After Tsushima Kagami got back from Yamada Kenta's place, he set his things down.
Only then did he call Yukinoshita Shizuku, who was keeping Shimizu Nayotake company at the hospital.
He learned that neither Yukinoshita Shizuku nor Shimizu Nayotake had any appetite at the moment, so they still hadn't eaten dinner.
Kagami decided to head over to Hayase Kinue's place for dinner first, then bring a bento back for the others.
By the time he arrived at Hayase Kinue's home, Tsukuyomi Komoe and Douraku Utage were there as well.
The moment they saw Kagami walk in, they hurried over to him.
"Kagami, how's Nayotake doing?"
Tsukuyomi Komoe was the first to ask.
Last night, when Yukinoshita Shizuku had gone back to Shinjuku to search for Shimizu Nayotake, Tsukuyomi Komoe, Douraku Utage, and Hayase Kinue had found out too, and they'd helped search until very late.
It wasn't until he himself had called to tell them Yukinoshita Shizuku had already found her that Shizuku sent them home while she rushed over.
By the time both Shizuku and Kagami got back, it was already very late, and the three of them had already gone to bed.
In the morning he and Shizuku had headed straight out again, so there'd been no chance to fill the others in on the current situation.
Once Kagami had explained in detail how Nayotake had gone back to the hospital and to Mrs. Shimizu the previous night, the three of them sighed with dismay.
Especially Tsukuyomi Komoe, who had always taken Shimizu Nayotake to heart.
After hearing that Shimizu Nayotake had gotten her medical aid grant approved, she'd thought the poor girl's days of suffering were finally over.
She never expected something like this to suddenly hit out of nowhere.
By the time Kagami finished speaking, there were tears in her eyes.
"Should we go see Nayotake later too?"
At this point Douraku Utage, standing off to the side, asked as well.
Kagami shook his head after hearing this.
"Nayotake's in a delicate state right now."
"It's better to keep contact to a minimum."
"In a situation like this, even words of comfort might set her overthinking all over again."
"It's enough that she has Shizuku with her right now."
In the end, everyone could only let the matter drop.
"Oh, right—Kinue, could you help me put together a bento?"
"I'm planning to bring some to Nayotake and Shizuku. They still haven't eaten anything."
Kagami turned to Hayase Kinue and asked with a smile.
"Ara, the food's all ready."
"I'll go get a bento box and fill it up right now."
With that, Hayase Kinue hurried off to bustle about in the kitchen.
Kagami, along with Tsukuyomi Komoe and Douraku Utage, went ahead and started eating.
Once they'd finished, Kagami took the prepared bento and headed to the hospital affiliated with the University of Tokyo's medical department.
The moment Kagami walked in, he saw Shimizu Nayotake sitting beside Mrs. Shimizu, holding those withered, bony hands of hers.
Though Mrs. Shimizu had seemed a fair bit more spirited when he'd looked at her before, she'd clearly been growing thinner all along.
Kagami didn't understand these symptoms, and he'd always assumed it was just that her body was swollen and she couldn't eat much, leading to malnutrition, which was why she couldn't recover.
Now it seemed that even back then it had already been the early or even middle stage of heart failure—and a rare case at that, one that had deteriorated to the terminal stage at an unusually rapid pace over a short period.
Heart failure—that is, cardiac failure.
When they'd come to see Mrs. Shimizu the previous night, he'd already spoken with the attending physician to understand the situation.
Mrs. Shimizu's condition was caused by a congenital heart defect—a ventricular septal defect—that had gone without intervention or treatment for a long time, compounded by constant overexertion, resulting in heart failure.
In other words, structural damage to the heart had led to functional failure.
In his past life, Kagami had once come across information about how patients with this kind of terminal heart failure could basically no longer be sustained with medication, and could only rely on a heart transplant or the implantation of an artificial heart.
If a heart transplant didn't come through, and the patient didn't meet the criteria for an artificial heart implant, then relying on medication alone would give a median survival of only about five years.
