Chapter 7: Clinical Assessment
(Hifumi POV – Expanded Version)
The guild always smelled faintly of metal and coffee.
Today it smelled like disinfectant.
Not strong enough to notice at first.
But once I did, I couldn’t stop noticing.
The air felt scrubbed.
Like something had already gone wrong and someone was trying to erase the evidence.
Liora stood at the front of the conference hall that morning, cigarette balanced between her fingers like it belonged there permanently.
“Shoji Shiraishi,” she said evenly. “A-Rank. Suspended pending review.”
The word suspended landed softly.
Too softly.
No outrage. No protests. No raised hands.
Just a ripple of understanding passing through the room.
“He’s still one of ours,” Liora continued. “But he doesn’t set the pace anymore.”
I didn’t know why that sentence bothered me.
Maybe because Shoji always set the pace.
Too fast. Too loud. Too reckless.
Meeting dismissed.
Chairs scraped. Hunters dispersed. Equipment rattled.
And yet—
The tension stayed.
Kaede walked beside me, steps quick, controlled.
“You think he’ll actually stay suspended?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” she said immediately.
“You don’t sound like you mean that.”
She stopped walking.
Her shoulders were tight, posture rigid.
“We’re staff,” she said, sharper than usual. “We file reports. We schedule raids. We don’t fix A-Rank hunters.”
A couple nearby hunters glanced over.
She noticed instantly.
Her voice lowered.
“…Sorry. I didn’t mean to snap.”
“It’s okay,” I said quickly.
But my chest felt oddly tight.
I hadn’t meant to imply anything.
Had I?
“I just mean,” she continued, speaking a little too fast now, “it’s not our lane.”
“I know,” I said softly.
She rubbed her temple.
I’d seen her do that before.
Usually after something scared her.
The hallway buzzed quietly as the day wore on.
Hunters checked weapons. Assistants processed structural damage requests. Two B-Ranks argued about resource allocation.
It almost felt normal.
Almost.
Until whispers started drifting.
“HQ’s involved.”
“She escalated it.”
“Setsuna’s reviewing his numbers.”
The name passed between people like a sealed envelope.
Carefully. Quietly.
I’d seen Setsuna twice.
The first time, a B-Rank had lost half his leg.
He was screaming.
When she entered the room, the screaming didn’t stop because she told him to stop.
It stopped because she looked at him.
And something about her gaze made people behave.
The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.
The second time, she walked past me in the hall wearing gloves already.
Not in a rush. Not panicked.
Just prepared.
Like injuries were inevitable.
Like failure was expected.
Later that afternoon, Kaede and I delivered finalized raid reports.
We passed Liora’s office.
Door closed.
Lights on.
The faint click of the intercom echoed down the hall.
“…Yeah. It’s me.”
Liora’s voice.
Lower than usual.
“I need you to review something.”
Pause.
“No assumptions. Just confirm.”
Long silence.
“…I know.”
Click.
Kaede hesitated a fraction too long before continuing.
I noticed.
She didn’t look at me.
Evening crept in quietly.
The fluorescent lights hummed faintly overhead.
The hallway outside Liora’s office went still.
I didn’t see Setsuna approach.
She was just suddenly there.
White coat pressed smooth. Dark hair tied back without a strand out of place. Thin glasses reflecting the ceiling lights in clean, sharp lines.
Gloves already on.
That bothered me most.
She knocked once.
Entered.
Door closed.
I told myself not to listen.
I listened anyway.
“Shoji Shiraishi,” Setsuna’s voice said.
Clear. Measured. Precise.
“A-Rank.”
A soft tap— maybe a tablet being placed down.
“Muscle fiber regeneration inconsistent with system-based growth parameters.”
Pause.
“Adrenal output elevated beyond sustainable range.”
Another pause.
“Hormonal markers artificially stimulated.”
Silence.
“He is supplementing.”
My throat felt dry.
Kaede shifted beside me.
“How bad?” Liora asked.
“He believes he is accelerating growth.”
A faint rustle of paper.
“He is narrowing his limits.”
That sentence felt wrong.
Like it was describing something breaking in slow motion.
“If continuation persists,” Setsuna added, “organ failure probability increases exponentially.”
“How long?”
“Three months.”
Beat.
“Less, if escalation occurs.”
Silence stretched longer this time.
“This is decay.”
The word settled like dust.
Not dramatic.
Not loud.
Just final.
“You’re pale,” Kaede whispered suddenly.
“I’m fine.”
“You were listening.”
“I wasn’t—”
“So what if you were?” she snapped.
Her voice wasn’t loud.
But it was sharp enough that a few staff glanced over.
She froze.
Then immediately lowered it.
“…Sorry. I didn’t mean that.”
“It’s okay.”
I meant it.
But confusion prickled at the edges of my thoughts.
“Kaede,” I tried carefully, “if he’s doing something dangerous—”
“What do you want me to do?” she said, too quickly. “We’re not heroes.”
