Prologue 2

Masaharu has just turned 28 last month, and in the three years of his nursing career, it is the first time he enters the hospital building with this amount of dread.

Being a nurse, Masaharu has seen a lot. One time an elderly man in Masaharu's previous unit proposed to a colleague in front of his own wife and another time someone was sent to his floor after surgery done to treat injuries caused by having their ass washed with a high-pressure water hose (don't ask). So, to come to work with a foreboding sense of dread is a norm, at the very least, to himself.

But this; this is something else.

Five - no, six. He counts the faces he reckons to be non-patients in the lobby of their President Class patient accommodation whilst tapping his ID card to the scanner. They range in appearance; one is a middle-aged man with a beer belly holding a loud tablet that is playing a video of an outdated comedy show; another one appears to be an old lady in a purple dress and a heaping bag of knitting yarn. One is pacing their corridor, dressed in a hospital gown and dragging an IV pole, acting like a deranged patient. But all the nurses stationed on this floor know better.

They are not patients; nor are they family of the patients. 

They are spies, secret agents - whatever they call them nowadays.

It all started that evening 3 weeks ago when Masaharu was working at his usual station in the ICU. His shift started on a silent note, which was not that unusual for this unit. Most of the time their patients are barely conscious. That evening was especially quiet though because the ICU ward happened to be empty, and only one of the private Intensive Care rooms was in use. 

He remembers having his colleagues commenting on the latest updates on the recently opened portal at a high school; a case that had been all over the news; and the scandal surrounding it; what's with the many students still pronounced missing, and the fact that such a serious case is being handled by a team of very young Espers from some newly established Esper Organization.

That started a whole debate between his two colleagues about whether Neo Japan needs children to fight their battles. "If I'm a parent of one of those students, I would sue the government," his colleague gave their 2 cents. "I'm fine with mini-Espers, but I think they shouldn't handle a project this big," The other one said. Masaharu did not follow their conversation too closely, as he was busy with paperwork. Looking back, he should have enjoyed that moment of peace. It would be the last he would have in a while.

An hour later, everyone in the ICU scrambled to their feet. Orders were shouted left and right as hands flew around to reach tools as they all circled the body of a child on a stretcher; covered in drying blood from head to toe. To call them a child would be too strong of a word. This was, to Masaharu, a dead body they were tasked to revive. 

An impossible job.

Yet somehow, they managed to hook the child, now known to be a boy, to machines and medicine. The doctor, that has walked all the way from the Emergency Unit with a nurse, declared the boy in a coma as they all started cleaning the patient with a washcloth. The gash wounds, slashes, and bruises came to light.

"They don't look like a typical injury for a mutant attack".

"... the gashes look too clean for it to be done by mutants".

"- done by human?"

"How does he survive this?"

Yet Masaharu was far too stunned at the barely attached piece of clothing he took off from the boy's body. As he gathered them, he caught the red-stained school badge on what seemed to be a school uniform.

It said Shun-En Kōtō Gakkō; the name of the school where the portal just opened.

The ICU rarely allows visitors into their ward, but that night, Masaharu found people dressed in black and a few dressed in light gray hoodies loitering their ward. This is a victim of a mutant attack, Masaharu mentally noted as he cleaned the boy from dried blood, and those people are probably Espers. That light gray hoodie was, he supposed, the uniform of that newly formed Esper Organization; the one that only recruited adolescents.

"YES," his colleague whispered to him, "Those people; they are YES Espers. I've never seen Espers up close. Quite exciting huh?"

Being a C-Class, Masaharu did not pay much attention to Espers. His chance of ever joining their ranks was small. His ability is limited to sometimes knowing when it would rain or storm; at times he misses his forecast. That kind of ability would do very little to protect their people from the existing threat of mutant apparitions. Most Espers are B-Class at the very least, with very few C-Classes.

YES, short for Young Esper Society, is a newly built Organization that prided itself on recruiting very young Espers with mostly Class A status. Their lead figure, Takenouchi Sora, is renowned throughout Neo Japan, and it is said that he is building a core team of all S-Class Espers in YES.

However, with them failing to save anyone from Shun-En, perhaps all of those were just talk. People were holding protests over having these Young Espers handling a case where many other young lives remain missing. And the first discovered victim happened to be this boy.

"Second," he remembered his colleague telling him, "There's another one found from the school. She's pronounced dead on the scene".

Yet, that night they all agreed this boy would not have much of a chance at survival either. The Intensive Care Unit is no stranger to acutely sick patients. And with that kind of experience, they can usually tell which patient would survive the night and which wouldn't.

The rest of the night continued with a rather solemn note. The doctors and the Head of their department were in a lengthy exchange with the Espers in their lobby. They were clear about wanting to keep the information of the boy, then tagged as Patient 1082, confidential while YES Officials figured out what exactly happened within the school. No wonder they skipped the Emergency Unit and went straight ahead to the ICU. They wanted to make sure no one saw the boy.

If people found out that the surviving victim was on the brink of death after being found in such a gruesome crime scene, there would be a renewed public outcry.

That night, they moved the patient to a private room in the ICU to keep the boy hidden.

