Chapter 03
SUE'S REVIVAL
That night, I discovered something interesting about myself –
"My body has a back-up battery."
And so, there came five things causing turmoil inside my cerebrum.
NUMBER ONE: If I were to be asked what happened right after they found me along that dusky alleyway, half-dying from a one-and-a-half-inch-wide stab wound, and before I opened my eyes to find myself already inside the recovery room of the university hospital, lying on an inclined bed with ventilators and vital sign monitors hooked on me, I wouldn't answer. I wouldn't because I couldn't.
How and when did I get here? My bloodied school uniform had been changed to a white hospital gown, my hair dried and combed decent enough to be considered 'neat', and my stab wound carefully stitched, disinfected, and gauzed. Was the lacunar amnesia an adverse effect of the midazolam they gave me pre-surgery? Or was it simply the effect of some extreme case of catecholamine overdose secondary to running God-knows-how-many kilometers down the streets of Shibuya to save my life? Either way, arriving at the most logical conclusion did not require some extensive differential diagnosis – Amnesia isn't a cliché when you realize that your heart just 'froze'. I consider it as a psychogenic reaction to some mega weirdness. Perhaps during that brief, unremembered interval, my brain suddenly decided to join the Stopping Organs Club and… well…. stopped too.
NUMBER TWO: Why in the world am I still alive? Not-so-long ago, I experienced how it was like to be 'dead'. I felt really scared for the very first time in my life. I was so frightened with the thought of 'dying'. There were still a lot of things I wanted to do – work as an S.A.T. agent, practice medicine to make okaa-san proud, become the best wife to My Destiny – Kojima-sama, give birth to six little Jet Li-kicking Kojima kids, and grow up to see this good-old-world evolve into something more interesting. The main point was that death just couldn't happen yet.
Is that why my heart came to the rescue? I never knew that a human heart could also act like a circuit breaker – or was it only true for right-sided hearts? There was no way of knowing.
NUMBER THREE: Sen is a donkey – a descendant of a wild ass. Screw his drool-inducing rectus abdominis, his Cloud Strife-motorcycle-super-moves, and his peculiar blue-black eyes. Even the hottest donkey God in Heaven created does NOT turn me on. The fact that he wanted me dead does not make things between us any cooler either.
NUMBER FOUR: But why on earth did Sen have to lie? Why did he 'rescue' me when he actually wanted me dead? Was he really trying to kill me? What if he's NOT trying to kill me? What if Sen came there to save me from those members of the Black Sigma Syndicate who think that I ran away with that weird 'white container'?
If that was so, then how was he able to know exactly where to find me? I remember running for my life without any particular direction. The rain was pouring so hard, my uniform soiled, and my hair so ruined that I couldn't even recognize myself. When my world dimmed during that split second, I thought I was really going to die… until his hand reached for me. Sen piloted my grand escape onboard a fancy-looking motorcycle like I was some damsel-in-distress starring in a 007 movie. What if Sen wasn't who he seemed to be? Who is he? Who is Sen?
NUMBER FIVE: Wait…
Why the heck am I thinking about Sen at a time like this anyway?
