2026-03-12: Scars Run Deep
- Log: Scars Run Deep
- Cast: Hyousuke Suzuki, Tae Takemi
- Where: Yongen-Jaya - Back Alleys
- OOC Date: 2026-03-12
- IC Date: Mon Oct 08
- Summary: With the wounds sustained during the fight at the sanitarium still in the process of healing, Hyousuke pays a visit to Tae for a checkup.
- TW: Mild medical depiction of wounds
<Pose Tracker> Tae Takemi has posed.
The clinic of Tae Takemi is not what many would expect. Walking into the narrow corridor that makes up the lobby, a red couch alongside the side of the wall is the only seating, underneath a rusted bulletin board and across from a potted plant. The clerical area has a window for shutter, with morbid posters along the walls, such as a teddy bear getting jabbed with needles to advise vaccinations and flu shots.
Sitting behind the window is Dr. Tae Takemi, who while wearing a doctor's coat, does not appear the type. She's wearing a choker attached to several necklaces, a one-piece black dress underneath her coat, bare legs, and stiletto heels, her blue-black hair cut short.
She's tabbing through a... it's not quite an official magazine, but a punk 'zine, as she waits for the next customer. There's a skull on the front. It's very cool, and also very indie. Seems to be keeping her attention, at least.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke paused before the threshold. He told himself that there was nothing to think about. It was just a checkup. It was just a quick session to see if his wounds needed any further treatment. It was just a routine visit to someone that, by all accounts, he should have been able to trust. He knew, intellectually, that there was nothing more to think about. But his eyes were still distant, and his hand still trembled a fraction of an inch before the handle. A brief spark of will flared up, unsmothered by the darkness that had pervaded him during the conversation with Ichika, and forced his hand to open the door. It was too late to back out now.
Hyousuke stepped in slowly. His feet were leaden, requiring great effort to heave forward, and every step he took past the door - one that he clicked gently shut - echoed like thunder in his ears. He forced a polite expression into his features, smiling and nodding and giving her a quick greeting as he moved towards a seat, but it was all stunted and awkward. It was like he was trying to move in clothes that were a size too large, cumbersome and heavy upon his frame, or trying to perform some delicate task underwater. It was like he had to puppeteer his own body, and force himself in.
"You're Takemi-sensei, aren't you?" Hyousuke asked, trying to sound casual - as though just making sure he had the right address - but the words were spoken with uncharacteristic gingerness. His gaze, in spite of his best efforts to keep eye contact, drifted away a little. First due to whatever plagued him, and then because of the overall aesthetic she bore. The necklace, the magazine, the air of the clinic... It all felt rather different to the cold and sterile environment of a hospital ward.
<Pose Tracker> Tae Takemi has posed.
As Hyousuke enters the clinic, a bell rings briefly, alerting Tae to put down her magazine. She does not straighten up.
As he comes up and greets her, she does sit up a bit finally, looking over him. "That's my name." A pause.
"Are you walking in, or are you the guy who called for a check-up?"
She doesn't seem to care either way, but that is not a *lack* of care. She's checking to see how badly Hyousuke may be injured, and she can tell he seems a bit younger, so her face isn't stone cold.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke nodded as firmly as he could manage.
"Yeah, I'm Suzuki." He said flatly. Upon realising that that was precious little information with which to work, given how little he'd deigned to give her prior to the appointment, he shook off his jacket so that she could get a better look at him. The majority of the injuries he'd sustained during the fight at the sanitarium had since faded, and were not worth paying any great attention to. The bruises had begun to fade into faint patches of blue and grey, while the smaller cuts and scrapes had begun to scab over to the point where any further covering was wholly unnecessary.
The more serious ones had bandages still wound firmly - but not tightly - around them. The edge of them could be seen peering past his collar, but if Tae deigned to look closely at the plain shirt he'd worn to the appointment, the faint outline of bandages wound across his chest could be seen.
"I got into a fight." He said, hoping that was enough to satisfy any need for an explanation. "And I got cut up pretty bad. Nothing's broken though."
<Pose Tracker> Tae Takemi has posed.
Tae nodded once, and then glanced as he took his jacket off. After a few moments taking appraisal and listening to his explanation, she rolled her chair back. "Alright, then. Let's bring you to the back so I can get a closer look."
Standing up, she grabbed the necessary forms - who is she kidding no one ever signs the forms, washed her hands real quick, and then moved to unlock the side door. If Hyousuke follows, he'll find himself led to a mid-sized room with a desk containing computer and science stuff, more of those morbid posters, and a boiler in the back to heat the place up. She pulls a curtain, covering the boiler, and then gestures to the bed to the side.
"Take a seat, get comfortable if you can. I'll need you to show me the wounds, so do that in whatever way minimizes your pain."
A pause. "Also, I may have to touch your wounds at points. Don't worry, I usually don't bite." An attempt at humor, maybe provide some casual comfort.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
It took Hyousuke a moment to register that she'd not pressed for details. The look he'd worn while speaking remained frozen on his face, disturbed only by the stray blink, until he shattered the ice by speaking in acknowledgement.
"Sure, that's fine." Came his response. Curt as it was, he delivered it with a fairly neutral - if hurried - tone, and followed dutifully behind. The morbid posters only added to the somewhat strange atmosphere the clinic held, and - consciously or not - his body began to ease a little. Every glance at the oddities scattered about the place, everything he noted that was incongruous with normal doctors' offices, even the way she treated him... it all seemed so utterly *different* to what he'd expected.
