Ch 3: Broken Innocence (Hiiro)

To this fate… I say no thank you.

It’s been two whole days since we lost touch with Poppy Pipopapo.

I knew I should have stopped her even if I had to catch her by the neck.

Yesterday, I received a call from Deputy Director Hinata.

According to him, Poppy Pipopapo wanted to know where the pediatrician had had his traffic accident as a child. Perhaps Poppy Pipopapo thought that was a novel spot and tried to capture Mighty Novel X.

Since she’s a bugster, she should be able to make an emergency evacuation even if she’s facing a serious crisis. I really resented the error of judgment I had made two days ago when I had assumed that.

However, regret would not improve the situation. I need to change my mind and calmly analyze what I should do.

When I was studying in the US, I learned a lesson from a professor of surgery at a major hospital with the world’s best medical technology.

“The biggest monster in surgery is your emotions.”

Emotions are full of random numbers and are the most illogical of all.

When an unforeseen situation arises in an operation where a patient’s life or death is at stake, the uncertainty of emotions can rob the surgeon of their ability to make a calm decision, which can lead to fatal mistakes that would otherwise not be possible. In order to prevent this from happening, it is necessary to develop an unshakable confidence through daily training and to be carefully prepared to deal with any unforeseen situation, both mentally and physically.

Change your mind. Let go of your personal feelings. The operation isn’t over yet. 

You’ll only regret it after everything is over.

“Genius surgeon. Our helpers have arrived.”

The coroner’s words interrupted my thoughts.

Strictly speaking, the words spoken by the medical examiner caused air vibrations that vibrated my eardrums. They are amplified by the ossicles, converted into electrical signals by the sensory organ in the inner ear called the cochlea, analyzed for their frequency and strength, and then carried to my cranial nerves…

Excuse me. I don’t really care about that right now.

When I turned around, I saw the practitioner and the female gamer in CR’s medical office.

The medical practitioner was wearing a black V-neck shirt, camouflage army pants and black boots. He wore a white coat and looked ready to go. The female gamer looked more mature, but she was still wearing a colorful outfit with primary colors and a mini-skirt.

“You’ve come a long way, haven’t you?”

As soon as I started to say that, the practitioner came up to me and grabbed me by the chest.

“How did this happen when Brave and Lazer were there!”

“Taiga. This is not the time for us to be arguing.”

The female gamer pointed out the truth.

The practitioner didn’t have anything to say in reply, so he let go of me.

I adjusted the collar of my disheveled coat and explained to them what had happened so far. I shared with them all the information I knew at the moment.

“Poppy Pipopapo is also believed to have disappeared in a failed attempt to capture Mighty Novel X. Anyway, be prepared that this operation is going to be different from anything we’ve done before.”

“Bring it on,” the practitioner spat.

The coroner quickly interjected and got down to business.

“Well, well. Now that we’re all here, let’s have a doctor’s conference. Nico-chan, can you tell us what you know about Emu’s past?”

“Okay. Between the time you called me and the time it took me to get here, I’ve been gathering info from my old gamer friends. I was shocked when I first heard about it, but it seems that he used to live with his father when he was in high school. His mother died of illness right after Emu was born.”

No mother… that was news to me.

When the topic of his family came up, the pediatrician seemed to avoid the subject, but apparently he had a complicated family background. He hadn’t given us the slightest hint of that until now. It’s not as if we could do anything about it if we knew that fact.

But even so. Distant.

If I were to say this to you, you might say, “I don’t want to hear that from you, Hiiro-san.”

You’ve been smiling all this time, while keeping your family situation hidden in your heart.

Will you say that you were trying not to make us worry?

Being self-righteous is a good thing.

Did you think that I would care about you? No matter what your situation is, you and I are still you and I. There’s nothing else to it.

…Wait a minute.

In front of such a pediatrician… I was talking about my family background….

I was ashamed of myself. I feel sorry for the pediatrician.

“I thought that might be the case.”

“What do you mean, Lazer?” asked the practitioner.

