Vermilion Star (1)
A cough.
An unexpected fit of hyperventilation, and a clot of blood came spilling out.
It was the price of taking the blade driven into my heart without resistance — of receiving it with my whole body.
Ordinarily there would not have been so much as a tremor. But I had torn my own flesh open and twisted the steel through until it punched a hole straight through my heart.
Well. It had been a rather valuable experience.
I clamped one hand around the hilt of the greatsword still piercing me, wrenched it askew with a staggering pull, and drew it free with a wet shhk.
The sensation of the edge raking through my insides was a little filthy, but the blood I coughed up in its wake was not so much.
"…"
I looked down at Erika, who had briefly lost consciousness, then went and retrieved my right arm from where it had been flung some distance away. I brought it over to her shoulder stump, still half-veiled in drifting mist.
"Think this'll work?"
"Well, there is nothing to say it will not."
"It's been a while. I don't remember it all that clearly."
Suture magic — the clean rejoining of a severed limb. Back when I had been running experiments on my own body, I had done this sort of thing quite a lot.
In those days the pain itself had become so familiar that I barely registered it.
"This girl has an extraordinary regeneration stat. Once thou hast sutured it, it should take hold quickly. Two or three days ought to suffice."
The rest of her injuries were not severe… so I only needed to focus on the arm.
My blood was genuinely precious. When she woke up, I hoped she might at least thank me.
Not that she would.
I scattered blood through the air and shaped it into a vast elliptical ring. The currents stirred, gathering into a single coherent flow.
Bloody's body glowed faintly; her cloak rippled. In the empty space at the center of the ring, the structure of a magic circle took form, characters etching themselves across its surface. What had been slowly luminous suddenly condensed, collapsing into a thin membrane — a little thicker than the girth of an arm, longer top to bottom than it was wide.
I held it against her shoulder stump and adjusted the size for a moment. Then I slipped it between the severed faces of arm and shoulder and began the suture.
Muscle knit. Nerves linked. Bone joined, and the mana channels began to flow again.
"Mm."
The magic circle flared.
A small ring inscribed with many characters turned slowly where it sat nested in the cut. Yeah — looking at it like this, it was actually kind of cool.
"Can she still wear clothes over it?"
It would look weird if the circle stuck out under her sleeve.
"How practical of thee."
"Because this is reality."
I could fine-tune it later.
While the suture worked through its initial stage, I sat down for a brief rest. Erika, who had been unconscious, slowly opened her eyes and let out a low groan.
"You awake?"
"…Ugh."
"Ah — careful. Don't move your arm."
It was delicate work. If it shifted out of alignment, we would have a real headache.
Her face twisted hard as she looked down at her arm — then her head snapped up and she stared at me.
"I— I definitely stabbed you through the heart…!"
"Hm?"
I met those round eyes and decided, on the spot, to match her energy.
"Yeah! You did! My heart got run clean through! Amazing. Great job!"
As I said it I flung my hand out and pointed at my own chest.
All that remained was a heart long since restored and skin wrapped only in the torn scraps of my clothes.
"It really hurt. Hurt so bad I almost cried. You're the first person who's ever stabbed me in the hea—"
Not the first.
"—well, not the first. More like the sixteenth. But anyway. Yeah. You did."
"W-what are you even…"
Bewilderment swallowed her whole. It was rather cute.
"What's wrong?"
"If your heart was pierced, you should be de—"
"I almost died."
I let the pause hang.
"But I lived?"
"Ugh…!"
Erika's face contorted in an instant. She tried to seize her sword with the newly sutured arm and cried out at the pain.
"I told you to be careful. That's your only right arm. You ought to treat it gently."
Erika steadied her breathing and bit down on her lip.
I rose from my seat with a thin, crooked smile.
"I won the wager, and you — defeated in combat — failed to kill me. The expected outcome. The natural course of events."
"…"
Her teeth ground together.
"Angry? Too bad. Because that isn't the important part."
I approached her slowly, kneading the empty air in one hand as if shaping something invisible.
"What matters is this: from now on, no matter what I do to you, that body of yours can't fight back."
"Y-you piece of trash—!"
She tried somehow to scramble backward on a trembling body, but a solid wall blocked her from behind.
All she could do was claw at the ground with her one still-functional left hand.
"Hehehehe…"
"Stay away!! Come any closer and I'll kill you!!"
The moment I heard that, I stopped dead where I stood.
