Chapter 1719 - 239 - Give Up (1)

Chiaki's POV

I was standing outside the medbay, waiting for some kind of news about whether Sakai-san had finally woken up. Deep down, though, I already knew that expecting her to suddenly open her eyes was probably a little too optimistic, especially considering how serious her condition had been when they brought her here.

Still, I couldn't bring myself to leave.

Maybe I was being overly hopeful, but after everything that had happened, I wanted to be there when she finally woke up. I kept telling myself that I was only waiting because I needed to know her condition, but honestly, that wasn't the entire reason. I was worried about her.

While I was waiting outside, Morofuji-san and Morishita-san eventually came over to me.

"Good morning, sensei," Morofuji-san said as she approached me.

"Good morning," I replied before looking between the two of them. "Did you both sleep well?"

"We... didn't sleep," Morofuji-san admitted while scratching the side of her cheek with a slightly embarrassed expression.

"I see..." I said, although I wasn't exactly surprised by the answer.

I was concerned that neither of them had gotten any sleep, but at the same time, I couldn't really blame them for being unable to rest. One of their classmates was still unconscious after nearly dying, and knowing that had to be weighing heavily on them. Morofuji-san looked especially worried as she stood beside Morishita-san, who, even though she wasn't saying much, her expression made her feelings fairly obvious as well.

Anyone would have trouble sleeping after something like that.

There was also another possibility that had been bothering me.

Their bodies had been changing in ways that none of us completely understood yet. Perhaps they simply couldn't sleep because of those changes, or maybe they technically could sleep but their bodies no longer needed it for some strange reason. I honestly wasn't sure which explanation was correct, and that uncertainty was starting to bother me more than I wanted to admit.

It was the kind of change that made me think we should probably have someone examine us properly and figure out what was happening before we casually assumed everything was fine.

Even so, their lack of sleep was probably one of our smaller concerns at the moment. I still didn't think it was something we should simply ignore, especially when we had no idea whether these changes were temporary or something they would have to live with permanently.

"Has Ayaka woken up?" Morofuji-san asked after a short pause.

She sounded worried when she asked about her.

I understood her concern because I had been feeling exactly the same way throughout the entire night.

I hadn't slept either.

I had stayed outside the medbay all night, waiting and hoping that Sakai-san would eventually wake up. I kept thinking that perhaps the next doctor who walked through those doors would finally tell me that she was conscious, but that moment never came.

I waited for what felt like hours.

Unfortunately, waiting didn't magically make the situation change.

"Well, not yet," I said, trying to keep my voice reassuring. "Doctor Trisha told me that there's nothing we need to worry about right now, though, so we just have to give her some time."

I tried to reassure Morofuji-san as much as possible, and from the way her expression relaxed slightly afterward, it seemed that my answer had at least helped her calm down a little.

That was probably the best I could do for now.

I couldn't force Sakai-san to wake up.

Still, there was another person I was considerably more worried about right now, and I couldn't help asking about her.

"What about Asada-san?" I asked.

"Well..." Morofuji-san began, giving me a somewhat awkward smile. "I think she's okay now, but it seems like she's still not ready to come outside."

"I see..." I replied quietly.

I understood why Asada-san didn't want to come out yet.

After experiencing something like that, something that no one should ever have to go through, I couldn't expect her to simply walk outside and pretend that everything was perfectly normal. What had happened to her was horrible, and she didn't deserve any of it.

She needed time.

More importantly, she deserved to have that time without anyone pressuring her to act like she was already fine.

I couldn't even imagine what she must have been feeling after everything that had happened.

While I was thinking about that, I noticed Doctor Natasha approaching us with Leon-san walking alongside her.

Something about Doctor Natasha immediately caught my attention.

Her expression seemed strangely off.

Her face was red, all the way up to the tips of her ears, and even her walking looked a little unusual. She wasn't exactly stumbling, but her steps seemed slightly awkward, almost as though she was having trouble walking normally.

I couldn't see her face particularly well because her hair was covering much of it, and she was keeping her head slightly lowered as she approached us. Still, even from where I was standing, I could tell that something about her behavior seemed different.

I just couldn't figure out exactly what it was.

Maybe I was imagining things.

After a little while, she and Leon-san finally reached us.

"O-Oh, why are you all here?" Doctor Natasha asked, sounding slightly flustered. "Didn't Trisha already tell you that Ms. Ayaka is safe and that she doesn't require any further attention? I assure you, she's alright."

From the way she spoke, it seemed like Doctor Natasha had interpreted our presence as unnecessary worrying over something that should already have been settled.

"I'm sorry," I said, lowering my head slightly.

Doctor Natasha looked at all of us for a moment before letting out a tired sigh.

"Look, I understand that you're all worried, but you have to trust us with this delicate process," she said. "We're doing everything we can for her, and standing outside the medbay constantly isn't going to make her recover any faster."

She paused for a moment before continuing in a slightly gentler tone.

"Besides, it's really not good for you to stay out here like this. This is a place where many people were injured during the war, so we have to keep the entire area sanitized as much as possible, and that means we need to be careful about who stays around here and for how long. I'm not saying that you're unsanitary, so please don't take it personally. I'm also thinking about your well-being, because there's a possibility that you could contract some kind of sickness while staying around here for too long."

Her expression became more serious as she continued explaining the situation.

"And if that happens, we don't necessarily know how your bodies will react to it. Your physiology isn't completely identical to ours, even though you're fundamentally the same species as us, so something that we could normally treat might be considerably more difficult for your bodies to handle."

Well, I couldn't really argue with that.

She had a point.

Even though we were fundamentally the same species, our bodies clearly didn't function exactly the same way.

If we ended up contracting some kind of disease while staying inside or around the medbay, there was a real possibility that whatever treatment worked on ordinary humans from this world wouldn't necessarily work on us.