Chapter 67: Public Execution
At the Teikoku Institute of Technology Affiliated Hospital, Shinomiya Kaguya was fixed to a large medical device, not yet having gotten down.
An elderly doctor with white hair walked in, his hands in the pockets of his white coat.
His name was Shozo Tanuma, the Shinomiya family's private physician, a world-class medical expert and professor whose grandson was also a student at Shuchiin Academy. He was once the primary physician of Shinomiya Kaguya's mother.
Upon hearing that the young lady of the Shinomiya family suspected a problem with her heart, he immediately thought it might be due to her mother's hereditary disease and quickly arranged an extremely strict and complex physical examination for Shinomiya Kaguya.
However, Shozo Tanuma found that the reality was not so. It was far less serious than the worst-case scenario he had imagined.
'The girl who once held no expectations for anything, whose eyes were like ice.'
Shozo Tanuma gazed at Shinomiya Kaguya, whose temperament and expression had undergone significant changes, and slowly drifted into thought.
'Has she changed so much now?'
"Doctor."
Shinomiya Kaguya, whose face looked displeased, focused on the doctor. She recalled how her heart violently pounded during the photo session, almost jumping out of her throat.
"My heart was beating so violently earlier; I thought I was going to die."
Shinomiya Kaguya's tone was incredibly cold and revealed a hint of anxiety. Otherwise, she wouldn't have been in such a hurry, skipping her afternoon class to undergo a complete physical examination.
Hayasaka Ai, standing by, wore a strange expression. In fact, even before the results came out, she had already inquired about them privately with the doctors. But the conclusion was so utterly embarrassing that Hayasaka Ai felt she couldn't look the doctors here in the eye anymore.
But compared to Shinomiya Kaguya's urgency, the doctor was quite unhurried, showing no sign of nervousness. The feeling he gave was, "I know you're in a hurry, but don't rush."
"Shinomiya-san, you have lovesickness." Dr. Shozo Tanuma said slowly.
When the doctor revealed the truth that Shinomiya Kaguya was so concerned about, Hayasaka Ai, who already knew the truth, was too embarrassed to face anyone and immediately covered her face with both hands.
'It's a public execution now.'
"Lovesickness? Is that the name of a new heart disease?"
Although Shinomiya Kaguya understood the words when combined, her brain's defense mechanism was to refuse to understand, even concluding that it must be a newly named heart disease by the medical community.
"No, it's just a condition where your heart pounds uncontrollably for someone you love."
Looking at Dr. Shozo Tanuma's calm eyes, an uninformed person might think he was making a serious, deadpan joke.
"What kind of joke are you playing?"
Shinomiya Kaguya's face became even colder. Love was an unnecessary thing for members of the Shinomiya family.
"You're saying a member of the dignified Shinomiya family is suffering heart-wrenching pain because of lovesickness?
What kind of joke is this!"
Shinomiya Kaguya felt the doctor's diagnosis was clearly a joke. Although Hikigaya-kun was excellent, it shouldn't lead Shinomiya Kaguya to contract such an absurd illness.
"Calm down, Shinomiya-san. This is my first time seeing this, too." Shozo Tanuma calmly pushed up his glasses. This might be the first case in his decades of practice.
"But your physical condition shows no abnormalities."
"That's a lie! I feel like my heart is riddled with holes." Shinomiya Kaguya forcefully slapped the detection device.
"If that were the case, you would be dead. Besides, the test results are already out." Shozo Tanuma replied. "You have a very healthy and beautiful heart, one that is unlikely to have problems for decades."
"Huh? There must be a problem somewhere."
Shinomiya Kaguya remained adamant, insisting that the earlier test results were flawed. She refused to accept that her embarrassing behavior was simply the result of a girl's budding affection.
"Ah, ah, ah! Kaguya-sama, stop talking!"
Hayasaka Ai, standing nearby, could no longer listen.
Having a young lady who was so foolish and unaware of her own feelings was truly worrying. When she first learned of the mission to capture Hikigaya-kun from Shinomiya Oko, Hayasaka Ai had already been thinking about the feasibility of the task.
The biggest problem was that Kaguya-sama didn't know her own feelings, coupled with her extremely strong pride that wouldn't allow her to lower herself.
Kaguya-sama had never experienced what it meant to love, so even if the results were clearly presented, she would absolutely refuse to admit it.
This was because Shinomiya Kaguya simply lacked that understanding. But it couldn't be helped, given the education of the Shinomiya family. The Shinomiya family's education was a cold, high-and-mighty system of "Emperor's Studies" that only allowed for the utilization of others, not the loving of them.
The Shinomiya family's education only produced scum.