The boy had come in and out of flatlining throughout his stay. On Day 2, the Doctor announced that the boy would not last the night. That evening, Masaharu held the boy's hand in his own. He bid him goodnight before clocking out of his shift. That night he stayed up a little later than usual, a luxury most nurses cannot afford, as he pondered the kinds of nightmares that boy had to go through before lying there to wait for his rescue.

He wished that death would come peacefully to that boy. He wished that death would bring an end to all his pain. The only good thing that could come up from this was the fact that not many would mourn the boy's departure. Masaharu heard that the parents of the other victim, Kana Yukiko, were crying hysterically when they picked up the body of their dead daughter in the morgue, enough that all the hospital staff stationed around that area were shedding tears too. She was so young, so beautiful, with so much potential. Her mother was wailing about her future and her dreams; of how she wanted to be an elite Esper, something that she could easily achieve with her A-Class status.

On the other hand, Hinata Ren was an orphan and spent all his life growing up in an orphanage. Unlike Kana Yukiko, he's not an A-Class. Instead, he is an F-Class. Perhaps there's not a lot to cry about with his death. Maybe.

The next day, Masaharu brought a bouquet of flowers to work. If that boy's already on his way to the morgue, at the very least these flowers could stay a while on his hospital bed.

What he found instead were men in suits crowding the Intensive Care Unit. The Hospital Director was also there, next to a mysterious man who introduced himself as 'Yasuo'. Masaharu found himself being gathered along with all the medical staff who were involved in the care of Patient 1082. They were interrogated by men dressed in black; their backgrounds were checked; and they were all told to sign a contract regarding confidentiality.

And when Masaharu asked where Patient 1082 was, whether he'd been moved to the morgue, or if there was any autopsy required, they told him the boy had been moved to a different wing.

This wing, he later found out, was their president-class patient accommodation.

Soon, Masaharu was stationed in that wing to exclusively tend to Patient 1082 along with the rest of the medical staff who had cared for him. It seemed that they wanted to minimize the number of people involved in the treatment of Patient 1082 by only involving those who were already informed of his care at the hospital.

In the days following this turn of events, Masaharu found more and more new faces wondering about the hospital. They're not patients, nor are they worried family members of the sick. They appear so, but they were only feigning those roles. "They're undercover," his colleague provided one day, "To watch over 1082".

As for Patient 1082, Masaharu remembers not being able to believe it, he survives.

In fact, the first time Masaharu saw him after he was moved to the President Class Accommodation, he looked okay - which was unexpected because just the night before everyone in their unit was convinced he would never see the light of day ever again.

In just one week, all the gashes and visible wounds on his body disappeared.

In the week after, they put him off of most of his medication.

In those two weeks, patient 1082 transformed from a body on its course to flatline on the hospital bed, to what seemed like just any kid stealing a nap in what is their most expensive room at the hospital.

The doctors in charge of his treatment would continue to purse their lips and knit their brows in confusion as they watched the progression of Patient 1082's condition day after day. This boy was technically resurrected from death by God-knows-how, yet none of the intelligent and curious minds working to get him to recover were allowed to discuss this one-in-a-million miracle outside of their wing. The boy is, after all, the President Wing's most kept secret.

Masaharu's colleagues were whispering about being followed by mysterious figures on their way back home. Masaharu is convinced some of those 'secret agents' also followed him home every day to ensure he did not speak to anyone who could risk him discussing the boy's treatment outside of the Hospital. No one beyond their wing seems to know anything about a survivor from Shun-En. Instead, what used to be persistent reporting on the newly opened portal in Shun-En slowly dwindled down to nothing on the news. No one seemed to care about what happened to the kids who remained missing anymore, which was seriously eerie.

And that is how he is in his current predicament; standing in the President wing in his scrub as he notices more and more undercover 'agents' in the lobby. He stops by the front desk to check the previous shift's notes while bending slightly to cover the papers with his body - not that it matters, all the other patients have been vacated from this wing as soon as Patient 1082 moved in, so no one with no business in this matter would be in this wing anyway.

"You have a guest," the front desk informs him.

"Hm?"

"A guest," the other nurse refuses to meet his eyes, "A special guest. In 207".

"Uhh.... okay?" Masaharu drops his bag and his water bottle at the nurse's station. He then leaves to check on Room 207, where Patient 1082 is sleeping.

Whilst caring for Patient 1082, Masaharu has seen many visitors come and go. The one he sees the most is the mysterious man named Yasuo. He doesn't expose much about himself, but Masaharu has an inkling that every undercover in this room follows this man's orders. He's in Room 207 almost every day. Masaharu would find him sitting next to Patient 1082's bed, holding the boy's hand or brushing his hair. Sometimes he'd read the sleeping boy a book. 

Whenever he is around, he has two or three extra people with him. Two would be the same faces every time. Masaharu guesses these two are his assistants or people who work very closely with him. Masaharu often sees them just looming behind Yasuo, following his orders; from changing the water in the vase next to Patient 1082's bed to simply opening the blinds.

If he takes a third person with him, then this third person would be the 'guest'.