And that was back in 2025.
Whereas now it was still 1998.
Never mind that drug treatment now was nowhere near what it would be back then—most survival rates wouldn't even make it to that one figure.
As for heart transplants, that field happened to be sitting at an awkward point in time.
After Japan performed its first heart transplant in 1968,
the surgeon got swept into a storm of public controversy over the determination of "brain death," and was even subjected to a criminal investigation.
As a result, for nearly thirty years afterward, Japan performed almost no organ transplants from brain-dead donors.
After years of social debate, the Japanese Diet finally passed the Organ Transplant Act on October 16, 1997.
The core of this law was that, for the first time at the legislative level, it recognized "brain death" as the death of a person.
But its conditions were extremely strict.
The passage of the law opened a crack, but the strict restrictions meant there were very few eligible donors.
It wasn't until February 28, 1999, that the first brain-death heart transplant under the new law could be carried out.
For a long time after that, the number of heart transplants Japan performed each year hovered in the single digits.
In July 2010, Japan made fundamental revisions to the Organ Transplant Act, which had been in effect for thirteen years.
After the law was relaxed, the number of donors increased noticeably, and heart transplants grew rapidly year by year, surpassing a hundred cases in recent years.
In other words, a heart transplant was basically out of reach in Japan for now.
And an artificial heart was even more out of the question.
At this stage, the artificial heart was still in development—so far it had only been successfully tested on animals, and hadn't yet been used in clinical trials.
Looking at Mrs. Shimizu, who seemed to have fallen asleep but was still frowning, an oxygen mask over her face, Kagami let out a quiet inner sigh.
It was then that Yukinoshita Shizuku walked over.
Kagami handed the bento to her.
"Even if you don't have an appetite, eat something to fill your stomach."
Yukinoshita took the bento and nodded.
Then she looked toward Nayotake, who sat unmoved at Mrs. Shimizu's bedside.
Shaking her head, she walked over.
"Nayotake, let's eat first."
Only then did Shimizu Nayotake turn her head and look at the two of them.
Then she nodded.
The ward was a single-occupancy intensive-care room, with a tea table and a sofa off to the side.
The two of them sat down on the sofa, took out their bentos, and began to eat.
Kagami watched the two of them just sit there in silence, eating their bentos.
For a moment, Kagami couldn't stand the atmosphere.
So he said,
"I'm going to get some air out in the hallway."
Without waiting for a response from either of them, Kagami walked out of the ward.
As he passed the other rooms, from time to time he could hear the moans of various patients.
Once he'd left the ward area, the faint sound of weeping kept drifting through the corridor.
He walked up to a window and opened it just a crack.
The bitter, frigid wind immediately rushed against his cheeks, slipping into his nostrils, sinking deep into his lungs.
After letting the cold wind blow over him for a while, he felt a bit more clear-headed.
Only then did he open his System Panel once more.
A familiar voice sounded in his mind.
[Your Pure Love Points have been detected to meet the upgrade requirements.]
[Upgrade now?]
"No."
Kagami looked at his Pure Love Points.
As his works grew more and more numerous, and his sales climbed higher and higher,
his Pure Love Points had accumulated faster and faster.
From the last culture festival until now, a few days ago he'd saved up 10 million Pure Love Points.
And it had triggered the System's upgrade prompt from LV.3 to LV.4.
But he hadn't been in any rush to upgrade.
It was precisely because of what had happened last night that he'd wrestled with the decision all night long.
Would these Pure Love Points be better spent upgrading the System's level?
Or better spent upgrading the exchange shop he'd unlocked last time?
If he used them to upgrade, then if the new function LV.4 granted wasn't some kind of medical-healing ability, the points needed for the next upgrade to LV.5 would surely be at least tens of millions.
Whether Nayotake's mother could hold out that long was a real question.
