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Hyo supposes that maybe this is karma, for watching someone without their knowledge.
Now, she’s left with two choices.
Leave Zanka’s unconscious body in the woods and hope someone else finds him, or take her somewhere herself.
She slowly makes her way down the tree, using branches as leverage to climb down the tree pretty much exactly the way she got up. The way she always goes up, always comes down. She spends more time here than she would like to admit. Trees are so rare on the Ground. Having full sized, healthy ones all over the place like this is something she never thought she would get to experience, and it’s a good place to watch. Observe.
Usually, Zanka is the one she ends up watching.
She was up there when she first noticed Zanka enter the clearing below. She’s seen him there before, but had noticed from the beginning that it must be somewhere he goes to a lot, because the grassy ground is worn down to dirt in the middle, in the shape of a circle, and almost, at certain points, worn further to the exact movements he makes as he practices his form, drills and whatever else is drilled into them by the Academy.
It doesn’t seem like the ideal way to improve a person’s skills. Doing the same thing over, and over, and over. But maybe he has something figured out that she doesn’t. It’s why she’s been studying him.
She makes it down the ground as gracefully as she got up. Even if Zanka was conscious, he likely wouldn’t have heard her descend the tree.
Hyo was focused on Zanka’s movements, and while a little slower than normal, there wasn’t anything out of the normal that would have led her to assume that he would, at any point, suddenly collapse into the dirt the way he did.
She starts to take a few cautious steps over, curiously circling him once to see if there’s anything in particular that would give her a hint as to what happened here. It’s fairly early in the morning. The air is still cool. If those things weren’t true, she would have just assumed that he tired himself out with training during class, but that can’t be the case here, unless he’s been training all night. Not impossible. He seems to work himself incredibly hard.
She kneels down beside him, curiously tilting her head. He’s lying on his side. She touches his shoulder to see if she’ll get any response from him that way, but he doesn’t really budge at all.
Well, he’s definitely breathing, so he’s not dead. That’s good. She didn’t want to leave any proof that she was near him if he was dead, but now she doesn’t have to worry about that.
Hyo places a hand on Zanka’s face and turns it just enough so that she can see his expression, and he looks a lot worse than she realized he did from up high. His skin is warm. A little hot, even, like a fever. The furrowed brow, the bags under his eyes, it's showing lots of things very clearly. He's in pain. He's been struggling for longer than just since the start of the day. He probably hasn't slept.
The only problem is, she has no idea what to do with him now. There isn't anyone around, and she has a feeling their classmates wouldn't take any action if they found him like this. They're all followers. None of them have minds of their own. They don’t have an on-site infirmary or anything of the sort, which she’s always thought was strange, for a place like this.
Should she find out where he lives?
She stands, headed back toward the Academy yard. It’s early, too early for class, but she’s sure she’ll find someone training or hanging out who can tell her some information she needs, and she’s right on the money. There’s three, a male and two female students, talking against the wall of the training yard. They’re really not far from where Zanka is at all.
“Excuse me,” she says, approaching them without waiting.
The student she’s directly facing jumps. She’s not sure why. She’s staring back at her like she’s just seen a Trash Beast. Hyo turns around briefly, making sure there isn’t anything scary behind her.
“Can you tell me where Zanka Nijiku lives?” she asks as she turns her head back. No time to waste, really. She isn’t exactly sure what’s wrong with Zanka, but she knows that he needs to see some sort of doctor, and that he shouldn’t be left in the dirt with a fever of any kind.
Her face pales, as if Hyo has just asked her to help hide a body. She really doesn't understand these people, and she desperately wishes that she could.
“The…Nijiku…house?” she answers timidly. Hyo thought at first that she was confirming, but that seems to be an answer. Strange.
“And where is that?” she asks plainly.
“You don't know…?” the student squeaks back. How is she supposed to know where the Nijiku House is? Obviously, she doesn’t, and that’s why she’s asking.
“Relax, Chiyo. She's not from here, remember?” the male student behind her whispers. It sounds condescending, but Hyo is terrible at gauging emotions.
“Right, um…the Nijiku house is that huge complex in the center of Kamuatari. With the big stone staircase…”
Hyo visualizes what they’re talking about. Right. She can see that place very well from the trees. That makes sense. She's gotten the impression that Zanka Nijiku is important somehow, but the reason, she couldn't quite pin down. He's an heir to this area's ruling family, she's gathered now, based on everything she knows combined with this conversation.
“Thank you,” she says, turning on her heel to walk the other direction. She hears them whisper and chatter behind her, but she doesn’t care to pay attention to anything they might be saying. They only exist as boring background noise, and they have combat skills and personalities to match. None of them are both studying even remotely.
Once she makes it back to the small forested clearing where Zanka is, she tries to decide the best way to carry him. Ideally, on her back would be the easiest, but with him seemingly completely unconscious, she decides to carry him in her arms.
