Chapter 16: The Cuckoo Occupies the Magpie's Nest (Edited) "I want to listen."...
"Your wound needs treatment," Gin said.
"Huh...Xiaoqin, I can do it myself."
Gin didn't move, but sneered, "With your horrible bandaging skills? If you move a little, the wound will break open again. Do you want to be caught here for not treating your wounds properly?"
"Hey, I told you they won't pursue us relentlessly." Lin Xi persisted for a while, but finally gave up struggling under Gin's burning gaze.
"Bear with it for a while. Your wound needs to be disinfected and rebandaged." Gin squatted down and let Lin Xi lean on the edge of the tatami. "If you can't bear it anymore, don't scream too loudly. I'll finish it as soon as possible."
"Uh, considering we've booked a double room... even if someone heard the noise, I'm afraid it wouldn't be interpreted as someone bandaging a wound, uh!"
Gin first treated the wound on his abdomen. As Lin Xi had said, the wound wasn't deep, and it didn't damage his internal organs. It was just a narrow, long cut from the dagger, running from the lower chest to the waist.
The white flesh was scratched by the sharp blade, and blood flowed across the body like the roots and veins of a plant...
Gin wiped away the blood with a towel and carefully disinfected the wound with a cotton ball.
This wasn't his first time tending to the wounds of a living person. During the Great Plague, the elderly fell ill first, and as their leader, he was responsible for their care. Pus, blood, stench, excrement... Gin was familiar with the gradual destruction of the human body by disease.
Unlike them, the body beneath his palm was young, healthy, and full of vitality, untouched by disease. What he was bandaging was a complete body, not a fragment of a body gradually being stripped of consciousness by death.
Therefore, this bandaging is not hospice care for the dying, but care and protection for the living.
This was an experience Gin had never had before.
"Are you good at bandaging?" Lin Xi asked with a sigh of relief as he watched him bandage his waist.
"Not really good at it. Just experienced." Gin placed the dirty cotton balls and blood-stained cloth strips on the plastic sheet. "After all, everyone I bandaged has died."
"...You'd better be joking." Lin Xi said speechlessly.
Gin didn't say anything, but gestured to Lin Xi to turn slightly to the side.
The wound on the thigh appeared to be deeper than the wound on the abdomen, but fortunately no artery was injured.
"You're the one. In that situation, letting them take you away is obviously better than foolishly resisting," he sneered. "Even if they get the so-called immortality elixir, they'll have to kidnap you and make sure you, as a researcher, are present when the drug takes effect, so they don't get hurt."
"Haha, then what would you do, Xiaoqin?" Lin Xi retorted with a smile, "With just two gunshots, you slaughtered everyone in the corridor. If I ended up in the Karasuma clan and was imprisoned there, you would probably find me no matter what, right? What would happen to the Karasuma clan members then? What would become of the Karasuma clan? What would happen to Baijiu Pharmaceuticals... It would be completely beyond my control."
"Oh, are you trying to say that you rebelled because of me?" Gin glared at her. "Do you think I'm the kind of reckless person who would attack public facilities and civilians with weapons of mass destruction?"
"Hiss, I get it... Please, Master Gin, don't be so hard. Disinfection really hurts." Lin Xi really suspected that this guy was doing it on purpose. Fortunately, the pain in the thigh was less noticeable than in the abdomen, but still...
"You can't even bear this little pain, you really are..." Although saying this, Gin still slowed down his movements.
He lowered his brows, knelt on one knee on the ground, and concentrated on bandaging Lin Xi's wound.
From Lin Xi's angle, he could clearly see the trembling of his silver eyelashes.
Although she is only seventeen years old, she looks more reliable than adults.
"So, how did you end up in the lab? The Soviet data indicates that the experiments on you didn't begin until you were fourteen."
Gin straightened the bandage and wrapped it tightly.
"I went there on my own."
"Huh." Lin Xi was surprised. "Why?"
"I was sick and wouldn't survive long outside. And they were recruiting volunteers at the time," Gin said calmly. "The plague destroyed my home. Thinking I had nothing else to worry about, I went to them—I thought maybe they could save my life."
"So you have an infectious disease? Will Soviet research institutions accept patients with infectious diseases?"
"If I had another infectious disease, they probably wouldn't accept it. But..." Gin paused, "They were the ones who spread that disease. So of course they have vaccines and countermeasures. I discovered this by chance later."
