The scent of cold antiseptic in the VIP room of the Central General Hospital no longer felt suffocating. Instead, it was filled with the gentle floral fragrance radiating from the hair of the girl standing watch by the hospital bed.
Four days had passed since the earth shattering slap and the explosive kiss that stripped away all the rationality of the man who worshipped pride.
And in those four days, the atmosphere between Kazuya and Chizuru had undergone a spectacular transformation. The icy wall he had painstakingly built for so long completely collapsed, leaving behind a Kazuya so gentle and tender it sometimes gave even himself goosebumps out of embarrassment.
He no longer swore as much, no longer used razor sharp words to push her away. Instead, he obediently lay still and let her take care of him. And Chizuru? Completely shedding the professional "Rental Girlfriend" shell or the reserved neighbor persona, she revealed a proactive side, clinging to him almost 24/7. She applied to suspend her studies, stood watch at the hospital around the clock, and personally did everything from peeling fruit and feeding him porridge to checking his temperature. No one knew the reason for this, and even when he pressed her for answers, he only received perfunctory lies.
Naturally, this sudden shift to "lover" mode inevitably led to some awkwardly hilarious situations.
For example, yesterday afternoon. Because his left arm was still in a cast and his body was weak from the pneumonia, he had trouble changing his hospital gown himself. Chizuru, with a blushing face but resolute eyes, fiercely insisted on helping him.
"Let me help you wipe down and change your shirt. The doctor said the wound cannot get wet." She said, her voice trying to sound calm, but her ears were burning red.
"I can do it myself. You. Go outside." He stammered, bringing his right hand up to cover his firm, bare chest, glaring at her, but his intimidation factor had plummeted to an absolute zero.
"Sit still!"
With just one blunt command from Chizuru, the man ready to single handedly take on the entire internet instantly bit his lip and obediently sat still on the closed toilet seat. He allowed her soft hands to use a warm towel to wipe every inch of skin on his shoulders and chest.
Her breath fanned against his collarbone. Combined with being half naked in front of the girl he loved, his heart rate on the monitor outside the room danced wildly. It got to the point where a nurse rushed in to check, thinking he was having a heart attack, only to awkwardly apologize and retreat upon seeing the ambiguous scene in the room.
At times like those, he could only cover his face, wishing he could dig a hole and crawl into it. But deep inside his chest, a warm stream overflowed.
He liked her presence here. He was addicted to her scent. He had truly surrendered.
However, behind Chizuru's extreme proactiveness and tenderness lay a cruel secret she was using her very life to hide.
...
Three days ago, the time when Kazuya was still deep in delirium.
Outside the emergency room hallway, the air thickened with despair. Chizuru stood silently next to Kazuo, Harumi, and Grandma Nagomi. The head doctor with a stern face, holding Kazuya's blood and bone marrow test results, had just dealt a fatal blow to the Kinoshita family.
"We discovered an abnormality in the patient's blood count while treating the acute pneumonia. After performing an emergency bone marrow biopsy, the results show that patient Kinoshita Kazuya has Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML). In other words, blood cancer."
Grandma Nagomi slumped down; if Kazuo hadn't caught her, she would have collapsed completely. Harumi burst into tears.
"However," the doctor hastily added, "it is in the early stages. Early detection, right as the malignant cells are just beginning to develop, offers a very high chance of remission. But currently, his immune system is severely compromised, and combined with the shock of pneumonia, his physical condition is at a red alert level. We must begin a mild chemotherapy regimen while he is still in a coma to prevent the cancer cells from spreading."
Chizuru stood petrified. The test result paper felt like a sharp blade piercing straight into her heart.
Cancer. That word, carrying a death sentence, had fallen upon the man she had just realized she deeply loved.
For someone showing signs of severe depression and psychological instability like Kazuya, finding out this news suddenly might make him give up, refuse treatment, and let himself wither away in agony.
That was the primary reason for Chizuru's drastic actions when Kazuya woke up. When he chased her away, scolding her with the cruelest words to force her to leave him, Chizuru's heart bled.
She knew he was doing it out of pistanthrophobia. She knew he thought he was a piece of trash unworthy of being loved. And she knew even more clearly that if she turned her back and walked away then, Kazuya would completely collapse upon receiving his cancer sentence. He would die. He would kill himself through loneliness before the cancer cells even had the chance.
That was exactly why she slapped him. Why she kissed him. Even knowing the future ahead might be incredibly short, even knowing this love might end in an eternal parting between life and death, Chizuru still wanted to love him. She wanted to use her love as an anchor, pinning Kazuya's torn soul to this world. She had to make him crave life.
...
Back to the present.
The dense city lights, like falling stars, appeared through the hospital window window like a ridiculously contrasting painting.
Chizuru had just run down to the administration office to pay the hospital bills. Kazuya was left alone in the room.