She doesn’t expect him to be so light.
He groans when she lifts him, and she sees his face twist up in discomfort, but his eyes stay screwed shut.
Hyo didn't notice it before, but as she’s inspecting his face for any sign of consciousness with the little noise he made, she notices that the redness on his face seems to have pretty odd placement. It starts in the middle of his face and spreads outward over his cheeks, in the shape of a butterfly. It’s almost raised, too, not looking like the typical redness she’d see from a fever. How strange.
She starts her trek up to what is, apparently, Zanka Nijiku’s house, and she ponders what it is that may have caused him to pass out.
Maybe he’s just overworked himself. It’s the most logical explanation.
The other students seem to think that Zanka is born with this innate ability of perfect combat skills, but strangely enough, he lets them believe it. He never corrects them, even though he’s the only one out of all of the students in their class that she ever sees training outside of their courses. He’s pretty much always here in the mornings, and Hyo has seen here most afternoons, too. If he isn’t here, he’s studying in the library room. She had never considered that he lived anywhere, because he spends almost all of his time at the Academy building.
He doesn’t seem to have any friends, either. No one at the Academy talks to him casually, and she’s never seen him speak with any of them outside of conversations necessary for class or training during class.
Even so, something about that theory doesn’t feel quite right either. His skin felt a little warm when she touched his face earlier, and he even feels warm through his uniform, now that she’s carrying him. She suspected a fever, and this confirms it. She’s noticing he’s taking pretty shallow breaths, which must indicate it’s painful to inhale completely right now. He’s stiff, even though he’s unconscious. It’s like a subconscious effort to protect himself, like he’s in pain.
He must be sick. He shouldn’t train at all if he’s sick. She thought that was common sense.
The stone staircase is certainly long and treacherous, but she considers it good training too, to carry someone all the way up. She manages to do it without breaking much of a sweat either, but she had no doubts about being able to do it in the first place.
The house certainly is something. Really, it’s like nothing else she’s seen before. It’s bigger than the Academy. She would almost call it a castle, even though it looks like none she’s ever seen or heard of. There’s two floors, but the bottom floor itself could probably house ten families, if they really wanted to. She’s not sure what any family would need so much space for. She wishes Zanka wasn’t so difficult to get a conversation out of when he’s awake, otherwise, she’d make a mental note to ask him later.
She starts to try and find a way in. Luckily, there seems to be ways around the back and entryways on the side that won’t make it a difficult task. She’d like to bring him somewhere and remain undetected, entering and exiting. She doesn’t want to be questioned or attract any unnecessary attention. It’s the logical way to go about a situation like this. Even if she’s not able to give them a history on his situation. They’ll be able to figure it out.
As she carefully wanders around the halls of the building, she realizes she’s probably going to have a hard time finding his bedroom. They don’t have bed frames or mattresses in this town, just fold-away futons that only stay out when they’re being slept on, so she decides that whichever room she finds first with enough open space to house a bed, she’ll find a futon to lay him on, and sneak out. She realizes she also probably shouldn’t have her shoes on. They don’t like that here. She keeps forgetting.
Too late now.
Her eyes peer down to his face while she’s carefully wandering around the complex. His eyes are half-lidded now, but he isn’t exactly trying to wake up, and doesn’t seem to notice he’s being carried, either. If nothing else, he just looks horribly exhausted, too out of it to make any movements or wake himself up.
She finds a room, after several minutes of tip-toeing around corners and peeking into entryways. And surprisingly, one with a futon still laid out, and the blanket lazily strewn across.
Interesting. It doesn’t match the look of this place at all. It’s like it doesn’t belong. If this is in fact, his room, he doesn’t strike her at all as this kind of person. If anything, it might be a testament to how he’s feeling.
Or, maybe, something else.
She gently lowers him down to the futon, and she hears a little groan from him again. She really thinks that he might be in pain, but she can’t tell where. The uniforms pretty much cover everything, so even if he was injured, she wouldn’t be able to see it.
These futons aren’t uncomfortable. They’re much better than most everything she grew up with to sleep on, but if Zanka is really in pain, then he should sleep on something more comfortable than this. She hears a little noise from him again as she tests the depth of the futon with her index finger.
“Nn…Hyo…?” Zanka mumbles. He can hardly open his eyes in the first place, and keeping them open seems to be a completely separate issue. It makes no difference to her if she recognizes him or not, so she doesn't answer. She only stares down at him, secretly wondering what on earth is going on with him.
He loses all of the energy he had pretty quickly, and his eyes fall shut, his head rolling to the side with a pained sound.
She stands, carefully not to stir him, but there’s a new problem. Footsteps.
“Where? This way?” The voice asks. Deep. Female. Hyo needs to hide.