If he used them to upgrade the shop, then upgrading it to LV.2 cost 2 million points, and going by the pattern of the System level requiring 10 million Pure Love Points,
upgrading the shop to LV.3, even if it wasn't 3 million, probably wouldn't be too expensive either.
10 million Pure Love Points should be enough to upgrade the shop at least twice.
Two shop upgrades might just yield something that could save Mrs. Shimizu.
But what if it didn't?
And so Kagami had been agonizing all along over which one he should upgrade first.
Useless System, hurry up and think of something!
It was in that moment that Kagami came to understand the helplessness of having such a garbage system.
Back when he read novels, he'd always looked down on those books where the systems and cheat abilities were far too overpowered—found them thoroughly boring to read.
Now that it was his turn, of course, his only complaint was that the cheat was far too weak.
If only it were some black-tech system, some million-times-critical-hit system.
A single amoxicillin pill turned into a cure-all miracle drug.
Even the dreaded cancer conquered too.
Kagami stared out the window at Tokyo Tower in the distance, its colored lights glowing in the night, lost in a daze for a good while.
When he came back to himself, it was as if he'd made up his mind about something.
He closed the window and went back to the nurses' station in the ward area.
He borrowed a pen and paper and began writing something on it.
By the time Kagami returned to the ward,
Yukinoshita Shizuku and Shimizu Nayotake had just finished eating and were tidying up.
Kagami walked straight over to Shimizu Nayotake.
"Nayotake."
Shimizu Nayotake looked at Kagami, puzzled.
But she still forced herself to give a smile.
"What is it?"
Yukinoshita Shizuku looked at Kagami in confusion as well.
Kagami simply held both of his hands out toward her.
The two of them saw that his hands were clenched into two fists.
"Pick one."
Kagami said to her.
Yukinoshita Shizuku, at his side, asked with a frown.
"Kagami, what's this about?"
Kagami didn't answer, only kept his eyes fixed on Shimizu Nayotake.
Shimizu Nayotake looked back at him, and in the end asked nothing.
She glanced at his fists.
Then pointed at the left one.
Kagami nodded. He didn't open his fist, but instead stuck both hands straight back into his trouser pockets and said with a laugh,
"I thought the mood was getting a little heavy."
"Figured I'd play a little game to lighten things up."
"Guess it didn't really work."
"You two keep tidying up."
"I'm going to the restroom."
With that, Kagami immediately headed out again.
Yukinoshita Shizuku and Shimizu Nayotake exchanged a bewildered glance.
In the end, they both shook their heads and went back to tidying up.
Inside the restroom.
Kagami spread both of his hands open.
There were two slips of paper in his hands.
The slip in his left hand read [Shop].
The slip in his right hand read [System].
"Shop" stood for the exchange shop, and "System" naturally stood for the System.
He'd figured that since he couldn't choose, he'd leave it to Nayotake to decide—do his utmost and leave the rest to fate.
Whatever the outcome after that, he wouldn't agonize over it anymore.
He'd already done enough; he'd done all he possibly could.
Kagami looked at the character [Shop] in his left hand.
So the choice was to upgrade the shop?
Nayotake, I hope your luck holds out.
Kagami opened the System Panel.
And called out in his mind.
"System, allocate points!"
[Please select the option to allocate points to or upgrade.]
"I want to upgrade the exchange shop."
[Current exchange shop level: LV.1]
[Consume 2 million Pure Love Points to upgrade?]
"Yes!"
[2 million Pure Love Points consumed.]
[Exchange Shop LV.1]——[Exchange Shop LV.2]
[Upgrade complete.]
Hearing the notification of a successful upgrade,
Kagami stared intently at the brand-new, upgraded shop.
He kept browsing through it without stopping.
LV.2 had many more items than before.
But most of it was an expansion of categories.
Some common medications were now available too.
They were even all original brand-name drugs.
But there was no miracle drug that could cure heart failure.
As Kagami finished looking through the shop, his expression went from anticipation to dejection.
Then he quickly rallied himself and checked the prompt for the points needed to upgrade to the next level beside the system shop.
