Ch4: Life of Miyu

In my dreams, my father was always a cold person, yet while I was awake he was anything but. He was a man who always tried his best to smile. He would keep smiling even as he burnt dinner. He would keep smiling even as he broke the new air conditioner Fuji-nee brought us in his attempt to install it. All the things he couldn't do, my brother had to do in his place, which were quite a lot of things.

He wasn't someone that could be called reliable despite all his efforts, but he was sincere about raising us. When my brother would sneak out of bed to roam the streets at night as he did every night, father would always be there watching over me. Even so, he would consciously turn his gaze away from mine.

Far from a gentle golden amber like my brother's, my eyes were an ominous red, like the fire in my nightmares. Father's eyes weren't like that either. Sometimes I couldn't help but think that I was fake.

"Are we ….. a real family?" I had forced myself to ask him one night.

On that night, he did not turn his gaze from mine. His face was weary and the bags beneath his eyes were pronounced. He did not answer my question. He simply hugged me as he cried. I never understood him. He never exchanged words with me, but the warmth he gave me was real.

There were many things I had wanted to say to him. There were many things I wanted to learn about him. There were many things…..but I never got the chance. He was simply gone one day. He had left on a trip…...to Germany. He would return some months and he would be gone the next few. One day, he was gone….. and he didn't go to Germany.

When I asked my brother where he had went, he did not turn his gaze from mine. His face was weary and the bags beneath his eyes were pronounced. He did not answer my question. He simply hugged me. I didn't understand. Shirou didn't say anything, but that warmth was real, but I understood it would not last. I understood something in me. The terror of being alone.

I didn't want to lose anything.

Logically, death is the natural state of the world. Everything approaches stillness as entropy increases. All lives will end eventually just like how the stars in the sky will cease to shine. Stars were nothing but giant balls of flaming gas, but humans found them beautiful, linking them in their heads to form constellations, giving them meaning beyond what they were. If stars were beautiful, then life must have been too. It must have been many things, but today I was called out of school. I enter a makeshift operating room.

"Sorry for calling you here under such short notice, but…..all the hospitals in this city have been flooded with patients lately," is what old man Raiga says to me as politely as he can.

It wasn't reported on the news, but there were things brewing in the city other than gas leaks and murders. The doctor that worked under Raiga was apparently caught up in something. Even so, those things were irrelevant as Fuji-nee was sprawled in front of me.

"My boys were able to restart her heart, but…."

I could sense his desperation. He couldn't get a hold of a doctor, so he had called upon me. My brother has already been informed about my whereabouts and what I was asked to do.

"Understood."

I place my hand over her chest. I invoke one of the few things my brother had taught me.

"Trace on."

I grasp the structure. In her beating heart were 7 shards of glass, the mitral valve has been damaged, it opens and closes irregularly, bulging towards the left atrium. Those are the facts I can gleam, but there is a difference between knowing a problem and solving it.

If I don't want to lose anything, I have to be determined. I already have my answer. Anesthetic has been applied. I place the scalpel upon her chest and make the first incision.

Live or die.

The outcome will be determined in the next minute. Any slower and complications will arise. Peeling back the skin and muscle, I see them with my own eyes.

A shard in each atrium. One in the left ventricle. The other 3 had been stopped by the fibrous pericardium. From structural grasp, I knew there was a tiny piece stuck in the mistral valve flap. Tweezers in my right hand and suture needle in my left. I take aim at the 6 targets I could see.

Remain centered…...breathe…...focus…...as the stars have taught me…

I ignore the itch in my left hand. My hands steady and the flow of time slows…..the right hand extracts the shards and the left hand sutures as the thread dances between all my free fingers.

One, two, three, four…...five...six…..pieces have been removed and 5 sutures I have performed. I left the opening in the left atrium so I could reach the mitral valve, but I don't know how to fix such a thing. It's beyond my current ability…...

Remain centered…...breathe…...focus…...as the stars have taught me…

The seconds feel like minutes…...

Even so, I know my desired outcome. I know what I have at my disposal. The inputs and outputs are known. I need to move forward. I load it up. The Black Box in my head will arrive at the answer as long as I have the magical energy to feed it.

...As the stars have taught me…

My shining fingers move on their own to actualize what I desire. I reach it. In a matter of seconds the Mitral valve is functioning normally again. I close up the atrium.…..All that's left is to close up the initial incision.

The operation is complete. Fuji-nee is bandaged up and Raiga credits our family account with a hefty sum.

I stay around Fuji-nee's bedside for the next few hours to check for any complications and to make sense of what exactly I had done for future reference.

The sky had become dark. Even though the car is moving, the inside feels still. A testament to the suspension system. Sitting in the back seat alongside me was old man Raiga.

"I don't want to admit it, but I was worried for a moment when your hands stopped, but…...you saved Taiga," he says with a smile, "you're quick with your hands, just like your father."

The comment doesn't make any sense from what I know about my father.

"Well, he couldn't fix anything…...but believe me….his hands were fast with the way he handled …..," he continued to ramble. He certainly had energy beyond what his age would suggest.

"Still….that Healing Touch of yours…...are you a Child of God?" he asks of me.

I was only half aware of what had happened in that makeshift operating room. My hands were still trembling.

"Child of God?" The term was familiar for some reason.

"Like a descendant of Aslepi….Asclepius? Well whatever you are, it doesn't matter," he says with a laugh. In his line of work, it was imperative not to dig into things too deeply.

I can still feel the buzzing sensation in my hands. I realize now that I may have done something irresponsible. Regardless of how close we were to the Fujimura family, they were not of the moonlit world. Raiga was just your mundane Yakuza boss. If my brother found out, he would definitely scold me.

