10:00pm
A male janitor used the cleaning cart he had been pushing to ram open the
metal doors of the rink, the loud clank echoed throughout silent room,
and he was surprised by a faint groaning sound that responded. Holding
his broom in a defensive fashion, he advanced slowly towards the source
of the sound, at 10:00pm, nobody was supposed to still be in the center,
not unless they were here to….
*clank*
The man dropped the broom with a start and rushed over to the man who was
lying facedown on the ice, moving about as though he was having a bad dream.
His spastic movements jerked at his limbs, the man quickly moved to turn
him over and realized that the person was the current number 1 in figure
skating, Tsuzuki Asano lying on the ground unconscious.
Two female junior residents sat in the tearoom, hovering over a cup of
coffee on their break during their night shift, tonight was not a busy
evening, and they were glad of the rest that was available to them.
The door opened to admit an older male doctor, holding an empty mug in
his hand, interrupting the two gossiping ladies.
“Uhum,” he cleared his throat to get their attention and laid his hand
on one of the women with long hair, “fifteen minutes ETA, one Japanese
male, 19 years, unconscious, heart rate slow - reason unknown, found in
Tokyo Skating Rink. Get down there in thirteen to meet the car; Doctor
Mizuno is supervising.”
Waiting until he had left the room, the other doctor with short closely
cropped hair and blonde bangs close to her eyes leaned towards the one
with the long hair, “noticing a pattern here?”
“Yeah, I know what you mean, ever since Doctor Mizuno’s daughter started
skating, we’ve had stuff like this happening to professional skaters, and
now her daughter’s missing, makes you wonder doesn’t it?”
She flicked her ponytail behind her shoulder and laughed, “do you think
that maybe she’s somehow involved in it, getting someone to kidnap her
daughter?”
Laughter rang out throughout the tearoom, masking the sound of the opening
door behind them, “maybe her husband did it, he’s a nature-herbal type
of person, maybe he’s found this herb that causing this stuff, oh yeah,
I can see it right now, ‘Custody feud knocks down top skaters, Crazy Supervising
doctor’s husband’s mad herbal spree!’.”
“I don’t think that my husband will appreciate being caught into the stereotypical
nature-herbal freak painter.” Came the quite response from behind
them.
They whirled around to see Dr. Mizuno standing in the open doorway smiling
at them, her head tilted to one side and her eyes sparkling from the small
piece of gossip that had landed on her ears. The two stammered and
mumbled apologies which she waved aside, “In fact, I don’t think that he
knows anything about herbs and natural medicines.” Addressing the
doctor with the long hair, she said in a professional tone, “I’ll expect
you down in a few minutes.”
10:15pm
He looked at the angel sitting slightly in front of him, reading the computer
screen with concentration, it often surprised him how Ami could find rather
mundane tasks like this one so interesting. This was a task that
he was supposed to do monthly, however, due to the repetitiveness and the
boredom of it, he had always delegated it to his security officers; if
possible, he even avoided seeing people do this task, as the thought itself
was enough to send him to sleep. There was something innate in him
which preferred the undertaking of tasks that involved other people, while
he liked books, he did not like working with them, and while he could understand
computers, he did not like working on them either. Here Ami was,
poring over large volumes of manuals to work this computer, using her mind
to logically apply, while he preferred having the manuals of ruling the
Kuriverse Go in his head and applying them where he believed was necessary.
She had already been at this file for over 2 hours, she had been checking
the status of implants and status of the brainwashing which people whom
had been captured by the Kuriverse had received. Prior to the invention
of implantation of computer chips to control the human’s movements, the
captured people had to be re-brainwashed every 3 months, however, on some
people, the effects of the brainwashing was often shorter than the average,
and a band which these people wore would monitor how much of the brainwashing
had worn off. Thus, across each person’s name was their memory status
marked by percentages, otherwise, was the word ‘terminated’ to show that
they had been executed due to disloyalty.
At the present, she was on the R’s, there were still nine more alphabets
to check, thankfully, there were fewer people on the list after the S’s.
