It had already been thirty minutes since Kiryu Kazusuke had been driven out.
Partway through, Watanabe Tsubasa thought something had happened and came scrambling over in a panic.
He had no choice but to be anxious. If something happened, bringing the police over and getting the shop shut down, the boss would absolutely kill him.
Kiryu Kazusuke explained that Dr. Imagawa was venting her emotions.
Watanabe Tsubasa was only half convinced.
Still, before leaving, he couldn’t help offering a bit of information.
He said that if Dr. Kiryu needed it, there was a park two streets away where runaway “god-waiting” girls often gathered, and there was no need to force Dr. Imagawa—it would land him in prison.
Kiryu immediately gave him a kick and told him to get lost.
Kiryu Kazusuke lowered his head and glanced at his watch. It was almost twelve.
There was a limit to how much the human tear glands could secrete, and emotional release also had its own cycle.
The sobbing in the break room gradually grew quieter, but it did not stop.
Venting.
This was a physiological compensatory mechanism.
Prolonged mental pressure, excessive physical exhaustion, plus the series of blows she had suffered today.
Imagawa Ori’s nervous system had already reached the critical point of collapse.
If she was not allowed to cry it out, that pressure would transform into somatic symptoms—perhaps a gastric ulcer, perhaps insomnia, perhaps an even more serious mental illness.
Letting her cry was the right thing to do.
Another five minutes passed.
The sobbing in the break room finally stopped completely. Then came a rustling sound of clothes being straightened, along with the sound of sniffling.
Another five minutes passed.
Click.
After the lock turned, the door was pulled open.
Imagawa Ori stood in the doorway.
Her eyes were still a little red and swollen, her face damp as if she had washed it, and her hair had been combed again.
Her back was very straight.
The pride and cold sharpness belonging to the genius specialist of First Surgery had returned to her once more.
Even though the redness at the corners of her eyes was still there.
After the two of them looked at each other for a few seconds.
“Kiryu Kazusuke.”
Imagawa Ori called him by his full name. Her voice was rough, as if it had been rubbed with sandpaper, carrying a trace of desperate, all-or-nothing ferocity.
“Everything that happened tonight.”
“If you dare breathe even half a word of it.”
“Whether to Tanaka, Mizutani, or anyone else.”
“I will make sure you die a very miserable death.”
“I’ll chop you into pieces and dump you into Tokyo Bay to feed the fish!”
As she spoke, she even raised her fist to show that she was not merely threatening him, but would truly strike to kill.
Even though she was already trying hard to look fierce, she really had no deterrent force at all.
Kiryu Kazusuke looked down at her from above.
“Senpai.”
“No matter how you look at it, I saved you tonight, didn’t I?”
“If it weren’t for me, you’d probably be lying on a rewarming blanket in the emergency center right now, catheter inserted, being watched by everyone, wouldn’t you?”
“And in the end, you don’t even say thank you. You open with death threats?”
Three consecutive questions, and the facts were indeed exactly that.
Imagawa Ori’s expression stiffened.
About three seconds later.
She lowered her fist, tilted her body forward fifteen degrees, and gave a bow.
“Thank you!!!”
This time, she shouted with all her strength, ensuring that even the shop attendant in the lobby could hear her.
She was probably afraid Kiryu Kazusuke would say he couldn’t hear her again.
“Hmph!”
After shouting, she ignored whatever reaction he might have, snorted heavily, turned, and retreated back into the break room.
Kiryu Kazusuke glanced at the watch on his wrist.
The hour hand, minute hand, and second hand overlapped at the very top of the dial at that moment.
It was already past midnight. A new day had begun.
The pale red screen of light surfaced in his vision right on time.
【Imagawa Ori’s world line has been converged】
【Reward: External Fixator Application Technique · Advanced】
A set of knowledge completely different from the current mainstream AO internal fixation theory surged into his mind like a tide.
Ilizarov techniques, unilateral frame force transmission, circular frame configuration design…
He mastered how, under the worst soft tissue conditions, to avoid important nerves and blood vessels and accurately drive several thick Steinmann pins into the safe zones of the bone.
He learned how to use external connecting rods and universal joints to compress, lengthen, or correct deformities at fracture ends from outside the body.
Kiryu Kazusuke let out a long breath.
The reason he had ordered himself to choose Branch Two was because he had always known about one major event.
Even though this was a parallel space-time, and reality did not completely overlap with his memories, the general direction of history remained the same.
In other words, twenty days later…
January 17, 1995. The Great Hanshin Earthquake.
The first major earthquake directly beneath a metropolitan area that postwar Japan would experience. Magnitude 7.3, seismic intensity 7.
At that time, Kobe City would be reduced to ruins.
Elevated bridges would fracture. Buildings would collapse. Seas of fire would spread.
Water and power would be cut off.
Operating rooms would be buried or contaminated.
Sterile conditions could not be guaranteed.
Tens of thousands of injured would pour in, most of them suffering comminuted fractures of the limbs caused by being crushed under collapsed buildings, accompanied by severe soft tissue crush injuries.
At a disaster site without C-arm fluoroscopy, without enough anesthesiologists, even with sterile gloves in short supply…
Insist on open reduction and internal fixation?
Spend two hours stripping periosteum and piecing together shattered bone fragments?
Impossible.
If the goal was to let the wounded die, they could simply be left alone. There was no need to make things so complicated.
In that kind of hell, external fixators were god.
All one needed was a hand drill, a few steel pins, and several connecting rods, and within five to fifteen minutes, a leg broken into several sections and mangled beyond recognition could be stabilized.
…
In the break room, against the wall, there was a single folding bed.
The bedding on it had already been changed. It was new bedding Watanabe Tsubasa had brought from the linen room earlier. It looked fairly clean, and one could still smell the faintly sour residue of sodium hypochlorite.
And at this moment, that bed had already been occupied by a figure.
Imagawa Ori poked half her body out from under the quilt.
The towel on her body had already been removed. Underneath, she wore only close-fitting thermal underwear, outlining the rise and fall of her curves.
“I am a patient.”
“I was almost in hypothermic shock just now, and I’m still in the recovery period. I need warmth and proper rest.”
“You’re a doctor. Taking care of patients is your duty.”
“And besides, the money you gave Watanabe-kun just now came from my wallet.”
“So I’m sleeping in the bed.”
She knew Kiryu Kazusuke was a man with no gentlemanly manners.
Just now, in the snow, he had been able to watch helplessly as she nearly froze to death, so now, if he wanted to snatch the bed, he definitely would not hold back.
Thus, she decided to strike first.
The width of this bed only allowed one person to sleep.
So she had already prepared herself: if the other party tried to climb up and snatch it, she would defend herself with her nails and teeth.
“I never said I was going to fight you for it.”
Kiryu Kazusuke did not really care. He only felt that her attitude of facing a mortal enemy was a little unnecessary.
When he was on duty at the hospital, as long as there were no patients, forget sleeping on a sofa—even if he had to put two chairs together, or lean against a wall while standing, he could still fall asleep.
Besides, sleep quality did not depend on how soft or hard the bed was. It depended on whether the pager rang.
And so—
Beep! Beep! Beep!
The pager Imagawa Ori had placed to the side began to ring. It was the one the hospital issued to specialists.
She picked it up and glanced at it.
333.
Upon seeing the number displayed on it, Imagawa Ori’s expression changed at once.
Assembly. Full recall.
A major emergency had occurred at the hospital, requiring all doctors to return to their posts immediately without calling back to confirm, dropping everything they were doing.
Well, that settled it. Even if she had protected the bed, it was useless now.