Chisen stood with his back to him, adjusting the temperature of the water bath. His cane rested against the lab bench, and the way he bore weight on his right leg looked natural-more natural than at any point in his previous rehabilitation.
"Once you finish that Awakening Agent, I'm doing the first field test," Guy said.
Chisen did not turn around.
"Provided your ribs have healed completely before the field test.
Otherwise, I'll give the slot to a Jonin fresh out of meniscus surgery. At least his meniscus will heal faster than your ribs."
Guy snorted from the doorway.
It was not a laugh, but a sound expelled through his nose, somewhere between defiance and acknowledgment.
Then he walked out, touching the hallway wall with one hand. He did not need the support; he simply had a habit of slapping the wall at corners-a movement he had practiced on the training grounds for over a decade and could not shake even in a hallway.
In the third week, Akamatsu Kinpei's antibody gene sequence was finally fully decoded.
Chisen spent two entire days stationed in front of the gene sequencer.
The sequencer was an old capillary electrophoresis machine that had sat unused for years. When they dragged it out of the Research Institute's special equipment warehouse, a thick layer of dust coated the inside of its casing.
Shizune helped blow out the dust with compressed air, replaced two capillaries, and calibrated the laser detector. It took three days of tinkering to get the old machine running again.
When the sequencing results appeared on Chisen's computer screen, he was drinking his fourth cup of tea that day.
The tea had gone cold, and the leaves had settled at the bottom. He took a sip of cold tea and spat the leaves back