Erika sucked in a sharp breath, her face blank with confusion.
I counted two seconds inwardly — then lunged straight at her.
"Hehehe…!"
"Ukh…!"
I threw myself toward her as if to grab her, then twisted my arm at the last instant and slammed my fist into the wall behind her head.
A dull impact rang out. The wall shuddered.
Our eyes met. A sliver of silence passed between us.
"So from now on, take better care of your body too."
You're the only one who gets to kill me, after all.
Her twisted expression did not change. I reached for her just as she was.
I slid one arm under her neck and the other beneath the joints of her legs and lifted her in a princess carry.
A body that could not resist was easy to handle.
Whether she had realized struggling was useless, or simply no longer had the strength, Erika only glared up at me in silence.
"We're going to the hospital. The ER. This time I'm…"
Hm.
"…the guardian, I guess."
The place we had fought was not far from the Association ward. There was no need to burn a transfer build, so I walked at an easy pace.
Embroidered streetlamps flickered on and off with soft tuk-tuk clicks. Residual echoes of the battle still clung to the road, and a cold scent rode the air past my nose.
Somewhere between calm and exhilaration, I kept walking — and the faded lights of the commercial district began to come into view beyond.
The quiet was nice, but right then I wanted conversation.
Of course she would not give me a normal response.
"I wonder how people will react if I walk into the ward carrying you like this."
"…"
"Or maybe I should worry first about the chaos of just standing out on the street with my face uncovered."
"…Why."
Her mouth opened, a small, stiff motion.
"Why won't you kill me? I came at you like I meant to end you. I cursed you, condemned you, provoked you. Or is there some other scheme—"
"Because you're pretty."
"…"
"I'd like to tie you up somewhere and look at you all day."
Erika stared at me. Under that dissecting gaze I found myself looking away without meaning to.
"So you won't tell me. Is that it?"
A brief silence settled.
"I'm going to grant your wish."
"…Wish?"
"You said it yourself. That you were going to kill me no matter what."
Hearing the words kill me in my own mouth made something itch strangely under my skin.
"So I decided to help you."
Her lips parted and froze there, slightly open.
"Well. Do your best."
"…What are you—"
"Ah. We're here."
Not the ward itself — the entrance to the commercial district.
The night was sliding toward the small hours, so there were not many people, but neither were there few; the aftermath of the fight had not reached this far.
"Noise or quiet — which do you prefer?"
"…"
"You don't have to answer. I'll do as I like either way."
I put power into my legs and ran. The street was quiet, but small sounds still drifted through in soft threads. Fine strands of her hair tickled my hand and arm.
The slight weight of her body pressed against my chest.
It did not slow me down at all.
It was better than I expected. It was fun.
Fun, huh.
I slammed the ward doors open with my shoulder. At the same instant my hat scattered mana and wrapped my head; my skin and eye color shifted, and I tugged my collar up over my nose.
Then I shouted.
"E-emergency patient! Please help!"
Every gaze in the room snapped toward us.
"She's lost too much blood! I think she's still breathing!"
Erika looked up at me as if she could not believe what she was hearing.
"Bring her this way."
"Dr. Kim! Need you over here!"
"That's Miss Erika!"
The commotion doubled, and everything moved at breakneck speed.
A blood-soaked girl who looked dangerously injured was wheeled away on a gurney, and a medic came toward me.
"What is your relationship to the patient? And what was her condition when you found her?"
"Guardia— I mean, I found her collapsed on the street. Her arm had been severed, so I performed emergency suture magic."
"Suture magic? How would a civilian even perform top-tier surgical buil—"
The medic did not finish. His eyes left me and he hurried over to Erika, who was nodding repeatedly as if to say she was fine.
The other staff must already have checked her; they were gathered around the magic circle bound to her right arm, talking among themselves.
"I've never seen precision like this. Even a team of healers working for hours might not manage it…"
"Th-this isn't a procedure you just finish in one go…?!"
I scrambled for a story.
What was I supposed to say?
Should I just run?
I had started to turn when a hand caught my shoulder.
"I'm afraid you'll need to stay a moment, sir. There are a few things we'll need to ask you and the patient."
I hurriedly pressed my hat down and averted my eyes.
"Her disrupted internal mana, the ruptures and external bleeding that should inevitably have followed — all of it has been treated cleanly. Did you handle that as well?"
"Ah. Yes."
The medic's pupils blew wide.
This was going to be a nuisance. That much was certain.