She pushes the wood framed paper door on the other side of the entryway out of the way, opposite from where she came, and moves against the wooden wall so that her silhouette can’t be seen from the other side. The footsteps seem to pass the room. Two sets. One returns, though, and Hyo is presuming that she’s been caught - but they must have seen Zanka.
“When did he come home?” The voice says after a pause.
“I didn't see him enter, I'm sorry, ma'am…” A squeaky voice says.
“The instructor didn't tell me he was ill,” the woman huffs in frustration after a few seconds.
“I don’t…know that classes have even started yet, ma’am…?”
“They haven’t. They start at seven,” A different voice. She must have heard the footsteps incorrectly. This one is male. Deep as well.
“So, did he ever leave…?” the squeaky voice says, but it trails off, and there’s a silence once again.
The wooden frame door opens beside her.
This woman is good. Hyo didn’t hear her footsteps after that point at all, and she’s fairly certain that she wasn’t close enough to open it without moving her feet. She’s noticed Zanka has similar skills.
The woman approaches her, calmly, but with a stern rage in her eyes. Hyo isn’t afraid of her. She won’t kill her, they don’t do that here. And if this gets her arrested for some reason, it’ll be an interesting experience, at the very least. And she’ll just escape when she’s bored.
Not much different from what she’s doing here, really.
She’d like to stay a while, though. Zanka is interesting.
“What are you doing on our property?” The woman barks.
This woman. She's seen her before. Never inside of Kamuatari, but the slums, absolutely. Her striking red hair is a difficult thing to forget. She didn’t recognize her resemblance to Zanka before, but she isn’t wearing any makeup right now, and that could absolutely be why. They almost look like they could be twins.
Interesting. She didn’t know Zanka had any siblings.
“I got lost. My apologies,” Hyo says plainly.
“Lost?” she scoffs. She’s not buying it.
Hyo just stares back. Her stern expression doesn’t waver, not even for a second, but Hyo still isn’t afraid of her, and this woman seems to be counting on the fact that she can make it that way.
“You brought him here,” the woman says.
She waits for Hyo to answer, to admit it, but she doesn’t budge.
“You’re in the Academy,” the woman notices, her eyes peering down to her uniform. Hyo wonders if she’s going to threaten to have her removed. They certainly have that authority. It doesn’t matter to her, though, she’ll find work elsewhere.
She’s not sure she’ll find someone as interesting as Zanka.
“Don't tell anyone about his condition. Act as if you never saw him,” she tells her.
Hyo finds that strange. She seems to imply that this has happened before, but Hyo surely can’t pry on this, at least not now, not with this woman. She’d prefer to keep a low profile if she can, and getting involved in this family’s drama, or any drama for that matter, is not something she’s interested in.
She can’t seem to take her mind off of Zanka, though.
“Goka, I don’t need you here. Please go prepare for work.”
She hears him hesitate before he agrees to leave, begrudgingly so. Kyouka doesn’t turn to look at him, but she hears his footsteps trail out, following behind the maid that she sent out earlier. She’s busy checking Zanka’s pupils, making sure he doesn’t have a head injury of some kind, because he’s clearly out of it. It must be from a fever, though.
She doesn’t need anyone in the way here.
“What happened?” Kyouka says. She’s stern, but quiet. It’s obvious he isn’t well, and while she would like a full explanation for this, scaring him won’t do him any good, either.
Zanka looks like he's afraid to answer. He’s lying against his futon, still in his uniform. One of the maids had mentioned that he hadn’t folded it back up before he left that morning, which was awfully unusual for him, but Kyouka instructed her to leave it. She’d make sure he knew not to make a mistake like that again, and not to create extra work for their staff.
“Think I didn' get…enough sleep,” he mumbles. He sounds breathless. She listened to him breathe for a few moments to make sure. He’s not in a good condition at all, but she won’t call the doctor this time. She won’t hear his diagnosis again. Her brother is not weak, not frail. He can't just be broken. There’s a way to fix this. There has to be.
She rests a hand against his warm cheek, examining the redness on his face. She's seen this before. It hasn't gone away while he's been in here this morning. That odd shape, spreading over his face, the way it's raised, almost. She had hoped it was from over-exertion, and that it would fade now that he’s lying down, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. His skin is still warm, too. This fever hasn't gone away.
He had a fever last night, too. She saw it when he was there for dinner. She didn’t say anything, and he didn’t say anything to her. She just knew.
A fever the night before, just like last time. She bites her lip.
“You know better than that, Zanka,” Kyouka says, “balance your training and your sleep. This won’t do you any good at all.”
That’s it. That’s why he’s unwell. He needs to be more diligent, that’s all
He nods carefully. It seems he wants to say something, but she won't have any more excuses, and he knows that.
