A week later, Hesta was already able to get out of bed and walk on her own.
Whenever there were no nurses around, she would sneak off to the bathroom to examine her body, checking whether the hospital had "replaced some parts"—just like they had for Miss Chiba.
Thankfully, it didn't seem like they had.
Every day after lunch, if the weather was clear, a nurse would push Hesta's wheelchair up to the surface for a walk. Hesta had assumed they were merely going up for some fresh air, but the young nurse always tirelessly pushed her through the woods west of the base, and before she knew it, more than an hour had passed.
On rainy days, they pushed her around the corridors of the underground hospital instead. Once, they ran into Ligo, who was doing walking rehabilitation alone with a walker.
The two of them were not particularly close. They nodded to each other in greeting and went their separate ways, but the tattoo on Ligo's body left a deep impression on Hesta.
During their first hurried meeting, Hesta had not had a chance to look closely. Now she saw it clearly: it was a black-feathered raven, its wings spread across Ligo's back and left arm. Its neck curved around her left shoulder to the front, its beak reaching toward Ligo's heart.
The raven's eyes were a vivid crimson. Seen from the front alone, they could easily be mistaken for the demonic eyes of some monster.
After they parted, Hesta could not help lowering her gaze to her left wrist. There was now a faint scar there, left behind when the chip had been implanted.
Next year, on her twelfth birthday, perhaps she could find a tattoo artist in Tanyi and have an eagle tattooed there too.
...But