Before dawn.
In the deep, silent alley, all kinds of clutter were piled up at random, accompanied now and then by the faint scurrying sounds of rats darting past.
"Uh—sir, please don't pound the door like you're trying to kill me! I'm opening it right now, just a second, let me change my clothes—okay, okay, I won't change, I'm coming, right now!" Along with the doctor being dragged out of sleep in the middle of the night, hurried footsteps echoed inside the newly opened small clinic, followed by the sounds of bumping into furniture and a pained yelp of "Ow!"
One minute later, the clinic door finally opened.
A doctor in pink pajamas cautiously poked his head out. Before he could clearly see who was standing outside, Randou violently shoved the door open, half-supporting and half-carrying the unconscious person in his arms as he rushed inside.
Randou spoke at a breakneck pace. "He was scratched on the face by a cat. There's also a serious wound on his abdomen—possibly my fault for not treating it properly. The wound got infected. He had a low-grade fever during the day, but it turned into a high fever at night. Please help treat him."
The doctor tugged awkwardly at his sleepwear, his gaze sweeping over the two of them before settling on the black-haired young man in the foreigner's arms. The patient was wearing loose home clothes underneath, with a coat draped over him to block the wind. He was slightly shorter than the foreign youth, his complexion pale yet flushed with an unhealthy redness. Three thin scratch marks crossed his face—under normal circumstances, that alone would warrant a rabies vaccination.
The foreign youth wore insulated gloves, while the feverish black-haired young man's hanging hand bore the calluses of firearm use and the marks of long-term writing, suggesting someone with a profession that relied heavily on both pen and weapon—perhaps an office worker of a very particular kind.
The doctor withdrew the overly sharp scrutiny from his eyes, put on a smile, and stepped forward to lead the way. "This way, please."
After passing through a corridor, the doctor brought them to the area normally used to treat the injured. The walls were bare—no certificates, no honorary plaques. The shelves of medical supplies were not fully stocked, and many instruments lay half-disassembled in the corners. Delivery boxes were stacked high everywhere. It was the unmistakable look of a clinic with some financial backing, but one that had only just opened for business.
"Lay him flat. Be careful not to let him strain his abdomen."
"Are you cold? I can turn on the heater for you. Business hasn't been good this year—every industry is struggling. I can barely afford the electricity bill."
"Eh? By the way, who told you I'd opened a clinic here? A lot of my equipment isn't ready yet. I can only handle simple external injuries and administer rabies shots. If it's anything else, I really won't be able to treat it…"
As he spoke, the doctor deftly began removing the bandages, clearly trying to lighten the atmosphere a little.
When Randou caught sight of how much worse Akiya's wound looked than before, his heart clenched painfully. His attention shifted to the young doctor treating his lover, uncertainty gnawing at him—he had no way of knowing whether this doctor's experience and skill were truly reliable.
Randou replied, "It was a senior whom Akiya admires. He gave us the address of this clinic."
"Oh… I see," the doctor murmured softly. When his eyes fell upon the gunshot wound inflicted by the sniper rifle, his brows lifted slightly. "This kind of penetrating wound… you don't see it very often. Whoever tried to kill him didn't use high-powered ammunition." With the right firearm and bullets, it would have been more than enough to tear a person clean in half at short to medium range.
Having seen real battlefields before retiring, the doctor noticed several peculiarities, yet he tactfully chose not to voice them.
Perhaps the assassin's mission had not been to kill, but to cripple someone instead?
What a pity Akiko was not here.
With Randou's assistance, the doctor reapplied medicine to the injuries, his movements quick and efficient, and carefully rebandaged Asou Akiya's wounds. His fingers, long and slender inside white gloves, circled Akiya's waist and abdomen with the gauze, and in doing so he noticed a mark that looked suspiciously like a kiss mark. He could not help but glance toward Randou, whose tightly wrapped attire still failed to conceal the unmistakable allure of a Frenchman.
The doctor's lips curved upward, and beneath the clinic's incandescent lights, his violet eyes glimmered with unspoken implications.
"Although I probably shouldn't say this," he remarked lightly, "for someone who's injured, it's best to abstain for a while."
"That's not what you're imagining," Randou replied coolly, offering a brief explanation. Unwilling to let Akiya suffer, he then asked, "He's afraid of pain. Can you give him a painkiller?"
"I'll go get the medication right away," the doctor said.
Randou bent down and touched Asou Akiya's forehead on the hospital bed. The warmth he usually cherished now felt like a small burn against his skin.
Asou Akiya's sleeping expression seemed faintly unsettled.
"Akiya, sleep," Randou whispered softly. "You don't need to worry anymore. I'll stay here until you wake up."
At the doorway of the room.
