As she carries me through the moldy corridors, I notice several heroes and police officers passing by and talking. Most of them, when they see me, cast looks of pity.
As we pass through a busier area, my gaze fixes on a leg behind a desk, one that feels very familiar. Some pieces start fitting together in my head.
'That must be the gunshot I heard earlier… did they kill the doctor?' I remember that he himself had a gun, since the bastard had the brilliant idea of shooting me in the leg to test my regeneration.
I feel a gentle touch on my head. The woman, seeming to notice my restlessness, starts stroking my head again…
I'm tired…
I think it's okay to sleep a little…
I hope so…
─── ◆ ───
POV of Nemuri Kayama – Midnight
Seeing the boy fall asleep on my shoulder makes me feel even more pity for his situation… what must this child have gone through in that place to end up with such a neutral expression?
Leaving the house, I head to an ambulance that had been called earlier and try to hand the boy over to the nurses, but he clings tightly to me, even while asleep… this action makes my eyes water a little.
After composing myself, I gently loosen his fragile grip and hand him over to the nurses care.
"He seems to have grown attached to you, Miss Midnight," one nurse says, already placing some blood pressure monitoring equipment on the boy.
"I think it would be good if you were with him when he wakes up," a doctor says this time, making me think for a moment.
"You can go. After everything he's been through, it must be stressful to wake up in a strange place, even if it's an ambulance or a hospital…" says the detective as he arrives beside me, watching the boy sleep.
"Alright, then I'll go with him." I say goodbye to my colleagues and get inside the ambulance, which begins heading toward the hospital.
The nurses measure the boy's blood pressure and the doctor takes some notes in a small notebook.
Then the nurses remove his shirt, the sight draws a few gasps and exclamations from those inside the ambulance.
His body is covered in scars, but two stand out more than the others: a huge surgical scar that runs from his chest to his abdomen, and a horrible burn mark in the shape of an "X" on his back.
The commotion ends up waking him. When his eyes open, I feel that strange sensation again, which seems to intensify when he looks at the doctor, more specifically, at the white coat he's wearing.
I place my hand on his head and gently stroke it. When I do that, he looks at me, and the sensation begins to slowly fade.
"Is that his Quirk?" one nurse asks, wiping some sweat from her forehead.
"I don't know. He doesn't speak Japanese, so I couldn't talk to him."
"Hm… we can use a phone to translate when we get to the hospital," the doctor says while looking at the blood pressure monitor.
"Is something wrong, Doctor?" the other nurse asks him, noticing his unusual attention to the device.
"Just an idea I need to confirm when we arrive. Let's keep examining the boy." As he says that, the doctor begins using his Quirk on the boy, passing a kind of scanner over his entire body.
─── ◆ ───
POV of the Protagonist
'Huh? What's going on?' I think as my gaze alternates between the nurse with cat ears and the doctor passing a strange blue light over my body.
The nurse with cat ears seems to notice my stare, so with a mischievous little smile she lightly pokes my nose and says something in a playful tone that makes the other two women in the ambulance laugh and the doctor let out a sigh.
'Why the hell is everyone dealing with this like it's normal!?!?' I scream internally.
When the ambulance finally arrives at the hospital, I imagine I'd be making an amused face if it weren't for this permanently neutral expression.
'What the hell is this??' I complain internally as I'm wheeled on the stretcher past a giraffe man talking to a guy with a refrigerator head…
While I'm having a silent existential crisis, I'm placed in a hospital bed, with everyone who was in the ambulance adjusting some equipment, and the heroine sitting beside my bed, fiddling with the phone that the nurse lent her.
Then she shows me the phone, it's on a translation app. I slide my finger across the screen until I reach Brazilian Portuguese, which I select and press the microphone icon on the interface.
"Hello, thank you for saving me." As the message is spoken in Japanese by the phone, the woman gives me a gentle smile and pats my head a few times.
Then she sets it to translate her own speech, which says:
"That's what heroes do. My name is Midnight, what's yours?"
Before taking the phone to reply, I find myself reflecting. I'm a new person here, in a clearly new and strange world. Should I keep my previous name, or have a new one?
She interprets my delay as tiredness, which isn't necessarily wrong, and then she speaks to the phone again, which translates:
"We can talk more tomorrow. The detectives will want to talk to you. I'll come with them to visit you. You can rest." I just nod in agreement.
After a few more pats on my head, she says goodbye and leaves the hospital, leaving me with the nurses and the doctor.
They help me take a bath. It's a bit embarrassing to need help with that, having been 16 years old in my previous life, but I can barely stand on my own, so it was necessary.
After the bath, they gave me food. Even though it was hospital food, I devoured it eagerly, especially after spending so long eating only hard bread and that army food block.
Finally, with a full stomach, freshly bathed, and lying in a comfortable bed after so long, I was able to relax while watching the room's TV cycle through several programs, even without understanding anything that was being said.
While watching TV, I found myself thinking about the name issue. I had already decided to change my name; I just needed a new one.
Meanwhile, the show's host announces the arrival of a guest. Hearing the guest's first name makes an idea pop into my head.