Broken Innocence

HIIRO

To this fate… I say no thank you.

It’s been two whole days since we lost touch with Poppy Pipopapo.

I knew I should have stopped her even if I had to catch her by the neck.

Yesterday, I received a call from Deputy Director Hinata.

According to him, Poppy Pipopapo wanted to know where the pediatrician had had his traffic accident as a child. Perhaps Poppy Pipopapo thought that was a novel spot and tried to capture Mighty Novel X.

Since she’s a bugster, she should be able to make an emergency evacuation even if she’s facing a serious crisis. I really resented the error of judgment I had made two days ago when I had assumed that.

However, regret would not improve the situation. I need to change my mind and calmly analyze what I should do.

When I was studying in the US, I learned a lesson from a professor of surgery at a major hospital with the world’s best medical technology.

“The biggest monster in surgery is your emotions.”

Emotions are full of random numbers and are the most illogical of all.

When an unforeseen situation arises in an operation where a patient’s life or death is at stake, the uncertainty of emotions can rob the surgeon of their ability to make a calm decision, which can lead to fatal mistakes that would otherwise not be possible. In order to prevent this from happening, it is necessary to develop an unshakable confidence through daily training and to be carefully prepared to deal with any unforeseen situation, both mentally and physically.

Change your mind. Let go of your personal feelings. The operation isn’t over yet.

You’ll only regret it after everything is over.

“Genius surgeon. Our helpers have arrived.”

The coroner’s words interrupted my thoughts.

Strictly speaking, the words spoken by the medical examiner caused air vibrations that vibrated my eardrums. They are amplified by the ossicles, converted into electrical signals by the sensory organ in the inner ear called the cochlea, analyzed for their frequency and strength, and then carried to my cranial nerves…

Excuse me. I don’t really care about that right now.

When I turned around, I saw the practitioner and the female gamer in CR’s medical office.

The medical practitioner was wearing a black V-neck shirt, camouflage army pants and black boots. He wore a white coat and looked ready to go. The female gamer looked more mature, but she was still wearing a colorful outfit with primary colors and a mini-skirt.

“You’ve come a long way, haven’t you?”

As soon as I started to say that, the practitioner came up to me and grabbed me by the chest.

“How did this happen when Brave and Lazer were there!”

“Taiga. This is not the time for us to be arguing.”

The female gamer pointed out the truth.

The practitioner didn’t have anything to say in reply, so he let go of me.

I adjusted the collar of my disheveled coat and explained to them what had happened so far. I shared with them all the information I knew at the moment.

“Poppy Pipopapo is also believed to have disappeared in a failed attempt to capture Mighty Novel X. Anyway, be prepared that this operation is going to be different from anything we’ve done before.”

“Bring it on,” the practitioner spat.

The coroner quickly interjected and got down to business.

“Well, well. Now that we’re all here, let’s have a doctor’s conference. Nico-chan, can you tell us what you know about Emu’s past?”

“Okay. Between the time you called me and the time it took me to get here, I’ve been gathering info from my old gamer friends. I was shocked when I first heard about it, but it seems that he used to live with his father when he was in high school. His mother died of illness right after Emu was born.”

No mother… that was news to me.

When the topic of his family came up, the pediatrician seemed to avoid the subject, but apparently he had a complicated family background. He hadn’t given us the slightest hint of that until now. It’s not as if we could do anything about it if we knew that fact.

But even so. Distant.

If I were to say this to you, you might say, “I don’t want to hear that from you, Hiiro-san.”

You’ve been smiling all this time, while keeping your family situation hidden in your heart.

Will you say that you were trying not to make us worry?

Being self-righteous is a good thing.

Did you think that I would care about you? No matter what your situation is, you and I are still you and I. There’s nothing else to it.

…Wait a minute.

In front of such a pediatrician… I was talking about my family background….

I was ashamed of myself. I feel sorry for the pediatrician.

“I thought that might be the case.”

