Post

Promise: Part II

600-Word Post

Yanomito

I wake with a start. I’m inside the Yoruhara residence, somewhere. The spacious yet barren room is illuminated only with one gas lantern dangling idly from the ceiling, strobing around its sunrise glow as it bobbles around, back and forth.

My eyes feel like they’ve been glued shut for hours. Still, by blinking a bit, I manage to chase away the itching feeling. At least for now.

I’m in an overly soft bed. I think I need to stretch; it doesn’t feel good for my posture.

And then the pain jumps in. That’s right, I recall, writhing in agonizing silence, tears streaming unceremoniously down my bandaged face. (My face is bandaged?) I was shot. Twice. Once in the shoulder, the same shoulder I was hit in all those months ago. And another on my side. Despite these two clear points of entry, the cruel fires of excruciating torture lick throughout my entire body. I don’t have the strength to scream or do anything. Just suffer silently.

With nothing else to do, I try panning my gaze from side to side, taking all my effort to move my head to see what lay beside me. I’m surprised my shoulder didn’t render me unconscious as I did so, regardless of how small these actions were. My shoulder certainly tried. There is a nightstand to my right. An analog clock sitting neatly on a stack of papers declares that it is 5:20.

I must have been panting and wheezing like an idiot to the extent that the doors to the room slide open softly, dully thudding against the walls. I try to center my head and peer down across the hall, to see who opened the door. It’s Shinobu-san.

Shinobu-san? Since when did we wrest naval control over Yanomito? I try to open my mouth, to speak, yet nothing comes out.

“Don’t speak,” Shinobu-san hisses through grit teeth, pacing around me like a madwoman with her by-now iconic clipboard and half-fogged glasses. Instead of her traditional labcoat, she wore a dark green Jinmin Kumiaiha field uniform, sleeves rolled up to allow room for thick latex gloves. There is blood scattered across her uniform, a malign constellation across the hammer-and-sickle emblem of the faction. “Don’t move,” she follows up, noticing my head’s feeble rolls across the silk pillows. “You know what?” she amends, scrunching her face at her clipboard, “Don’t do anything. At all.”

Shinobu-san wheels around, looming over the bed. She sweeps down my blanket, with a crude yet tender jerk, and races analytic fingers across my bare chest. She reaches down at my side and begins to change its bandages. I wince.

“Deaf idiot,” she tsks. I try to lie a little more still, in humiliating self-consciousness. My head is propped up to face what’s above me. As Shinobu-san (very painfully) changes my bandages, I can’t do anything except look at her face. Beads of sweat dotted her hairline like a tiara. Some began to trickle lazily down the temples of her glasses. Others hugged loose strands of her hair to her round face. Her cheeks are tinged a shade of red. For a moment, her eyes dart to catch mine. I feel my face redden too. Just as quickly as her gaze came to me, they leave, back to attending to my wound. Her face reddens even more.

“There,” Shinobu-san sighs nonchalantly, quickly turning away from me once she finishes. “Anyway, Ryoshiro, to give you the short version, two bullets entered your body. One ruptured your axillary vein and grazed your clavicle. It exited safely. The other missed your external iliac by three centimeters, its exit blocked by your pelvis. Considering your extremely unstable operation, not helped at all with this horribly unsanitary island, it’s a miracle you’re still here. You’ve already done the brunt of recovery, but try not to ruin it just by moving needlessly. It’s another miracle you haven’t yet damaged yourself further by rolling like a seal in your little Kallian playground you have there.”

I don’t say anything. Even if I could, I stay silent.

“You could have easily perished given the circumstances. You suffered a concussion when you fell out of that building, so they tell me,” Shinobu-san continues, her matter-of-factly tone faltering.

Shinobu-san falls silent too. She wheels back around, her pressed her lips together and her eyes clenched shut. Pinning her hands down at either side of my head, she descended, kissing me flush on the lips. My eyes started to dart about. I can’t focus on anything. A tear falls on my face.

Something comes up in my throat. Shinobu-san jumps away, clearly as confused as I am. “I’m sorry, Mr. Musai, that was wrong,” Shinobu-san clears her throat, her normally stoic, focused visage broken. Her eyes bounce everywhere, as if trying to catch the scattered emotions running loose from her mind, her heart.

And then do I notice Chiyeko standing in the doorway, eyes wide and pupils narrowed.