Chapter Text
There is a child on the operating table.
The room is bright, too bright. Fluorescent lamps run along the ceiling, flooding eyes with harsh light. Latex gloves snap and rustle. The rolling table squeaks obnoxiously, adding to headaches. Adults leave the room, muttering and grumbling. The surgeon is left alone.
She takes in the child’s face. Pale, sweaty, brows pinched. Having a nightmare, no doubt. She wonders if he remembers every other time this has been done to him. The people here liked to be cheap with their sedatives. But as for her, well, this is her first time operating on a live subject. She’s never needed anesthesia before.
The surgeon picks up the scalpel from the rolling table, turning it over in her hands thoughtfully. It hasn’t been properly cleaned from the last person’s operation. She tsks, nose wrinkling up in disgust. As she sterilizes the object, the child on the operating table stirs.
He can’t move much, given the straps binding his arms and legs. Upon closer inspection, it doesn’t seem like the bindings have been cleaned, either. The surgeon rolls her eyes. She walks back over to the child and poises her scalpel above his bare stomach.
The child whimpers.
She freezes. On instinct, she looks at his face, and regrets it the moment she meets purple-yellow eyes.
He’s looking at her, half-delirious from fever. The lights are intrusive, probably blinding him, and the smell of antiseptic is far too strong.
“M-mom?” He rasps. “Dad?”
The surgeon is silent. He struggles weakly, crying and reaching for her, but eventually he stops moving. His sobs turn to quiet hiccups, and then to nothing. His eyes close.
The surgeon checks him over again. He’s still fitful, and given his awakening, the others clearly hadn’t given him enough anesthesia. She gives him another dose.
This time, the child relaxes, expression loosening, and now he finally looks like a proper patient.
The surgeon picks her scalpel back up. She ghosts it over his stomach, then hesitates. Is the child dreaming in his induced sleep? Is he having a nightmare? Unwelcome thoughts flood her mind, and she sighs to herself, pinching the bridge of her nose.
There is one way to alleviate these feelings. The surgeon thinks, then makes the decision. She allows her ability to flow freely into the scalpel, soaking it in a starry, barely visible glow. Then she takes the scalpel and sharply taps the child on the head.
Pulling away, she leaves a little drop of glow. The color melts away, and it turns back into a normal scalpel. The glow is completely absorbed into the child’s head, and he seems to sink even deeper into unconsciousness. Into a dream.
Good, the surgeon thinks faintly as she grips her scalpel tighter. It’s a good dream.
She finally starts the procedure. She’s used to working on deceased adults, not live children, but her hands do not shake as she precisely cuts out each organ. She works fast. In minutes, the operation is over.
There is a corpse on the operating table.
Everything has been removed, except for the appendix and the heart. The harvesters have been wary of the heart, lest removing it permanently kills their golden goose.
It’s fascinating, the surgeon thinks, watching the corpse restore itself. Veins sprout new kidneys, liver, lungs. The heart still beats. Flesh closes up over the carnage, refusing to let her see any more. Not that she wanted to. Not after this.
The surgeon turns around and throws up into the sink.
There is a child on the operating table.
He is in a deep sleep, dreaming of peaceful days. He will wake up eventually. Will he remember her face, she wonders?
A senior harvester walks in on her hacking into the sink. He raises a brow as he gathers up the organ bags.
“Seems like it went well,” he comments.
The surgeon slowly lifts her head to look at him.
“Yes.” She rasps. “It did.”
“Need help with the cleanup? I’ve got a bunch of operations I gotta tend to, but I could spare a minute.”
“No.” The surgeon shakes her head, wiping her mouth with a paper towel. “I’ll do it, Kimura-san.”
The senior harvester shrugs. “Alright, then.”
And he leaves her there with the child on the operating table. The surgeon cleans. She sterilizes the tools, washes the gunk in the sink, throws away her gloves, and stares at herself in the mirror for a long, long time.
Just an hour later, when the senior harvester walks into the room with his assistant, there is no one on the operating table. There is no one in the room at all.
· · ─ ·✶· ─ · ·
The night is cold, and this particular alley is just as deplorable as the rest of the street. The headmaster walks slowly, caught up in his own thoughts. The stars are faint above the tall buildings, struggling to peek out behind thick, dark clouds. The headmaster’s own breath comes out in a mist before him, and he rubs his hands together absentmindedly.
He’s starting to make his way out of the alley when he sees someone standing at the end. He doesn’t have a good idea of them beyond a cloaked figure silhouetted against the flickering streetlamps.
Immediately, his hand ghosts over the gun hidden in his robes. “Who’s there?”
“Don’t shoot,” says the figure. A woman, going off of the sound of her voice.
The headmaster narrows his eyes. “Are you armed?”
“Yes, but I’m not here to attack you.”
He doesn’t believe her at first, but when she takes another step forward, he realizes her hands are occupied— not by a weapon, but by a child. A boy, no older than three or four, sleeping peacefully where she holds him against her chest.
The headmaster spots blood on her cloak. He frowns. “Why are you here, then? Come to drop this boy off at my orphanage?”
She is silent for a moment, then nods her head. The headmaster massages his temples. He had come out here for an evening walk, not another needy child. Already, he was calculating the tight cost and the unwanted time. The woman hesitates, perhaps sensing his reluctance.
“His parents sold him for organ harvesting.” She offers, a little too quickly. “He’s been in the ring for a few months now.”
“And still intact?”
“Yes,” the woman glances down at the boy. He remains asleep. “Because of his ability.”
The headmaster stiffens. Spurred on by his reaction, the woman takes another step forward.
“He can regenerate. Scratches, gashes, limbs, organs- he can heal it all. He’s gone through a hundred or so procedures already. But the organs don’t regenerate once they’re removed from his body.”
He doesn’t say anything. What is he supposed to say? He can’t even be sure if this woman is telling the truth or not. Then, she takes an envelope from her cloak.
“I will give you enough for his first year.”
She really seems desperate, he thinks. Besides, even if he refuses now, the boy will probably end up on his doorstep later.
The headmaster sighs and opens his arms. “Give him here.”
The woman slowly transfers the boy from her hold to his. She brushes her hand against the boy’s cheek. She’s so gentle that it’s off-putting.
“Are you his mother?” He asks.
For a heartbeat, she doesn’t move, then answers: “No.”
The envelope is tucked into the boy’s shirt pocket. It certainly seems heavy. As the woman pulls away, the headmaster sees a glow where she’d touched the child, but it’s gone as quickly as he thought he saw it.
“You found him in the trash bins over there,” the woman tells him as goodbye, turning to leave.
“Is he injured?” asks the headmaster, eyeing the blood her cloak has left on the ground.
“It’s not ours.” She replies, and then she is gone.
When the headmaster returns to the orphanage, he opens the envelope. There is money, and there is a note in sharp, elegant handwriting, detailing everything the woman knows about the boy’s ability.
When the boy wakes up, the headmaster asks him what he remembers. The boy, shaky and nervous, says: “Nothing.”
“What is your name?”
“I-I don’t know.”
The headmaster can only trust what the woman wrote in the letter.
“Atsushi,” he says. “Your name is Atsushi Nakajima.”
There is a child in the orphanage basement. He can heal, he can turn into a beast, and he does not know who he is.