“Sit up,” she tells him.
She watches him nearly whimper at the thought of doing that, but she can't let him fall to a weakness like this. He uses his elbows as leverage, and just as she suspected, there’s pain there, too. His joints. They said that was one of the biggest tells of the diagnosis, but she won't believe it. He’s too young to have issues like that. She knows he trains a lot more than his classmates do, but she never had issues like this, and neither did Goka. He just needs to work harder.
He manages to push himself up so that he’s sitting, but there’s still more than enough proof something is wrong.
Even if this is some kind of illness, some sort of condition, she can’t have that. He has expectations he needs to fulfill. He can rest for now and build up his strength, but needs to train past this. It can’t happen again.
“You need to have some water,” she tells him. That is something he's always been terrible at, keeping himself hydrated, especially when he's been unwell.
Another shaky nod, but no words.
Recently, he's been much more hesitant about communicating with her. She doesn't like it. It makes her nervous that he's distancing himself from his family.
“Let’s remove your uniform, at least.”
“This looks like Lupus,” Alice says, her face hanging over his.
Zanka blinks back at her. He’s lying on his back on one of the cots in her clinic, and he’d like to sit up to hear her diagnosis, but he doesn’t have the energy. It hurts too much.
He's been feeling sick for about a week, now. Mind-melting fatigue. He couldn't stay awake for meetings or gather any energy to train, but even if he was awake enough to do that, everything just hurts. He tried to train, but it’s even become a chore to put his uniform on. Then there’s this awful redness on his face that everyone keeps poking fun at him for, wondering how he got sunburnt when that isn’t the case at all. He thinks he has a fever too, which would explain some of these things.
He was doing pretty good at hiding it, at first. He’d go hide and rest in his room and everyone thought he was off at some secret training location, but on their last job, the pain he’s in was obvious to Enjin. When he was struggling to open the car door, that set him off. He caught him with a fever by the end of it.
Enjin tried to make sure he was resting and taking medication the best he could in the days following. His pain seemed to be the most concerning part. He had medications he could try or tricks to help the pain, but Zanka knew none of them would work, because he’s tried everything. He's dealt with this his whole life.
The moment Zanka mentioned his chest pain before he decided he was going to bed, he was being carted off to Alice.
This has happened before. It didn’t used to be as bad, either. When he still lived in Kamuatari, it happened every now and then, but not for several days at a time. He just chalked it up to the air quality for a while, since leaving that place, and assumed that’s why he’d been feeling off, every now and then. Sick, in pain.
Alice has done all sorts of tests on him. Zanka feels awful. He wants more than anything to sleep peacefully, and he doesn’t often choose that over a training session in the middle of the day.
“Lupus?” Zanka repeats. He’s never heard that word before.
“Auto-immune disease! You've had this your whole life, I bet.”
Zanka lowers his gaze. He just shrugs. He has no idea what any of that means, but it sounds like she’s implying that all of this really is connected, like he’d thought. He decides that maybe he’ll nod. He doesn’t know what else he’d do.
His first inclination is to think she must have that wrong. Surely, if he had some sort of condition, the doctors in Kamuatari would have figured that out. Kyouka never let Zanka speak to any of the doctors, tell them directly what he was feeling, what was going on with him. She said all they told her was that he was frail. That he needed to build up his strength.
He starts to feel nauseous, thinking about the possibility that maybe she knew all along. And just wouldn't tell him.
Because that meant something was wrong with him. Something she couldn't train out of him.
“Really?” Enjin says.
Zanka turns his head. Enjin is standing close by, his arms crossed over his chest, evidently worried. Zanka hates that. He feels like he’s wasting his time.
Zanka feels his chest tighten.
Enjin must not believe him. Why would he?
“Can't imagine they let this fly in your house, huh?” Enjin says with a sigh.
Zanka's eyes turn up to meet his. There's an unfamiliar look in his eyes. Sympathy or something similar, he isn't quite sure, but he doesn't look angry. Or disappointed. He was expecting some sort of sour look at the very least, but Enjin is treating this like a minor inconvenience.
“Not…really,” Zanka murmurs. He's trying not to think about it too much. His eyes burn, wondering if Kyouka had really kept this from him. He doesn't want to believe that she would do something like that, but he knows that if it served her idealized view of him, that she would.
“Well, we’ll figure something out,” Enjin says. “I'm sure you've got some sort of plan for a treatment, Alice?”
“Antimalarials are a hard find, but the best bet,” she says, shuffling through a book on her over-crowded desk.
It’s so casual. Like it means nothing. He knows that’s not the case. Enjin very much does think it means something, otherwise he wouldn’t have driven him here a mere hour outside of midnight.
But the difference is, he’s not treating this like a problem, or something to hide.
And just for a second, the words that his sister drilled into his skull start to fade into the background.