The next day, at eight in the morning, inside the largest hospital in Aswan.
"Avdol."
Joseph pushed open the door and entered the ward, greeting his companion on the hospital bed. "Are your injuries healed?"
"Yeah, I'm more or less fine now."
Avdol waved to everyone from the bed. Notably, he had already changed back into his usual clothes. Aside from the bandages around his neck, he looked almost completely unharmed. "I can leave with you at any time."
"What about Kakyoin?"
Jotaro Kujo glanced at Kakyoin Noriaki in the neighboring bed. "How is he doing?"
"I'm afraid his condition isn't optimistic."
At this, Avdol's expression immediately turned grave. "His left eye wasn't damaged at the eyeball itself, so it should recover after some rest. But his right eye has probably already..."
"Nani?"
Everyone's faces changed instantly, especially Polnareff's. "Does that mean he'll..."
"Be permanently blind in his right eye?"
Joseph had probably guessed the outcome already, and his brows were tightly furrowed.
"Please don't worry, everyone."
However, Kakyoin Noriaki spoke up on his own, his tone unexpectedly steady. "Rather than thinking that permanently losing one eye is terrible, it's better to think that I managed to save one eye... If you look at it that way, it's actually a good thing."
"Kakyoin..."
Everyone's expressions grew complicated at his words.
"When I was in middle school, a classmate once hit me in the eye with a baseball. I nearly went blind then."
Though Kakyoin Noriaki's eyes were covered in bandages, his attitude remained remarkably positive. "I had already prepared myself for blindness back then. But in the end, I only shed a few tears and recovered quickly. So don't worry, everyone. Don't I still have one perfectly good eye?"
"But this is still..."
"It's fine. Once the bandages come off