Therefore, Shinomiya Oko was the perfect embodiment of the Shinomiya family's education: a scumbag driven solely by self-interest.
However, the situation today genuinely frightened Hayasaka Ai, as the young lady had never shown any heart-related issues. From the results, it was a complete false alarm—Kaguya-sama was simply deceiving herself, causing the aware Hayasaka Ai to feel too ashamed to face anyone.
"Stop it, Young Lady."
The more Shinomiya Kaguya insisted there was a problem with her heart, the more embarrassed Hayasaka Ai felt. She was being publicly executed and dragged along with the shame.
Unfortunately, Shinomiya Kaguya couldn't hear Hayasaka Ai's inner pleas. Shinomiya Kaguya, meanwhile, thought that the hospital's equipment must be too outdated and couldn't properly detect all the lesions in her body.
"That, however, is very easy to test." Shozo Tanuma had a way of dealing with people who insisted on being stubborn.
"Shinomiya-san, do you have a picture of the person you care about?"
"Yes.
Hayasaka, hurry up and bring it over." Shinomiya Kaguya urged.
Honestly, Hayasaka Ai didn't want to hand over her phone, because she already foresaw the consequences.
When he received the photos, Shozo Tanuma's expression grew interested when he saw the three people in the picture. The boy was handsome, a perfect match for the beautiful girl. At first glance, he thought both of them were the cold type, but that wasn't true.
The young man just seemed to have experienced a lot, so his maturity was on a different level from his peers. He was a man who looked stern but had a mix of gentleness and ferocity in his eyes.
"Very good. He's quite an excellent young man." Shozo Tanuma praised.
"He is."
Shinomiya Kaguya smiled faintly upon hearing Hikigaya-kun being praised. "Hikigaya-kun is quite outstanding.
He's very smart, very strong, and also very talented. He's won the Akutagawa Prize several years in a row..." Shinomiya Kaguya knew Hikigaya-kun wrote books every year, but she never imagined that the great author who won so many awards was right beside her. This was quite ridiculous. To maintain such good grades and still have time to write so much, he was truly a monster. To be honest, Shinomiya Kaguya wasn't very confident about this exam, because he was a greater genius than her, making her feel as if she were no different from an ordinary person.
"Stop talking, Young Lady!"
Hayasaka Ai saw the heart rate value on the monitoring screen and her mouth fell open.
'How can you say that without changing your expression?'
No matter how calm the young lady acted, the real-time monitoring instruments wouldn't lie about her heart rate. The value had jumped from 90 to 140, and her blood pressure was also rising.
"You care about him a lot, don't you?" Dr. Tanuma also noticed the abnormality on the instrument.
"He's just a competitor." Shinomiya Kaguya was still being stubborn.
"Then have you ever thought about being with him?"
"I told you, I only have a strong sense of rivalry toward him, just unwillingness to lose!" Shinomiya Kaguya's heart involuntarily twisted when Hikigaya-kun's face popped into her mind.
"As for being together...
If he pursues me, I might consider it.
But it would only be a little bit.
Besides, why do I need to tell you all this?"
The instruments monitoring Shinomiya Kaguya's various physical parameters suddenly triggered an alarm, showing that the young lady's heart rate was rapidly climbing.
"It has already surpassed 200!"
Hearing the report from the nearby medical staff, Hayasaka Ai's face was flushed, as if she were embarrassed for Shinomiya Kaguya.
Exposing the young lady's feelings with modern technology—no, don't do this! It was too shameful!
"This is lovesickness." Shozo Tanuma sighed.
'What an uncompromising child.'
He also realized that forcing this girl, who was so concerned about saving face, to admit she was completely in love with someone else would probably only work if she came to the sudden realization herself; relying on others was useless.
"Let's leave it here for today." Shozo Tanuma pushed up his glasses. Since this young lady wouldn't admit it, this was the only way. "If Shinomiya-san wants a more in-depth examination, I can help you schedule an appointment with a more professional institution."
"Please do." Shinomiya Kaguya said.
Clearly, the girl was very dissatisfied with today's examination. It was too rushed. She needed to quickly schedule an appointment with a more professional institution for an appraisal.
'This old man in front of me is probably a quack, isn't he?'
If this old man hadn't been the Shinomiya family's doctor, she should have given him a cold shoulder and slammed the door the moment he first diagnosed her with something ridiculous like lovesickness instead of an actual illness.
It was too preposterous!
Saying she was in love with him. Shinomiya Kaguya did think Hikigaya-kun was outstanding as a human being, but that was all she thought. She certainly wouldn't believe it was unrequited love. Therefore, Shinomiya Kaguya decided to switch to a different place for another check-up. She had to find a physical problem.
