Goku slipped inside the room again as he quietly sat beside Sanzo's bed.

It was awful, he felt awful. It was even worse compared to the time when Sanzo got hurt to protect him from Rikudou. Back then he heard later from Hakkai and Gojyo what happened after his limiter broke, but as expected... he couldn't remember anything about it. Just like that time in Keiun.

Though, as with the incident in Keiun... he did remember at least what he felt before his limiter got broken. Back in Keiun, it was his fear of being abandoned; with Rikudou, it was his fear of losing Sanzo. But compared to those two incidents, this time... he remembered the bloodlust of the Seiten Taisei when 'that person' was released.

It scared him, the thought that he could've hurt Sanzo with his own hands. The very sun who had saved him from the darkness! How could he do that? How could he have hurt the most precious person in his life when all he ever wished to do was to protect him?

Looking at Gojyo's injuries just made him feel worse. If Gojyo had been hurt THAT much, what kind of damage could he have done to—Hakkai reassured him day-by-day that the Seiten Taisei hadn't been able to hurt Sanzo THAT much in the end but that never eased his mind. Because Sanzo still ended up worsening his condition just to stop him from continuing to go on a rampage (because neither Hakkai nor Gojyo could stop him.)

Goku ran a hand over Sanzo's cheek. Please wake up, he cried in his heart.

if anything should happen to you, I wouldn't know what to do...

.

"That was tasty!"

Sanzo sighed to himself as the four of them headed back to their rooms. Surprisingly, dinner turned out to be quite peaceful. Unlike usual, there was less squabbling between Goku and Gojyo over food and Gojyo mostly allowed the monkey (and him) to eat in peace without making a big scene at the restaurant. He wondered if perhaps Hakkai had sounded the cockroach out prior, in consideration of his own recovery. Though it would still be weird if Gojyo actually did what was told without some kind of resistance. Well, all was good then. Though he wished that this could happen all the time.

Seeing Goku and Gojyo having a go at each other may be fun to watch at times, but it kinda gets tiring if it happened too often.

He snapped out of his daze suddenly, just in time to catch Goku passing out beside him. He was about to cry out in concern over the boy... but the moment he heard the sound of Goku's snores, Sanzo shook off his concerns.

"What the—? You should've waited a bit until we reached the inn before crashing down to sleep!"

Hakkai let out a long sigh. "Finally, Goku allowed himself to fall asleep, huh?"

"Well about time!" chimed Gojyo as well as Sanzo frowned at them.

"What did you two mean?" he asked before Hakkai explained to him. Apparently, for the past three days... Goku hadn't been able to sleep properly. Almost every second of the day and night... the boy had sat at his bedside, worrying about whether or not he would awake from his slumber. And despite how the kid almost always constantly be hungry all the time, Goku barely ate anything for the last three days. Gojyo even added that he even had to force-feed Goku to make sure that the boy wouldn't end up starving himself in the process!

Sanzo sighed as he slung the monkey over his back to carry the boy back to the inn before Hakkai gave a big fuss about how he shouldn't be overworking his body.

"You've only just woken up this morning!" Hakkai argued.

He just scoffed at it before turning to Gojyo.

"Oi, cockroach! Switch rooms with me tonight, and don't make too much noise. I'll have the monkey stay with me tonight."

"Heh, such a concerned Papa—!" Gojyo immediately clammed up as Sanzo's gun went up to his face. Gojyo shrugged before turning around obediently. "Cheh... as if you'd actually shoot me down and not mis—!"

Right away Gojyo started to 'dance' in an odd way back to the inn as Sanzo kept shooting at the kappa's feet to make the man leave.

And the man kept on grumbling loudly, back at their rooms as Gojyo took his things to the other room and left the two alone. Sanzo ran his hand over Goku's head as the boy slept beside him.

"Idiot monkey..." he muttered softly before taking out his cigarette to smoke beside the window.

Honestly, he just can't stop worrying about this kid...

xxx

Nii Jianyi just smiled to himself as he reattached all of the wires and monitoring devices on Kougaiji. What a reckless boy, he thought, considering the red prince hadn't just undergone one surgery... but TWO. The first was to fix whatever injury Son Goku had inflicted on the boy. The second was the small surgery on the prince's brain to make him more susceptible to the minus wave as well as hypnosis. The man leered at the unconscious prince as the young rabbit lay naked on his operation table.

Well, at least the main 'package' was undamaged. There were still a lot of things he needed to adjust to make the prince strong enough to take on Son Goku without getting hurt again. He needed to add an even stronger obstacle for their dear old Kouryuu to face. Or else it wouldn't be so fun for him.

"Eh, come to think... I still have that boy as well. One of these days I need to go down and check on him again..."

"Oh? What's this boy you're muttering about now, Dr Nii?"

He turned his head around to see Instructor Wang staring back at him. Nii just waved his hand at the old demon before laughing. "Ah, it's nothing. Just a kid I happened to find a few years ago..." He shrugged.

Now that he remembered about that kid, it was about time for him to send over some new toys for the kid to play with. It would be even better if along the way that kid could cross paths with the so-called Sanzo party and fight each other. That should be a pretty interesting fight.

Don't you think so, Koumyou?

xxx

"Don't let go of your precious person..."

Dokugakuji let out another loud groan as he started regretting his decision to let Kou do whatever he wanted to do back in the desert. If only he hadn't let Kou recklessly challenge Goku for the Maten scripture... his prince wouldn't have gotten himself hurt pretty badly. And then he wouldn't have had to leave Kou in the hands of that suspicious Nii Jianyi.

And now he hadn't been able to see or hear any news about Prince Kougaiji. He knew that the surgery on the young man had already finished a few days ago. But other than that, he had no idea how his prince had been doing. And what other things those suspicious 'researchers' might be doing to Kou... unknown by everyone else.

"Dokugaku—?"

Dokugaku immediately got up as he dashed over to Yaone. "Yaone?" he exclaimed. "Where the hell did you go all this time? What happened to Miss Lirin?"

When Yaone started telling him what happened to them while he and Kou had been away, Dokugakuji couldn't help feeling even worse than he already did before.

So not only did he fail to protect Kougaiji... he also failed to keep Yaone and Miss Lirin safe as well.