I sat there in the dark of my bedroom, the cheap clock ticking away the seconds as I forced my breathing to slow down.
'Clinical Sage,' I thought, my mental voice practically vibrating with panic. 'Tell me that was just a nightmare. Tell me a yandere from an entirely different Fate timeline didn't just hack my brain.'
My blood ran cold. 'Wait. What?!'
I stared blankly at the wall, the sheer horror of the situation washing over me.
I buried my face in my hands, letting out a long, shaky groan.
She wasn't a phantom memory. Manaka Sajyou was actually out there in the multiverse, actively hunting for her Prince, and because the system gave me this exact face and physical specs, I had just tripped her radar. She was looking for him, but she found me.
'Note to self: absolutely never, under any circumstances, let anyone with the last name Sajyou find out which universe I live in.'
"Master!"
The sliding door to my bedroom slammed open with a sharp clack.
I flinched, my head snapping up.
Okita stood in the doorway, the pale blue-green of her Shinsengumi haori catching the dim moonlight from the window. Her hand was already resting heavily on the hilt of the Kiku-Ichimonji, her body coiled like a spring. Her dead, cold eyes swept the corners of my bedroom with terrifying, lethal precision, hunting for whatever threat had caused my heart rate to spike so violently.
Seeing the room empty, her gaze snapped to me. I was sitting on my futon, sweating and clutching my chest.
"Master, are you injured?" she demanded, stepping into the room. Her voice was completely serious—a hardened soldier assessing a battlefield. "I sensed your distress. Was there an enemy—"
She stopped mid-sentence.
As she spoke, she took a sharp breath in. Then, instinctively, she braced her shoulders, waiting for the inevitable, agonizing burn in her lungs. She waited for the metallic taste of blood to fill her mouth.
It didn't come.
Okita froze. Slowly, her hand slipped away from the hilt of her katana and hovered over her own chest. She inhaled again, deeply, filling her lungs to their absolute limit. The air flowed smoothly, unobstructed by the conceptual rot that had plagued her entire existence.
Her cold, calculating demeanor shattered. Her hands began to tremble. She looked down at her palms, then back up at me, her gray eyes wide with a profound, earth-shattering realization.
"It's gone," she whispered, her voice completely devoid of its usual icy edge. She dropped to one knee right there on the tatami mats, bowing her head deeply. "Master... my body. It is whole. You truly..."
"I told you I was aspiring to be a doctor who could cure death," I said gently, finally letting my hands drop from my face.
Okita remained kneeling for a long moment, the silence of the room heavy with the weight of her altered destiny. When she finally lifted her head, the terrifying manslayer was still there, but her gaze was no longer empty. It was filled with an intense, burning, and absolute devotion.
"I was broken," she stated, her voice quiet but ringing with absolute certainty. "A defective blade meant only to shatter. But you reached into my very soul and reforged me. From this moment until my final breath, my sword, my life, and my loyalty belong entirely to you, Master."
A small, amused laugh bubbled up in the back of my throat.
'Did I seriously just unlock some kind of max Bond dialogue?' I thought, the sheer absurdity of the situation cutting right through the lingering dread of my nightmare.
For a split second, I actually debated opening my system to see if I could use an invite ticket to drag Ritsuka Fujimaru into the group chat to have access to more servants in wider range.
'Focus, Kenji. Not the time.' I pushed the ridiculous thought down, giving her a reassuring smile.
"I appreciate it, Okita-san. Really," I said, letting out a tired breath. "Having you at full strength is going to make tonight a lot easier."
Okita stood up. The feverish, mana-drunk flush from earlier was mostly gone, filtered out by the Clinical Sage, but a faint, determined pink dusted her pale cheeks. Her eyes locked onto mine with a deadly serious intensity.
"As your unbroken blade, it is imperative our connection is absolute," she said matter-of-factly. "The mana integration is stable, but the physical anchor of our contract remains incomplete."
"Wait, incomplete?" I blinked, suddenly feeling a completely different kind of panic rising in my chest. "Okita-san, the Sage balanced your sensory input, you don't need to—"
She didn't walk toward me. She didn't even take a step.
She simply used Shukuchi—the terrifying martial technique that reduced the distance between two points to zero.