“What do you mean, Lazer?” asked the practitioner.

“Emu and I were talking about family before, and he seemed strangely fidgety. I was wondering if there was something behind it.”

When the coroner said that, I thought, “He got me”.

“Coroner. Did you deliberately lie about your family because you had a premonition of this? So as not to offend the pediatrician?”

“Well, we don’t need to talk about that right now.”

I see. As usual, the medical examiner is a shrewd man. He always senses the two sides of a person and is always prepared for anything.

I’ve never met anyone as observant as this man. Sometimes I even feel that it is almost an occupational disease. He carefully observes the body of the deceased, reads the messages left behind, and derives the cause of death. With the eyes of such a medical examiner, reading the back of a living person would be like twisting the hand of a baby.

At any rate. It turns out that the pediatrician is from a motherless family.

This fact could be some kind of clue to help us clear Mighty Novel X.

The female gamer went on to tell us more information that she had obtained.

“So. About Emu’s father. His name is Hojo Kiyonaga. I don’t know about now, but when Emu was in high school, he was working for a company called Medictric.”

“Medictric. Isn’t it one of the largest medical device manufacturers in Japan?”

“As expected of Brave! You know your stuff!” The female gamer teased.

“Of course. A lot of the equipment in our hospital is made by Medictric. Particularly medical equipment such as ventilators and dialysis machines that are used to maintain patients’ lives.”

“Wow, I didn’t know Emu’s father worked for a company that made such amazing products!”

In addition, the following facts were revealed by the female gamer’s report.

The pediatrician’s father worked in the development department of Medictric at the time. When the pediatrician was still young, he often moved from one place to another due to his work. Because he moved around a lot, he didn’t seem to have many friends at school.

His favorite food was hamburgers. Perhaps because of his motherless family, he had been eating lunch boxes, prepared foods, and frozen foods from supermarkets since he was a child, so eating out at a burger store every once in a while was his greatest reward. It seems that his preference at that time continued into his high school years.

There was also a bit of trivia mixed in, such as his tendency to fall and get hurt easily, his love of cleanliness and his use of laundromats for laundry, and his preference for techno-pop music, but I noted it just in case.

What surprised me the most was the pediatrician’s father. Being a member of the development department of Medictric, he was a leading figure in the development of cutting-edge medical equipment, and his job was an important one that involved taking care of people’s lives from a different standpoint than that of us doctors. Considering the fact that he was often transferred, it is easy to imagine that he must have spent his days very busy.

If that is the case, the pediatrician might have spent a lot of time alone at home. His unparalleled love for video games may have been due to the fact that he spent a lot of time playing alone, which makes sense. The fact that he loved to use the laundromat may have also had something to do with that.

Little by little, the background surrounding the pediatrician is becoming more and more outlined. I am not sure if this information will help me in the operation, but it is always better to be carefully prepared. In an operation where a patient’s life or death is at stake, it is important to be prepared for any unforeseen circumstances.

“Okay. Doctor’s conference is over. The situation is urgent. Operations will be performed simultaneously.”

“Simultaneously? Brave, what does that mean?” The female gamer asked.

“As you know, in order to conquer Mighty Novel X, we need to clear the novel spots in this town one by one. If we act in a group, we’ll only lose time during the operation. We’ll have to split up and perform the operation at the same time.”

“Very well.” The general practitioner agreed.

“But will it be okay? You two are not specialists in psychosomatic medicine, are you?” The coroner said sarcastically.

It’s the same for you, isn’t it? You’re not in a situation where you can say anything about it.

I was about to say something like that, but the medical examiner must have read my intentions, because he said, “Well, it’s the same for me.”

Bring it on.

I’ll be the best doctor in the world. That’s what I promised Saki.

Holding a scalpel in an operation is not the only thing I’m capable of.

It doesn’t matter what kind of disease it is. As long as there’s a patient there, I’ll cure them.

I reiterated my resolve.

To bind myself to the words by saying them out loud.

