The pain that began in his abdomen seared through his mind. A torment like a blade scraping away at every fold of his brain. Even the self-harm he had attempted after his parents died hadn't been this agonizing. The breath he drew in scattered before it could be exhaled, and the trembling of his entire body wouldn't stop.
Beyond his reddening vision, he could see Nagisa's frantic face. She seemed to be gripping his shoulders and shaking him, but each movement only intensified the pain. Yet the words to tell her to stop wouldn't come. When he opened his mouth, all that came out were syllables that failed to form words.
Slowly.
His consciousness began to fade. His hearing was the first to go, followed by his sense of taste. The bitter, metallic flavor was gone. His eyes, seemingly ruptured with broken capillaries, remained bloodshot and showed no sign of returning to normal. Only the scent of tea from Nagisa and the sweet fragrance of Mika lingered at the tip of his nose.
And then, his sense of smell went numb. He couldn't feel anything anymore. He could only perceive the sensation of his body growing cold. A piece of his innards protruded slightly from the hole in his abdomen. It helped to stanch the bleeding a little, but it was of little use. He had already lost too much blood.
'I get like this from a single gunshot?'
Kenji thought as he coughed up a gout of blood.
It was a bullet no larger than 9mm. It hadn't even lodged in his body but had passed cleanly through, yet it was enough to completely wreck him.
It was impossible to resolve the question. This was the first time in his life he had been shot, and he had never heard any firsthand accounts from those around him.
But one thing was certain.
'Mika is going to cry...'
Kenji stared at Mika through his increasingly heavy eyelids. Her face was contorted in a grimace as she shed tears like a waterfall.
He wanted to say, it's okay, but his blood-stained lips were incapable of anything other than spitting up more blood.
In the end, after mouthing a few more words, he lost consciousness.
*
A surgical hospital within the Trinity district.
Torimune, Mika, and Nagisa sat on a bench in front of the operating room. Three hours had passed since Kenji had been taken in for emergency surgery, but there was still no sign of him coming out. The sun had set long ago, and the moon was hidden behind a thick blanket of clouds.
Nagisa sat on the bench, sipping her black tea. Whenever she was nervous or anxious, she always drank black tea like water. Now was no different.
Would Kenji make it through the surgery safely? What if there were lasting complications? These anxieties swirled in her head.
'I have to apologize... I have to.'
Although Mika was the one who had fired the gun, she couldn't claim to be blameless. How could she be without fault when, far from stopping Mika, she had smiled and encouraged her? She would have no defense if he decided to distance himself from her from now on.
And so, she was anxious. Her chest felt tight, as if someone were squeezing her heart to the brink of bursting.
But... could it compare to what Mika was feeling right now? Nagisa's trembling eyes glanced to the side. Her gaze fell upon Mika, who was biting her nails and shaking from head to toe.
"Mika-san..."
"..."
Mika didn't answer Nagisa's call. No, she couldn't.
'It'smyfaultit'smyfaultit'smyfaultit'smyfaultit'smyf—'
A torrent of negative thoughts flooded Mika's mind, rattling her brain.
She could still recall it vividly. Her soaked hands and the blood covering half her face. Kenji collapsing as he coughed up blood, the sight of the blood pouring from his perforated abdomen seeping into the floor. The groans Kenji made and the blood that stained the pistol she held.
"You killed him. You witch."
Kenji's voice echoed in her ear. But when she turned her head, he was nowhere to be seen.
-Crack.
Blood spurted from the finger she had bitten. The sharp pain forcibly dragged Mika back to reality.
The scent of blood that had lingered in her nose vanished, and the hospital's distinctive smell invaded her nostrils. Her hands, which she had imagined were drenched in blood, were fine except for a few reddened fingers.
"Mika-san."
"Ah..."
Only then could Mika hear Nagisa's voice. The beeping sounds from the operating room and the glowing 'Surgery in Progress' sign entered her vision.
"Are you alright?"
"Ah, yeah. I'm fine. And shouldn't we be more worried about Kenji than me?"
"...Mika-san, look at your hands. They're a mess, aren't they?"
"Ahaha... This is nothing."
Mika smiled crookedly and hid her bitten hand behind her back. Nagisa, overcome with emotion at the sight, opened her mouth to say something, but no words came out. Who was she to scold anyone? In the end, she bit her lip hard and stared at the blinking light of the operating room. Mika followed her gaze.
How many hours passed like that? The 'Surgery in Progress' light went out, and the tightly closed doors of the operating room opened. Mika and Nagisa shot up from their seats almost simultaneously. Torimune spoke first on their behalf.
"The surgery... did it go well?"
"Yes. The sutures were completed successfully. There won't be any lasting complications, though he will need to be hospitalized for a while."
"Hah... Thank goodness."
Torimune let out a sigh of relief. Mika's legs seemed to give out as she collapsed to the floor, and Nagisa dropped her teacup, muttering "thank goodness" over and over. The doctor, after excusing himself to the three of them, left.
*
When he regained consciousness, the first thing he saw was the dark sky. The full moon, visible through the uncurtained window, was more than enough to create an ethereal atmosphere. Kenji stared blankly at the full moon for a moment, then grimaced at the pain he felt.
"Ugh."
A sharp pain that started in his abdomen and shot through his head. But it was much better than before. It wasn't unbearable.