One second she was standing near the doorway, and the absolute next, she materialized directly between my knees on the futon.
I froze, completely paralyzed by the sheer, unadulterated speed of a top-tier Saber.
Okita leaned in, her hands resting lightly on my shoulders. She tilted her chin up, her face mere inches from mine, and slowly fluttered her eyes closed, waiting patiently for a kiss to properly seal the contract.
I sat there, completely paralyzed by the fact that a legendary, hyper-lethal swordswoman was currently kneeling between my legs with her eyes closed, waiting for a kiss.
"Uh... Okita-san?" I managed to squeak out, my voice cracking slightly. "What exactly are you doing?"
Okita cracked one gray eye open, looking at me with genuine, innocent confusion. "A mana transfer, Master. To solidify the physical anchor of our contract. Surely you know this?"
I swallowed hard. Of course I knew the lore. I knew the classic, old-school visual novel mechanics of how mana transfers worked. I just didn't expect to actually have to do it so quickly.
I was completely, hopelessly out of my depth. I hadn't even held a girl's hand romantically in my past life, let alone kissed one. But looking at her expectant, deadly serious face, I realized she wasn't going to take no for an answer. To her, this was standard tactical procedure.
'Right. Just a quick peck,' I told myself, feeling the heat rising in my cheeks. 'Just a touch to seal the deal and make the Grail system happy. I can do this.'
I leaned down, my heart hammering against my ribs. I aimed for a brief, chaste press of my lips against hers.
Chu~
The moment we made contact, Okita's eyes snapped open.
Before I could even register the movement, her arms shot up and locked around my neck with a grip like a steel vice. She didn't let me pull away. Instead, she surged upward, pressing her body flush against mine and completely attacking my mouth.
Nchu... chuu~!
"Mmph?!" My eyes went wide as saucers.
It wasn't a chaste peck. It was an all-out assault.
Smooch... mwah... chu~
My brain completely short-circuited. Between the sudden, overwhelming physical contact, the wet sounds of the kiss echoing in the quiet room, and the sheer intensity of her lips moving against mine, my virgin nervous system was being utterly fried.
I could feel the rush of my own absurdly pure mana cycling through the connection, looping between us in a massive feedback loop of energy.
I tried to gently push her back, but she was a Servant with B-Rank strength. I wasn't going anywhere.
Suddenly, Okita froze.
She pulled back abruptly with a soft chupha, her face flushed an absolute, radiant crimson. Her eyes widened, completely blown out and unfocused.
Then, a massive, comical fountain of blood erupted from both of her nostrils.
"Okita-san?!" I yelled, sheer panic cutting through my flustered daze.
Her eyes rolled back into her head, and she instantly collapsed forward, dead weight against my chest.
I scrambled to catch her, grabbing a tissue box from the nightstand to stem the bleeding. "Clinical Sage! What's happening?! Did the tuberculosis come back?! Did the modification fail?!"
I stared at the unconscious manslayer in my arms, a fresh tissue pressed against her nose, completely bewildered.
———
[Okita Sōji POV]
The rush of energy was incredible.
Okita had fully intended to execute a standard, professional mana transfer. A necessary ritual to tether her newly perfected Saint Graph to her incredible Master.
But the moment their lips touched, the sheer, staggering purity of his mana had hit her like a physical blow. It was warm, overwhelmingly vast. All her disciplined, tactical restraint vanished in a split second.
She had pulled him in, entirely drunk on the sensation of finally being whole and being so close to the man who fixed her.
But what pushed her completely over the edge wasn't the mana.
It was the way he completely froze. The way his shoulders tensed up under her hands, entirely helpless and overwhelmed by the kiss. The great, confident doctor who had calmly rewritten the laws of the universe to save her life was currently sitting there, red-faced and trembling over a single display of affection.
'Ah...' Okita thought, her vision swimming as the heat rushed straight to her head, entirely overloading her senses. 'He's so flustered... that's way too cute...'
A dopey, entirely un-lethal smile spread across her face as the world faded to black.
———
[Mc first pov: Kenji Sato]
I let out a long, exhausted sigh, staring down at the legendary manslayer who was currently out cold against my chest with a dopey, completely un-lethal smile on her face.