It’s not just an ideal.

It’s not a pretense, either.

Say and Do. That’s my philosophy.

“There’s nothing I can’t cut.”

I left CR ahead of the others and picked up a cab in front of the University Hospital.

“Please take me to Shinkyo Central Hospital.”

The cab driver seemed to be a seasoned veteran who knew the area well, and he started the car without checking the detailed route.

It was late afternoon on a weekday. Normally, the roads would have been relatively empty, but for some reason, today was the only day that they were crowded.

Thinking back, I realized that today was the middle of a major holiday weekend. I could see many families on their way home from their holidays.

But no matter what, I have learned how to keep a level head.

This is not the first time this has happened to me. I’ve faced many emergency surgeries where every minute counts.

Patients don’t wait for you, even if you’re at home taking a bath or sleeping. As soon as I receive a call from the emergency services, I immediately arrange a hired car and rush to Seito University Hospital.

You rarely drive a motorcycle or car yourself. The reason for this is that you obtain specific information about the patient’s condition while on the road and train yourself to imagine the operation. If you have a clear vision, you can dramatically shorten the time of the operation and save the patient’s life.

This time was no exception.

Let’s start the image training as usual.

The Shinkyo Central Hospital I was heading to was a place of great importance.

I had asked my father to gather information beforehand, and he told me that Deputy Director Hinata used to work as a doctor at Shinkyo Central Hospital.

In other words, this is the hospital where the eight year old pediatrician once underwent an emergency operation, and is an essential part of the pediatrician’s past.

The pediatrician was inspired to become a doctor after his life was saved by Deputy Director Hinata. The story of the pediatrician’s fate must lie in the Shinkyo Central Hospital where the two met.

I decided to speculate on the nature of the Mighty Novel X game.

The pediatrician – and possibly Poppy Pipopapo – failed to clear it and got a game over.

There is no one who can match the pediatrician in terms of game strategy. There must be a special reason why a man of such skill could not clear the game.

The pediatrician and Poppy Pipopapo. If there’s one thing they have in common, it’s that they’re both too friendly and tend to get too involved with their patients.

Maybe, what if that friendly nature is a liability in Mighty Novel X…?

After all, it’s a game set up by Dan Kuroto.

You don’t need to imagine that it is a game in bad taste. It’s a game of deception and revenge against those who become immersed in the story and become deeply involved. It would not be surprising if he had set such a trap.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I have kept a certain distance from the pediatrician.

Yes. That’s how it was between me and him.

We were both comfortable with our unfamiliarity. It was comfortable for us to remain professional coworkers without getting involved in our personal lives.

We shared only a small percent of our lives, and we shared only a small percent of our trust in each other. Any more than that is superfluous. Just the necessary percentage.

If Mighty Novel X is the story of the pediatrician himself, then I can objectively analyze whatever story is waiting for me.

Don’t go too deep.

Let go of the idea of saving the pediatrician.

I don’t care who the patient is that I’m trying to save.

I just need to give the patient in front of me the appropriate treatment. That’s all there is to it.

The biggest monster in surgery is your emotions.

The cab arrived at its destination when I got a perfect vision.

Shinkyo Central Hospital is a major hospital that represents the fourth district of Seito City, and it is also one of the largest hospitals in Japan, rivaling Seito University Hospital.

My father had already made the necessary arrangements with the director of Shinkyo Central Hospital.

When I gave my name at the reception desk, a handy clerk took me to my destination.

Room 307 of the pediatric ward.

Fortunately, there was a bed available.

This was the hospital room where the pediatrician whose life had been saved by Deputy Director Hinata’s operation had been hospitalized.

After thanking the clerk and saying goodbye, I stepped into the hospital room.

Then I took out my Gamer Driver and attached it to my waist, as Poppy Pipopapo had told me about the conditions for participation.

“Mighty Novel X! Event Start!”

The game’s system voice echoed out of nowhere.

The inside of the hospital room distorted into a mosaic.