He saw it required 5 million Pure Love Points.
"I want to upgrade the exchange shop."
[Current exchange shop level: LV.2]
[Consume 5 million Pure Love Points to upgrade?]
"Yes!"
[5 million Pure Love Points consumed.]
[Exchange Shop LV.2]——[Exchange Shop LV.3]
[Upgrade complete.]
Kagami hurriedly looked at the shop.
Once again the range of items had continued to expand.
There were even CNC lathes, road rollers, and bulldozers now.
Would there be lithography machines someday too?
Kagami reined in his thoughts and hurried on, scanning the shop's product list.
In the end, his expression slowly grew despondent again.
There was still no miracle drug that could treat terminal heart failure or congenital heart disease.
Kagami let out a sigh.
He turned the faucet at the sink, cupped tap water in his hands, and splashed it onto his face.
Then he took out a tissue and wiped himself dry.
Only then did he look at himself in the mirror.
This is as far as I can help you, Nayotake.
Kagami turned and walked back to the ward.
When he opened the door and came in, he saw Shimizu Nayotake and Yukinoshita Shizuku helping Mrs. Shimizu—who was frowning and seemed to be in some pain—to sit up.
Mrs. Shimizu noticed Kagami coming in just then.
Forcing a smile and gasping for breath, she said slowly,
"Kagami-kun, you came too."
"I've really troubled the two of you again."
No sooner had she finished than she immediately started coughing.
Shimizu Nayotake quickly brought over a trash can.
Mrs. Shimizu coughed a trace of bloody foam into it.
After a good while, when she finally stopped coughing, Nayotake helped Mrs. Shimizu sit at the edge of the bed.
She moved a chair over beside her, placed a pillow against the backrest, and then let Mrs. Shimizu lean forward against it.
"What's this for?"
Kagami asked Yukinoshita Shizuku beside him, puzzled.
Yukinoshita Shizuku spoke softly in his ear.
"If Mrs. Shimizu lies down to sleep now, she gets chest tightness and can't breathe."
"The doctor said it's called orthopnea."
"She can only sleep leaning forward."
"She hasn't slept properly since yesterday."
"It was only when you came that she felt a bit better and lay down to sleep."
"Just now she woke up suffocating again."
Only then did Kagami turn to look at the utterly haggard Mrs. Shimizu.
Mrs. Shimizu, still weak and listless, smiled at Kagami.
"Sorry for the unsightly display."
"Yesterday I'm truly grateful to you and Shizuku for finding Nayotake."
Kagami only smiled, not knowing what to say.
At this point Shimizu Nayotake, holding a water cup, said,
"I'll go get some hot water."
Kagami took the cup from her.
"Let me go instead."
And so Kagami left the ward once more, carrying the water cup.
Kagami went to the rest area, where hot water was provided for patients and family members to drink directly.
After filling the cup with hot water, he didn't head straight back.
Instead he glanced around and found that there was no one about.
Only then did he take out a bottle of energy potion from his System space.
These potions were all things he'd pulled from the gacha mall back in the day.
He rarely used them himself.
A young body, even after staying up all night, wouldn't get too tired.
It was only on the occasional stints of nonstop deadline crunching that he'd drunk a few.
Now his stockpile was too numerous to count.
And the exchange mall sold these too, at a pretty steep price.
An absolute rip-off of a thing.
But it really was useful.
After drinking one, he'd feel a hundred times more energized than waking up from a nice, sound sleep.
His weary, worn-out body would instantly regain its vigor.
So he thought of pouring a bottle of energy potion into the water cup for Mrs. Shimizu to drink.
At the very least it could restore some of her spirit.
It would surely be far better than her current state of illness combined with exhaustion and drowsiness.
Not so agonizing.
And so, taking advantage of there being no one around, Kagami poured a whole bottle of energy potion straight into the water cup...
By the time Kagami returned to the ward with the water cup,
he saw Mrs. Shimizu chatting about something with Yukinoshita Shizuku and Shimizu Nayotake.