"Still, why did you entrust your granddaughter's life to me?" I ask.

"I know you've been practicing on injured animals and my go to surgeon recently got into a traffic accident. Almost ran over a foreign girl, no passport or anything. Quite a lot of them these past few weeks…..my idiot granddaughter tried saving one and you know what happened to her….…," he angrily exclaims.

He recounts the tale of how his granddaughter 10 years ago ran about the city while a serial killer was still at large, chasing down a wine barrel thief. His voice is mixed with both pride and anger. The old man was both energetic and scary. Even without knowledge about magecraft, he was someone you didn't want to mess with. The motto of the Fujimura Group was "Anything Goes". By following that motto, he could do what others deemed insane. After all, he put his faith in me, a 10 year old to perform surgery on his granddaughter. He was someone that was hard to predict. It was fortunate that he was a family friend because he would make for a most troublesome enemy.

"Serial killers 10 years ago, human traffickers today…..I may growing old, but younguns these days think they can walk all over my territory….well enough grumbling from me….. here's your stop. You siblings better take better care of yourselves ya hear!"

"Understood."

I step out of the fancy black car and stand in front of the entrance way to the Emiya residence. I stare down at my arms and realize I'm still wearing my white doctor's coat. Taiga had always berated me on my taste in clothes, but what I was wearing right now, she exclaimed suited me. I needed to get changed…..Bear pajamas or cat pajamas? I'll know when I get inside.

As I walk in, I notice that the lights were on. Did my brother's patrol end early today? Even though the news was warning people to return home early with the recent crime wave, my brother was someone who always ignored curfew without fail, so it couldn't be him.

"I shouldn't have trusted that seaweed head. No one's here!" was a high pitched voice I couldn't recognize at all. It must have been an intruder. The bounded field Kiritsugu had set up only warned the occupants of outsiders with malicious intent, but neither me or my brother were home these past few hours…..

It could be one of those victims of human trafficking that Raiga talked about, but that was a best case scenario. In my pocket in a leather sleeve were 7 cards my brother had entrusted to me. I couldn't fight as well as my brother, but I could temporarily overwrite my existence with someone that could.

"... no one's here," the intruder mumbles to herself.

I walk into the living room and see the intruder in tears by the table in the center. Those tears stop once she turns her gaze to me. She had hair as white as snow that sparkled in the light, the complete opposite to the black hair I had possessed. Her eyes were an ominous red like mine. Her build and stature…...she must have been around the same age as me. For a moment, my thoughts drift to my brother's favorite pair of swords. What struck me was that right now, such a girl was smiling at me. She genuinely looked happy.

"So you haven't summoned it yet have you?" she innocently says to me.

I sense it in the air. "Something" was present. Something similar to the cards in my pocket.

"Well, it would be no fun if everything ended too quickly."

She continues to say incomprehensible things as she plucks a strand of hair from her head forming a wire-frame sword. I reach for my pockets. One hand over a card and another over my cell phone. Whenever I call my brother, he'll stop everything he's doing and run back home without exceptions, which was why I usually never call him.

The tension in the air was such that the waiting tone on my cell phone might as well have been a siren, yet the one in front of me simply widens her smile.

"Let's play a game of tag until Onii-chan comes back," she says.

I invoke the simple words.

"Install:Saber."

I dawn the regal Briton armor and take the Holy blade in hand just in time to parry the sword she had just fired at me.

"Huh?" my assailant exclaims. She did not comprehend what was happening and started to panic. Most people are at their most dangerous and impulsive when faced with the unknown. The girl in front of me was no different.

"Berserker!"

It was only an instant, but I'm knocked away, crashing through wood and glass in the process. The dust settles and I can see the starry night sky above me. I was in the yard. I was bleeding in a few places, but my wounds quickly closed up. I feel the familiar warmth in my chest. Such was an ability of the Saber install that put it above the other 6 in most situations. It was then I saw it.

An ominous giant with a glowing red eye, Berserker. The class that boasted the highest mana consumption in exchange for power while also dulling one's ability to think. Those two downsides arguably made it the worst of the 7 to use, but right now, that Berserker was faithfully listening to the commands of that girl and didn't need to think.

"Huh? You're still alive? Well, that's good, no that's great! I can't have you die too easily. I need to teach you thoroughly just how good you've had it up until now," she says with a giddy tone.

The giant charges at me with a massive archaic sword hewn from stone. I'm able to deflect the first few blows, but even though I'm deflecting them, the raw power behind them hurts my arms. Then it comes, the swing I had no choice but to block. I hurtle through the air like a rag-doll and careen through the rusty door of the storehouse which my brother likes to call a workshop.

"I'm not going in there. I have you for that, Berserker," was the bell I could hear above the ringing in my ears.

Live.

I don't want to lose it. I don't want to lose anything. No one wants to lose anything. We had already lost our father, I don't want to lose my brother and my brother doesn't want to lose me. That's why I can't die here, but the blood leaking from my body disagrees.

The giant cleaves the roof off along with the walls and the storehouse is no more. If I hadn't been knocked on my back, I would have lost my head.

I ignore the pain as I pick myself up, using a Holy sword to prop myself up, but that was when I noticed the warm glow around me and the intricate circle drawn on the floor.

"That's mother's…," I could've sworn I heard my enemy say from afar.

A loud crack resounds and the giant is pushed back. My left hand burns, and the faint marks on my left hand become more pronounced and together form the shape of a sword.

Appearing in front of me, between me and the giant was an older girl garbed in armor just like mine, or rather it would be more accurate to say I was garbed in armor modeled after hers. Blue and silver. Practical, yet elegant. The regal blonde girl stares at me with her emerald eyes.

"Are you my master?" was her bell-like voice that carried with it immense authority.