The green glow faded from the nurse’s hands, and Hikaru felt the last of the wound seal itself shut beneath skin that was still tender and new. She lay on the bathroom tile with her chest exposed and her roommate standing three feet away and a medical professional kneeling over her body, and she wanted very badly to sink through the floor and keep falling until she hit something that would kill her properly.

"Can you sit up?"

The nurse’s voice was clipped. Not unkind, but the kind of professional neutrality that Hikaru recognized from years of navigating systems designed to process people rather than help them. She pushed herself into a sitting position, one arm crossing over her breasts in a gesture that felt pathetic and necessary at the same time.

"I need you to look at me, Miss Tanaka."

Hikaru’s head snapped up. The nurse was studying her with an expression that contained no surprise whatsoever about the body beneath the bandages or the name attached to it. This woman had probably seen a hundred secrets more interesting than Hikaru’s in her career. Maybe a thousand.

"You walked five flights of stairs while hemorrhaging from a wound deep enough to require emergency intervention. You attempted to treat a laceration that had severed two minor blood vessels using bathroom supplies and sheer stubbornness. If your roommate had arrived ten minutes later, we would be having this conversation in the morgue instead of your apartment."

Hikaru said nothing.

"I understand that students have reasons for avoiding medical attention. I’ve worked at this academy long enough to know that privacy concerns exist and that not everyone wants their information in the system. But you need to understand something very clearly." The nurse leaned forward, and her voice dropped. "I am bound by confidentiality laws that predate this academy’s founding. Nothing I see in this bathroom goes into any report unless it directly threatens the safety of other students. Your physical condition is your business. Your poor decision-making, however, is very much my business."

"I understand."

"Do you? Because your file says you’re one of the top combat students in your year. Your professors describe you as intelligent and disciplined. Neither of those descriptors matches the person who decided to bleed out alone rather than walk into my clinic and accept help."

The words landed like punches, each one finding the soft places between Hikaru’s ribs where her armor didn’t reach. She stared at the grout between the tiles and counted the bloodstains that were already drying into brown.

"You need to be better, Miss Tanaka. Not for my sake. For yours."

Hikaru nodded. The movement felt mechanical, disconnected from anything real happening inside her skull.

"Now. Your wound is closed, but your body has lost significant blood volume. You need fluids, rest, and at least forty-eight hours of reduced physical activity while your system replenishes what you lost. I’m recommending you withdraw from any high-intensity training until Monday at the earliest."

The words hit her like ice water.

"The gate run on Friday. Can I still participate?"

The nurse stared at her. In the doorway, Hikaru heard Naomi make a small sound that might have been disbelief.

"Are you serious? You are injured. We need a formal statement about the incident that caused this wound. Your body still needs to heal and replenish the blood you lost. Friday is in two days."

"I can’t miss this."

Hikaru kept her eyes on the floor. The tile was cold against her bare skin, and she could feel the places where the healing had left her nerves raw and oversensitive. Everything felt too bright and too loud and too much.

"Miss Tanaka."

"I can’t miss this."

The repetition sat in the air between them, heavy with something the nurse probably recognized. Hikaru had heard that tone in her own voice before, years ago, standing in front of a different authority figure and making a different impossible demand. Some things couldn’t be explained. Some things just had to be understood or not understood, and either way the outcome remained the same.

The nurse exhaled slowly. "I will need to clear you personally before you enter any gate environment. That means you come to my clinic Friday morning at oh-seven-hundred for a full evaluation. If your readings are even slightly below acceptable parameters, you do not go. This is non-negotiable."

Hikaru nodded again.

"And you will provide a statement about the sparring incident. Third-year students do not get to slice open first-years and walk away without consequences, regardless of what ability overlap exists."

Another nod.

The nurse stood, gathering her supplies into a bag that Hikaru hadn’t noticed her carrying. The green glow from her healing ability left afterimages in Hikaru’s vision, floating spots of light that made the bathroom feel even more surreal than it already did.

"I’ll send someone to check on you tomorrow morning. Drink water. Eat protein. Sleep." A pause. "And for the love of everything sacred, if you get injured again, come to the medical center. I promise you that whatever you’re afraid of us finding is less important than you staying alive."

The nurse left without waiting for a response. Her footsteps crossed the apartment, the front door opened and closed, and then the silence rushed back in to fill all the spaces she’d vacated.

Hikaru sat on the bathroom floor with her arm across her chest and her back against the shower stall and her whole life in pieces around her.

The pink-haired girl was still standing in the doorway. Naomi. Hikaru had learned the name during orientation but had never spoken to her directly. She was one of Monroe’s collection, part of the strange constellation of women who seemed to orbit around the lottery winner like moons around a planet. Her eyes were wide and uncertain, and she kept looking between Hikaru and the bloodstains on the floor like she was trying to solve a math problem that didn’t have an answer.

"I should..." Naomi’s voice trailed off. "Do you need anything? Water, or..."

"I’m fine."