But his mind wasn’t on checking the list, it was more on the monitoring
of Ami’s health, so far, her complete concentration had worn her energy
levels down, yet presently, she had seemed somewhat excited. He watched
her eyes, fixated on the screen beyond her glasses; once more, he was captured
by their deep ocean blueness, and for the infinite time, he sighed out
of the beauty.
“Patient is clutching a rose, can we get it out of his hand, it’s in the
way!”
“Not unless we saw off his hand, the rose is too short, we can’t do it.”
“Okay, fine, he is unresponsive, unconscious - no signs of epilepsy, heart-rate
steady 31, blood pressure 157 over 134…” The nurse trailed on, dictating
and writing down the state of the condition of the young athlete, who was
lying on the hospital trolley, to the two female doctors attending him
while they were discussing possible treatments for this unknown of illness.
“He’s starting to get convulsions, signs of hallucination, preparing for
IV injection, move back, move back, gastric lurching, esophagus movement,
dry retching, nauseating, he is showing signs of vomiting…”
The two doctors immediately moved forward at this development to look at
what he would be vomiting, the elder of the two doctors pushed forward
a tray to hold the contents for laboratory testing. The nurse took
the tray from her hand and continued her narration, “tilt his head please,
white foam containing blood strains, the foam is turning pink, oh my god,
it looks like it is moving! He’s just vomited a light blue crystal!
Can you take a sample now?” She turned to another nurse, but before
he could reach her, she dropped the tray on the ground, “the foam’s moving
upwards, it touching me!!!”
A light blue form erupted from the crystal, taking the pink foam with it,
the two became a mist as it enveloped Tsuzuki Asano and disappeared into
his body. The staff screamed at the sight, and became hysterical
as rose petals began raining down on them from nowhere. The ER cleared
as most of the hospital staff members rushed out of the room, equipment
scattered along the ground, and the tray which once held the crystal and
the foam was empty, save a hollow crystalline structure which contained
the blue form.
The elder female doctor locked eyes with the male nurse who was still holding
at plastic bottle and an eyedropper. She calmly reached over to open
one of the eyes of the patient and moved a small pen-flashlight over his
pupils expertly, she nodded her head and moved back, “will you please settle
him into Ward 9? I will check in on him as soon as I finish recording
his chart.”
“Yes Dr Mizuno, I will do that right away.”
“Umm… there’s a blank here, next to a…” Ami’s voice faltered for
a brief moment as her heart came to a stop and fell into her stomach, “Kunki
Saito-Sato,” she felt her throat constrict considerably as she pronounced
the name, “what does the blank beside his name mean? Tell me.”
She breathed, as she tried to say it as calmly as possible without panicking
and sounding desperate, and that she care about the reason.
“What was that name you said again?”
“Kun-ki Sai-to-Sa-to.” She pronounced each syllable carefully, so
as to make sure that he got the name correctly.
He leaned back into his chair as he pondered for a moment why that name
sounded so familiar, and why he should recall it. The room was deathly
quiet while he prodded his memory, and then he clicked his fingers, “I
remember my parents, my adoptive parents that is, you see, they… have I
ever told you the whole make up of this place?”
She shook her head silently; she did not trust herself to speak in this
situation.
“There are five sectors in the Kuriverse, and then there is the main control
sector, the five of us, the leaders of the sectors in the Kuriverse, call
the leader of main control sector our parents. When the two of them
are towards their dying days, they name one of us, the best leader of the
five, to be their successor, and the rest chose a younger commander of
our sector to become our own successor.”
“And you were chosen in that way?” Ami asked.
“I don’t really remember, we are put through strict quarantine and re-training
after we were chosen, our memories are not completely intact. Well,
back to the point, my parents did point out this name to me in particular
because he was taken by this sector and was working in the security section
of this sector and others, so his information couldn’t be entered onto
this file to prevent him from remembering that he was indeed a human.
So I know who he is, and I monitor his work and loyalty without entering
it in this file.”
“So who has Kunki Saito-Sato become?”
“Avarice.”
She stared him briefly as the room started blinking black and flashing
with imagined bright lights, the ground began to melt at her feet, she
slumped into her chair and her world collapsed around her.