Hairo sprinted back into the passageway's shadows, moving toward the voice that had called his name from the pile of garbage against the wall.
"Hey…!" he called out, hauling away piles upon piles of trash. "Hey, are you there!?"
It was a man buried in garbage bags. His cold, damp skin was tightly wrapped around his body and his features were severely malnourished. He wore a full suit with a black tie, the breast pocket of which had a badge. Premium, black-colored leather with the letters "JSPI" embroidered in silver. An I.D. card displayed his name in Japanese.
"Shuntaro Nagatsuki…" Hairo inspected the name on the badge before quickly turning his attention back to the man.
"Mr. Nagatsuki! Mr. Nagatsuki!"
Hairo examined Nagatsuki as best he could, following the ABCDE approach. His airways were unobstructed but his breathing was concerningly shallow. What's worse was—
"...?!"
Hairo couldn't feel a pulse.
But the man was still alive, barely.
"Damn it," he breathed. "He's not gonna make it. He needs a hospital."
His mind raced. The closest medical facility wasn't Shizukesa General but a smaller clinic a few blocks away. Gekkeiju Primary Care. It wasn't ideal, but it was his only option.
Calming his breathing, Hairo crouched lower. "…Hup!"
With ease, Hairo hoisted Nagatsuki over his shoulders, who was way too light for his age. For someone who was supposed to be alive.
"I've got you," he murmured. "Just stay with me."
* * *
The neon sign of Gekkeiju Primary Care flickered ahead. It was a small clinic, way cheaper than the high-tech surgical theaters at Shizukesa General. Probably only had a few surgical bays, if that.
But right now, it would have to do.
Bang!
The front door nearly flew off its hinges as Hairo kicked it open. "I need help! Now!"
A nurse behind the reception desk jolted up, eyes widening in recognition of who was standing before her. "Dr. Kisaragi?! What—"
"No time!", he began, out of breath. "This man is critical! I need a crash cart, IV fluids, and access to your ER—NOW!"
An attending physician, Dr. Yoshida rushed out from a nearby room in response to the noise. "Hold on—who is this? What happened?"
"Shuntaro Nagatsuki. No pulse, but he's alive with severe hypoxia. No signs of trauma, but his body is shutting down! I don't know what's killing him, but he won't last much longer. I need to operate—immediately."
Dr. Yoshida hesitated. "Dr. Kisaragi, you're not on staff here. We can stabilize him, but we can't—"
Hairo's expression darkened. His next words weren't a plea, in what was very much the first display of arrogance in his life.
"You know who I am."
Yoshida stood, taken aback by Hairo's sudden change in demeanor.
"If we waste time on paperwork, he will die," Hairo continued. "If you won't do it, I will."
Silence filled the room as the nurses and patients in the lobby froze. But they all knew.
Hairo Kisaragi was the best general surgeon in Japan.
Dr. Yoshida exhaled sharply. "Fine. Bring him to the ER. You take the lead."
Accompanying his words were a quick scrambling of nurses. A gurney was quickly brought in front of Hairo, to which he gently laid Shuntaro Nagatsuki on top, his mind racing in panic as he was rolled down the narrow corridor.
Severe hypoxia, yet his lungs were clear. No pulse, yet spontaneous breathing. Clammy skin, yet no fever. Pupils fixed and dilated, yet he reacted to light.
Every single symptom had contradicted itself. Even with the best surgeon in the country, it was impossible to know what was wrong with him because his condition defied any medical reasoning.
Just who is Shuntaro Nagatsuki?
* * *
"None of this is making sense."
Hairo was scrubbing in, meticulously cleaning his hands, fingers, and nails.
"It's like all of his organs are failing at once. I can't pinpoint a condition."
He peered forward, staring through the window that had Nagatsuki's shirtless body on an operating table.
"Vitals?" he spoke through the glass.
An attending nurse viewed the countless monitors around the body. "BP dropping—60 over 40! Heart rate unstable!"
