-Vol 5: A New Life-

-Waking Up!-

3:20 Am, the day after Yuki’s arrival at the hospital.

Sachiko, under the insistence of both Yuki and Joy, returned to a nearby hotel to sleep for the night. She hadn't been slept for to days, and after her fight with two powerful monsters, she also needs rest. Not everyone was like Kenshin with monstrous regenerative powers. Yuki also wanted Joy to go for the night as well, but he insisted on staying. Since she couldn’t change his mind, she allowed him to stay as well. Throughout the night, they talked about various things, and finally, they stopped and opted to just rest silently on their chairs.

It was during that time, suddenly the nurse appointed for the night burst out of the room with the panic laid face. Yuki and Joy stood up hastily and surrounded her in an instant.

“What happened, nurse? Is everything alright?” Yuki asked, worry filling her voice. Although he didn’t look like it, Joy was also worried.

“I don’t know! The patent suddenly started to glow. I am so panicked right now! Please wait here, I will call for the doctor.” After that, the nurse broke away from the encirclement and ran towards a random direction.

Dumbstruck at her words, Yuki and Joy entered the room and found Kenshin was indeed glowing a light purple hue. Beside him, all the monitoring equipment were also showing some dangerous readings, with a few even started bleeping furiously.

“What’s happening?” Yuki asked in worry as she covered her mouth with her hands as tears flowed from her eyes freely.

“I don’t know. It's my first time seeing something like that!” even Joy had never seen anything like that in his long career as a hunter. They both, step by step, moved on as they came near Kenshin’s bed. His half covered face due to a huge oxygen mask looked pained as his eyebrows were furrowed and sweat pouring out of his forehead. He looked like he had a bad dream.

Seeing such a Kenshin, Yuki couldn’t stop her tears from flowing from her eyes. She hastened her steps and came face to face with Kenshin, as she caressed his face with her snow-white lithe fingers. To the other side, Joy didn’t say anything to break the moment, he just silently observed everything.

His interaction with Kenshin was shortest, but he was the one who had saved his life at the cost of his own. If he hadn't given him that expensive potion, right now he wouldn’t have gone through this tormenting process.

As Yuki was crying silently, she saw Kenshin’s eyelids shaking, as if they would open any moment. With anticipation, she watched as the lids opened, displaying a pair of black pupils underneath. His eyes looked unfocused as if he couldn’t discern between reality and illusion. After staring at her a second, his shaky and raspy voice sounded

“W-hat! What happened?”

“Kenshin!” Yuki cried loudly as she hugged him. On the other side, Joy also secretly wiped away something from his eyes as he looked at Kenshin with a smile on his face.

“Hey! Yuki! Why are you here? Can you give me a glass of water? My throat is drying!” Kenshin said while trying to move his hand, but they were all strapped to various IVs so he couldn’t move them easily.

“Yeah, of course!” it's not Yuki but Joy who said that. Reaching for the water jug beside Kenshin’s bed, he poured some into a glass and brought them and handed it to Yuki. Giving him a thank, Yuki poured the content into Kenshin’s mouth carefully.

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After drinking a few mouthfuls, Kenshin finally looked at Joy and stared at him in surprise. Seeing Kenshin looking at him, Joy gave him a smile as he nodded his head. from that one nod, Kenshin understood everything. Throwing him a grateful look, he tried to sit down but was stopped Yuki.

“You! Don’t move. You are heavily injured. The nurse has gone to call for the doctor, don’t move randomly.” Yuki reprimanded him and forced him back to sleep. Towards her, Kenshin smiled wryly and explained, “I am already healed fully. I have no more wounds. I have a healing factor okay?”

“Still, you should refrain from moving. Let the doctor check you once.” Shaking her head, Yuki refused to believe him and instead forced him to rest on the bed. Letting at a sigh at that, he looked at Joy and asked, “What happened after I lost consciousness? How many days has it been?”

“Three, including today.” Before Joy could continue, Kenshin’s surprise-filled voice came “What? Three days? I was unconscious for three days? No wonder my throat felt dry, and I am starving. But, three days…” Kenshin felt he only spent a few hours inside that void of his mind but unexpectedly three days already past just like that!

Kenshin couldn’t help but sigh, even though it's his own body, he still didn’t know anything about it. Closing his eyes for a second, he opened them once again and looked at Joy, signaling him to continue. Nodding his head, Joy started again:

“After you are injured and returned to Lady Sachiko, she carried you to this hospital and waited till you wake up. She would have been here, but this lady forced her to take rest today, so she booked a hotel near this hospital and is sleeping for the night there.” as he said this, he pointed his chin at Yuki, signaling that she was responsible for it.

“Hmm! So lady Sachiko is also here. I must thank her for the trouble when I see her later. So, did she tell you anything about the reason for my wounds?”

“No! She said she would explain the matter to you personally and didn’t disclose to us. She said its a secret that shouldn’t be divulged to others easily, so she kept her mouth shut about it.” Yuki spoke as she gritted her teeth. She indeed tried to force out of the old woman, but that stubborn mule didn’t budge at all. She remained adamant to her decision of not divulging at all.

“I see. Well forget about that, when did you come here, Yuki? By the way, where am I?” Kenshin asked while getting comfortable in his bed. Although he said he was healed, he could still feel some phantom pains near his abdomen and kidney area. Compared to the pain he felt before losing conciseness, this was nothing. That time, he felt like all his internal organs were shaken violently.

“In order, I came here yesterday after getting a call from staffs. As for where you are, its not Mito. You are still in Orai, at a public hospital. With your condition back then, they didn’t have enough time to transfer you to a better one.” Yuki replied as she wiped away the tears from her eyes. Kenshin looked at her for a few seconds before giving her a smile.

Joy, reading the mood, quietly excused himself from the room. With the recovery of Kenshin, a huge weight has been lifted off his chest. With all his anxiety gone, he suddenly assaulted with two days worth of tiredness. He plopped into the waiting chairs, not caring about what others would think, he slept like a log, falling into a deep sleep in seconds.

Back in the room, now Kenshin and Yuki were all alone. Looking at each other's face, they didn’t speak anything for a long time before Kenshin broke the silence: “You should go and take a rest too. You haven’t rested since yesterday.”

Shaking her head, she looked at him with teary eyes as she asked: “Why?”

“Huh! What ‘why’?” Kenshin didn’t understand the meaning behind her question, so he puzzlingly looked at her.

“Why are you always like this? Why did you force yourself when others backed away?”

Hearing her question, Kenshin sighed as he looked at the roof of the hospital. “As a hunter, getting hurt is something that comes in the job description. I couldn’t avoid that. That time, we are in the middle of a huge whirlpool. Lady Sachiko could only support, she couldn’t do both attacking and supporting at the same time and needed someone to attack the beast. I don’t know why she didn’t ask others to help, when she came to me, I saw it as an opportunity.

Hey, thanks to that, I have a feeling that I have leveled up quite a few times. I can feel it in my bones. After discharging from here, I am gonna renew my license.”

Intensifying her glare, before she could say something, the door to the room was opened as few people barged in, dressed in hospital clothes.