Now, it’s time for the operation.

The next thing I knew, I was standing in the special space of Mighty Novel X.

The scene around me was almost the same as before, a hospital room. Only some of the ancillary equipment has been replaced with old-fashioned equipment from more than twenty years ago.

A boy was lying on a slightly angled reclining bed with his upper body raised.

An intravenous needle was inserted into his small arm and fixed with tape.

With his hands, he was operating a portable game console, engrossed in a game.

The boy’s face somehow reminded me of the pediatrician. I didn’t think their faces were particularly similar, but the way they looked while playing the game was a perfect match.

If the car accident had caused his internal organs to rupture, it must have been a long and serious surgery. How did you endure it with your tiny body, pediatrician? No… pediatrician junior.

“Dad!?”

Pediatrician Junior, noticing my presence, suddenly shouted at me.

I denied it, shaking my head in disbelief.

At the same time, I felt a sense of déjà vu. I’ve been in this situation before.

Yes. It was Hoshi Madoka, a pediatric brain tumor patient I had saved in an operation before.

At that time, I became Madoka-chan’s father in the VR game space. Or more accurately, I was made to play the role of a father. Don’t tell me you want me to be her dad again.

Pediatrician Junior was staring at me.

No, not at me, but at my white coat.

“Is it time for a check up?”

I see. Apparently, he just thought I was his dad.

I’m relieved. I’ve had enough of dads. And it’s too much of a farce to be dealing with the pediatrician.

“I’m sure Deputy Director– I mean, Dr. Hinata Kyotaro will be here later to make his rounds. I’d like to ask you a few questions first. Tell me when you’re done with your game.”

I wondered if he would be confused if he was suddenly told that by a doctor he didn’t know.

Should I give him a better explanation? No, but would his young mind be able to understand what I was saying?

As I was thinking about this, Pediatrician Junior turned off the game console and placed it on the side table.

“I’m done.”

Good thing he was an understanding child.

“Are you sure? I thought you were in the middle of a game.”

“No problem. I just saved the data.”

“I see.”

A moment of silence passed.

I didn’t come here just to make small talk. Let’s cut to the chase.

“You called me Dad earlier…”

I felt Pediatrician Junior’s expression tense up a bit.

I continued without hesitation.

“Have you been waiting for your dad to come visit you?”

“…He’s not coming.”

“I don’t think so. I’m sure your dad is worried about you.”

“Well… he came just the first day.”

“Just the first day? He hasn’t come to visit you since then?”

“No.”

Pediatrician Junior lowered the corners of his mouth, his face dark.

“…Not even once?”

I thought it was a bit immature, but I took a step further and pressed him, and this time the corners of his mouth lifted a little and he smiled brightly.

“Yes. But he can’t help it. Dad is busy with work.”

After all, this child looks just like the pediatrician.

You’ve been such a softie since you were little.

Loneliness. Heartbreak. Distress. Are you going to bear all of that on your shoulders and smile in front of me again?

Why don’t you just come straight at me with your true feelings?

What are you so afraid of?

Do you think being selfish is an ugly thing to do?

If so, your self-righteousness is now a disease.

In addition, you are only eight years old now. You’re in a position where you have no ties to society or the world of adults. You have the right to be selfish and to push through your own desires.

“But I have a game. The doctor gave it to me.”

The doctor must be Deputy Director Hinata.

For the pediatrician, it seems that games were an irreplaceable part of his life.

You spent a lot of time alone, and games were your emotional support. They were your companions, your friends, your playmates. Games made you smile, didn’t they?

I felt like I had glimpsed the roots of the pediatrician’s beliefs.

Simply curing the body is not a true treatment. It can only be said to be a complete cure when the patient regains their smile and their mind becomes healthy.

The first patient to be saved by this concept was none other than the pediatrician himself.

When I learned this fact, the image I had of the pediatrician changed 180 degrees.

This is not mere idealism or pretty words. It was a lesson based on his own experience.

