a handful of glass shards.
“Please…”
Her voice was very small, almost drowned out by the wind.
“I can’t hear you.”
Kiryu Kazusuke did not budge.
Imagawa Ori closed her eyes. Then, in despair, she shouted loudly.
“Please! Take me to get a room!”
Those words echoed down the street, overwhelming the howl of wind and snow.
Kiryu Kazusuke looked at her.
In his heart, there was no pity, nor any sense of satisfaction from having avenged some great grudge.
But this was indeed a pleasant moment.
“Then let’s go.”
He walked over, but did not reach out to support Imagawa Ori.
The other party’s consciousness was already somewhat hazy at this point. He had to make her move on her own, using muscle contractions to generate heat while stimulating the sympathetic nerves to maintain alertness.
If he carried her on his back or in his arms now, and she fell asleep, then it would truly be dangerous.
Imagawa Ori obeyed and staggered after him.
Walking was extremely difficult.
High heels had no grip at all in the snow; instead, they were like a burden. Every step required tremendous effort to maintain balance.
Several times, she was about to fall, but Kiryu Kazusuke showed no intention of reaching out to help her.
Heh. Cold-hearted.
The two crossed the road.
A distance of fifty meters took them several minutes, as though they had walked for a century.
At last.
The automatic doors sensed someone approaching and slid open to both sides.
A wave of warmth rushed toward them, mixed with the scent of cheap aromatherapy.
Imagawa Ori’s body abruptly swayed.
The sudden change in temperature caused her originally constricted blood vessels to begin dilating. Her blood pressure fluctuated instantly, leading to a brief lack of blood supply to the brain.
“Careful.”
Before she could fall, Kiryu Kazusuke reached out and grabbed her, lifting her up as if picking up a kitten.
The hotel’s layout was that of a typical self-service love hotel.
Upon entering, one selected a room from the large screen on the wall, pressed a button, and a room ticket resembling a parking ticket would be spat out from below.
Imagawa Ori looked around, and her heart sank halfway.
All full.
Among the indicator lights for dozens of rooms, not a single one showed the red character for “vacant.” All of them had turned into the yellow character for “occupied.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me…”
Unwilling to give up, Imagawa Ori ran her finger across a row of buttons, pressing them one after another.
But after pressing for a long while, the buttons felt hard and unresponsive. No ticket came out, and no room card was dispensed.
“Is anyone there? Hey!”
Kiryu Kazusuke shouted toward the reception desk beside them, which had only a small window open.
The frosted glass of the little window was pulled aside.
A young female clerk with dyed blond hair poked her head out, chewing gum.
“We’re full!”
“In this kind of weather, everyone who can’t get home has come here. The last room was gone half an hour ago.”
“Try somewhere else.”
She was about to pull the window shut.
“Wait!”
Imagawa Ori grabbed the window frame.
“I have money!”
“I’ll pay double… no, triple the price!”
“Clear out a room for me!”
She took several bills, damp from melted snow, out of her handbag.
With a slap, she smacked them onto the windowsill.
The female clerk glanced at the stack of money. Her eyes did waver slightly, but she still shook her head.
“Customer, this isn’t about money.”
“There are people in all the rooms, and they’re in the middle of it. I can’t exactly take a key and go in to throw them out, can I?”
“Besides, in this damn weather, who’d be willing to come out?”
“If I let you in and get complained about later, I’ll be out of a job too.”
“Go on, go on. Don’t block the way here.”
Immediately after, she mercilessly shut the window.
Imagawa Ori stood there, still clutching the money in her hand.
Her lips trembled slightly, whether from exertion or from the cold, she did not know.
This feeling of being turned away at the door made her remember the day the bank had taken back her family’s house years ago.
It had also been a snowy night like this.
She and her mother had been driven out, standing on the street, clutching their only savings in their hands, yet unable to find a single place willing to take them in.
Was history going to repeat itself?