Schedule Update
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Ren pulled his hand back. The needle tongue folded itself into the palm mouth and the mouth closed. His hand looked like a hand again.
The diagnosis was already complete. Everything mapped, every system read. He turned to face Chu Xinghe.
Chu Xinghe sat on the examination table breathing through his nose, knuckles white on the edge, composure locked down by sheer will. He had held it through the tentacles, the gauze, the needle in his ear. Ren respected that. Most people lasted three seconds.
"Do you know," Ren said, "that you have brain tumors and lung cancer?"
The composure cracked. Chu Xinghe went very still, a different kind of still, the kind that happens when a brain gets information it was not built to process in the next five seconds.
"Are you serious."
"Yes."
"I haven't coughed once. I run six kilometers every morning. I sparred with a B-rank hunter last Thursday and won in under two minutes."
"Stage four. Both of them. The lung cancer is presenting atypically, no respiratory symptoms yet because the mass isn't near the bronchial passages. The brain tumors are multiple, small, distributed across the prefrontal and temporal regions. Nothing is pressing on anything obvious. Nothing yet."
"How long."
"Without treatment, eight to fourteen months before the lung cancer becomes symptomatic. The brain involvement is slower but worse once it tips."
Chu Xinghe was quiet. He looked like someone running numbers.
"I had a checkup eight months ago."
"At a standard facility. They would have missed it. The tumors are below conventional imaging threshold. They wouldn't appear on a standard MRI."
"Then how did you"
Ren held up his right hand. The palm mouth opened briefly, closed.
Chu Xinghe accepted this without comment, which Ren noted as further evidence the man had excellent self-control.
"One more thing," Ren said. "Has anyone close to you mentioned you've been acting differently lately? Something small, out of character."
Chu Xinghe's expression shifted. Something behind his eyes moved.
He thought of Uncle Pei. Last Tuesday, after he had dropped off the pastries for the cleaning staff. The janitor had looked at him with the careful attention of someone who was not sure if he should say something, and then said it anyway.
"Vice Guildmaster, you've seemed a little different lately. Just quieter. I wasn't sure if something was on your mind."
He had said everything was fine. He had thought about it for about forty seconds and let it go.
"A janitor," Chu Xinghe said. "Uncle Pei. He said I seemed quieter."
"He was right. Early temporal lobe involvement. Subtle behavioral shifts, slight processing changes. The people in casual contact notice before colleagues do because you're not performing for them."
Chu Xinghe took that in. "I think I've heard that before. That the people you don't perform for see it first."
"Can it be cured, Doctor?"
"Yes," Ren said.
Chu Xinghe exhaled. The control dropped for exactly one second and what came through was genuine relief, the kind he did not bother hiding.
"A normal doctor would advise palliative management," Ren said. "Too many tumors, too distributed for resection, lung surgery high-risk. They'd give you a timeline." He let that sit. "I can do it in a single session. Full removal. No residual cells. One hundred percent recovery."
"Thank God," Chu Xinghe said.
Ren reached into his coat and placed a document on the examination table. Twelve pages, clinic letterhead, stapled cleanly.
Chu Xinghe picked it up and began reading.
Clause four: The patient agrees not to scream during the procedure unless the Doctor has explicitly indicated that screaming is acceptable at that stage.
He looked up. "Is this a real clause."
"Yes."
He kept reading.
Clause seven: In the event of unexpected side effects including but not limited to temporary grey skin, involuntary enhancement of physical ability, altered eye coloration, or the emergence of a third eye, the Doctor bears no liability.
"Third eye," he said.
"That clause is precautionary," Ren said.
"Has it happened."
A pause.
"That clause is precautionary," Ren said again.
Chu Xinghe turned to the next page.
Clause ten: The patient acknowledges that the slogan displayed at the clinic entrance constitutes the full extent of the Doctor's written guarantee and that no verbal promises made before, during, or after a procedure supersede this guarantee.
The Doctor had put his own slogan in the contract. Chu Xinghe kept going.
Clause twelve: The patient agrees not to disclose the nature of the treatment to any third party, including but not limited to government bodies, hunter bureau representatives, military institutions, journalists, family members, close friends, or pets.
"Pets," he said.
"People are unpredictable when frightened," Ren said.
Chu Xinghe turned to page eight.
ADDENDUM C: SPIRITUAL AND METAPHYSICAL LIABILITY WAIVER.
In the event that the treatment methodology draws upon forces beyond the currently recognized spectrum of mana classification, including but not limited to outer divine influence, eldritch biological synthesis, or cosmic law application, the patient acknowledges that the Doctor operates within a framework that predates and supersedes conventional medical governance, and that the patient's soul, being, and fundamental existence remain wholly their own property following treatment and cannot be transferred, harvested, or otherwise claimed as a consequence of receiving care.
He read it three times. He turned to the back page.
By signing, the patient confirms they have read and understood all thirty-one clauses and four addenda of this agreement.
Twelve pages. Thirty-one clauses. Four addenda. A waiver specifically clarifying that his soul was not for sale.
He looked at Ren.
"What the fuck is this. Is this a soul contract. Am I going to sell my soul to an old god."
"It's a consent form," Ren said. "Standard in any serious surgery. Clause four, for instance, about screaming. In real procedures patients scream all the time, it's completely normal, the clause just means try not to do it while my hands are inside your brain. And the side effects clause, that has never triggered in a standard treatment. The grey skin, the third eye, all of that only comes up in the grafting process."
"What is the grafting process."
"I'll explain after the procedure."
Chu Xinghe looked at him for a moment.
"That is not reassuring."
"It's not meant to be reassuring. It's meant to be accurate."
Chu Xinghe looked back down at the contract. He thought about it with the clear-eyed practicality of a man who had just received a terminal diagnosis and been offered the only exit available. The math was simple. Sign and there was a chance he would walk out. Don't sign and the tumors would do it for him in fourteen months without anyone's permission.
He was not actually choosing between safety and danger. He was choosing between one kind of unknown and a certainty he liked very much less.
He picked up the pen from his inner pocket and signed.
"Here," he said, and held the contract out.
Ren took it. The mask smiled, which on a featureless porcelain face was a specific and faintly unsettling thing to observe.
"Good. Now relax. I'll take care of everything."
Chu Xinghe set his hands in his lap and took a slow breath through his nose. He had faced A-rank gate breaks with less preparation than this and done it without flinching. He could manage a medical procedure.
"What do I need to do," he said.
Something small and sharp pricked his neck.
He registered it as a sting, quick and clean. His hand came up automatically and found the syringe barrel still there. His fingers closed around it. Then his muscles stopped.
Everything stopped, actually. His arms, his legs, his neck. He was completely still in a way that had nothing to do with composure. He could feel the examination table under his back, the texture of his jacket against his arms, the air in his lungs. He could feel all of it. He could not change any of it.
Awakened Anesthesia, some part of his brain supplied, distantly. He used Awakened Anesthesia on me.
Two red tentacles emerged from behind Ren and settled across his shoulders, pressing him back gently but without any particular interest in what he preferred. He went horizontal. The examination table adjusted.
"I need you to stay still," Ren said. "Good news, that part is handled."
He pulled the Outer God Surgical Set from inventory. The instruments were black, each one slightly wrong in a way that was difficult to name precisely. He arranged them with the efficient attention of someone who had done this many times and found it interesting every time.
"Let's begin."