Shigure and I ignored the scrawny rooster man who was trying to get our attention both physically and mentally by our side while we continued to unashamedly make out in front of him. Our mental barriers were strong enough that we were confident he wouldn't be able to even sense that we were having a silent conversation in front of him.
"Ahem," there was a loud knocking and coughing at the door. "The doctor is here."
Shigure and I shared another two short kisses and then separated. Shigure immediately resumed feeding me as if we hadn't just been making out, dabbing my tingling and swollen lips with a serviette.
A tall male doctor with the usual long entourage entered the room. I wasn't very familiar with this doctor and so tilted my head, looking at my usual nurse with a question. My usual doctor and another female doctor I didn't know were present. My nurse didn't get a chance to speak.
"Mrs Kubo-Shigure, I have looked at your medical files and after consultation with your other doctors, I have agreed to help you perform the surgery you need to deal with your urogenital and rectal issues. Given your history of poor health and complications, we will put the surgery off a little longer in the hopes you will be strong enough to survive the extensive surgery that we're going to have to perform."
The tall surgeon went on to detail exactly what was wrong with me and what he was going to do, meanwhile Shigure's face had gone white as a sheet and he put the bowl and spoon down before his shaking hands spilled anything. He stared at me, looking horrified.
*"I did that to you?"* he asked, feeling distraught. *"While I was hypnotised, I hurt you so badly? I didn't know. You hid it from me so well. You shouldn't have hidden such an important thing from me."*
*"I wasn't planning on letting you know if I could help it,"* I told Shigure. *"Don't blame yourself. It wasn't your fault. I don't blame you. I love you. You hide a lot of things from me in order to protect me. Don't think I haven't noticed. I have done the same. Now, we are even."*
My usual nurse forced Shigure to lean back in his seat before he fainted and fell on the floor. She checked his vital signs discreetly while the tall surgeon who hadn't bothered to introduce his arrogant self continued talking, and she gave Shigure a cup of water.
Shigure closed himself off from me, so I didn't even notice he was about to faint until he did. The tall surgeon frowned and then stepped back while the usual medical staff quickly got Shigure onto the empty bed beside me and made sure he hadn't had another heart attack. They took some blood for a blood test, just in case.
"I suppose he's the scumbag who injured you while under the influence?" the tall surgeon scoffed. "Mrs Kubo-Shigure, you shouldn't stay with an abusive man."
"He's not abusive," I replied stubbornly in my soft voice so that the tall surgeon had to lean in to hear. "He got tricked by his clan members when we thought they could be trusted. They drugged us both and were going to sacrifice me to the mountain god to be its toy or food. They wanted to use him to break my spirit first because they didn't like that I was a foreigner. It wasn't his fault. They did something to him that hypnotised them and made him obedient to them. They were going to separate us and lock us both up in the shrine. You can't blame him. It wasn't his fault. The big snake had already thrown me down the mountain when I angered it before they set him on me. I didn't tell him how badly he hurt me. I didn't want him to know because I knew it would hurt him and might trigger him. If your announcement gives him another heart attack and kills him, you can be sure that I'm going to die with him," I declared to the tall surgeon.
There was a long silence while the tall surgeon looked into my determined eyes with a frown. He listened to the other doctors and nurses tell him how in love and how in tune Shigure and I were with each other and how we had both almost died multiple times when we had first been admitted to hospital from overseas. From what they said, Miki-san had told them the story I had told her of what Shigure had done for me. Now I listened to them repeat it.
The tall surgeon's eyes softened upon realising that he had misunderstood our situation. He took a step back and gave a deep bow.
"I deeply apologise for my presumptuous words and actions. Please forgive me," he said.
"Alright," I nodded, seeing and feeling his sincerity. "I forgive you. Please, no need to bow so deep."
"No," the tall surgeon bowed again past ninety degrees. "My attitude and preconceived thoughts are unacceptable. Please accept my deepest apologies to you and your husband."
"I accept," Shigure said in a weak voice, waking up. He almost fell out of the bed he had been placed in and a nurse helped him walk over to the chair by my bedside again. "If you hadn't told me, my wife might have never told me the whole truth. Rather, thank you for informing me. I apologise for fainting. It was quite a shock."
"No, no, I'm the one who should apologise," the tall surgeon said, while Shigure repeated the same and they both bowed continuously to each other.
