Chapter 147 - The Silent Rehearsal

​The air inside the Shibuya clinic's private consultation room felt thick, heavy with the sharp scents of isopropyl alcohol, iodine, and local anesthetics lingering beneath the stark, sterile fluorescent lighting. Beyond the reinforced windowpanes, Tokyo was waking up under a leaden blanket of winter fog that blurred the silhouettes of nearby skyscrapers. Aibek remained seated at the edge of the examination table, his upper body clad only in a black thermal tank top that left his shoulders looking exceptionally pale and his posture subtly hunched in recovery. His right arm rested on a padded foam medical support. Stripped of the rigid splint for the first time in twenty-four hours, his wrist looked alarmingly swollen, bruised with a deep purplish hue that revealed the severity of the internal microfractures beneath his damaged ligaments.