Three Years
----"AIDS."
This was not a colloquial name at all, but a medical term.
Its common name was actually something else.
"AIDS..."
Kikuoka Seijiro murmured the name of the disease, and Asuna felt her head spin. She found it difficult to breathe, and her whole body seemed to freeze, leaving her unable to react.
Luo Zhen lowered his eyes as well and said nothing.
Only Kurahashi's voice rang out again.
"AIDS is no longer as terrifying as the general public imagines. Even if someone is infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, early treatment can suppress the AIDS virus for ten or twenty years. With proper medication and thorough health management, they can even live a life no different from the one they had before infection."
As he spoke, Kurahashi paused briefly, then sighed and continued.
"However, newborns infected with HIV have a much lower five-year survival rate than adults. It was an indisputable fact. After learning that the entire family had been infected, Kotonoha's mother seemed to have considered dying together with everyone else. But her mother had been a Christian since childhood, and after overcoming the initial crisis with the help of her faith and her father, she chose to continue fighting the disease."
In other words, from the moment Yuuki was born, she was destined to fight the virus in order to survive.
Throughout her life, she had never possessed a healthy body. All she had was the grim reaper that constantly accompanied her.
"After escaping the most dangerous period, the petite Kotonoha was able to grow up safely and even enter elementary school. Although taking large amounts of medication regularly was extremely difficult for a child, nucleoside reverse transcriptase inhibitors also had very strong side effects. Even so, Kotonoha continued striving because she believed that her