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Ayane's home was quite spacious for someone living alone. It was a small courtyard residence, with a main house, a woodshed, a kitchen, and even a small forge that looked like it once belonged to a blacksmith.
When she returned, Ayane set the washbasin down in the yard and carried Matsurize into the main house.
Inside, the first thing that greeted the eye was a large living room. It was simple but spacious—the place where she usually ate her meals.
To the left was the west room, where Ayane herself lived. To the right was the east room, which had once belonged to her parents.
Ayane only entered the east room occasionally to clean. She never stayed there—it brought back too many memories.
As for Matsurize, though he was a grown man, Ayane still chose to bring him into her own room rather than disturb her parents' resting place.
The west room was tidy and well-kept. There wasn't much in the way of feminine decorations or vanity items—Ayane lived simply.
She laid Matsurize down on her bed. She didn't care that his body, covered in mud and blood, dirtied her sheets.
After settling him, she fetched a basin of clean water and a towel, then began gently wiping away the grime and blood from his body.
Her room also contained a small collection of basic medical tools and medicine.
These were things she'd gathered over the years. Living alone since childhood, she often got hurt doing chores or odd jobs. Bit by bit, she had learned to treat herself and slowly built up a small supply of medical equipment.
Because of that, Matsurize's luck wasn't all bad—he had run into a girl with some medical knowledge.
Ayane cleaned most of the dirt and dried blood from his body, but some of his wounds were still worsening.
When she placed her hand on his forehead, she felt the heat—he was burning with fever.
Looking at his tattered, blood-stuck clothes, Ayane spoke softly to herself.
"Don't overthink it, Ayane. Saving him comes first."
She took up a pair of scissors and began cutting away the shredded clothes.
Ayane worked quickly and efficiently—within moments, she had stripped the filthy rags off him.
But after all, she was still an eighteen-year-old girl. Faced with the bare body of a young man, her cheeks flushed scarlet.
Still, she didn't hesitate for long. Forcing her mind to stay focused, she continued to clean his wounds, press out the clotted blood, and bandage him carefully.
Then she hurried to the kitchen to boil a pot of water.
Once it was ready, she soaked a clean cloth in the hot water, wrung it out, and laid it gently across Matsurize's forehead to reduce the fever.
She covered him with a blanket and watched as he tossed faintly in his feverish sleep.
She wanted to give him some fever medicine, but he was still unconscious and couldn't swallow.
Then she remembered an old medical book she'd once bought at a market—it was on the shelf beside her bed.
Ayane quickly retrieved it and flipped to a page she recalled, one that described how to administer medicine to an unconscious patient.
She found it, and her memory had been right—but reading the method made her hesitate.
According to the book, when a person falls unconscious, their natural swallowing reflex disappears. That's why the medicine she had tried to place in Matsurize's mouth hadn't gone down.
The book went on to say that in such cases, the only way to trigger a person's primal reflex was through what it called the "suckling response."
In other words—mouth-to-mouth feeding.
Ayane froze for a moment. It was embarrassing, especially since he was a complete stranger.
But when she felt his burning forehead again, she knew she had no time to lose.
Her small courtyard was isolated—there was no one nearby to ask for help. Even if she ran to the village, by the time she returned, he might already be dead.
His life, she realized, rested entirely in her hands.
After a brief moment of inner struggle, Ayane made up her mind. She didn't speak it aloud—there was no one awake to hear her anyway.
She poured some boiled water into a small cup and took out several fever-reducing tablets.
Crushing them one by one between her fingers, she mixed the powder into the warm water until it dissolved completely.
She blew gently on the mixture to cool it, then took a small mouthful.
Leaning forward, Ayane pressed her lips to Matsurize's and slowly transferred the medicine into his mouth.
His body reacted instinctively, lips parting, faintly sucking as he swallowed the liquid. Ayane repeated the process patiently, feeding him a little at a time.
At first, her face was burning red and her movements stiff. But as she grew more confident, her actions became steady and practiced. After a few tries, she had managed to get the entire cup of medicine into him.
Her medical skill was only self-taught, nothing exceptional—but this was all she could do.
Looking at the still-unconscious Matsurize, she could only pray that fate would be kind to him—that he would pull through.
She noticed how thin he was. Though his frame was large, his body was all skin and bone. That led her to her next problem—food.
Judging by his condition, he hadn't eaten properly in a long time.
She thought to herself, "I can't let him recover from fever only to starve to death in my bed."
So she left the room and went to the kitchen.
She added wood to the stove and reheated the leftover porridge from lunch. As it simmered, she stirred it steadily with a ladle, breaking it down to make it softer and smoother—easier to swallow.
That porridge had been meant for her dinner, but she decided to give it to Matsurize instead.
Once it was ready, she filled a small bowl and carried it back to the west room.
Setting it on the bedside table, she gently touched his forehead again.
Her efforts had paid off—the fever was starting to subside.
A smile brightened her face, as if she herself had been cured.
Ayane took a spoonful of porridge, tasted it, then leaned close once more.
Just as she had done with the medicine, she fed the warm porridge to Matsurize mouth to mouth, patiently and carefully.