Kagami handed the water cup straight to Mrs. Shimizu.
"Thank you, Kagami-kun."
"I happen to be thirsty too."
Mrs. Shimizu paused her conversation and smiled as she reached to take the cup.
But perhaps she was too weak—she nearly lost her grip and let it slip.
After Shimizu Nayotake, beside her, caught it, she smiled apologetically.
Shimizu Nayotake opened the cup and poured its contents into a nearby teacup, then blew on it. Once it felt no longer hot, only lukewarm, she handed it to Mrs. Shimizu.
Mrs. Shimizu held the small teacup, with Shimizu Nayotake supporting it from below, and only then, tremblingly, slowly finished the water in the cup.
Just as Shimizu Nayotake was about to take a tissue and wipe Mrs. Shimizu's mouth,
Mrs. Shimizu's eyes suddenly brightened a little.
And she visibly perked up quite a bit as well.
Mrs. Shimizu felt it herself too.
She said, somewhat uncertainly,
"I... I feel a lot more energetic."
"And what's more..."
As she spoke, Mrs. Shimizu slowly rose to her feet before the eyes of all three of them.
Then she gently stroked her chest.
"My chest doesn't feel so tight anymore either."
There was only a clattering sound.
Kagami saw the water cup in Shimizu Nayotake's hand fall to the floor, spilling water everywhere.
Her eyes had gone completely red.
Shimizu Nayotake wasn't moved because her mother's condition had suddenly eased.
Rather, from a young age, she'd seen far too many cases like this in hospitals.
Over at the neighboring University of Tokyo they called this a last flare before the end—the final rally!
She went from being at a loss to hurrying to the head of the bed and pressing the call bell.
In no time, a few nurses came in swiftly, following a doctor.
"What's wrong with the patient?"
the doctor asked directly.
Before any of them could speak,
Mrs. Shimizu spoke up herself.
"Doctor, I suddenly feel a lot more energetic."
"I can even stand up now, and my chest doesn't feel so tight anymore!"
The doctor frowned after hearing this.
"Please lie down first; let me examine you."
"All right, all right."
"Thank you for your trouble."
Shimizu Nayotake came back to herself.
She helped Mrs. Shimizu lie back down on the hospital bed.
After the doctor and nurses brought in all sorts of instruments and ran a full check,
the doctor murmured to himself,
"How strange."
"Judging by the ejection metrics, it really has returned to a value somewhere between moderate and severe."
"Rather than a terminal-stage value."
The doctor couldn't figure out what was going on either.
Terminal-stage heart failure was inherently irreversible.
This patient had only been diagnosed yesterday, and today her symptoms had suddenly lessened.
It left him with nothing to do but scratch at his already somewhat thinning hair.
In the end, all he could do was have a nurse draw blood to send for testing—the blood results would be the most direct way to determine whether the heart failure symptoms had truly eased.
When Shimizu Nayotake heard the doctor say she was fine for the moment, she couldn't help but breathe a sigh of relief.
Only then did she look at the water cup that had slipped from her grasp and fallen to the floor by her feet, and at the water spilled all over the ground.
Then, as if compelled by some unseen force, she looked toward Kagami at her side.
She saw the corners of his mouth faintly curling up—clearly he wanted to smile but was doing his utmost to suppress it—and his eyes were full of excitement.
She looked again at that puddle of water on the floor, and fell into a blank, dazed stare...
That night, Kagami and Yukinoshita Shizuku returned home together.
"Say, do you think maybe Auntie Shimizu was actually misdiagnosed?"
"Maybe it isn't as serious as being terminal-stage after all."
Yukinoshita Shizuku, taking off her coat, looked at Kagami beside her.
Kagami took off his coat too and hung it up on a hanger as he said,
"It's no use us guessing wildly."
"Didn't the doctor draw blood?"
"We'll know once the results come out."
Kagami said with a smile.