"They released the virus, infecting everyone in a region, and then collected data. The researchers at that institute included not only Soviets but also Americans—mostly Americans. They were probably using human experiments to develop some kind of biological weapon, the kind that could be used on the battlefield."
"I see... That's why you know English... What happened next?"
"Later, I created an explosion. All the core researchers died in the harmful gas, and most of the research data was destroyed." Gin said with a calm tone, as if he was talking about something that happened to someone else.
From then on, he no longer kept track of how many people he had killed.
After all, people in this world will always kill each other. In the case of insufficient resources, this is fate.
"No one suspected me. I was fifteen years old at the time, a well-behaved, healthy, and high-quality experimental subject." He continued, "Then the incomplete experimental group was sold to Japan by the Soviet Union. I originally wanted to escape during the handover, but I accidentally discovered that the drug they injected me could enhance my physical fitness."
"So you stayed?"
Gin nodded.
This is truly a beast-like thinking... Lin Xi clicked his tongue.
"So, what about you?" Gin put the medical tools aside and sat on the ground facing Lin Xi. "I told you about my past, so you have to tell me about your past too. What were you doing before coming to Japan?"
Lin Xi blinked, trying to get away with it: "My story is far from as exciting as yours—"
"I want to listen." Gin interrupted her.
"Okay." Lin Xi sighed and pretended to recall something, but he was actually making it up in his mind.
"Well, I was born in China, in an ordinary family. I'm an only child. My mother is a businesswoman, and my father is a teacher. As an ordinary person, I grew up healthy. Then...something happened. My parents passed away, leaving me alone. After that, I went to study abroad alone. And then, I came to Japan."
"It's over. That's my story."
Is that so? Gin couldn't find any reason for her to start an organization from a story like this. The part about her parents' death was probably true, but a normal person couldn't shoot someone with such a nonchalant expression. She didn't even blink when she killed the man with her pistol.
So, what was this accident she was vaguely discussing? Was her decision to found the organization related to the cause of her parents' death?
In the end, was she truly ready? Embarking on this path meant enduring all kinds of pain. Killing someone was a minor issue; the injuries, deaths, and betrayals of those around her were inevitable. How could this guy, who seemed barely injured and couldn't even bandage himself, face all this?
Regardless, in some ways, her will was quite resolute. Gin glanced at her wounds. He had noticed from earlier that both of Lin Xi's wounds were on her left side. The wound on her waist was curved, extending from left to right. The wound on her left leg was short but deep, and had been stabbed with a dagger. And when Gin saw her, she was holding the dagger in her right hand.
——Both in shape and strength, the two wounds looked like they were cut by Lin Xi himself.
A man who had never been seriously injured cut himself twice with a knife—his hand was steady, the blade parting flesh and drawing a fair amount of blood, but it wasn't fatal. This guy had always exuded a mad, life-threatening disregard for life, yet he wasn't some desperate criminal. Instead, he seemed to enjoy life, appreciating delicious food and the latest massive video game consoles...
A contradictory guy.
However, since she cut herself, what about the two consecutive gunshots?
Did the gun go off accidentally when she fought back?
She hid her gun in her sleeve and didn't seem to intend to use firearms to resolve the conflict. The two people lying on the ground were still breathing, but they had lost the ability to move.
After knocking the two men unconscious, she cut herself with a knife...
By now, Gin had finally come to his senses. Lin Xi was probably planning something, deliberately using the knife to make herself appear incapacitated. The gunshot was not something she had anticipated; it was a complete surprise.
Then… he was moved by the two gunshots and rushed into her room. I wonder what she was thinking when the intense gunfire rang out in the corridor? I'm afraid her expression must have been very difficult.
"I'm sorry." Gin said to Lin Xi, "I disrupted your plans."
The boy's eyes dropped. His sincere apology surprised Lin Xi, and his slightly lost expression even made her feel as if her nonexistent conscience was being condemned.
"Oh, it's okay, Xiaoqin," she said. "It's my fault for not communicating with you before."
"Actually, those people were sent by Rum. Well, ostensibly, they were sent by his brother... but in reality, the leader of the guard team truly obeys Rum's orders. After Karasuma Renya dies, the guard team will officially change hands and become the organization's strength... So when I saw you kill them all, I felt a little sad."
"But it doesn't matter anymore. They're nothing compared to you. Besides, this is not bad either—let Rum and Madeira handle the rest while we rest outside. Haven't you seen Kyoto? This is a great opportunity to travel."
"Think of this trip as your graduation trip. After that, when Rum officially takes over the Karasuma family, you'll probably be very busy~"
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