Carefully, I scooped Okita up into my arms, making sure to keep her head tilted back so the nosebleed wouldn't make a mess of her haori. She was surprisingly light. I carried her out of the bedroom and laid her down gently on the small couch in the living area, grabbing a fresh tissue to dab at her nose before draping a blanket over her.
"Well," I muttered, shaking my head as my racing heartbeat finally began to settle back to normal. "That's one way to seal a contract."
Leaving her to sleep off the sheer emotional and magical overload, I walked over to the cramped kitchenette. The sun had fully set, but my internal clock—and my stomach—were entirely thrown off by the chaos of the day.
I pulled out some vegetables and chicken I had bought yesterday and began prepping a late lunch-turned-dinner.
The rhythmic thwack-thwack-thwack of the kitchen knife against the cutting board was therapeutic, helping clear the lingering flustered fog from my brain.
Right as I tossed the chicken into the hot frying pan, a translucent blue screen popped up in my peripheral vision.
[Multiversal Groupchat]
[Subaru Natsuki: Yo, Kenji. What've you been up to since we got back?]
I reached over, turning down the heat on the stove with one hand while pulling up the chat interface with the other.
[Kenji Sato: Currently, I'm just making lunch for myself and my servant.]
There was a brief pause on Subaru's end. The typing indicator flickered for a few seconds before his message came through.
[Subaru Natsuki: Servant? Wait, you mean like a maid? Bro, you've been in that world for one day and you already have a maid?! I'm living in a giant mansion right now and the maids here just insult me in stereo!]
I rolled my eyes, flipping the chicken in the pan.
[Kenji Sato: Not a maid. When I say 'Servant', I mean a familiar. My servant is the Bakumatsu manslayer, Okita Sōji.]
The typing indicator popped up, vanished, popped up again, and then stayed gone for a solid thirty seconds.
[Subaru Natsuki: ...Wait. Okita Sōji? The Shinsengumi captain? The guy who was diagnosed with symptoms of Tuberculosis back then?]
[Subaru Natsuki: Kenji... are you into dudes?]
I nearly dropped my spatula. I immediately tapped the interface, my fingers flying across the holographic keyboard.
[Kenji Sato: Absolutely not. First off, the Okita I summoned is female.]
[Subaru Natsuki: Female?! History lied to us?!]
[Kenji Sato: Apparently. Secondly, I did some digging around my apartment and the city after we returned from Saki's world. I found out some things.]
I leaned back against the counter, carefully constructing my explanation. I had already established that my world was a modern, seemingly normal 1990s Japan.
[Kenji Sato: My world isn't as normal as it looks. It turns out there's a hidden magical underbelly here. Every few decades, a secret tournament called the Holy Grail War takes place in this exact city. Mages summon historical or mythological figures as 'Servants' to fight for a wish-granting cup. I accidentally triggered a summoning circle and ended up with Okita.]
[Subaru Natsuki: DUDE! So you're basically in an urban fantasy battle royale right now?! That's insane! Also, wait... you summoned a swordswoman with terminal tuberculosis to fight in a death game? Isn't that a terrible draw?]
I glanced over my shoulder at the couch, where Okita was still passed out, a faint blush still dusting her cheeks.
[Kenji Sato: It would have been. But I used my actual first system called The Medical System to rewrite her conceptual data and cure her. She's currently at full strength...well somewhat]
[Subaru Natsuki: You CURED her? You just casually fixed a historical figure? Your system is utterly broken.]
[Kenji Sato: Let's just say my first day here has been very productive.]
[Subaru Natsuki: I'll say. Meanwhile, I'm currently hiding from a terrifying drill-haired little girl in a magical library who threatened to launch me through the ceiling. Wanna trade worlds for a bit?]
[Kenji Sato: I'll pass. Just don't touch any of her books and she probably won't vaporize you.]
Subaru and I kept conversing back and forth, the casual banter a surprisingly grounding anchor amidst the absolute lunacy of our respective situations. It was nice just talking to someone who understood the sheer, overwhelming whiplash of being isekaied.
Just as I was plating the food, another notification slid smoothly into the chat window
[Kobayashi is now online.]