Yukinoshita Shizuku nodded thoughtfully.
Then she asked again.
"Are you okay?"
"What would be wrong with me?"
Kagami was taken aback.
"I noticed you seemed on edge the whole time in the ward today."
"I'm fine."
"After all, in an atmosphere like that, no one really likes being there watching a loved one or friend suffer, right?"
Yukinoshita Shizuku nodded in agreement.
"Are you really okay?"
"I'm really fine."
"Then I'll go run the bath water."
"Thanks for your trouble."
After Yukinoshita Shizuku went to run the bath water,
Kagami sat down on the sofa.
Out of thin air, a bottle of energy potion materialized in his hand.
It gave Yukino, who had just been about to come over and act coquettishly, a fright.
She promptly scampered off again.
Kagami gave the potion a shake.
Energy potion.
As the name suggested—and with all the novels he'd read—this was obviously the kind of thing like an energy drink, that would instantly restore your spirit and stamina once you drank it.
There was no need to go read any sort of instructions or description at all.
And the item description was just a few simple words too.
[Can restore the body's condition to its original state.]
At the time, Kagami hadn't given it much thought at all.
Reading that description again now,
perhaps it really did mean exactly what it said, literally.
In fact, it wasn't simply restoring energy and stamina.
Rather, like some kind of rewind magic, it rewound the body's entire condition back to its healthiest period?
Could it be some kind of magic potion?
Kagami even began wondering whether he should set up a lab and hire scientists at high salaries to analyze the potion's effects, then open a pharmaceutical factory for mass production.
Both benefiting humanity and raking in gold while lying back.
But if it really were some magical creation, wouldn't that be a bust?
He thought again of the nine blues and one gold in the gacha mall.
A bottle of energy potion was, after all, a gold.
And the exchange price for the energy potion in the exchange shop was outrageously, ripoff-level high too.
Looking at it now, had he wrongly blamed the System?
If it really did rewind the body to a healthy state,
then could functional organ failure be restored to how it was?
Or even—could physical, structural defects at the organ level, like congenital heart disease, be rewound?
Still, judging by Mrs. Shimizu's condition today, at the very least, functional organ failure could be restored.
As for why it hadn't been fully restored right away, only partially, it was perhaps because it had been diluted with water.
As well as...
Kagami looked at the energy potion (Small), energy potion (Medium), and energy potion (Large) in the exchange mall.
The energy potion he'd pulled himself looked like it should be the energy potion (Small) from the exchange mall.
As well as the required strength of the effect?
He just didn't know whether, once the effect ended, she'd immediately revert to her original terrible state, or slowly deteriorate back again.
And also, whether long-term use could bring about a complete cure.
Kagami thought it over—the several times he'd drunk the energy potion himself, he'd gradually gotten drowsy by the next evening in line with his normal body clock,
rather than suddenly becoming unbearably sleepy the instant the effect wore off.
So it seemed it shouldn't rebound right away.
If used long-term, then even if it couldn't fully cure her, it could restore the heart failure to at least a symptomless stage.
As long as the heart failure could be restored to a standard where she could get onto the operating table for surgery,
that would work too.
After all, Mrs. Shimizu's heart failure was functional organ failure caused by the structural defect of a congenital heart condition.
As long as surgical intervention on the heart was completed, heart failure shouldn't occur again.
And even taking ten thousand steps back, if even that didn't work,
he had plenty of energy potions on hand now, enough to keep Mrs. Shimizu's life hanging on while he slowly developed the System to its fullest.
I refuse to believe it—I've found something worthwhile.
A grand, mighty System.
Could it really be as useless as the systems in those Cishuwang novels he'd read in his past life?
Still acting like some raw recruit even after all the upgrades were done?
Unable to cure even a few illnesses?
Kagami tossed the energy potion up into the air, then snatched it back and gripped it tightly.
In other words, Mrs. Shimizu could be saved!
The gloom in Kagami's heart was swept clean away.
____
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