He sat leaning against the pillows, his right hand scrolling through the view charts on his stream channel out of habit. Suddenly, an intense itch spread across his scalp. He frowned, bringing his right hand up to scratch it lightly.
As his hand ran through the black hair he always proudly gelled into place whenever he went out, a strange sensation occurred. His fingers snagged. He brought his hand in front of his face.
A large clump of hair, broken off at the root, lay nestled in the palm of his hand.
He froze. His pupils contracted slightly. This was no ordinary stress induced hair loss. The amount of hair falling out from a single stroke was too much, and his scalp had felt a strange prickling sensation lately.
His sharp eyes instantly scanned the room. He noticed the blue medical file the head nurse had accidentally left on the small table next to the sofa after changing his IV line earlier. Chizuru had always hidden all his medical documents, but this time, her absence left a loophole.
He threw off the blanket, pushed the IV pole aside, and stepped out of bed.
Opening the file cover, his deep black eyes scanned the specialized medical terms. He had no medical expertise, but even a normal college student could understand bolded English keywords like Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Chemotherapy Protocol.
He flipped to the last page. The blood count chart. The red stamp of the Oncology Department.
The space in the room seemed to freeze. For a normal person, this moment would be when they collapsed, cried, smashed things, or screamed demanding why God was so unfair to them.
But Kazuya just stood still. He closed the file and put it back exactly where it was, not off by a single millimeter.
His face held not a single tear, not a single flash of panic. It was quiet, cold, and sharp as a frozen lake. An incredibly sarcastic smirk slowly curled on the corner of his lips.
"So that is how it is." He muttered, his voice dry but holding absolute clarity.
His brain instantly linked all the data. Why was Chizuru so desperately proactive? Why did she cry so much when she slapped him? Why did his parents and grandmother always have puffy eyes and look at him as if he were about to shatter when they visited? Why did the medicine pumped into him make his body ache to the bone and his hair start falling out?
They were hiding it from him. They were afraid he would despair and commit suicide. Ichinose Chizuru, that foolish girl, even knowing he carried a death sentence, still decided to kiss him, decided to offer her affection as a reason for him to keep breathing.
"Idiot." He scolded softly, but his chest twisted in a blinding pain, not because of the cancer, but because that girl's love was so immense and pure. It completely shattered the obsessions about betrayal from his past life.
He walked into the bathroom and looked at himself in the mirror. A pale, gaunt face. He ran his hand through his hair a few more times. More clumps of hair fell into the sink.
He turned on the faucet, washing the fallen hair down the drain. Smoothing down the remaining locks to look neat, he returned to the hospital bed, sitting cross legged with the relaxed demeanor of a CEO waiting for a business partner.
Click.
The door opened. Chizuru walked in, holding a fruit smoothie. She smiled and was about to call his name, but her smile instantly froze when her eyes caught the medical file on the table, its position slightly shifted. Even though Kazuya had tried to put it back perfectly, with the sensitivity of someone hiding a secret, Chizuru noticed.
She snapped her head up to look at him. Chizuru's heart felt crushed. The smoothie in her hand trembled.
He was looking at her. His pitch black eyes were calm and piercing.
"Kazuya." Chizuru stammered, her feet rooted to the floor. "You...you read it?"
Panic struck. Chizuru imagined him going crazy, pushing her away, roaring that she pitied him, and then pulling out the IV and giving up on life. Tears began to well up in her eyes. She rushed forward, intending to grab his hand to explain, to beg him not to give up.
But before she could open her mouth, a calm statement, dripping with sarcasm and arrogance, rang out, cutting through the tragic atmosphere.
"Hey Ichinose, I just discovered a fantastic perk of this hospital."
Chizuru froze, the tears that had just spilled suddenly stopping. She glared at him, bewildered. "Huh?"
He leaned back against the pillows, bringing a hand up to stroke his hair. He purposely let her see a few strands fall onto the mattress.
"Look." He smirked, the familiar half smile of a master crowd manipulator reappearing. "I am losing hair at the speed of light. I will probably be officially bald next week. Which means from now on I will save a ton of money on shampoo, and you will not have to turn beet red every time you demand to come into the bathroom to wash my hair for me. Truly convenient."
Chizuru stood rooted to the spot. Her brain stalled. This man just found out he had blood cancer, and the first thing he said was. Joking about not needing shampoo?
"Are...are you crazy?" Chizuru burst into tears, but this time out of anger at his extreme nonchalance. She slammed the smoothie on the table and lunged forward, grabbing the collar of his hospital gown.
"Do you know what is written in there?! It is cancer! It is a death sentence, Kazuya! How can you joke at a time like this? Do you plan to give up by acting like you do not care?!"
He let her grab his collar. His large hand, despite being pinned with an IV, steadily rose, gently enveloping her two small, trembling hands against his chest.