The doctor stood in the dead corner of the shadows, holding a bottle of medicine and an IV line, watching the gentle Frenchman inside. He observed them for a moment before finally stepping in under the cold, indifferent glance Randou cast his way. "Sorry about that," the doctor said. "I saw how close the two of you are and didn't dare interrupt. You're in luck—by chance I have anti-inflammatory medication and painkillers on hand."
Randou paid no mind to the doctor's little hesitations. Whether the man was wary of patients and their families appearing in the middle of the night, or simply thinking of self-preservation, none of it mattered. All Randou needed was for him to help Akiya bring down the fever and ease the pain; once Akiya woke up, that would be enough.
The doctor dragged over a chair and placed it beside Randou. "Standing gets tiring too."
Randou thanked him and sat down.
The doctor yawned, eyes bleary with sleep, clearly ready to return to bed. "You know how to pull out the needle, right? The order of the IV drips is marked with numbers on each bottle. I'm going back to sleep. If anything comes up, you can come knock next door."
Randou nodded, then suddenly called out to him. "I still feel a bit cold. Could you turn the air-conditioning temperature up?"
The doctor turned his head. "That won't do. It's not good for the wound."
All at once, the two of them understood one of the direct causes behind the inflammation of the injury.
After a brief hesitation, the doctor asked, "How high do you usually set the air-conditioning at home?"
Randou's gaze drifted back to Akiya, and he did his best not to sound guilty. "A little higher than here."
The doctor said sympathetically, "Wounds can't be allowed to sweat."
Guilt washed over Randou.
He truly hadn't known. No one had told him, and the Port Mafia's doctors had never specifically warned him either.
They never asked each other's names or backgrounds. Seeing Randou dressed head to toe in French luxury brands, the doctor certainly wasn't about to ask about consultation fees—this man was obviously wealthy, and even if he somehow weren't, the injured one certainly wouldn't be lacking.
As the doctor returned to the room where he slept, a faint thought drifted through his mind.
[What I asked was "at home," you know.]
Pushing open the bedroom door, the doctor looked at his plain, sparsely furnished room and changed out of his pajamas, keeping himself mentally prepared to be summoned again at any moment by the injured man's companion. "A same-sex couple of different nationalities?" he muttered to himself. "After Japan fell into defeat, for a Frenchman of such privileged background to take a liking to a Japanese man… that's really quite rare."
A few hours later, the doctor's face was haggard, his earlier foresight about the patient's family proving painfully accurate.
"Well, um… this kind of small thing really doesn't require calling me over," he said weakly.
Wasn't it just a cry of pain, after all?
"What are you talking about?" Randou said coolly, dipping a cotton swab in water and moistening Asou Akiya's dry lips as he shot the doctor a cold sideways glance. "This is a very serious matter."
At home, where he was pampered and cherished by his lover as the most precious thing in the world, Randou's temperament had grown far more willful.
He had no need to wrong himself, nor to wrong Akiya. Now that he possessed an ability, he could do even more for him—free him from the pressure of work, give him time to accompany Randou and write together.
The doctor looked utterly drained. On his unkempt face, a few coarse stubble hairs stood out. "You're right, you're right about everything," he surrendered. "Just make sure you pull the needle after the IV is completely finished. Leaving nearly a fifth of the medication unused is such a waste—medical supplies are tight these days. Yes, yes, I know, you're afraid of seeing your boyfriend's blood flow back up the tube."
Unable to argue his way past Randou, the doctor slunk off to tidy up the clutter, no longer wanting to endure fragmented sleep.
People in love simply didn't operate on reason at all…
When daylight finally broke, sunlight slipped through the alleyway and filtered into the room through the narrow gap in the curtains. After removing the IV needle, Randou dozed off beside the hospital bed, slumped forward with his head resting nearby. His long hair spilled over the pristine white sheets—some strands curling freely, others pinned beneath his elbow. When he suddenly straightened up, he accidentally tugged on his own hair.
Asou Akiya had already opened his eyes some time ago, silently watching Randou with dark, quiet pupils, unwilling to wake him from his light sleep.
Randou had promised himself he would stay awake, yet because he let his guard down at Akiya's side he dozed off. A faint flush crept onto his face.
"Akiya, do you feel any better now?" he asked softly.
"I'm not burning up anymore."
"Next time… if I turn on the air conditioner, remember to remind me, all right? I'm not actually that afraid of the cold."
"It's fine. That wasn't really the problem."
With such a breathtaking beauty sleeping right beside him, heat came all too easily; Asou Akiya felt that the air conditioner was being unfairly blamed for something it hadn't done.
