Chapter 207: Chapter 72
Seijirou was feeling groggy.
The sensation was like being subrged in thick, viscous oil—the sa substance that had coated the monster on the rooftop.
Every ti he tried to pull his consciousness toward the surface, the weight of his own body dragged him back down into the depths.
No, he didn’t just feel groggy. He also felt pain.
It was a localized, searing agony in his stomach where the blade had pierced him, and a dull, throbbing ache in his shoulder and thigh.
It felt as if his very bones were vibrating with the residual shock of the "Seeker’s" curse.
The price of his invincibility was being collected now, and the interest was high.
He could hear voices calling out to him, drifting in and out of his awareness like radio signals during a storm.
He could hear the faint, rhythmic wail of sirens echoing in the background—dozens of them, a city-wide response to the nightmare he had just ended.
He could hear crying. It was a soft, muffled sound, filled with a guilt-ridden despair.
He could hear soone calling his na.
Over and over.
He could hear a female voice, desperate and cracking.
However, he couldn’t even think straight.
The logical, calculating mind that he was usually so proud of was currently offline, replaced by a hazy, fragnted static.
Where was he?
What was he doing again?
The mory of the "Mister," the black entity, and the screaming won felt like a movie he had watched years ago.
It didn’t feel real. The only thing that felt real was the coldness in his limbs and the heavy, rhythmic beat of his own heart.
I feel... sleepy.
I... want to sleep. Just for a minute. Let the world take care of itself.
*
*
*
Nishimiya Private Hospital.
The atmosphere in the private wing of the hospital was more tense than the battlefield with mister and his inner circle had been.
The corridors were silent, save for the hum of dical equipnt and the sharp, rhythmic clicking of high heels against the polished floor.
Outside the Intensive Care Unit (ICU), the air seed to crackle with a different kind of power as Kageyama Hakari stood before the double doors, her presence so overwhelming that the sterile hallway felt small.
She glared at several of the nation’s top surgeons, who were currently cowering in front of her, their faces pale and their hands trembling.
"I don’t care even if you ignore every other patient in this hospital," Hakari said, her voice a low, dangerous silk. "I don’t care if the Pri Minister himself is waiting for a check-up. You will devote every second, every resource, and every ounce of your skill to making sure that my son will fully recover! If there is so much as a single scar or a lingering tremor in his hand, I will consider it a failure of your profession."
"Y-Yes, ma’am! We will do our best! We have already called for more specialist from Tokyo!" the lead doctor stamred, sweat beading on his forehead.
Hakari clicked her tongue, a sound of pure, unadulterated irritation.
Then, in a move that was as fast as it was terrifying, she grabbed the doctor by the collar and slamd him against the wall, the impact rattling the frad certificates hanging nearby.
"I don’t want your ’best,’" she hissed, her eyes flashing with a cold, maternal fury. "I want an absolute answer! I want a guarantee! If you cannot help my son to recover completely, then you better prepare for your dical license to be revoked and for this entire hospital to be shut down by the end of the week! Do I make myself clear!?"
"Y-Yes, ma’am! Perfectly!"
"Good." Hakari released him, and the man dropped to the floor, gasping for air as he straightened his white coat.
Hakari stared down at him, then swept her gaze across the other doctors, who looked as if they were ready to bolt. "What? Why are you still standing here? Hurry up and do your job! Or I will have you fired and blacklisted from every hospitals and clinics in the country by tomorrow morning!"
"Yes, ma’am!" The doctors scrambled, scurrying into the ICU as if the devil himself were at their heels.
Hakari watched them go, her chest heaving slightly as she tried to regulate her own breathing.
Once she cald down, she then turned her gaze toward the long plastic bench behind her.
There sat the Night Patrol group—Suzune, Shou, Sakai, Renji, Haruka, Yukina, Emi, and Erina.
They sat perfectly still, like a row of statues in school uniforms and tactical gear.
So of them were heavily bandaged; Emi had a thick dressing around her midsection, and Renji’s arms were wrapped in gauze.
They looked exhausted, their faces streaked with soot and dried blood, their eyes fixed on the floor in a collective display of sha.
Hakari crossed her arms, her silhouette tall and imposing against the hospital lights. "So? Are you going to sit there like guilt-ridden puppies, or is soone going to tell
exactly what happened tonight?"
Suzune was the first to move as she stood up, her movents stiff but her gaze eting Hakari’s with the respect of a warrior. "I’ll explain it, Auntie."
"Go on," Hakari nodded, her expression unreadable.
"It’s like this..."
With a steady, quiet voice, Suzune explained every harrowing detail of the night.
She started with how they only wanted to help Erina and her mother free their relatives from being imprisoned by Kirei, but soon, everything quickly spiraled into the discovery of Mister’s inner circle, the horrific human-trafficking operation, the cannibalistic, and the supernatural entity that had been fueling it all.
She spoke of what they found in the kitchen, the wailers, and the absolute depravity they had witnessed.
"...and, when we finally reached the rooftop," Suzune finished, her voice faltering for the first ti, "Seijirou was already there, bleeding and unconscious. Mister was already dead at that point."
Hakari stared at her, then let her gaze wander over the others—Haruka, Emi, and Shou’s blank stare, Yukina and Renji’s clenched fists, Sakai’s guilty look, and Erina’s quiet tears,
She let out a long, painful sigh that seed to carry the weight of a decade.
"Seriously?" she muttered, rubbing the bridge of her nose. "You kids... you really like to stick your noses into other people’s business, don’t you? Do you have even the slightest idea about what would have happened if any of you had died tonight? Have you even thought of the consequences if you had failed and all of them escaped?"
The group lowered their heads in unison.
Until this night, they had actually lived in a world of high-school rivalries and "safe" supernatural skirmishes.
They had fought thugs, deluded martial artists, and other teenage Karyoku users, and in those fights, beating up soone until they are hospitalised for broken bones was the worst-case scenario.
There was always a sense of boundaries—a subtextual rule that no one was actually trying to erase the other person’s existence.
They had gotten so used to fighting within the confines of those unspoken boundaries, so used to winning, so used to Seijirou’s effortless superiority, that they had subconsciously begun to think they were invincible, that, at the worst case scenario, they’d just end up with broken bones.
They had forgotten—or perhaps it had never even entered their sheltered minds—that the world contained depraved, rciless adults who didn’t care about "honor" or "rules
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