Each word that the pediatrician had been saying so far took on gravity and stretched out in my brain.

At that moment, I felt a presence behind me and turned around.

It was Hinata Kyotaro, clad in a white coat. His face still had few wrinkles and he looked young and fearless.

Without a second thought, Dr. Hinata walked up to the side of Pediatrician Junior.

“Emu. How’s your body feeling?”

Dr. Hinata began examining Pediatrician Junior as if he had not noticed my presence.

It was unthinkable that I, who had nothing to do with this hospital, would be in a hospital room in a white coat and completely unattached.

So that’s how it is.

The protagonist of Mighty Novel X is the pediatrician. I, the player, can only communicate with the main character, the pediatrician. I can’t interfere with any other characters. That’s the game rule of Mighty Novel X.

After Dr. Hinata completed his formal examination and confirmed that there were no abnormalities in Pediatrician Junior’s post-operative course, he began to talk about something strange.

“Emu. There’s one thing I want to make sure of. I’m not asking this as a doctor, but as a human being.”

“…What is it?”

“Why were you walking on that road on the rainy day when you had the traffic accident?”

For some reason, Pediatrician Junior looked down awkwardly.

“To get from your house to the elementary school, you have to leave your house and go down the hill. That means the road where you had the accident is on the opposite side of the road to school. If you were taking a detour, you would have been late for school, right?”

I hadn’t heard that before.

The pediatrician had been involved in a car accident on the opposite side of the road from where he was going to school. Why was he walking on that road?

“…I was lost.”

“…I see. You just moved here, so you didn’t know your way around.”

“…Yeah.”

If you had just moved to an unfamiliar town, it’s no wonder you didn’t know the way around. But it’s about going to school every morning. Whether to go up or down the hill right after leaving home. Could you really make such a mistake?

It was true that the pediatrician had a careless and restless side.

Even though he was a doctor, he was often injured by trivial things.

A head-on collision with someone at the corner of a corridor in the hospital. Or he steps off the stairs and falls down. In the worst cases, he falls down even on a barrier-free path with no obstacles or steps.

He has an extensive list of injuries: bruises, sprains, contusions, there’s no end to it. The frequency of his injuries made me wonder if he had a serious defect in the brain function that controls movement.

That’s the kind of guy he is. It would not be surprising if he took the wrong route to school and got lost. I came to the conclusion that it was nothing to worry about. Not at this time.

After Dr. Hinata finished his rounds and left the hospital room, I remained in the room.

Pediatrician Junior was enjoying the rest of the game on his portable game console.

Despite his near-death experience, he seemed to be doing well after his surgery.

Dr. Hinata’s treatment was perfect, even from my point of view.

The operation on a small pediatric patient is particularly difficult because the surgical field is narrow. Moreover, in the event of an accident, lifesaving operations must be carried out with quick decisions and without sufficient time to prepare. It was commendable that he was able to accomplish this, but what was even more thoughtful was the suturing of the abdomen. The abdominal sutures were carefully done so that the area where the scalpel was inserted would not be noticeable. In the case of a pediatric patient with a future, it is important for the surgeon to take care of the appearance as well.

“Um…” Pediatrician Junior opened his mouth, “How long before I’m good to go?”

“…You’ll be discharged in two months. You can thank Dr. Hinata for that. Originally, you could have stayed in the hospital twice that long.”

“…only two months.”

It was a strange thing to say. It was as if he did not want to leave the hospital.

“When you get out of the hospital and go home, you’ll be able to see your father.”

“…If I get injured again, will I be able to stay in the hospital?”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because… the doctor and the nurses are kind. And I don’t have to disturb my dad’s work.”

“What about school?”

“…I don’t really want to go. I don’t have any friends who can come to visit me. Even if I went, it would be boring.”

I was at a loss for words to say. I felt a tingle in my chest and a tightening of my heart.

Not going to school was not in my dictionary.

