Katori's Soliloquy

The four Captain-level officers all turned to look at him at once, and Lin Nan felt his heart skip a beat.

Had they discovered him!?

He steadied himself. When they made no further move, he realized they weren't looking at him, but at the body on the bed behind him.

"His spiritual pressure is fluctuating. Is he about to wake up already?" Yan Yuan Jinle said, surprised.

"Well, with such a powerful soul, it makes sense he'd recover quickly," Zhi Xing Nai Wu Gang said. "We should be going. If we keep talking, the boy might hear something he shouldn't."

Katori nodded. "All right. If anything comes up, you can have a squad member send word, and we'll arrange another time to discuss it."

The others stood, nodded their farewells to Katori, and left the room.

"Did my spiritual pressure fluctuate because I got worked up just now?" Lin Nan wondered, mulling over Yan Yuan Jinle's words. "There's no time to waste. I need to get back to the real world."

But how?

His body was lying on the bed, but was his consciousness observing this scene from the Playback Room, or was it really here in the hospital room?

After watching the door close, Katori Batsunsai waited a moment before slowly rising and strolling over to the bed.

When he saw Katori approaching, Lin Nan reached out in a panic and grabbed at his own body on the bed, trying to wake himself up before she noticed something was wrong.

The moment his hand "touched" his body, faint mist seemed to swirl at the corners of his eyes. The next second, everything went black. The direction of gravity abruptly shifted, and he felt the solid surface beneath his back.

A regretful thought crept into Lin Nan's mind: Why was I in such a hurry? Even if I stayed asleep, she wouldn't do anything to me...

Katori came to the bedside and activated her spiritual sight to take a look. In her experience, the spiritual pressure of an unconscious patient usually became briefly unstable just before they woke. But when she checked, she found that the patient's spiritual pressure, which had fluctuated a little earlier, had settled down.

Seeing no sign that the patient would wake anytime soon, Katori simply pulled over a chair and sat beside the bed, studying the young man her division had spent ten whole days searching for.

Looking at Lin Nan's tightly closed eyes and his now-loose white hair, she murmured to herself, "Not bad-looking. From the way you look, you're at most a hundred and thirty or forty. So young...

"You're mine now. I hope we'll work well together in the days ahead!"

Lin Nan kept his eyes closed. He heard every word beside him, but didn't dare open them.

What is with this captain? Why is she talking to herself beside my bed?

"I'm Katori Batsunsai, captain of the 8th Division, and your future captain... You know, I never wanted to be a captain. I preferred martial arts... But my father and eldest brother died in battle, and I was the only one left who could restore the glory of the Cloud Style. So I had no choice but to bring the remaining Cloud Style disciples into the Court Guard Squad...

"...After we defeated the Quincy invasion, the Court Guard Squad suffered terrible losses. Nearly half the members of the 8th Division died, and most of them were my Cloud Style disciples...

"Ever since then, I've had a hard time believing in myself. I was afraid I wouldn't be a good captain, that I'd let down my fallen squad members and betray my father and brother's dying wish. So I've always hoped I could make life better for those who are still alive, and live well on behalf of those who died.

"...But we were still better off than most! Back then, entire divisions were wiped out, their very existence erased...

"But do you know how hard it is to make life a little better for your squad members? There are always people destroying our hopes and making things difficult for us. The rebels are fighting us tooth and nail, and Central 46 is scheming behind our backs. The Court Guard Squad's situation keeps getting worse..."

Katori's voice drifted like willow fluff as she quietly rambled beside Lin Nan's bed.

Lin Nan kept his eyes shut, unable to see her expression. But just from her voice, Katori sounded like a little girl who'd had a tiring day at school, confiding her feelings to a stuffed toy.

"Of course, things will get better. I can't keep thinking about sad things, can I? Besides, happy things are happening too...

"For instance, I found you! You've got a really special constitution, and your spiritual pressure has great potential. And you're so handsome...

"...Ah, being a captain is great... Now I can always find excuses to keep all sorts of handsome young men by my side. Tall and handsome, aloof or cheerful, all kinds..."

Katori grabbed her braid and toyed with its end as she spoke, swishing it above Lin Nan's face as though teasing a kitten. As she pictured keeping all sorts of young men by her side, something seemed to cross her mind, and she suddenly blushed.

"Ah, I'm suddenly so embarrassed! Thank goodness you can't hear me..." She covered her flushed cheeks with both hands and bowed her head. Even the visible rims of her ears had turned pink.

Meanwhile, Lin Nan struggled to hold on, trying not to let his expression change or his body tremble.

And just now, something soft and fuzzy—hair, maybe—seemed to have fallen on his face and then slid off. It tickled, but he didn't dare scratch. He could only pinch his thigh beneath the blanket and grit his teeth, keeping his face perfectly still.

For the first time in his life, he realized how agonizing it was to pretend to be asleep! This woman was getting funnier by the minute! It was so hard not to laugh! I'd rather she just kill me!

Katori kept her hands over her face and didn't notice Lin Nan's expression stiffen for a moment. She took some time to compose herself, then went right back to rambling:

"You're not allowed to laugh at me! I've been a captain for more than two hundred years, but I'm still a normal girl. What girl doesn't like handsome men? There's nothing wrong with that. If Saito were here, she'd probably have thrown herself at you already. Compared to her, I'm pretty reserved..."

As far as Katori was concerned, she hadn't had a chance to speak from the heart like this in at least a hundred years. She had to maintain a captain's dignity in front of her squad members, and when leading them into battle, she had to deal with all kinds of missions and fighting.

Besides, she needed someone to confide in. There were always things she couldn't say to an inanimate object. At the very least, it had to be a living creature like a cat or dog to make her want to open up.

At last, the moment had come: she'd found someone who was unconscious. He couldn't respond, but he couldn't spill her secrets either. Only now could she set aside her captain's identity, become once more the young woman who loved martial arts, and share with herself all the little secrets she'd kept bottled up for over a hundred years.

As she rambled aimlessly and played with the loose hairs at the end of her braid, she suddenly caught a tiny movement out of the corner of her eye. At the same time, a woman's intuition sounded an alarm.

Her gaze shifted from the ends of her hair to Lin Nan's face.

Lin Nan felt as though he'd been holding out for thousands of years. His leg was probably bruised from all the pinching. But there were limits to anyone's endurance; making it for several minutes was already impressive. So, at an unguarded moment, the corner of his eye twitched slightly.

Katori's voice abruptly changed from gentle and soft to the low, cool tone of the 8th Division captain she'd used before. "You're awake, aren't you?"

The sudden change in her voice snapped the last taut thread in Lin Nan's nerves, and his mind went blank for a moment.

What happened? Wasn't she just a sweet, gentle young lady? How did she suddenly get that mature, sultry voice?!

He opened his eyes on instinct, and met Katori's scrutinizing gaze.

Katori's eyes seemed to see right through him. In a low voice, she asked, "How long have you been awake?"

"I... just woke up..."

"How much did you hear?"

"Not much... really..." Lin Nan answered with an awkward, sheepish smile.

Under the unrelenting gaze of those beautiful, almond-shaped eyes, he suddenly felt bad about lying to her. But telling the truth now would be asking for trouble, wouldn't it?

Sure enough, Katori Batsunsai's eyes went wide, and her lovely brows knit into a delicate crease. Her face flushed crimson as she declared:

"I'm going to beat you to death!"