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"Let me have a sniff..."
Tei Inaba leaned directly over the stretcher, her nose twitching rapidly like a true rabbit.
"...Ugh! You have a very, very thick aura of misfortune clinging to you. This sheer amount... Did you go up to Youkai Mountain to get all lovey-dovey and rub shoulders with Hina Kagiyama, the Curse God? Ran Yakumo won't be very happy if she finds out you've been seeing other girls, will she~~?"
Tei's little face scrunched up in profound disgust. Her innate, conceptual ability is manipulating good luck, so she is extremely sensitive to the foul, heavy scent of misfortune and curses. She immediately backed away, distancing herself from Leo on the stretcher, looking at him as if he were a rotting piece of stinky tofu left in the sun.
"No," Leo groaned, his head lolling to the side. "I was just scientifically testing meteor summoning with Ishin Shion on the Beach and I violently sprained my leg. Now... oh god, now it's swollen like a radish."
Leo painfully propped himself up on his elbows and took a miserable look down his body. Great. In just that short, agonizing trip through the teleportation gate, both of his ankles had swollen massively, turning an angry, throbbing purple-red color, looking exactly like oversized radishes. They felt searingly hot to the touch, and even the slight vibration of the stretcher caused sharp spikes of pain to shoot up his calves.
"You're a brave, stupid one," Tei crossed her arms, shaking her head. "That's exactly how Reimu's shrine got blown up into splinters back then. After it was rebuilt, Reimu specifically invited me over to her place to roll around in the sheets for a few days just to cleanse the area with my luck. And yet you still deliberately tried to hang out with Shion on purpose. How's your house doing now?"
(That was a blatant lie. In reality, a furious Reimu had flown straight to the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, violently tied Tei up with spiritual talismans, and hung the screaming rabbit upside down from the shrine's ceiling rafters to cosplay as a living 'Teru Teru Bozu' good-luck doll for an entire week. But Tei obviously couldn't say such a humiliating, embarrassing thing out loud to a human, so she sugarcoated the brutal history a bit).
"I don't know," Leo sighed, resting his arm over his eyes. "Looking at the sheer size of that flaming meteor before I passed out from the pain, I'm guessing my precious farmhouse is probably in the exact same state as the Scarlet Devil Mansion right now."
"Doesn't that mean it's smashed to bits? Don't tell me the Windbreak Grass I wanted to buy from you is gone too!" Tei panicked slightly.
The crippled human and the rabbit chatted as they moved, soon arriving at the grand entrance of Eientei.
After unceremoniously dropping Leo off at the wooden entrance of the clinic wing, the exhausted Little Kappas packed up their stretcher and immediately sprinted away. This place was an absolute nightmare for Kappa medical students like them. They worked here to earn necessary graduation credits, but the manual workload was insanely heavy with absolutely zero breaks. Not only was there no salary, but they even had to pay out of their own pockets for transportation to work, and occasionally had to participate as non-consensual test subjects in Eirin's terrifying experimental drug trials.
It was simply treating Kappas like they weren't people. They had previously secretly gone to the Hakurei Shrine to formally complain about the labor abuse, but Reimu was never there during working hours—who knows where the shrine maiden went to slack off.
Eientei is located deep in the dead center of the Bamboo Forest of the Lost, permanently shrouded by a powerful, ancient magical barrier that makes it completely invisible and inaccessible from the outside world. Back during the chaotic Imperishable Night Incident, it was accidentally exposed when Marisa recklessly used a massive Master Spark laser to give the dense Bamboo Forest a scorched 'middle part.' Usually, almost no normal person ever comes here.
The entire Eientei compound consists of several elegant, traditional Japanese buildings, including private living quarters, a massive, glowing medicinal herb garden, and a sterile clinic wing. Most of the structures are primarily made of polished, ancient bamboo and dark wood. Eirin Yagokoro's architectural aesthetic sense is quite refined; the overall quiet, Zen environment alone is deeply relaxing. It feels like simply staying here for a while and breathing the air would significantly improve one's essay scores on a classical literature exam.
"Hmm? Why are you here?"
A calm, ancient voice broke the silence.
"Did you get your legs broken by Ran Yakumo for aggressively chasing other girls? I'm sorry, but I refuse to cure a scumbag."
Eirin Yagokoro and Reisen returned from the gardens, each carrying a woven wicker basket full of glowing, freshly picked herbs. Seeing Leo lying pathetically on the stretcher by the door, Eirin gave a radiant, perfectly polite smiling greeting. As for the "scumbag" comment, she was obviously just joking. Since she was currently free of patients anyway, she absolutely loved teasing young, flustered boys like Leo the most; seeing a young man's embarrassed blush was better entertainment than anything else.
After instructing the rabbit to put away the herbs, Eirin had Reisen easily pick up the stretcher and carry Leo into the sterile, white-tiled clinic room.
Under Leo's intensely indignant, panicked gaze, Eirin calmly pulled on a pair of white latex gloves and reached out to grab the waistband of his pants.
Leo gasped and gripped his pants tightly with both hands, his knuckles turning white; if he was violently stripped off in front of these two women, his social life would officially be over!
"Don't be shy," Eirin smiled gently, her grip like iron. "How can I perform a proper, thorough medical exam on your lower body without taking off your pants? Besides, you're still wearing another layer of underwear underneath, aren't you? As an immortal doctor who has lived for millions of years, I've seen absolutely everything there is to see on a male body. Stay calm. Stay calm."