"So do you think the surgery will be successful this time?" I asked, interrupting all the repeated bowing. "I've had surgery there before and I know a second surgery is unlikely to definitely be successful."
"I've had a look at your scans and your previous surgeon only did a patchy rough job. Do you still have his contact? I believe I can do better for you this time," the tall surgeon asked.
"I never met the last surgeon," I said simply. "My husband and I were being held captive at the time and our enemy was using me to hurt and spite my husband. I had also been drugged and conditioned at the time, so I don't remember much. I had been gang raped and tortured before that, while my husband was was being almost tortured to death, so I know things aren't the best down there. I will accept whatever you think you can do for me. Please don't misunderstand my husband. He has been very good to me and didn't throw me away even though I am a dirty used rag."
All the medical staff were taken aback at that. I saw tears spangle in the tall surgeon's eyes. He wasn't the only one. There was a collective hissing. None of them dared to look into Shigure or my eyes. They all gave Shigure and me a few silent bows. I didn't understand what was going on.
Shigure patted my hand and nodded.
"You aren't a dirty used rag," he told me and then looked at the doctors. "Please tell me in detail the plans for the surgeries," Shigure said in a soft voice, sounding very tired. "Yours aren't the only surgeries you are all planning, correct?"
"That's right," said the female doctor I didn't recognise. "We're planning a series of surgeries for Nodoka-chan that we hope to spread out over several months or even years, depending upon how well she recovers. By the end of it, we hope that Nodoka-chan will be well enough to be able to go home with you and be at least able to sit in a wheelchair to get around."
I sighed and closed my eyes, leaving the details to Shigure. All these things were so tiring and being a slow learner, I would have difficulty remembering most of the information. The best I could do was file a recording of what was being said to slowly review later and get Shigure to explain it all to me a few times. It was times like this that I distinctly felt the gap between my intellect and his. I relied on Shigure so much for so many things. If I didn't have him to help me, I definitely wouldn't have made it this far.
"Don't worry about her," Shigure's voice said. "She's just very tired after having so many visitors today. She also will struggle to remember and understand most of this information. I'll explain it to her slowly later."
I nodded my agreement and felt Shigure tuck the sheets around me again, lower the head of the bed to lay me more flat and give me a peck on the forehead.
"What a lucky girl," I heard someone whisper. "What a good man."
"What attracted you to her in the first place?" I heard someone ask out of curiosity.
"Her sincerity, simplicity and complete lack of schemes," Shigure said. "She brought me peace in the midst of my busy and complicated life. I can't thank her enough for helping anchor me down and give me both her love and support no matter what happens."
"Aww."
"Then we'll let her rest and continue this conversation over there."
I heard people's footsteps leave with Shigure's and the breeze of people leaving the room. It left only one person's soft breaths in the room. This person tried but failed to conceal himself in the room. He wasn't as good as Shigure at hiding himself. He was too full of arrogant self-importance that demanded to be noticed.
I guessed who was still in the room with me and projected the image of the scrawny rooster with a question mark.
"Oi, that's just rude," the lanky man with the scrawny neck grumbled in a soft voice. "I am not some scrawny rooster. It seems you aren't asleep yet. Please take back that image of me and stop shouting it out loud for anyone to see."
"How?" I opened my eyes to look at the lanky man who took the vacated visitor's seat, continuing to play the part of someone who didn't know anything about abilities. He really was a scrawny rooster.
"Is there any point in playing this type of game?" the lanky man scowled at me. "We already know that you and your husband are strong ability users who were among the first line of defence of your city. From the damage and your injuries, we presume you are both mental ability users. Just the strength of your combined mental defences already gives away the fact that you two have mental abilities," Shimizu Ietsugu grumbled. "Our government just wants to have a better understanding of what happened in your city, so as to better protect our special cities as well."
"There are special cities here?" I opened my eyes wide. It shouldn't have come as a surprise. There were sure to be at least one in every country. "Why are they special? What makes them special?"
"You know what I'm talking about," Shimizu Ietsugu growled.
"I'm sorry. I really don't," I said, maintaining my innocent look.
"Fine, have it your way," Shimizu Ietsugu snorted, tossing his head and then making himself comfortable.
"If you want to know details about our past and our former place of residence, you should really talk to my husband," I told him frankly, remembering the Blue Gulf with nostalgia and grief. My view of things was usually so unlike a normal person's that this man would probably be confused by me.
"Your husband is a really hard nut to crack."