Patient 1082's guests vary in profile. Some of them are scary-looking and would be walking alongside Yasuo while muttering lowly. The rare times Masaharu caught what they were discussing, it would have something to do with the Government, which would be enough for Masaharu to step away and give them room to converse privately. 

Other times, Yasuo would have familiar faces accompanying him. Once, a fellow nurse squealed excitedly when she saw the man walking next to Yasuo. "It's Matsuzaka Kei!!" She told him. Apparently, the man is a famous Esper and is the leader of an elite team. There were numerous other people Masaharu suspected to be Espers that had visited room 207, but he could barely keep up with all of them, let alone memorize their names.

While he does not recognize each and every one of them, all the room 207's 'guests' carry an air of importance with them, almost in the same volume the man named Yasuo carries himself with. So when his colleague mentioned a 'special' guest, Masaharu had zero clue what to expect. How much more 'special' can these guests get?

The two 'agents' that he normally finds in the living area of Room 207 are standing with their hands crossed when Masaharu enters the room. They are facing the bedroom but nod when they notice his arrival. "Routine checkup?" One of the agents asks. They're familiar enough with each other by this point to interrogate him before allowing him entry.

"And an IV change," Masaharu adds, lifting the hand that is carrying the IV bag. The agents nod and allow him space to approach the opened double door leading to the patient's bed.

He did not expect a guest of 6-7 people in the bedroom area.

Masaharu falters in his step as they all turn to see him one by one. They're all dressed casually, yet he can still sense that they are all not what they seem. Somehow, he knows deep in his veins that one wrong move and any of these people would go for the throat. The way they square their shoulders and stand around the bed tells Masaharu they are not the 'guests'; they are here to protect the 'guest'. And if his gut is right, there's only one 'guest' among them, and it's the one standing at the foot of the bed.

The man, dressed in a black long coat and a pair of light-colored pants, turns around.

Masaharu may not recognize any of Patient 1082's previous visitors, but he definitely recognizes this one. Those squinted eyes, the pale skin, the jet-black hair; every citizen of Neo Japan would easily put a name to that face.

It's Prime Minister Takenouchi.

"Oh, don't mind me. Please, do your job," the 58-year-old man bows his head and smiles. Flustered, Masaharu bends his body forward as he approaches the bed. Most of the time, the visitors would ignore him unless they had a pressing matter to ask. A nurse enters the room and leaves expecting to be invisible to the patient's visitors. Yet, never in his life had the Prime Minister himself visited one of his patients.

He soundlessly gets to work; checking his patient's status and changing the IV bag. He also checks the drainage bag connected to the catheter and decides that it doesn't require a change. Their persistent staring feels like having his neck targeted by numerous arrows. 

"Who are you?" He mentally asks his young patient. Patient 1082, birth name Hinata Ren, only 16 years old, an orphan, and an F-Class citizen; how is this boy getting visitors like the Prime Minister and someone as famous as Matsuzaka Kei? Just weeks ago, the bouquet Masaharu bought him for his forecasted passing was the first and the only one to be placed by Hinata Ren's bedside. Now, the boy has 4 different flower arrangements decorating his room, all brought by different visitors; and his table is full of gifts, big and small. One corner of his room has a giant teddy bear, and Masaharu remembers being told that it was sent to this hospital all the way from India.

"How is he doing?"

Masaharu almost jumps when the Prime Minister addresses him. The man is standing on the other side of the boy's bed. "Um, h-he is recovering at a tremendous pace, S-Shushou," Masaharu sputters, silently scolding himself for speaking like a fool in front of the most powerful man in Neo Japan.

"He's going to wake up soon, yes?"

"It appears so". If asked the same question weeks ago, Masaharu would not have answered the same. Yet, this week, the only hiccup in his health was the sudden high fever he developed overnight. However, it was nothing much of a concern. They stabilized him in no time. As hard as it is to believe, this boy they all once thought would not survive the night, according to their observation, is healthy. If Masaharu could give his honest opinion, he'd say this boy in front of him is simply asleep.

"I heard he had a fever," Prime Minister Takenouchi continues.

"Yes, but as you can see, his temperature has gone down today".

Masaharu was referring to the monitor right next to the bed, but the older man took it as an invitation to check the boy's temperature himself. The man reaches out to touch the boy's face - which, Masaharu supposes, should be all right. It's not like a man of such importance would hurt a patient.

A hand catches the Prime Minister's in a strong grip.

To everyone's surprise, it is Hinata Ren's own hand.

"H-he's awake!" One of them, probably one of the Prime Minister's bodyguards, exclaims. True enough, the boy's eyes are wide open. But he isn't there with them - not mentally. His pupils reduce in size and his whole body convulses as he arches up. Masaharu watches the boy's hands gripping hard at the bedsheet.

"Hinata-kun!?" He calls the boy's name urgently while pressing the emergency button multiple times, "Hinata-kun!? Answer me!"

Footsteps are coming closer. Masaharu assumes those are of his fellow nurses, making a run for it once they hear the call from this room. It is then that Hinata Ren thrashes in his bed. He opens his mouth and lets out a blood-curdling scream.

And that is how the Phoenix rises from its ash.

***

To be Continued.