“I know.”
“Then we shouldn’t act like it.”
“I wasn’t.”
She exhaled hard.
“I just don’t want you getting dragged into something.”
“I won’t.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
Silence.
Not hostile.
Just stretched thin.
I stared at the floor.
Had I pushed too much?
Maybe I had.
Maybe she just didn’t want more problems.
Maybe I should stop bringing it up.
A high-level dungeon alert flared across the city just after sunset.
Sirens wailed.
Phones buzzed.
Hunters moved fast.
Gear clattered. Orders snapped. Vehicles roared to life.
Shoji would hear it.
He wouldn’t stay suspended.
Not with something to prove.
I found myself staring at the exit doors long after everyone else had gone.
Please don’t go, I thought.
I didn’t say it aloud.
That felt childish.
Hours later, the raid reports arrived.
A-Rank Hunter Shiraishi engaged primary target directly.
Excessive force noted.
Structural damage increased by 34%.
Injury sustained: None.
None.
“That doesn’t make sense,” I whispered.
Kaede closed the report quickly.
“It doesn’t have to.”
“But—”
“It doesn’t,” she repeated softly.
Her fingers tapped the desk once. Stopped.
She wasn’t calm.
She was forcing it.
I noticed that too.
When Setsuna said decay, it hadn’t sounded like prediction.
It sounded like inevitability.
Dungeon alerts were random.
This wasn’t.
This felt deliberate.
Like something accelerating quietly beneath the surface.
And for the first time since the McKing incident—
I wasn’t afraid of coincidence.
I was afraid of consequence.
The raid trucks returned past midnight.
I hadn’t meant to stay that late.
But the reports weren’t finished.
And leaving felt… wrong.
The medical wing lights were still on.
They always were after a high-level alert.
I passed the hallway by accident.
At least, that’s what I told myself.
The doors to the emergency room were open.
Hunters lined the walls, some seated, some standing, some pretending they weren’t in pain.
The air smelled like antiseptic and metal.
Setsuna stood in the center of the room.
Not moving quickly.
Not rushing.
But everything around her moved fast.
“Sit.”
A B-Rank obeyed immediately.
She removed a blood-soaked gauntlet from his arm without asking.
He flinched.
She didn’t.
“Pain level.”
“Six.”
“That is incorrect.”
She pressed along his forearm.
He hissed sharply.
“Eight,” he corrected.
“Good.”
She didn’t look impressed.
She looked satisfied.
She worked with clean, efficient movements.
Cutting fabric. Sanitizing wounds. Rewrapping injuries with surgical precision.
One hunter tried to wave her off.
“I’m fine, doc.”
“You are not,” she said calmly.
He laughed weakly.
“I can still fight.”
“You can still bleed.”
That shut him up.
I swallowed.
She wasn’t loud.
She wasn’t dramatic.
But the room bent around her authority.
Another stretcher rolled in.
This one was worse.
Deep laceration across the torso.
The hunter groaned.
Setsuna didn’t hesitate.
“Restrain him.”
Two assistants moved instantly.
“I don’t need—” the hunter protested.
“Yes,” she said evenly. “You do.”
She began stitching without ceremony.
He shouted.
She didn’t flinch.
“Pain confirms vitality,” she said, almost absentmindedly. “You are welcome.”
The assistants didn’t laugh.
Neither did the patient.
But no one questioned her.
Not once.
Across the room, a nurse handed her a tablet.
She scanned it briefly.
Her expression didn’t change.
“Shiraishi,” she murmured.
My stomach tightened.
“He left.”
The nurse nodded.
“He declined evaluation.”
Setsuna adjusted her gloves.
“He does not get to decline.”
Her voice wasn’t angry.
Just… mildly irritated.
Like someone had misplaced a file.
“Log his refusal,” she continued. “And prepare baseline comparison charts.”
“For what?” the nurse asked carefully.
“For when he collapses.”
The words landed flat.
Matter-of-fact.
Not dramatic.
Just inevitable.
I didn’t realize I’d taken a step backward until I bumped lightly into the wall.
Setsuna’s eyes flicked toward me briefly.
Not sharp.
Not judging.
Just assessing.
For half a second, I felt like she could see everything—
My worry. My hesitation. My confusion.
Then her attention shifted away.
“Next,” she said.
The room moved again.
Like a machine resetting.
I stood there a moment longer.
Watching.
Listening.
Trying to steady the strange tightness in my chest.
This wasn’t chaos.
This wasn’t panic.
This was controlled inevitability.
And for the first time, I understood something unsettling.
If Shoji kept going—
It wouldn’t be a dramatic explosion.
It would be clinical.
Measured.
Logged.
And cleaned up.
I left before she could notice me again.
The hallway felt colder somehow.
Behind me, someone groaned.
Setsuna’s voice remained steady.
“Breathe.”
