Chapter 14:
Kanzaki Tomomu sneezed several times in a row.
"What's wrong, Mr. Kanzaki? Are you coming down with a cold, or is someone talking about you behind your back?" Clarisse looked at him with concern.
"No one would talk about me. It's probably just the sudden drop in temperature." Kanzaki Tomomu rubbed his nose.
He and Clarisse had been chatting for a long time. It was already deep into the night.
"…Then why aren't you wearing more layers?"
"There are two reasons. The first is probably a habit formed from my childhood experiences… that I don't remember it clearly anymore."
Kanzaki Tomomu searched through his memories. His voice gradually took on a tone of quiet reflection as he spoke.
"When I was little, a world war broke out on my home planet. All kinds of devastating weapons polluted the land, the sky, and the oceans.
The air was constantly filled with a smell that made people extremely uncomfortable. The flames of war spread across the entire planet, and countless people were left homeless.
Countless biological weapons were used in the fighting, giving rise to many deadly viruses. No one who caught them survived.
I was lying in a pile of corpses waiting to die when my teacher appeared. She was a scientist who studied life itself. She took me in and gave me a chance to keep living…"
This was the first time Kanzaki Tomomu had ever spoken about his own past. Clarisse listened with full attention, completely focused.
"Maybe I was just stubborn enough to survive. My teacher said I was carrying at least a dozen different virus strains in my body. A few of them actually kept each other in check, which is why I lasted long enough for her to find me."
"After that, I became her test subject. To stay alive, I spent the first two full years inside a cultivation tank.
If I left it, there was a high chance the viruses would flare up uncontrollably.
Even after I could leave the tank, I still had to have my body checked constantly. We monitored the activity and possible mutations of the virus strains in real time.
Wearing too many layers of clothes was troublesome, so for the whole year I basically just threw on something clean. My memories of that time are a little fuzzy, but that's roughly how it was."
"And the second reason?" Clarisse asked softly.
Kanzaki Tomomu stayed silent for a moment before answering in a casual tone.
"…Although all the viruses in my body were eventually removed, they left behind aftereffects. Sometimes I lose my sense of touch."
"Sense of touch?" Clarisse tilted her head.
"Touch, smell, pressure, temperature, pain… For example, I sometimes can't taste food properly or notice changes in the weather. It's not too serious."
"My body used to be strong so it didn't affect me much. Now, maybe because I'm getting older, I've actually started to feel the cold. Heh…"
"You don't look like an old man at all, Mr. Kanzaki."
He spoke lightly, but Clarisse didn't fully believe him.
Everything she had seen and heard over the past few years wouldn't lie.
When the weather changes, people who feel cold put on more clothes. When it's hot, they dress lighter.
The frequency with which Mr. Kanzaki lost his sense of touch might not be occasional at all…
He could be going through half the winter without noticing the actual temperature changes and only deciding what to wear based on monitoring data.
And then there was his sense of taste!
Clarisse suddenly remembered the time she brought him the red-and-blue crystal fruit. After tasting it, he had said it was very sweet.
But that fruit was clearly sweet-tart. Even when fully ripe, the sourness was still obvious.
At first she thought it was just a difference in personal taste. Now it seemed…
Clarisse's heart stung as if pricked by a needle.
Had he… stopped being able to taste things properly a long time ago without even realizing it…?
But if his sense of taste was impaired, how could he still make such delicious pastries and brews?
Unless — his taste had been fine before and the problem had only appeared recently.
"Even your teacher couldn't cure it?" Clarisse asked, trying to hold back the ache in her chest.
"…If it could be cured, it wouldn't be called an aftereffect." Kanzaki Tomomu gave a carefree smile, but inside he was apologizing.
This was also only half the truth.
In reality, these symptoms had only started appearing in recent years.
It was the natural decline that came with the aging of a mortal body, not the lingering damage from the viruses.
He was a short-lived species. His natural lifespan should never have exceeded a hundred years or so.
The only reason he had lived this long was because Ruan Mei had extended his life for him back then.
But he had no intention of telling her any of that.
A person who was about to die should take any unpleasant things with him into the grave instead of planting them in someone else's memory.
Kanzaki Tomomu understood one thing very clearly.
To Clarisse, he was nothing more than a passing figure in her life — the doctor who had helped her mother's amnesia.
Nothing more.
Clarisse had no idea what he was truly thinking. She could only let out a soft, quiet sigh.
"Why the sudden sigh when everything was fine?"
"I feel bad for you, Mr. Kanzaki. Fate has been too unfair to you."
"Heh. It was never fair. I understood that even as a child. But that's simply part of life."
Kanzaki Tomomu smiled gently.
"Try your best to live the way you want. Then so-called unfair fate doesn't matter so much anymore. You can treat it as if it doesn't exist."
"Then, Mr. Kanzaki… have you lived the way you wanted to?" Clarisse asked.
"I suppose I have."
"…That doesn't sound very confident."
Kanzaki Tomomu's smile didn't waver. "That question never had a single correct answer anyway. It's like pi — you can never calculate it to the end."
"Fate left me homeless and made me suffer terribly, but it also let me meet my teacher and find salvation."
"When you look at it that way, fate has actually been quite fair to me."
Hearing those words, Clarisse realized Mr. Kanzaki wasn't a pessimist after all. He sounded more like an optimist.
He was very open-minded.
Or perhaps people who had faced death since childhood and stood on the edge of it simply saw things more clearly?
Clarisse thought of her own home planet.
On the surface there were no wars between countries, but the hidden struggles between them had never stopped.
Even within her own nation, the courtiers and politicians held different positions and would fight to the death over their own interests.
Still, compared to what Mr. Kanzaki had gone through as a child, the environment she had grown up in might as well have been paradise.
Being ostracized and isolated… when placed next to his experiences, it was nothing.
Maybe that was why she could never fully understand how he could be so accepting.
"You really respect your teacher, don't you, Mr. Kanzaki."
"Of course. Without her, there would be no me today, and there would be no you or Mrs. Durand either."
"Anyone who could teach someone as gentle as you must be a very gentle person herself."
"Yes. My teacher is the gentlest person in the world."
Kanzaki Tomomu answered from the heart, without the slightest hesitation. Whenever he spoke about his teacher, his expression grew even softer.
"She always said she was only using me as a test subject to research how to remove the viruses from my body… but for that one sentence, she worked herself to exhaustion for six full years.
During those six years, there were countless times she went without sleep for several days and nights in a row, all just to find one more thread of hope for me and hold onto it.
After the viruses were cleared and she saw I had nowhere to go, she took me in as her student and taught me everything she knew without holding anything back.
From the most basic knowledge to the most advanced studies, she guided me through it all step by step."
...
---
Bonus chapters
200 Stones - 1 chapter
400 Stones - 2 chapter
600 Stones - 3 chapters
And so on
Also visit my patreon for advance chapters!
patreon.com/liztl