Schedule Update
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From now on, the release schedule here will be daily.
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Ren had been placing medical supplies on the shelves for twenty minutes when the System chimed in.
Why are you doing that.
Organizing the clinic.
You have cosmic horror abilities. You have ten tentacles, a palm mouth, a needle tongue, and enough eldritch surgical equipment in your inventory to perform operations that would make conventional medicine weep. What exactly are those bandages for.
Aesthetic purposes.
That is not a real answer.
It is. The shelves look empty without supplies on them. A clinic should look like a clinic.
You told me the veins on the exterior were not aesthetic. You complained about them for twenty minutes.
That is different.
*How.
The veins were your idea. The gauze is mine. There is a meaningful distinction between your disgusting decorative choices and my professional organizational decisions.
Your professional organizational decisions consist of placing cotton balls in a glass jar and calling it interior design. You have a chainsaw familiar. You have performed surgery on a Legendary-rank hunter's inner demon. You once removed a divine law from a cosmic entity's blood while running at low HP through a ruined city. And right now you are arranging cotton balls.
They look nice in the jar.
I want you to think about the trajectory of your life. I want you to sit with it.
I am not going to sit with it.
You went from Chief Resident surgeon to cosmic horror entity to the only person in recorded history to survive a causality declaration from Gregory Hood, and the activity you chose for this Tuesday morning is cotton ball arrangement.
Are you done.
I am building to a point.
The point is that I should not arrange cotton balls.
The point is that you are, fundamentally, a disaster of a human being who somehow keeps surviving things that should kill him and then celebrates by doing the most mundane possible activity he can find. You arranged the cotton balls. You labeled the gauze by size. You are now considering whether to alphabetize the ointments.
I was not considering that.
*You were about to. I can see your thought patterns. You were three seconds from alphabetizing.
...They would be easier to find alphabetically.
*I cannot believe you are real. I genuinely cannot believe I am load-bearing inside someone who alphabetizes ointments.
If you are going to insult me, at least be useful. Tell me if I should put the lidocaine before or after the—
*I am not helping you alphabetize. I have standards. Low ones, given that I live inside you, but they exist.
You are the worst.
You are placing a decorative plant on a shelf in a clinic that has organic pulsing veins on the exterior walls. You do not get to tell me what the worst is.
Ren looked at the small plant. He had found it in the Dao Guild lobby and taken it without asking.
It adds life to the space.
*The space already has life. The walls are alive. The floor may be developing a pulse. You do not need a plant.
The plant is normal. I want one normal thing in here.
*You want one normal thing in a clinic called the Ruin Gospel with a blood-written greeting note on the neighboring door and a recording of you cursing at nothing while a Vice Guildmaster sits in your examination chair. That plant is not going to balance that.
It is a very nice plant.
*It is going to die because you will forget to water it.
I will not forget.
Entry three in your file: takes plant from guild lobby without asking, insists he will water it, will definitely not water it.
I will water it.
*I am setting a reminder. In thirty days I am going to say "the plant" and you are going to say "what plant" and I am going to play this conversation back at you.
Shut up and let me organize.
*Fine. But when you use the gauze in an actual procedure and I am proven correct I am going to be unbearable about it.
You are already unbearable.
*I am load-bearing AND unbearable. I contain multitudes.
The front door of the clinic opened.
"Excuse me. Is the doctor here?"
Ren set down the roll of tape he had been considering and walked out to the front.
.
.
.
Chu Xinghe stood in the entrance holding a cloth-wrapped object, having spent the walk over preparing himself mentally for whatever he was about to see. It had not been enough preparation.
I watched the footage on the guild surveillance system, he thought, keeping his expression perfectly neutral. I thought that would help. It did not help at all.
The mask was worse in person. On screen it had looked unusual. In a room it occupied a specific physical space, featureless porcelain with hollow eye sockets. The mouth had just appeared on it as the Doctor walked in. No strap, no band, nothing holding it to the face. It simply sat there, fused to the skin, smiling at him.
What is that, he thought. What is that. Are you attempting to transcend the natural order of facial expressions.
"I'm here," Ren said. "Who is it?"
"Greetings, sir." Chu Xinghe completed a small bow, smooth and natural. "I'm Chu Xinghe, Vice Guildmaster."
"Ah." Ren's mask-eyes widened slightly. "No need to be that formal. I'm the Doctor. Call me Doc or something. My status here is lower than yours."
"I insist," Chu Xinghe said, genuinely. "Status is irrelevant. We are all guild members here."
Huh. Ren looked at him for a moment. I quite like this guy. He seems nice.
"Sure," he said. "Come on, examination room."
"Ah, wait, I just came to return—"
Two blood-red tentacles emerged from Ren's coat and wrapped gently but completely around Chu Xinghe's shoulders, and carried him into the examination room before he finished the sentence.
.
.
.
.
Ren opened the medicine cabinet and scanned the shelves. After a moment he found what he was looking for and pulled it out.
A roll of gauze.
He turned and held it up.
See, he thought at the System. Aesthetic item. Useful.
I will not be acknowledging this.
You petty little—
"Excuse me, Doctor, I actually just came to return your—"
"WHAT THE FUCK DID YOU JUST SAY," Ren said, out loud, at full volume.
Chu Xinghe's mouth closed. He sat very still on the examination table.
"I— sorry," Ren said, after a moment. "I wasn't talking to you."
Chu Xinghe looked at the room. Then at the mask. Then at the room again.
You don't need to pretend, he thought, with the strained patience of a man choosing to be charitable. There is nobody else here. It is only the two of us. In this clinic. With the pulsing veins on the walls. There is no one else you could have been talking to.
"Bite this," Ren said, and placed the gauze between Chu Xinghe's teeth before he could respond.
Chu Xinghe looked down at the gauze.
"Wh—"
"What comes next is going to be unpleasant," Ren said, calmly and informatively. He placed both hands gently on either side of Chu Xinghe's head, fingers settling just in front of his ears.
The needle-thin tongue emerged from his right palm.
It moved toward Chu Xinghe's ear.
"Mgh—"
This is a standard diagnostic procedure, Chu Xinghe told himself, with great effort. The Guildmaster chose him. There is a reason. There is a reason. There is a reason.
The needle entered.
"AGHHHHHHH—"
The gauze flew out of his mouth and hit the far wall.
The clinic was quiet for a moment.