Ever since I was in elementary school, I wasn’t the type of person who bothered with making friends. My parents had always taught me that school was a place to study, and I had never doubted that.

Of course, I interacted with my classmates to a minimum, and I never caused any problems that would have unnecessarily disrupted the group activities, but I never let the presence or absence of friends affect the reason for attending school in the first place. Rather, I aimed for perfect attendance and never missed a day of school, even if I had a fever. In elementary school, I had decided that I would become a doctor, so I also served as the head of the student council in order to obtain internal application scores for higher education.

I took that kind of school life for granted and had no doubts about it.

What’s more, the pediatrician is a CR doctor who is on par with me. We were both enrolled in the same medical school at Seito University and worked at the same hospital. Yet, I couldn’t believe that the pediatrician and I had had opposite childhood experiences. I was well aware of the fact that people are different, but I had assumed that the pediatrician was also some kind of honor student.

Of course, I have no intention of discriminating against anyone because of their background. I just couldn’t help it. I didn’t know that the pediatrician, who unlike me was always smiling, had such a backstory…

Pediatrician Junior looked at me as if he wanted to say something.

Will I be able to accept this child’s feelings?

A hint of anxiety came over me, and I felt sweat beading on my forehead.

“Hey… can’t I stay here in the hospital forever…?”

Those were his last words.

Pediatrician Junior stopped moving like an elaborate puppet for clinical training.

A holographic monitor appeared in front of him, displaying three options.

《Okay》 《No》 《Other》

So this is the turning point of Mighty Novel X…

I couldn’t hide my agitation.

What was the pure, admirable, well-behaved boy in front of me thinking? What answers does he want? I thought I had prepared for every possible situation, but now I was going into the ordeal in a completely unprepared state.

The sweat pouring out of my forehead increased in volume, dampening my eyelashes. When I blinked involuntarily, the sweat got into my eyes and stung strongly. There was no nurse to wipe away my sweat at my command.

I would have to go through this operation alone.

My heart was beating slowly. I could feel a monster being born inside me.

“The biggest monster in an operation.”

At that moment, I suddenly came back to myself.

That’s right. I had almost lost sight of myself and forgotten the most important thing. Don’t get too deep into this. Don’t think of saving the pediatrician. I don’t care who the patient is that I’m trying to save.

It’s just a matter of giving the right treatment to the patient in front of you. That’s all there is to it.

I meditated and counted three seconds in my mind. The more critical the operation is, the more important these three seconds are.

A moment of nothingness to regulate my breathing and regain my calm judgment.

One. Two. Three.

《Okay》 《No》 《Other》

I’ve decided my answer…

“No. As a doctor, I can’t grant your request.”

I opened my eyes and said the string of words that had popped into my brain in a clerical manner.

There are always other patients suffering from illnesses, and it’s impossible to keep a recovered patient in a hospital room. It was a natural decision for a doctor to make.

Pediatrician Junior twitched, looked at me, and was silent. I didn’t know what he meant by that silence.

But I had no regrets about my answer.

In psychological counseling, encouraging a patient with mental illness to “hang in there” can sometimes have the opposite effect.

A case in which the patient is made to feel that the cause of their mental problems is that they are not working hard enough, which is perceived as a denial of everything. In the case of patients who are already doing their best, they are put under too much pressure by making them think “What more should I do?”. In the worst case, there are cases where the patient closes his or her mind, saying, “You don’t understand me at all.”

I don’t know how a psychosomatic medicine specialist would approach this, but this is the answer I’ve come up with.

I’m the best doctor in the world.

There’s nothing I can’t cut.

I declared this again in my mind.

The next moment, I felt my eardrums vibrate.

The system voice of doom, announcing the end of the game, was converted into an electrical signal and transmitted to the auditory cortex of my brain.

I perceived the fate of the game.

⇦ TALE OF ORIGIN (PART TWO) | CHAPTER INDEX | BROKEN INNOCENCE (TAIGA) ⇨