"My husband is a nut?" I imagined various kinds of nuts, projecting the images, textures, tastes and smells, along with the random information that I knew about nuts. I used the same way I used to think and talk before I had learned from Shigure how to use mental abilities. It should be sufficient to keep the man occupied. Then I purposely wondered aloud whether it was possible for a nut to become a person. I knew heads could sometimes be called nuts. Crazy people were sometimes called nuts. And sometimes that appendage down there was called a nut despite its lack of a hard shell. There were also coconuts which technically wasn't a nut at all but had the word 'nut' in its name. Nuts could be used as a useless exclamation in place of swear words as well. What kind of nut was Shimizu Ietsugu talking about?
I very sincerely wondered, convincing and confusing Shimizu Ietsugu of the veracity of the information he had received.
"I'm not talking about your husband being an actual nut or any of the other nuts you're thinking of," Shimizu Ietsugu face-palmed. "I meant that your husband is difficult to talk to, but now I'm coming to realise that you're even more difficult to talk to. I thought you used to be a City Agent. How could they have had a City Agent with an IQ as low as yours?"
"I was a barrel scraper," I said proudly. "I had no idea what was going on most of the time."
"Figures," Shimizu Ietsugu muttered. "What was your special ability then?"
"Special ability?" I cocked my head. "What's that? Is it like how you can read people's minds? How do you read minds? Can I learn? Can you read everything I'm thinking?"
"I thought all you City Agents were people with special abilities," Shimizu Ietsugu sneered at me, thinking he had caught me in his trap.
"But I was a charity barrel scraping case," I said. "I was picked up by a City Agent out of pity before my workplace could train me into a sex slave and be sold. If I had a special ability… I guess it was that I could do the long jump?"
"How far could you jump in the long jump?" Shimizu Ietsugu rubbed his face, seeming to go along with me for the moment.
"The furthest I ever jumped was seven point eight metres, but we rounded it up to eight metres to make it sound better. Apparently if I had been trained well, I could have joined the national athletics team for the Olympics," I said and what I said wasn't far from the truth. Things had pretty much happened that way, minus a few details.
"What did you do at work?" Shimizu Ietsugu asked in a lazy voice as if he had given up.
"There was this machine that had recordings of conversations on it and I had to write down everything the people said, including all the sounds, ums and ahs. I counted the length of the pauses between words. I was very good at it," I said proudly.
"And that's all you did everyday for work?"
"Oh. I did some training too," I agreed. "Sometimes I did the reports for people when they couldn't be bothered writing them too. They recorded a verbal description and I would write it down."
"So you were basically a transcriber? How did you meet Kubo-san then?" Shimizu Ietsugu rubbed his nose and drew circles on the armrest of the chair with a finger. It was as if he was just going through the motions.
"Someone bullied me. He saved me," I simplified the whole course events into a rose tinted version. "He was very handsome and offered to teach me other languages so that I would be able to help with more work. I do whatever he tells me. He's too handsome to disobey."
Shimizu Ietsugu slapped his other hand to his face.
"I shouldn't have come. This was a real waste of time," he mumbled to himself, standing up. "Do you know what triggered the earthquake? It was so big that it opened a trench that almost split your enemy country in half."
"There were a lot of bombs," I shrugged. "It was raining bombs and the airplanes that dropped them were everywhere. I don't know. I was too busy trying not to get killed. Can bombs trigger earthquakes?"
"Do you know then, anyone or anything who could have mentally incapacitated or stunned thousands of people on both sides of the sea? Do you know anyone that strong? Someone from your organisation?" Shimizu Ietsugu paused on the way to the door.
"They died," I blinked at him, feeling tears suddenly filling my eyes. I released the storm of emotions and grief, making Shimizu Ietsugu reel back in shock at the strength of my feelings. "They died. Everyone died. We couldn't save them. The whole city is gone. The tribes are gone. The whole Land is gone."
The lanky man hesitated and then brought the tissue box over to me, placing it on my table. He turned around to go and then turned back to look at me again, seeing how I could only stare at the tissue box and cry. He heaved a heavy sigh and then awkwardly dabbed at my tears. He held a tissue to my nose and turned his face away.
"Blow," he said in a stiff voice and I blew. He helped me wipe my nose. "I'm sorry," he said, throwing the tissues away and then rushed out to wash his hands.
Shielding my mind, I half laughed and half cried inside. I think I had succeeded in telling him the truth without a lie, but my feelings were definitely not fake.