"Hoo..."
Kenji took a short breath to compose himself, then checked his condition. He was wearing a patient's gown, and a large bandage was attached to the area of his gunshot wound. Judging by the foreign feeling on his back, there was probably another one attached there as well.
'Did they operate on me?'
He grit his teeth against the stabbing pain and pushed himself into a sitting position. Then he glanced around.
The surroundings were similar to a hospital room. The bed he was lying on was the kind you would see in a hospital, and most importantly, an IV was inserted into his arm. Three different kinds at once. Kenji looked at the colorful liquids in the packs and let out a hollow laugh.
'I never thought I'd have three IVs in me in my life.'
He rolled his shoulders, then nodded after confirming that there were no problems. Fortunately, his arms were fine. He could wiggle his toes, so his legs seemed to be alright too.
The bullet had passed near his spine, so he had been worried, but it seemed he hadn't been paralyzed.
Kenji let out a sigh of relief and closed and opened his eyes. And then, something came into his view.
"Mika, Nagisa."
Right next to the bed where he lay, Mika was sleeping with her arm as a pillow. On the opposite side, Nagisa was sleeping in the same position.
In the moonlight, the tear tracks on both of their faces were clearly visible.
Nagisa's lips were smeared with blood, as if she had been biting them, and Mika's fingernails were ruined. It was definitely not a natural state of disrepair. Those were wounds caused by forcefully biting them. The blood seemed to have been wiped away, but it had still pooled in the crevices of the wounds.
"Sheesh."
Kenji let out a deep sigh and grunted as he crawled to the center between the two of them. Then, he gently stroked their pink and light gray hair. He didn't know how they managed it, but both of their hair felt like silk. Not that he had ever touched silk in his life.
"Hnngh..."
"Hah..."
Mika and Nagisa purred in response to Kenji's touch. Kenji chuckled and ruffled their hair a little more forcefully. A few minutes of this, and the two halos that had disappeared reappeared in the air.
Mika blinked her eyes, and Nagisa stared at Kenji with a dazed expression. But in just a few seconds, both of them burst into tears simultaneously.
"Uwaaaaaah! Kenjiiii!"
"Hic... sob... Kenji-san..."
"There, there."
Kenji grinned and opened his arms wide. Mika and Nagisa were about to jump into his embrace but stopped abruptly. Even though they were just children who had just entered elementary school, they both had the common sense not to hug a patient who had just come out of surgery.
"What are you doing? Come here."
But at Kenji's grinning words, the two of them hugged him, albeit hesitantly.
As their bodies touched his cold skin, the tears that had stopped began to flow again. The arms that held him tightened instinctively, and they pressed their bodies closer to his.
A powerful jolt of pain shot through his abdomen from the impact, but Kenji forced a smile and hugged the two of them tightly. They, too, hugged him back strongly.
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry...! I was wrong! Please don't hate me...!"
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry for not stopping you... sob, it's all my fault."
"You two were definitely in the wrong this time."
Kenji didn't try to coddle them. The outcome was too severe for that.
He had a hole in his stomach and had been at death's door. If he had died, Mika would have been charged with murder. Nagisa, too, would have been charged with something, if not murder. A crime far too heinous for children to bear.
'Though it might not matter between them.'
This incident had confirmed it. Unlike Mika, Nagisa, and the other residents of this place, if I get shot, I die. If I'm hit by a bomb, my limbs will be torn apart, and the moment I'm sniped, my body will be ripped to shreds.
A body incredibly unsuited for living in this world. His appearance was the same as when he was a child, so he had held out a sliver of hope, but it seemed he hadn't inherited the durability of the residents here.
'I'm screwed.'
Kenji suppressed the rising sigh and looked down at Mika and Nagisa. The state of his body was a secondary concern for now; scolding these two came first. He cleared his throat with a dry cough and then spoke.
"I understand. You two don't have any major problems no matter how many times you get shot, so you probably thought it would be the same for me. It just turned out that wasn't the case. I guess I'm just a special case."
"..."
"To use an analogy, you were just playing, throwing stones like you always do. A passing frog just happened to get hit by one. But as a result, the frog's head was split open. Bleeding all over the place."
"...Uuu..."
"But you can't blame anyone for that. You didn't throw it knowing that the frog—that I—would get hurt, did you? This was just an accident. An accident that happened because of what we didn't know. So, there's no reason to resent you. I was foolish too."
Kenji smiled brightly and patted their backs gently. At his warm touch, Mika and Nagisa wailed with a mixture of sorrow, relief, and affection. Kenji continued to speak, oblivious to his shoulders and chest getting soaked by their tears.
"But let's make sure this never happens again. We know now, don't we? That if I get shot by you, I'll die. Right?"
Mika and Nagisa nodded. Kenji suppressed the pain rising from his abdomen and chuckled.
"Good. Now, let's stop talking about this. And stop crying, you're wasting your pretty faces. It's making me sad just looking at you."
Even at Kenji's words, the two did not leave his embrace. In his voice, small yet vast, tinged with laughter yet serious, Mika found comfort and Nagisa felt peace.
And a sweet yet bitter feeling that they both felt in common. The emotion that had come so suddenly and filled their chests melted into their hearts and became a part of them.
The two of them did not yet know the name of this feeling.