The grayish-white film on his glasses had begun to crack, just like the cracks on his blade: fine,
interwoven cracks, like a spiderweb.
He looked at Guy through those cracks and remained silent for about three seconds.
"Yes," Chisen said. "I lied to you."
Guy's lips moved. He wanted to say something, but Chisen did not let him.
"But not because I doubted your ability to handle it." Chisen took off his glasses and wiped the lenses with the ragged hem of his white coat. This time, he failed to clean them, because there was no clean patch left on the hem. Wiping them only made the smears worse. "It was because, in that emergency, your brain needed to make the most important tactical decision in the shortest possible time.
"If I told you I had taken a standard Neural Stimulant and might go into cardiac arrest once it wore off, that information would have occupied some of your brain's processing capacity. Your decisions would have slowed down. Even a fraction of a second could have changed the outcome.
"So I chose the option that best optimized your decision-making efficiency-lying to you.
"That is my standard procedure as a medical Ninja performing battlefield triage."
He put his glasses back on.
The lenses were smeared. Everything in his field of vision had a blurred, grayish-white halo, as though he were looking at the world through frosted glass.
The expression he saw on Guy's face was not anger, blame, or heartache. It was something complicated, something rarely seen on Guy's face, as though many emotions had been crushed together and mixed into something he did not know how to handle.
Tenten lay on the ground with her head resting on Neji's backpack. She saw Chisen with her right eye.
Her lips moved.