By this point, Hairo was unsurprised by such critical conditions. "No time for imaging."
He entered the operating room, where a scalpel was placed in his open palm.
"I'm gonna have to go in blind with an emergency thoracotomy."
The blade hovered over Nagatsuki's chest.
The scalpel sliced through his flesh, slowly and smoothly. Blood began to pool around the knife.
"There's not supposed to be this much blood," he muttered to himself. "It's making it impossible to see."
"Suction!" he barked, and the assisting nurse quickly assisted. Physically, Hairo was able to tell that Nagatsuki's bones and organs were in more or less good condition. Nothing broken, infected, or torn. So what could be causing his condition?
"It might be a problem with his heart. Get the suction ready, I'm going deeper."
The team of nurses around him nodded and closely watched as he made his move.
"What… the hell…?"
Nestled where a human heart should be was something unidentifiable. None of the tissue pulsated like how a heart should.
"Potential foreign body. I can't make out what this is at all."
He had to see more.
With steady hands, he cut deeper, parting tissue and muscle until the entire organ was visible. His breath hitched at what was laid out before him.
It was his heart.
But white. As if drained of all life and eerily translucent. Most peculiarly, the feint veins bulging from the tissue lead to stems connected to white lilies sprouting from the top.
BEEP! BEEP! BEEEEEP!
The monitors shrieked. The patient's brain activity had spiked.
Nagatsuki was awake. And he began to move.
Faster than any dying man should.
Hairo barely registered the motion before pain exploded through his wrist. A sickening crack echoed through the room as his scalpel fell to the floor. His own voice came second, a ragged gasp as he realized his wrist had been snapped.
Nagatsuki's eyes—hollow, white, and inhuman—pierced him.
With a disturbingly smooth motion, Nagatsuki's upper body rose. The way his body moved was not unlike a person being possessed by a demon in a cliche horror movie. He let go of Hairo's broken wrist, but his other one came into motion.
Hairo found his throat seized by Nagatsuki's fingers. It was vice grip that threatened to kill him on the spot.
Hairo gagged as his feet left the floor as his body was lifted with ease. Nagatsuki's expression remained disturbingly neutral, as if strangling a man was as natural as breathing.
Hairo's instincts kicked in, his bloodshot eyes darting to the nurses.
"R-run!" he choked out, reaching his hand toward them.
They hesitated.
That hesitation cost them everything.
Nagatsuki swung with his other hand in a curled fist.
A single, impossibly fast motion that didn't even allow them time to scream.
Blood sprayed and covered the ceiling and walls.
Their bodies were split cleanly in two, even though they were more than out of arm's reach. Their divided parts fell to the ground in a pool of blood.
The doctor and his patient were now the only ones in the room.
Nagatsuki, unbothered, reached into his own open chest.
Hairo's mind screamed at him to stop, but his voice was trapped in his crushed windpipe.
Fingers wrapped around the ghostly, white heart.
Nagatsuki ripped it out.
Yet, he didn't collapse. Didn't die. If anything, his strength grew, because Hairo could feel his airways being compressed further.
Then—
He plunged the heart into Hairo's chest.
Pure agony through every muscle fiber and blood cell.
Raw, searing pain tore through him as white-hot light flooded his vision. Blood poured from his mouth, and his consciousness began to slip.
Before the darkness swallowed him whole—
The door burst open.
Two figures.
A woman.
"TENGOKU, STOP!"
And a man, suited in the same strange attire as Nagatsuki.
There wasn't enough oxygen flowing to his brain or enough blood staying in his body.
But his final thoughts were not of the situation at hand. Not for his beloved coworkers at Shizukesa General. But of Yusuke Sato.
The first person under his care to die. Yusuke Sato, a patient, to die by a doctor. Now, it was Hairo Kisaragi, a doctor, to be killed by a patient, Shuntaro Nagatsuki.
His eyelids cascaded as darkness filled his mind.