He hadn't the time to ruminate on it. Tae asked him to show the wound, and he knew it was in his best interests to oblige. He sat upon the bed easily enough, and slowly - cautiously, even - he began to peel the shirt from his body. As he did so, layers of clean white, stained only by the faintest hints of that day's sweat, were bared to her. The bandages had been applied by a practised hand, that much was clear. The firmness was just enough to keep it all in place without interfering with the healing process, the winds were even and flat, the fabric was clean - save for what mark the earlier trek to the shrine had left - and the faint smell of disinfectant hung in the air. It was hardly the first time he'd cleaned and covered such a wound, some might have noticed.
"What are you, a vampire?" Hyousuke retorted, perhaps in an attempt at easing himself into the procedure with his own attempt at humour. The difference afterwards was only slight, but he acted just a little more easily at her effort to chip away at his guard. Whether it was enough to be noticed was anyone's guess, however, especially with something that was - to him - as dull a task as removing bandages. When finally he could show the full extent of it, there was little doubt that he'd been telling the truth. The cuts were only flesh wounds, but each one was too deep and too straight to have been an accident. The largest one - a long and red thing, reaching from the edge of his right pectoral to the lowest of his ribcage's left side - only cemented the fact that someone had cut him with, and on, purpose.
Healing magicks and first aid had healed the worst of it. The wounds looked more serious than they actually were, and he did not seem to be in any significant pain. But the distant look he gave as he gave once everything had been cast aside... that, in its own way, might have been worrying.
"Don't bother trying to drink any of this if you are." He play-warned. "There was enough garlic in the last bowl of ramen I ate to kill Dracula."
<Pose Tracker> Tae Takemi has posed.
As Hyousuke removes his shirt, Tae looks from her chair. "You did a good job bandaging it, that's a good sign."
The vampire quip gets her to smile toothily on purpose, revealing she is not, in fact, a fanged vampire. "Nope, these are all human."
As he removes the bandages, though, she gets to work. Looking over the cuts, dating them, she focuses on the longest one. "How old are these?" she asks, moving to feel the margins. She grabs a cotton swab and checks wound depth, frowning.
"I'm not sure we can stitch these without risking infection, which I'm already surprised you haven't had. And even if we did stitch them, I can't promise they won't scar. You got *very* lucky, but I am glad you came here, because we should be able to further clean and stop them from getting worse."
A normal doctor would probably scold him further. Instead...
"You'll want the wounds to be rechecked as they heal, which myself or any other doctor can do. But, you'll live. I'd buy a lotto ticket if I was you, honestly!" More of that humor, more of that attempt to show that, hey, this is life, it sucks sometimes, but such is how it goes.
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
"Not that old. A few days?" Hyousuke said. It wasn't a lie. It had only been a few days since the fight at the sanitarium, and that meant the wounds weren't particularly old ones. But they'd clearly not been stitched, no matter how thoroughly he'd bandaged and cleaned them. He almost sounded flippant about the whole thing - like he'd had some secret method for healing wounds without use of needles and threads. But that flippant tone disappeared abruptly when she mentioned scarring, and in an effort to keep himself from starting, Hyousuke gripped with skin-paling strength upon the edge of the bed.
It wasn't hard to see the muscles in his torso tense, even if it was for only a moment. He'd bared them all to her, after all. Even with that sense of panic running him through like a dagger, Hyousuke nodded in confirmation, and even offered a chuckle and response at her closing joke.
"I think I used up all my luck on these staying clean. Bet I'd get hit by lightning if I walked out right now."
It was a hollow thing, more a loud exhale than any genuine expression of mirth, but at least he'd been listening to her. And in listening to her, he'd appreciated her respect for his privacy. It gave him room to breathe. It gave him a chance to compose himself during the lull in their conversation, and ask his question a little more calmly than he might have with a more 'normal' doctor.'
"Is there anything you can do to stop them scarring?" He asked, a little more emphatically than he'd have liked, but still coherently. He'd also deftly sidestepped how lucky he'd been to not have suffered infection. If she believed that was all there'd been to it, he was in no hurry to disavow her of the notion. "I've been keeping them clean and covering them up, but I..." His eyes looked down and away for a moment. One unblemished, one marked from brow to cheek with a canyon of rent flesh. An old wound, from another life, and another blade. "...I wanna know if there's anything else I can do about it."
<Pose Tracker> Tae Takemi has posed.
Tae's expression becomes briefly sympathetic as Hyousuke tenses about scarring. She doesn't say anything, because that's his business, though she nods to his own counter joke.
But that question about scarring. This was important to him.
"I can't promise anything," she admitted. "But we can clean it the best we can, and there's some bandaging tips I can give you. You'll want to be redoing it daily, for example." A small sigh.
"I'll do the best I can, alright?"
<Pose Tracker> Hyousuke Suzuki has posed.
Hyousuke was silent for a few seconds. The moments seemed to stretch on for aeons, however, and he wondered just what he was supposed to say. Eventually, he nodded, quiet and pensive while he did so.
"Alright." He said. He sounded somewhat disappointed - he'd been hoping for a guarantee. More than just her doing her best. But it was better than nothing. Besides, she'd been honest and respectful with him from the start. That alone counted for more than he could realistically put into words. "So what do I have to do?"
<Pose Tracker> Tae Takemi has posed.
As Hyousuke agrees, Tae moves over to start getting the ointments and other supplies she'd need to try and stall the scarring.
"Alright, just hold still..."
It'd take a bit, but at minimum, the pain would go down. But the scarring was still up in the air. At the least... she did the best she could.