“Emu and I were talking about family before, and he seemed strangely fidgety. I was wondering if there was something behind it.”

When the coroner said that, I thought, “He got me”.

“Coroner. Did you deliberately lie about your family because you had a premonition of this? So as not to offend the pediatrician?”

“Well, we don’t need to talk about that right now.”

I see. As usual, the medical examiner is a shrewd man. He always senses the two sides of a person and is always prepared for anything.

I’ve never met anyone as observant as this man. Sometimes I even feel that it is almost an occupational disease. He carefully observes the body of the deceased, reads the messages left behind, and derives the cause of death. With the eyes of such a medical examiner, reading the back of a living person would be like twisting the hand of a baby.

At any rate. It turns out that the pediatrician is from a motherless family.

This fact could be some kind of clue to help us clear Mighty Novel X.

The female gamer went on to tell us more information that she had obtained.

“So. About Emu’s father. His name is Hojo Kiyonaga. I don’t know about now, but when Emu was in high school, he was working for a company called Medictric.”

“Medictric. Isn’t it one of the largest medical device manufacturers in Japan?”

“As expected of Brave! You know your stuff!” The female gamer teased.

“Of course. A lot of the equipment in our hospital is made by Medictric. Particularly medical equipment such as ventilators and dialysis machines that are used to maintain patients’ lives.”

“Wow, I didn’t know Emu’s father worked for a company that made such amazing products!”

In addition, the following facts were revealed by the female gamer’s report.

The pediatrician’s father worked in the development department of Medictric at the time. When the pediatrician was still young, he often moved from one place to another due to his work. Because he moved around a lot, he didn’t seem to have many friends at school.

His favorite food was hamburgers. Perhaps because of his motherless family, he had been eating lunch boxes, prepared foods, and frozen foods from supermarkets since he was a child, so eating out at a burger store every once in a while was his greatest reward. It seems that his preference at that time continued into his high school years.

There was also a bit of trivia mixed in, such as his tendency to fall and get hurt easily, his love of cleanliness and his use of laundromats for laundry, and his preference for techno-pop music, but I noted it just in case.

What surprised me the most was the pediatrician’s father. Being a member of the development department of Medictric, he was a leading figure in the development of cutting-edge medical equipment, and his job was an important one that involved taking care of people’s lives from a different standpoint than that of us doctors. Considering the fact that he was often transferred, it is easy to imagine that he must have spent his days very busy.

If that is the case, the pediatrician might have spent a lot of time alone at home. His unparalleled love for video games may have been due to the fact that he spent a lot of time playing alone, which makes sense. The fact that he loved to use the laundromat may have also had something to do with that.

Little by little, the background surrounding the pediatrician is becoming more and more outlined. I am not sure if this information will help me in the operation, but it is always better to be carefully prepared. In an operation where a patient’s life or death is at stake, it is important to be prepared for any unforeseen circumstances.

“Okay. Doctor’s conference is over. The situation is urgent. Operations will be performed simultaneously.”

“Simultaneously? Brave, what does that mean?” The female gamer asked.

“As you know, in order to conquer Mighty Novel X, we need to clear the novel spots in this town one by one. If we act in a group, we’ll only lose time during the operation. We’ll have to split up and perform the operation at the same time.”

“Very well.” The general practitioner agreed.

“But will it be okay? You two are not specialists in psychosomatic medicine, are you?” The coroner said sarcastically.

It’s the same for you, isn’t it? You’re not in a situation where you can say anything about it.

I was about to say something like that, but the medical examiner must have read my intentions, because he said, “Well, it’s the same for me.”

Bring it on.

I’ll be the best doctor in the world. That’s what I promised Saki.

Holding a scalpel in an operation is not the only thing I’m capable of.

It doesn’t matter what kind of disease it is. As long as there’s a patient there, I’ll cure them.

I reiterated my resolve.

To bind myself to the words by saying them out loud.

It’s not just an ideal.

It’s not a pretense, either.

Say and Do. That’s my philosophy.

“There’s nothing I can’t cut.”