"I'm wearing f***ing cropped pants!" Leo roared desperately through gritted teeth, fighting a losing battle against the Lunar Sage's strength. "The swollen ankles aren't covered by the fabric at all! You can clearly see them!"
The specialized autumn work clothes Alice had made for him were exactly like this: loose, breathable cropped pants that ended mid-calf, very suitable for heavy exercise and farming. This ancient woman was definitely, 100% doing this on purpose just to mess with him! What kind of perverted, R-18 doujinshi doctor did she think she was?!
"Fine," Eirin sighed, letting go of his waistband in mock disappointment. "Reisen, go get the heavy surgical saw. These legs are clearly beyond saving; let's just amputate them right now to prevent infection. Just cutting the ankles... seems a bit too little. The necrotic condition has already spread rapidly upward. Yes, everything below the head needs to be amputated immediately."
Since her academic desire to thoroughly study Leo's unique, dimensional body structure had been exposed, Eirin simply decided to blatantly threaten to cut off a piece of him for gradual, long-term research. She just casually planned to cut off a bit much. What a truly great scientific opportunity—a literal Prime God from another world had fallen helplessly into her clinic. It would be such a massive waste of resources not to cut something off to put under a microscope.
"Help! Yukari Yakumo! Yukari! Lady Yukari! You old hag Yukari, save me!" Leo began to scream at the top of his lungs, thrashing on the bed. At this terrifying medical moment, the only one powerful enough to save him from the mad scientist was the Sage of Youkai.
"Hmm? Who's looking for death by calling me an old hag?!"
RRRIIIIP.
A dark, eye-filled Gap tore open the fabric of space right above the hospital bed, and Yukari Yakumo poked her blonde head out with a terrifying, murderous expression.
However, after seeing it was specifically Leo screaming for her, her expression instantly completely changed. She immediately let out a dramatic, triumphant voice like a victorious soap opera villainess—"Yo~~~~ If it isn't my precious little brother!"—and jumped gracefully out of the Gap.
As she exited, she aggressively pushed back Ran Yakumo, who had desperately wanted to follow her master through the portal.
"In Stardew Valley, I won't hold it against you if you bully me and tie me up," Yukari purred, snapping her folding fan open and smiling down at the terrified Leo. "But this is Gensokyo, little brother—this is my home turf."
For the past two days, Ran had been diligently handling a massive work handover and paperwork backlog at the Lost Home. She had also finally used her saved, shedding tail fur to hand-craft a life-sized, one-to-one scale plushie of herself for Lady Yukari, so that her needy master could spend her lonely time cuddling with the doll from now on instead of bothering Ran while she courted Leo.
Although she had been forcefully pushed back into the Gap by Lady Yukari, Ran's incredibly sharp fox hearing still identified the muffled voice screaming in terror as Leo's, with Eirin's unmistakable, cold laughter echoing in the background.
Ran didn't know exactly why or how Leo had come to Gensokyo today, but she knew with absolute certainty that falling helplessly into the combined, scheming hands of those two ancient monsters would definitely not end well for his physical or mental health.
Ran quickly bypassed the Gap, physically sprinting at Mach speed toward Eientei through the bamboo forest. There were far too many dangerous creeps and predators in Gensokyo. A soft, sweet, utterly defenseless little cake like Leo was in incredibly great danger here; he could easily be snatched away and devoured by some pervert jumping out from the roadside.
"What are you two doing?!"
Leo lay paralyzed on the hospital bed, trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. These two terrifying, ancient women were staring down at him, smiling more lecherously and calculatingly than the other. Poor him; now with completely crippled legs, he couldn't even run away if he tried.
He shouldn't have come to Gensokyo so rashly. Wouldn't it have been infinitely better to just die of pain on the beach and magically respawn in his own bed?! Why did he have to go to a physical hospital for treatment?!
"Since you're already here, don't be in such a desperate hurry to leave," Yukari smilingly reached out and patted Leo's head; the sound was dull and hollow, like tapping a good, ripe melon.
Yukari exchanged a lightning-fast, highly communicative glance with Eirin. In that single, silent instant, the two oldest, smartest beings in Gensokyo exchanged countless wicked ideas, simulated a hundred scenarios, and finally reached a mutual, terrifying consensus.
"I'll leave this place to you," Yukari whispered to Eirin, her eyes gleaming with amusement. "Ran is about to arrive and kick the door down, so I'll take our little brother and go hide first."
Pulling a glowing, spiritual rope out of absolutely nowhere, Eirin moved with terrifying, surgical precision and very skillfully tied Leo up tightly to the bed frame.
Then, a soothing, brilliant green light emanated from the doctor's palm as she reached down and firmly touched his swollen ankles. The intense pain vanished instantly. The areas that were originally as swollen and discolored as purple radishes immediately shrunk and returned to normal, healthy flesh.
It wasn't scientifically medically sound, but it was very, very magical.
Once Leo was perfectly healed, Yukari didn't waste a single second. She immediately threw the fully bound, highly confused Leo over her shoulder like a sack of potatoes and stepped backward into a waiting Gap, vanishing from the room.
Exactly three seconds later, a golden, nine-tailed figure violently crashed through the shoji screen doors and rushed into the Eientei clinic.
"You're too late, Ran-chan," Eirin smiled serenely, sipping a cup of tea.
Eirin had stayed behind in the empty clinic room specifically to wait for Ran. With that one silent glance earlier, she and Yukari had mutually agreed to let Leo thoroughly experience an authentic, chaotic "Incident" culture characteristic of Gensokyo.
They had even gleefully picked a dramatic name for their impromptu game: Operation: Chase the Husband.