After Shinomiya Kaguya changed her clothes, she heard Hayasaka Ai say she was contacting the driver, but for some reason, the phone contact failed due to no signal.
"Kaguya-sama, I can't reach the drivers." Hayasaka Ai's phone seemed to be suffering severe signal interference; there was no signal at all.
"Don't joke around now, Hayasaka." Shinomiya Kaguya took out her own phone. When she saw the information bar also showed a signal loss, this caused both Hayasaka Ai and Shinomiya Kaguya to vaguely feel an ominous premonition.
"What's going on?"
"Regardless, let's get out of the hospital first." Shinomiya Kaguya and Hayasaka Ai exchanged glances. They should evacuate this hospital, whose main structure offered no escape routes or sense of safety.
Hayasaka Ai and Shinomiya Kaguya were both ordinary people without Sorcerer talent.
They carried high-level talismans and amulets that could ward off low- or mid-level cursed spirits. Otherwise, they would have realized that the culprit for the complete lack of cell phone signal was the Curtain covering the clinic near the ICU and emergency room downstairs, enveloping the entire clinic. Cursed energy severely interferes with electronic devices, making it simple to cause cell phones to lose signal.
Shinomiya Kaguya and Hayasaka Ai feared things like an earthquake.
They had common sense, so they chose the emergency stairs instead of the elevator. Hayasaka Ai walked in front, shielding Shinomiya Kaguya behind her, her expression extremely grim. This was mainly because she smelled something else in the air, which put her on alert.
It was the smell of knockout gas. Yes, the kind of substance that would cause people to fall completely unconscious upon inhalation.
However, since it wasn't deployed on their floor, the smell was faint, but Hayasaka Ai, who had received professional training, immediately smelled it. This was quite abnormal.
Suddenly, there was a loud bang. A violent explosion suddenly occurred on an unknown floor of the emergency stairwell below. A high-pitched, extremely suppressed shriek, which they couldn't clearly hear, swept through the entire building. If anyone looked from the outside, they would see that the glass walls of this forty-eight-story hospital were all shattered without exception.
Furthermore, under the terrified gaze of Shinomiya Kaguya and Hayasaka Ai, cracks appeared in the surrounding stairwell walls. How could two ordinary students imagine that a cursed spirit far exceeding Special Grade was raging due to its master's predicament?
The knockout gas was prepared by the Sorcerer Association.
Those Sorcerers regarded Okkotsu Yuta as a Curse User who only commanded high-grade Cursed Spirits. Dealing with a person was far simpler than dealing with a Cursed Spirit. Therefore, as long as they filled the area where the brat was with knockout gas, allowing him to sleep soundly, it would be much simpler for them to deliver the killing blow after he was subdued.
The Grade 1 Sorcerer led the team, assisted by two Grade 2 Sorcerers, in the subjugation of Okkotsu Yuta. They thought this was a great plan, essentially using the power of technology to deal with a human. By injecting a large amount of high-concentration knockout gas into that floor, the high-concentration knockout gas would not only cause unconsciousness when diluted but also cause irreversible damage to the brain.
After all, they were legitimate Sorcerers. If they caused mass panic, they would be in serious trouble.
100ml of special high-concentration knockout gas could knock out an adult elephant. Moreover, all they wanted to knock out was a malnourished, haggard brat. That's why the leading Grade 1 Sorcerer said he could defeat the brat with one hand.
After a large amount of knockout gas was deployed, the three Sorcerers, wearing gas masks and carrying infrared cameras, entered the floor. They quickly found the unconscious Okkotsu Yuta.
"High bounty, easily secured."
The Grade 1 Sorcerer's face under the gas mask was distorted in a smile. He was so pleased that he had secured the opponent so easily, especially after preparing so much expensive, high-concentration knockout gas. Little did he know that the moment he pulled out his knife toward Okkotsu Yuta, his fate was sealed.
"Don't blame me, kid. Be a better person in your next life."
The Grade 1 Sorcerer raised his blade toward Okkotsu Yuta's neck, preparing to behead him and set him free.
"Die!"
He gripped the blade and stabbed downward fiercely. But instead of the expected skin and flesh breaking, the knife hit a hard object and immediately snapped. It was a pale arm, emerging from the shadow at the side of the unconscious Okkotsu Yuta.
"Impossible!"
Immediately following was a wave of extremely terrifying malice. This chilling malevolence completely surpassed his imagination. This terrifying cursed energy froze the Grade 1 Sorcerer's blood. A terrifying one-eyed monster was gradually revealing its enormous body, its crimson solitary eye filled with a bloodthirsty glow.
"Don't bully Yuta!!!"
With the only person who could control Rika unconscious, the Queen of Curses was unstoppable!
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