“How can you be so early Lucy? We just got here!”
Kralus’ sarcasm broke the melancholic silence. Though the irony might have seemed uncapturing at first, Lucy seemed to have deciphered his meaning behind those words.
“I’m sorry! I had a quick bathroom break after treating another student…”
“Wait, I’m sorry, but you call it a ‘quick bathroom break’? Are you serious? We literally sat here for an eternity! Are you suffering from constipation or what?!”
Lucy's cheeks turned red, as a few tufts of her blonde hair hung down through the nurse cap, and she faced down in embarrassment.
“A student needs emergency treatment! He’s unconscious after losing blood!”
Lucy didn’t mutter another word but rushed at Hisashi unconscious on the bed. She did a quick check-up of his body and thoroughly examined the bruises and cuts, all those remnants of Avalanche’s agonizing torture that devoured the young and brave boy.
“The wounds are deep, he got hurt pretty bad…”
Upon her remark, Aya and Katsuro’s expressions turned grim. Surely, what would she understand what Hisashi had to go through, right? The thought ran through Katsuro’s head. But Lucy took a deep breath, and acknowledged to the astonished people with a cheerful tone–
“But worry not! The best nurse in Brieztopia is here to save the unfortunate from their forbidding fate! I’ll heal him in no time!”
She rested both her hands on Hisashi, and muttered incantations that were mere ‘unfathomable words’ to Aya, Katsuro and Reiko–
“Fluit, aqua, horaiz…”
Lucy’s hands shone as a blue magic circle manifested over Hisashi’s body, and drops of watery liquid trickled from her palm.
“...Countermand!”
These drops of trickling liquid formed streams that cascaded down Hisashi’s body and covered him as a whole, as if he was embedded in a jelly-like capsule with liquid walls. As Aya, Katsuro and Reiko stared at the sight with agape jaws, they perceived that Hisashi’s wounds were closing and banishing–they were healing! And soon enough, before they even knew it, he was fully healed.
“He’s safe now, and is asleep. Nothing to worry about.”
Though Lucy’s words seemed reassuring, it wasn’t for Aya. Because she noticed some more bruises on his arms that were left behind.
“Um…Th-there are…some more left…”
The nurse had already noticed while she had been healing him, but found them insignificant for they weren’t healed by her magic. After Aya’s words, though, she took a deeper look at them, and concluded not what Aya and Katsuro thought, something quite unexpected–
“These…these don't seem like wounds, these are scars, very old scars…”
Lucy, muddled by her conclusion, unbuttoned Hisashi’s shirt which was cleaned after her magic. Aya’s cheeks turned red like a tomato from embarrassment watching her, a girl, stripping a boy. Though, her embarrassment soon wore off in front of the sight of Hisashi.
His torso was enveloped with an incredible number of scars, scars like those of sword slashes, knife cuts and what not. Not just his torso, but his entire body was devoured by blemishes. Arms, legs, every square-inch area of his body. And all of those, as mentioned by Lucy, were old. Very old…
“Since his childhood…”
What kind of hell hole did he go through??
Astonished from the sight, the thought ran over Lucy’s mind as she couldn’t believe the truth in front of her eyes.
“It seems like…he had fought a war…”
Aya’s red eyes glittered with tears upon Lucy’s words, and Katsuro’s face grimmed.
War, huh.
Katsuro thought, his throat heavy. Hisashi was indeed too young, only fifteen, yet the scars were from when he was even younger. Surely Katsuro too had misery in his childhood, especially Reiko, his little sister, which led to her current condition. But never was it sorrowful to the extent of Hisashi’s. In fact, Katsuro’s agonies compare to nothing.
Hisashi…how much struggle did you have to go through..?
Aya thought, her glittery red teared-up eyes glinting in light like a blood moon at midnight. She felt guilty, for he already had tremendous sorrow in the past, but she forced him to walk on a glass already cracked in his childhood, she made him cut open healing wounds of torment from those days. Because only after he met Aya that he had been involved in numerous incidents–even their exposure to Brieztopia! It was because of her he had been through pain again, she thought, and faced down in guilt.
Kralus, too, was as shocked as the others. His head was racing with thoughts as he had both his hands on his jaw, his face horrific with astonishment.
Did he undergo some sort of brutal training? No wonder he was able to put up a fight with that monster…
He was also disbelieving of the sight in front of him. Hisashi was still just a kid, but he held off his ground against a guy whom even Julian had trouble defeating. So he wasn’t just astonished, but pretty well impressed too.
I was already aware of his strength, but his potential’s unfolding much faster than expected…not to mention on his very first day?!
Yes. It was Hisashi’s first ever day at the magic academy. But he already had dominated the leagues of that class. His hidden potential was on par with omniversal level, which only Kralus knew, and a performance of that calibre with Avalanche had rocketed his impression of the young and brave boy.
The melancholic yet thrilling atmosphere that surrounded their shoulders soon disintegrated, when a faint white light in the shape of a sphere glimmered into existence in the infirmary. The glowing blob of light progressively morphed and manifested two figures, a man and a woman who held each other’s hands.
“They’re here.”