Akiya tried to sit up, and Randou immediately became his human cushion, letting him lean back against his body. The back of Akiya's head pressed into Randou's scarf as he looked around the small clinic, a vague sense of déjà vu rising in his heart. "Randou, you still brought me to the clinic Natsume-sensei mentioned, didn't you?"
Randou replied unhurriedly, "You think Natsume-sensei is reliable, so I trust your judgment."
Akiya tilted his head back to look at Randou from this angle—still flawless.
His lover did not look as haggard as he had in the original story.
"Don't stay up all night for me anymore," Akiya said lightly. "Be careful you don't grow dark circles. If Randou ever realized he'd become ugly, he'd definitely cry." The very first thing Akiya did upon feeling better was to get Randou to relax; teasing had always been part of their daily rhythm.
Randou replied skeptically, "My ability to stay up late isn't that bad."
Every young person thought the same way—only when you hit twenty-seven or twenty-eight and look back do the regrets pile up.
Akiya coaxed him gently, "Lie down and rest for a bit. Let's leave in an hour."
Randou shook his head. "Let's go home and sleep."
Asou Akiya considered that there was no need to rush a meeting between so-called "senior and junior disciples." It would be enough to see the doctor briefly and leave; he could always come back another time. The only thing he could not be sure of was whether the owner of this clinic was Mori Ogai, and whether he had ever apprenticed himself under Natsume Souseki.
"All right," Akiya said. "Go settle the bill with the doctor, then. Did you bring cash and a card when you came out?"
"I did," Randou replied.
He took out his wallet, having developed a law-abiding awareness in the course of ordinary life.
Skipping payment was something he found beneath contempt.
Randou did not leave Akiya alone on the hospital bed. Instead, he walked to the doorway and called out, "Doctor!"
That single word had already been shouted countless times in the early hours of the morning.
The doctor came over immediately. Seeing Randou take out his wallet, he understood at once. "Settling the bill? Hold on a moment. I need to ask how the patient feels after waking up and prescribe a bit more medication based on his condition."
As he spoke, the doctor walked into the room, responsibly checking on the injured patient first. Asou Akiya, meanwhile, was studying the doctor with open curiosity, his gaze so intent that it was as if a horn had grown from the man's head, or as if his face possessed some extraordinary, otherworldly beauty. The young doctor in his white coat grew uncomfortable under that stare and reached up to touch his head.
There was no horn there—only a single stubborn tuft of hair at his bangs that refused to lie flat no matter what he did.
"Is there… something strange about me?" the doctor asked cautiously.
"No," Asou Akiya replied, his gaze finally dimming. Before meeting Randou, figuring out how to get to know Mori Ogai had been one of his contingency plans, and he had since learned that plans never quite matched reality.
Yes—this young man who would open his doors in the dead of night to save someone, who looked very much like an unlicensed underground doctor, was precisely Mori Ogai.
Asou Akiya was twenty-two. Mori Ogai was twenty-seven. There was a five-year gap between them. By the time of the first season of Bungou Stray Dogs, when Port Mafia boss Mori Ogai made his first appearance, he would already be forty.
His age itself was a far more striking "milestone" than even Hirotsu Ryuurou's.
"Hello," Asou Akiya said calmly, "young retired military doctor."
"..."
The doctor's boyish, rough-edged demeanor froze for a split second, and something heavy settled deep within his violet eyes.
People who had lived through a great war were never quite the same.
"How do you know that?" he asked.
"That sort of thing…" Asou Akiya replied lightly. "Isn't it obvious at a glance?"
His smile was bright as he shamelessly borrowed one of Edogawa Ranpo's favorite catchphrases.
This was their first meeting.
And he had dealt the other man a ruthless opening blow.
To truly appreciate someone, you had to leave the deepest impression when they were at their weakest. He was the Port Mafia's Analyst; sooner or later, the man before him would realize that. Rather than waiting to be appraised with condescension, it was better to establish the image of a high-intelligence persona in advance.
Maintaining one's "character setting"—that was a skill he had worked hard to learn from Natsume-sensei.
Sensing that something was off about the doctor's aura, Randou stepped in front of Asou Akiya and handed over the cash.
"Is this enough?"
"It is."
Mori Ogai accepted the money meekly, the cracks in his expression neatly patched over.
He then delivered the sort of line befitting a shameless doctor.
"You're welcome to come again."
Son of a bitch[1]—were there really people like this in Yokohama? It really was better to investigate everything thoroughly before opening a clinic.
Just who had leaked his clinic's address, anyway?
—
Translation Note:
[1] In the original text, the author used MMP which is a curse word in Sichuan dialect. It means something along the lines of "your mother is a bitch" or "son of a bitch".
{I think i'm going to do it like this from now on, because the way i do it before kinda breaks the immersion a lil bit.}