Muffled sounds came back first, like voices bleeding through water. It sounded like… shouting.
"You're not his superior; you don't get to make decisions like these."
"If he dies, that's on you!"
Air dragged into his lungs slowly this time, tasting sterile and bitter. His body felt heavy, and something brushed against his stomach. It was cold at first, then turned into a sharp, twisting sensation that bloomed from his abdomen, painful enough to make his fingers twitch weakly at his sides.
"Nn…"
His eyelids fluttered and light seeped in through narrow slits, blurry shapes hovering over him. They moved… strangely. Small figures, no taller than a child's torso, clustered around his midsection. Their bodies were soft and rounded, draped in loose robes that seemed to melt into themselves at the edges. Their faces were smooth and had almost faint features consisting of tiny dot eyes and thin, curved smiles.
Long, delicate fingers pressed into his wound, weaving threads of faintly glowing energy into his flesh. One of them tilted its head unnaturally far to the side as it worked while another hummed an off-key lullaby.
"What the…" Toma croaked, his voice barely making it out yet causing the nearest spirit to freeze. Its head turned toward him before and, just as quickly, it turned back to resume its work as if his awareness didn't matter.
"Stay still…" one of them whispered, but its mouth didn't move.
The pressure on his abdomen increased for a moment, sharp enough to pull a strained breath from him.
"He's awake!" Kira exclaimed.
Toma blinked harder, forcing his vision to focus to see the white walls and reinforced corners of the room. A medical room, though definitely not a hospital.
"Kira…" he rasped before coughing.
She stepped into view with her arms crossed and that usual sharp expression of hers. Though, it was dulled slightly by something else.
"Yeah," she said. "You're not dead."
"Feels like it..."
"Yeah… you were close."
Toma let out a weak breath that might've been a laugh. Then he gave another look around before looking at Kira.
"Where… am I?"
"The ferry. We're heading back."
"Back…?"
"To the Academy. Try to keep up, okay?"
Home, he thought. He shifted slightly and immediately regretted it as a sharp pain flared from his stomach.
"Agh, damn it!"
"Stay still, idiot," Kira said flatly.
Toma tilted his head down, seeing his stomach… or lack thereof. The wound was a crater-like cavity carved into his abdomen, where at its center was something unnatural. A flimsy, semi-translucent purple flesh sat there like an exposed layer, moving slightly. Around it, his skin had blackened and looked like rough, veined stone. Hardened in uneven patches that crept outward from the wound like a spreading infection frozen mid-growth.
"That's…" he started, swallowing hard. "That's inside me…?"
"Partially," Kira said
.
"Partially?!" His voice cracked slightly. "What do you mean partially?!"
Kira didn't answer immediately, but before she could, the door slid open. Both of them looked up to see a tall, composed woman with round-rimmed glasses resting neatly on her face, which framed sharp, observant green-colored eyes. Her skin was pale, almost porcelain, and her gray hair fell cleanly around her shoulders, contrasting strangely with how young she looked. She adjusted her gloves as she entered, gaze already fixed on Toma.
"So this is the one," she said calmly.
"Dr. Uemura," Kira acknowledged before inclining her head.
Dr. Uemura Yuriko, head physician of the Maestro Cultivation Academy, stepped fully into the room, her heels clicking softly against the floor. Her eyes flicked briefly to the wound, then narrowed. She didn't look away from the wound.
"Out."
The word was spoken quietly but was absolute in tone. One of the medical spirits paused mid-motion, and another tilted its head before all of them withdrew at once, their small bodies gliding backward in unison. Kira, however, kept still.
"I can stay," she said, her arms still crossed.
"No," Dr. Uemura replied simply. "We must be alone, Kira."
Kira clicked her tongue in annoyance, but after a brief pause, she turned toward the door. "Don't die on me, idiot," she muttered, though she didn't look at Toma. The door slid shut behind her.
Dr. Uemura dragged a stool over and sat beside him, adjusting her glasses slightly as she leaned in. Up close, her expression was even harder to read. She looked focused and distant, as if she were already working through a dozen possibilities at once.
"Now then," she said, her fingers hovering just above the edge of the wound. "How do you feel?"
Toma let out a slow breath, eyes drifting shut for a moment as he tried to take stock of his body.
"Like…" he began, his voice straining. "Like a thousand needles are stabbing into me… everywhere."
He tried to flex his hand just once, but a sharp wince pulled across his face as the sensation spiked violently, shooting up his arm and into his chest.
"Because there is," she said lightly, a small amused chuckle leaving him.