The teasing vanished from his eyes, replaced by seriousness, coldness, but also supreme arrogance. A kingly aura of someone who had never known how to bow to fate.
"Give up?" He repeated the word with deep contempt. He leaned forward, the distance between their faces reduced to a few centimeters. His warm breath fanned across her face.
"Are you looking down on me, Chizuru? Listen closely." He spoke slowly, articulating every word, exactly the way he judged the hypocrites out there.
"The doctor said early stage, right? That means a high cure rate. And even if it were terminal, my logic remains the same."
He released one of her hands and tapped her forehead lightly with his index finger.
"Above a 50% chance of survival, it is a 1 on 1 bet. Below a 50% chance of survival, it is just an uninsured 50-50 gacha banner between me and the grim reaper. And I have never lost."
The pride, the fierce will to survive, and the unparalleled cool headedness radiating from his declaration acted like a powerful adrenaline shot injected straight into Chizuru's soul. The fears, the sleepless nights crying secretly out of fear of losing him, suddenly crumbled before the solid fortress named Kinoshita Kazuya. He was not despairing at all. He treated cancer like a terrible client that needed logic and strength to be kicked out.
He looked deep into her teary but no longer panicked brown eyes, his tone suddenly dropping, carrying a melting fondness and tenderness.
"Besides." He reached up, using his rough thumb to gently wipe away the tear resting on her cheek. "You had to work so hard to smash my glass cage just to step inside. I would be an idiot to die early and let some other guy steal you. I am a very practical person. I will live, I will cure this trashy disease, so I can exploit you to pay off the debt for the days you camped out here taking care of me."
The half joking remark, holding his gratitude and a lifelong promise, completely demolished Chizuru's final line of defense.
She burst out crying. Not a suppressed, agonizing cry, but a cry releasing ultimate relief. She let go of his collar, wrapping both arms around his neck, burying her face into the crook of his shoulder.
"Idiot! You bastard! You arrogant jerk!" She sobbed, her tears soaking a patch of his shirt. "You promised. You have to live. If you dare die, I will chase you all the way down to hell to make you pay!"
He smiled. The most genuine, warmest smile since he reincarnated into this world. His arms wrapped tightly around her slender waist, pulling her fully onto his lap, ignoring the pain from his casted left arm. He buried his face into her fragrant hair, taking a deep breath.
"Thank you." He whispered into her ear, his pitch low, lethally magnetic. "Thank you for not giving up on a coward like me. Thank you for loving me, even knowing I carry this rotten seed inside me."
Chizuru raised her head. The two looked at each other at zero distance. There were no more sarcastic words, no more running away. In the cold, sterile hospital room, there were only two hearts beating with the same fiery rhythm craving life.
His eyes slowly darkened. The possessive instinct of a grown man, which he had always used rationality to suppress, now exploded before the girl he had determined to love with his very life.
Before Chizuru could react, before she could even blush, his large hand had slipped to the back of her neck, holding her head firmly, and he crashed his lips down upon hers.
Unlike Chizuru's agonizing, defense breaking kiss a few days ago, Kazuya's kiss this time was a plundering, the absolute invasion of a bloodthirsty hunter.
He sucked on her soft lips, biting lightly to force her to open up, then immediately slid his wet tongue inside. A wet, deep, and frenzied French kiss. He swept through every corner of her mouth, tangling her timid tongue into a wild dance full of lust but also drenched in the flavor of love.
"Mmm..." Chizuru let out a choked moan from her throat. Her body went limp, completely melting in his embrace. Her hands unconsciously ran into his thinning hair, gripping tight.
The kiss lasted so long that both seemed to run out of oxygen. The wet smacking sounds echoed clearly in the silent space, carrying ultimate ambiguity. Kazuya gave her no chance to pull back. He rolled over, pressing her flat against the narrow hospital bed, letting his tall body cover her, careful not to let his casted arm press on her but still locking down all escape routes.
"Kazuya. Wait a minute." Chizuru panted, her cheeks blazing like fire, her eyes sparkling with tears holding a lethally seductive haziness. She tried to use her hands to push his chest away, hesitant about being in a hospital. "The door. It is not locked."
"Who gives a shit?" He replied bluntly, his voice hoarse, his dark eyes now brimming with primal desire. "No doctor is going to come into the room at 10 PM anyway."
He leaned down again, this time not aiming for her lips. His burning lips trailed along her jawline, down her flawless white neck, lingering on her alluring collarbone. He bit lightly, then sucked hard on that delicate skin, leaving a bright red strawberry mark, a testament to his domineering possession.
Chizuru shuddered, her back arching as an electric current ran down her spine. The embarrassment, moral standards, and fear of that terrible disease no longer mattered.
The only thing she cared about right now was him, and only him...