"My heavens!"
The medi-nin abruptly sprang to her feet and rushed into the wooden building, her eyes shining with disbelief as she excitedly surveyed the interior from corner to corner.
Standing at the doorway, she turned back toward the people still frozen outside, waving her hand energetically as she called out with barely contained delight, "What are you all standing there for? Why are you still spacing out? Hurry up and carry the patients inside!"
The other medical-nin, who had been standing there in a daze, finally snapped back to reality as though waking from a dream, and immediately bent down to lift the injured shinobi onto stretchers, beginning to move them into the newly built wooden houses.
They had barely begun moving when a burst of dense, hurried footsteps suddenly rang out from not far away.
Amamiya Rei turned her head to look, only to see a patrol squad approaching at high speed.
"What's going on here?"
The violent tremor caused by the sudden construction of the houses had practically spread across the entire camp, and the nearby patrol, fearing an enemy ambush, had rushed over without hesitation, leading a group of shinobi to investigate the situation.
The patrol captain stared at the row of wooden houses that had appeared out of thin air, his eyes widening as he glanced around cautiously, as though trying to identify a suspect.
"It's nothing!"
The medi-nin ran over to the patrol captain with a radiant smile and explained cheerfully, "These wooden houses were created by Amamiya Rei so that the patients could have proper wards to rest in."
Amamiya Rei?
The patrol captain was not unfamiliar with that name.
Any shinobi of Konoha would have heard of her by now.
The one who had inherited the Wood Release Kekki Genkai of the First Hokage.
Although he had heard the name many times, not everyone actually knew what Amamiya Rei looked like.
Seeing how most people's gazes were focused on the young girl standing not far away, the patrol captain immediately made the connection in his mind.
So the Mokuton user was actually such a young girl!
"Sorry for making you come all this way and causing unnecessary trouble."
Noticing that the patrol captain's eyes had lingered on her for quite some time, Rei offered him a gentle smile and spoke softly.
The patrol captain froze on the spot.
So… so beautiful!
Not merely her appearance, but her temperament as well—gentle, kind, and warm in a way that made people instinctively lower their guard.
The patrol captain instantly became tongue-tied. "N-no… no trouble at all…"
For reasons he could not explain, he suddenly found himself unable to speak properly, and the more he struggled to get the words out, the more flustered he became, until his entire face turned red like an overripe persimmon.
"W-we still have… other duties, so we'll… we'll take our leave now…"
With his face burning red, the patrol captain hurriedly led the group of patrol shinobi away, all of them shooting him looks filled with unspoken questions and barely concealed amusement.
Amamiya Rei stared blankly. "..."
That was it?
They just left like that?
He had not even had the chance to ask them to help carry the injured into the wooden houses!
A complicated emotion surfaced in Rei's heart.
What a waste of his smile.
He turned back to look at the injured shinobi still lying on the ground and let out a long sigh in his heart.
Fine.
He would transport his food himself.
"Amamiya Rei!"
Amamiya Rei, who was currently holding one patient under his left arm and carrying another over his right shoulder, was suddenly called to a halt.
He turned to see a medi-nin walking toward him.
Wasn't this the same sharp-tongued troublemaker from earlier?
"Do you need help with something?"
Although Amamiya Rei's posture was far from elegant, the smile on her face remained impeccably graceful.
The medical-nin stood in front of her with an awkward expression, clearly wanting to say something yet struggling to bring himself to do so. "I… I…"
Spit it out already.
Rei almost wanted to step right on his face.
He was wasting his precious time.
And time was meat.
Wasting his time was equivalent to sabotaging his meat supply.
"I'm sorry!"
The medi-nin squeezed his eyes shut and blurted out the apology in one breath.
Afterward, he began breathing heavily, as if someone had just been choking him moments earlier and he had only now been allowed to breathe again.
So he had come to apologize.
Rei never accepted apologies.
He only accepted meat as compensation.
That said, his persona could not collapse.
After all, Rei was a kind, innocent, gentle, pure, and extraordinarily talented young girl who had been forced to stay in Konoha.
Amamiya Rei curved her brows gently, her eyes sparkling with soft light, utterly free of shadows, so bright and radiant that it made others feel ashamed by comparison.
"What are you apologizing for? There's no need at all. I understand—you're exhausted and deeply concerned about the patients, so of course you spoke harshly."
With that, Amamiya Rei carried her patients toward the ward.
The medi-nin stood frozen in place, staring blankly at her retreating figure.
Her voice, her smile, her expression replayed endlessly in his mind.
His eyes reddened slightly as he clenched his fists, desperately holding back his tears.
Seriously…
She was practically an angel.
"Abe Yoichi!"
"Come help out!"
"Don't just stand there blocking the way!"
Another medi-nin shot a glance at Abe Yoichi, who was still rooted to the spot like a wooden post.
"I'm coming!"
Abe Yoichi answered loudly and immediately joined the transport team.
The medi-nin who had called out to him stared in shock as Abe Yoichi began moving patients back and forth at an astonishing speed, as though he had been injected with stimulants, all traces of his earlier laziness and fatigue completely gone.
What on earth had happened while he wasn't looking?
All the injured were eventually moved into the wooden houses.
Each ward could accommodate more than twenty patients.
Although it was admittedly crowded, it was still far better than lying on the ground outside and being treated like hurdles for people to step over.
With proper wards available, the workload of the medi-nin became much easier to organize.
Each person was assigned responsibility for two wards, while the remaining two wards were handled collectively.
Amamiya Rei did not understand teamwork or coordination.
He only knew that if he wanted to eat meat, he had to increase treatment efficiency.
Closing the door to one of the wards, Rei turned to face the half-dead injured shinobi inside.
He rubbed his hands together and smiled brightly.
"I'm here!"
My dinners!!!
[Ding!]
[Scanning in progress...]
[Scan complete.]
[Congratulations to the host for obtaining "Shinobi Armored Meat Chunk" ×1]
[Analyzing...]
[Analysis complete.]
...
The evening glow draped the entire camp in a layer of gentle golden light.
It was as though even war itself had become a little less terrifying.
Especially after the injured shinobi who had been scattered across the ground were all moved into proper wards.
Abe Yoichi stood at the doorway and stretched lazily, his joints immediately popping and cracking from head to toe.
After admiring the sunset for a while, he suddenly remembered something, and his expression instantly darkened.
Although all the patients in his assigned ward had been treated, there were still those two remaining wards that all the medi-nin were responsible for together!
Abe Yoichi rubbed his face, feeling so exhausted that he could practically collapse onto the ground.
Even though his heart was full of reluctance, he still dragged his heavy steps toward the remaining wards.
Creak—
His hand had only just touched the doorknob, before he even had time to turn it, when the door suddenly opened from the inside.
What greeted his eyes was Amamiya Rei, her brows tinged with exhaustion, yet her eyes still shining like precious gemstones.
"Rei…"
Abe Yoichi stared at her in disbelief, then looked past her toward the inside of the ward.
Amamiya Rei smiled gently.
"Perhaps my patients were easier to treat, so after I finished with them, I came over to help out in these two wards."
***
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