Flight of Cendrillon

Chapter 2: Deceitful Love

           

"Gakupo, wake up!  There's someone at the door!" a girl's voice shouted.

"Mmm..." he mumbled, still in the thrall of a pleasant dream, "But we're having such a wonderful date together!"

The purple haired man suddenly found himself tossed out of the lower level of his bunk bed when the sheets were roughly tugged from him, leading to a hard landing on the floor below as his loose hair spilled around him. 

"Ah Rin!  I was dreaming I was about to kiss a woman with the loveliest brown eyes..." he muttered.

But the blonde-haired girl responsible for his predicament stomped her bare foot on the floor, shaking her long white night gown from the force.  "GAKUPO!  What if it's an emergency!?"

Indeed, the loud pounding knocks from the front door seemed to indicate as much.  Gakupo stood up and dusted himself off from his rough awakening, throwing a pair of brown pants on under his pajama shirt to at least try to look respectable.  He waved Rin as he left to greet whoever was calling on him at such a late hour.  "Go ahead and get prepped in case its serious... at this hour, it usually is..."

He glanced at the clock on his wall – it was already 3 am...

He tucked his shirt into his baggy pants as he wandered out of his bedroom, the sleep still dragging at his vision.  He slipped on a pair of black shoes, thinking momentarily of brewing a pot of coffee on the stove as the knocking continued.  "I'm coming, don't you worry!" he shouted, interrupted by a powerful yawn.

Passing through his small operating room, he quickly eyed the tools – everything in its place.

Finally, he made it into the shabby kitchen – miraculously clean today.  Well, not really a "miracle" given that Rin usually did that herself, when she wasn't making Gakupo help her out.  Housework was often a low priority for him... outside of the surgery of course, where the slightest contamination could cause infection.  That he maintained with rigorous devotion.

As he opened the door, he saw a curious sight.  A young pigtailed girl in a fancy white dress, with splotches of blood across the front, a single glass shoe on her right foot.  In her arms she held an unconscious man with blue hair, clutching him tightly as she tried to keep him propped up.

"Please... he... he needs help... he was nearly murdered... he'll die... You're supposed to be the greatest surgeon in Estmarch..."

Gakupo took one look at the blood seeping from the wound on his back and staining her dress... and the panicked but lovely eyes of the girl begging him for aid.  "To the operating room!"

He laid his new intake down on his stomach, quickly pulling off the young man's shirt and jacket as he gawked at the deep knife wound.  Given the location, he would have expected the attacker would have punctured one of his organs... and the stillness of the patient's body only seemed to confirm that to the doctor.

"Miss... I doubt he's alive..."

He couldn't see any signs of breathing either...

"He won't die, not know... he's... asleep..."

She sat in a well-worn red chair, fingering a small, empty glass vial.  Frankly, he would have expected greater alarm from the poor girl, but perhaps it was just shock?  That must have been what left her in such an obvious state of denial... she didn't even seem to notice her one bare foot...

Gakupo carefully touched the man's neck, trying to feel for a pulse.  Nothing.  He pulled out a stethoscope, only to confirm the lack of a beating heart.  "I'm sorry... there's no vitals..."