"What?" he asked, frowning before lifting his arm slightly to see that embedded across his skin, from his arms, shoulders, and even along his torso, were tiny hair-thin needles. So fine they were almost invisible unless the light caught them just right. There were hundreds, maybe more. They glinted faintly, barely perceptible, each one inserted with impossible precision into specific points across his body.
"What the hell?!" He exclaimed, jerking slightly and immediately regretting it as pain flared again.
"Relax," Dr. Uemura said calmly. "You'll only make it worse."
"Relax?!" Toma hissed. "I'm… What is this…? Why am I–"
"Seibari Needles," she cut in. "They're regulating you. Circulation, nerve response, structural integrity… Most importantly, they're the reason you haven't bled out."
Toma stared at her, then back at his arm, then back at her again.
"You're telling me…" he said slowly, "…I'm being held together by a bunch of invisible needles?"
"More or less," she replied without hesitation. Didn't sugarcoat it either.
Toma let his head fall back against the surface beneath him with a weak exhale. He then swallowed once and looked down to the grotesque crater in his abdomen before forcing himself to look at her again.
"Then what is this?" he asked, voice quieter now. "What am I actually looking at?"
"I have my theories," she said, her gaze never leaving the wound. "But the most plausible one is that this… is the result of a Yamirei attack."
Toma stared at her, then let out a pained scoff.
"That's the understatement of the century…"
Her eyes lifted from the wound and settled on him again.
"What do you remember?"
Toma blinked, his mind feeling… foggy.
"We… were hunting," he started slowly. "The Bat Witch: Annalise. There were a bunch of lesser Yamirei… then that thing showed up. Bigger one… a higher-grade Yamirei. It… grabbed me."
Dr. Uemura hummed softly, as if confirming something in her head. She then leaned in closer, studying him in a way that made it feel like she wasn't looking at his body but his very soul.
"The Seibari needles will fade," she said, her voice lowering just a fraction. "Gradually, as your body stabilizes. However, until I can determine a proper prognosis…"
Her gaze locked onto his.
"You will keep this hidden."
"Hidden?" he repeated, more to himself than to her.
"No one at the Academy is to know," she clarified. "No instructors. No classmates. No family."
Toma let out a quiet scoff, looking away. "Yeah," he muttered. "You don't have to worry about that last part."
Dr. Uemura didn't press. Instead, she stood from the stool and smoothed out her coat as she stepped away from the bed. "Take your recovery seriously, Mr. Del Cid. You're alive by a margin thinner than those needles."
She turned toward the door, but once she reached it, Toma called out to stop her.
"Wait, Dr. Uemura…"
She glanced back with that stoic expression of hers.
"Have you… heard anything from Mr. Hosho?"
A flicker of confusion crossed her face. "Reikan?" She asked
.
Toma gave a small head nod.
Dr. Uemura placed a finger lightly against her chin, thinking. "I believe… he's currently scouting in the city. New recruits, most likely."
Toma's eased up a bit. "Figures… but, uhm… if you do see him," he said, scratching lightly at the side of his head, wincing slightly from the motion. "Could you tell him that I wish to meet up sometime? I haven't seen him since I started all this… two years ago."
Dr. Uemura studied him, but then her expression softened slightly. A small smile tugged at the corner of her lips.
"I'll see to it," she said without hesitation before finally making her exit. The door slid shut behind her with a soft click before opening again, with Kira stepping back in.
"So," she said. "I see you survived the doctor…"
"Barely..." he replied with a weak exhale.
She nodded once, leaning back against the wall beside the door. "We're about thirty minutes out from Taida Island," she said after a moment.
Toma sighed slowly, letting his head sink further into the pillow.
"Already…?"
The thought felt distant, like everything else right now. The Academy, the training… all of it waiting for him on the other side of this.
"Did… did we get her?" he asked, the question coming out quieter than expected.
Kira didn't answer right away, yet that told him enough.
"She… got away," she said finally, her tone flat, and she looked down.
His hand twitched, fingers curling weakly at his sides.
"All that… and she just, what, flew off?" he muttered, frustration bleeding into his voice and mixing with the pain. "We had her. We had her, Kira–"
"It was either her or you, idiot!" Kira snapped, cutting him off. She then pushed off the wall slightly, uncrossing her arms. "You were impaled by a high-grade Yamirei, Toma. Your weapon broke… you were seconds from dying."
Her eyes locked onto his.
"I made a call. I wasn't gambling your life on a Witch that already had backup."
Toma looked away out of shame, his teeth grinding slightly.
"Damn it…"
Kira exhaled through her nose, her posture loosening a bit.
"I… I couldn't forgive myself," she added, almost under her breath, "if I let you bleed out there..."
His frustration vanished as soon as it came.
"Well… next time, we'll finish it. That Contract will be mine…"