I'll go with you

Untitled Part 3

Sadao had never in his life seen so dirty a man. And he had seen the general after Manchuria, so that said a lot. He fetched a bucket of hot water and stared disapprovingly at the man for a moment before proceeding to wash him. 

The man's skin, though rough with exposure, was of a fine texture and must have been very blond when he was younger. He had cleaned the man's breast bare and proceeded downwards to his rock hard abdominal muscles that had no doubt been maintained for years together. He was very careful while cleaning his face. With the wet towel, he slowly traced his remarkably sharp jawline that hid dextrously behind his long rough beard whose colour strongly resembled the risen sun at dawn now that it had also been washed. His coarse hair had a texture similar to that of the sand on the beach he often played in as a child, which made it rather satisfying to wash. Sadao decided that his front side was sufficiently clean and turned him over. On his back, he saw traces of black markings and began to clean his back more vigorously, curious to see what it was. He had cleaned enough to know that it was the tattoo of a bird of some sort. 

Sadao stared incredulously at the tattoo after he finished cleaning and flung the towel across the room in frustration. The tattoo had been that of a bald eagle. Just when he had thought this man couldn't possibly get more American! 

Sadao was now so repulsed by this man that it almost made him reconsider his decision to operate. Almost. The seaweed packing had come undone and fresh blood poured furiously and mercilessly out of the wound, and Dr. Sadao Hoki was not about to let a man- an American man, but a man nevertheless- bleed to death in front of him in his father's bedroom. 

Before he could change his mind, he unfolded a sterilized towel upon the floor of the tokonoma alcove, and put his instruments out upon it. He immediately saw that there was no need to fetch towels now, for the imbecile had already bled through the kasuri and ruined the mat on which he was placed. However, upon seeing the condition of the actively dying man, the mat was the least of his concerns. 

He removed the packing entirely, which caused the blood to flow more quickly than before. He peered into the wound with the bright surgeon's light fastened on his forehead. 

"The bullet is still there," he said to himself with cool interest. "Now I wonder how deep this rock wound is. If it is not too deep it may be that I can get the bullet. But the bleeding is not superficial. He has lost much blood." 

He did not wish to give his patient an anaesthetic. He wanted the man to suffer through the operation and he wanted the man to feel every bit of the pain that was about to be inflicted on him. It would serve the man right. He was the enemy after all, why did he deserve a painless treatment? Why did he deserve treatment at all? 

"Groan," he muttered, "groan if you like. I am not doing this for my own pleasure. In fact, I do not know why I am doing it."

He glanced once more at the piteously thin face of the foreigner. His lips were twisted and his features were contorted in pain. His gaze lowered to his neck, just below his ear where he saw deep red scars that looked as though his skin had been clawed out by an animal. His gaze lingered on them, and he remembered seeing other such scars on his back that were cleverly masked by the tattoo that he did not think much of at first. But one thing was clear now- the man was indeed suffering. Perhaps not nearly as much as he deserved, but more than Sadao wanted him to. And that was enough. 

Seeing that the man was beginning to stir, he saturated the cotton and held it up to his nostrils to act as an anaesthetic. At this moment he felt the tip of his instrument strike against something hard, dangerously near the kidney. All thought left him. He felt only the purest pleasure. He probed with his fingers, delicately, familiar with every atom of this human body. His old American professor of anatomy had seen to that knowledge. "Ignorance of the human body is the surgeon's cardinal sin, sirs!" he had thundered at his classes year after year. "To operate without as complete knowledge of the body as if you had made it — anything less than that is murder."

"It is not quite at the kidney, my friend," Sadao murmured. It was his habit to murmur to the patient when he forgot himself in an operation. "My friend," he always called his patients and so now he did, forgetting that this was his enemy.

Then quickly, with the cleanest and most precise of incisions, the bullet was out. The man quivered but he was still unconscious. Nevertheless he muttered a few English words. 

"Guts," he muttered, choking. "They got...my guts..." 

"Hush," Sadao said.

The man sank again into silence so profound that Sadao took up his wrist, hating the touch of it. Yes, there was still a pulse so faint, so feeble, but enough, if he wanted the man to live, to give hope.

"But certainly I do not want this man to live," he thought. He put away the anaesthetic. 

He turned as swiftly as though he had never paused and from his medicines he chose a small vial and from it filled a hypodermic and thrust it into the patient's left arm. Then putting down the needle, he took the man's wrist again. The pulse under his fingers fluttered once or twice and then grew stronger. 

This man would live in spite of it all. 

A/N: I know too much of this was copy pasted straight from the book, but even if Sadao had done this on his own, the operation procedure would have been the same, which is why I did not edit those parts. And I may have gone a little overboard with the imagery but like I just did it to make it very very clear that something will happen between these two at some point. Because like, literally no straight guy is gonna look at his nemesis' beard and be like "oh this is the colour of the risen sun at dawn! no homo." Sadao, my sweet summer child, you are extremely queer. I do not take criticism on this.