Chapter 46
IT happened in a blink of an eye. Bright-red blood gushed from the fifteen centimeter-long slash across his left arm. The fog lingering in her brain instantly cleared. Panic mounted at the abrupt appearance of blood.
“Aah! Wh-Wh-What?! What did you just do?!” she spluttered.
“Please stay calm,” Rhad coaxed, while blood ran down his arm and dripped onto the marble floor.
“How do you expect me to stay calm?! How are you so calm?! Doesn’t it hurt?!”
“It hurts.” Rhad held his injured arm out to Yuki with a composed expression.
“What?” She couldn’t look directly at the arm spilling blood all over the mahogany table and squeamishly pleaded with him. “What? What do you want me to do?”
“For starters, will you stop the blood flow?” he said coolly.
“O-Okay!” The chair scraped across the marble as she leapt to her feet and ran over to yank the sheets off her bed. She folded a corner of the sheet several times and applied it to his arm with the right amount of pressure she learned from Vigo. “Wh-Why did you do this?”
Rhad groaned. “Lady Yuki, what do you think about when you are interacting with patients suffering from the Ten Day Fever?”
“Huh?” She took a moment to consider his question. The lodged gears in her brain creaked into jerky action. “…I pray for them to get well soon. I think?”
“Then please pray for me in the same way.”
“Why?!” she was thunderstruck by the Rhad and his Cheshire cat like smile. “Y-You’re the one who cut yourself!”
“Don’t let the small details bother you. Please think of me in the same way as the sick. It might not show on my face, but I am in an astronomical amount of pain.”
“I-I bet…Are you okay?” Blood rapidly absorbed through the folds of the sheet she pressed against his arm, dyeing it a sticky red penetrating all the way to her fingertips.
“Please hurry if you care.”
“O-Okay…”
Urged on by him she prayed to herself, I hope he gets well soon. A frown crossed her face at the dark-red liquid pulsing out of the slash that caused her to cringe just seeing it. Not like anything will change by me praying for him.
“But I hope the blood stops soon,” she encouraged, looking up at his face. Rhad’s eyes were fixated on his left arm. She followed his gaze and dropped her eyes to the painfully red sheet. “…What is this?”
A dull white light radiated from Rhad’s left arm—or rather, from where Yuki’s hands touched the sheet against his arm. Too shocked to move, Rhad yanked the sheet from her hand and his arm. A scab suddenly formed over the fifteen-centimeter slice and started slowly healing from one corner following along the line of the cut. Before their very eyes the scab shrunk in size.