Heart Of Fire; Veins Of Ice | Kimetsu No Yaiba Fanfic (Kyojurou's POV)

Chapter 42

The smell of alcohol and antiseptic wipes fills his senses, its sharp, clinical and distant from him, just like who Himura was.

"Do you know what your weight and height is?"

"177cm and 72kg." This sparks some memories of which Shinobu had always told him to know this sort of information in case of emergencies as such.

"Blood type?"

"A positive."

"I'll give you the normal dosage of regional anesthesia first and we'll see how it goes. In the meantime, tell me if anything hurts," Himura speaks, as she uses a clean towel to clean his back, which he feels highly uncomfortable with how impromptu this operation was, but nevertheless, follows her instructions to try and relax.

Then comes the sharp pain.

It's a burning feeling, followed by freezing pain which paralyses his nerves.

Five minutes pass, as Himura runs her gloved hands along his back and she doesn't see a reaction from him in the slightest. Taking it as a sign to go, she begins the process.

"Do me a favour and stay still. And take the time to regenerate as well," Himura speaks in a listless tone.

"You do know how to trigger it, right?" Himura asks him, as he hears the sounds of metal scraping against metal as she set some of her tools down and picked the others up. Having absolutely no idea what was going on, he could only trust her blindly.

He didn't sense any killing intent from her, and she told him she was trying to help him. Masahiko trusted her enough as well.

An hour goes by without problem.

Then complications arise.

First of all, it felt as if the anesthesia was wearing off. No, not wearing off, he couldn't move or feel anything below where she had injected him, but pain. His limbs wouldn't move, which indicated that it indeed managed to paralyse his movements, but he could feel pain.

He can feel every single fibre of muscle that was being stabbed, pulled, realigned, his bones and spine being shifted, and broken again only to heal and regenerate, which drains his energy. In his mind, fire burns away the pain to make way for renewal.

Breathing hard, as sweat poured and dripped down his neck and face onto the ground. How was he supposed to react?

"I think it's wearing off?" He asks, as Himura turned to look at him.

She sets her tools down on the table, as she proceeds to fetch more anesthesia, preparing it quickly, within the span of three minutes, but it is an agonising three minutes that he has to wait for her to prepare it.

This time, she opts for general anesthesia and promptly administers it to him through his right arm, finding a vein as she injects the liquid into his arm. And she repeats it on his left arm, using the same dosage, which was the entire syringe for both injections.

As his limbs shook, he had enough control to restrain himself from the primal urge and instinct to turn around and gouge her throat out. He shuts all of his thoughts into a locked box. He could bear with this. He had taken on worse before.

Fire burns in his soul.

"I should have anticipated the fact that you, as a demon, would be able to absorb some of it and nullify its effects. I've given you twice the normal dosage for the anesthesia. I want you to count down from 50 verbally," Himura states, as she returns and cleans the syringe.

"50, 49, 48, 47, 46..." The anesthesia was like a tide of water by the side of the sea, dragging him into its depths and numbing the pain, but it's until 20 when he realises that he can't fully be pulled under. Or at least that was what he thought at the moment.

"I don't.. Think... it's going ...to...work." His eyes are half lidded, but that's where the drowsiness stops. He feels a pair of cold hands around his neck, forcing his head down against the pillow rest, refusing to let him look up.

Silence reigns.

His wounds heal, and she wipes away the blood with a cloth, and he rests his head on the bed.

"You're...still awake." She brings a hand down, snapping her fingers in front of his face, but it takes several snaps for him to regain his awareness and give her a response.

"Hm?" he looks up drowsily at her. "Stay still for the time being." Himura comments before she pulls away the tray of bloody blades and towels as she leaves the room. Her words pierce through the haze in his mind, as he wills himself to regain his focus and begins to think.

He can't understand her. He doesn't at all. Why exactly was she helping him? She herself already didn't like him, and while she could have just let him suffer in pain throughout, she gave him more painkillers instead. That was nearly enough to excuse what she had said to him earlier, but not quite there.

People were complicated.

He gives up trying to understand her for the moment, as he pulls one of the clean towels from a chair and drapes it over himself in order to retain his body heat. Why couldn't she be straightforward? Why couldn't anyone be? Like be as straightforward as Kamado-kun, and save him the effort of deciphering the hidden meanings or cryptic messages. He finally has time to think about what she had said.

Demons were sought after in other countries? That was the most incredulous thing he had ever heard of in years.

He didn't know if he could trust her, but... he had never seen what the situation was outside of Japan as well. It was not entirely an impossible thing.

What would they be used as? They were hard to control, mentally unstable, psychopathic murderers, feasted on human flesh, and had abilities different from that of normal humans. They were demons. No one wanted demons.

He decides to screw Himura's orders and stand.

Picking himself up, he swings himself over the bed as he takes a step, this time, it is completely painless and it is smooth, as he takes another, and another.

He smiles.

A/N: I am by no means a doctor, so the medical procedures are probably wrong.