Conan: What alias? That's my struggle!

Normal fingers are naturally curved.

The person's fingers were slightly closed, as if they were holding something. Lin Ye had seen this gesture before, countless times in the training space.

That's muscle memory left after the hand that was holding the gun relaxes.

"So, he's an assassin too?"

Lin Ye lowered his head, looked at the "B" written in pencil on the medical record, and remained silent for two seconds. Then he closed the medical record and put it aside.

"It has nothing to do with me."

People die every day in this world, and Lin Ye is no savior of the Japanese. He chooses not to care and begins his rounds in the inpatient department at 2 PM.

The thoracic surgery ward is on the seventh floor of the hospital. The corridor is long, with single and double rooms on both sides. On the nurses' station counter is a potted green ivy with glossy green leaves, which shows that it has been well taken care of.

"Everyone looks great today." As Lin Ye walked past the nurses' station, the nurse on duty stood up to greet him, and he nodded.

Keep going.

"This is the room of the patient we treated earlier."

Gin's ward was at the very end of the corridor; it was a VIP private room. When Lin Ye pushed open the door, Gin was still unconscious, and the numbers on the monitor were no different from when he made his rounds that morning.

Blood pressure 116/74, heart rate 67, blood oxygen saturation 98%. Everything was so stable that it didn't seem like someone who had been hit by a car.

"What a tough patient!"

Lin Ye stood by the bed, looking down at Gin's face. Under the operating lights, his face appeared somewhat aged, but in the natural afternoon light, it regained that inhuman coldness and sophistication. He remembered the phone call from last night, and the aged voice on the other end.

I remember every word that voice uttered.

"Madeira, take good care of Gin."

That was the boss's order. Lin Ye reached out and touched Gin's forehead; it wasn't hot, his temperature was normal. He tucked the blanket in and turned to leave the ward.

In the corridor, a nurse jogged up to catch up.

"Dr. Hashimoto, the emergency department just called and said there's a patient who was injured in a car accident with multiple rib fractures and suspected hemopneumothorax. Please come down for a consultation."

Lin Ye paused for a moment.

He was injured in a car accident, suffering multiple rib fractures and a hemopneumothorax. He thought of Gin from last night, the surgery, and Dr. Miyagi's calm eyes.

"I'm not feeling well today, so let Dr. Miyagi handle it. I'll just keep an eye on things."

Lin Ye immediately and naturally shifted the blame.

He turned and walked towards the elevator, pressing the button for the first floor.

The moment the elevator doors closed, he peeked through the crack at the door and saw the door to the VIP ward at the end of the corridor. It was white, tightly closed, like an expressionless face.

The emergency room was on the other side of the hospital, separated from the inpatient department by a long corridor. As Lin Ye walked along the corridor, his phone rang. It wasn't the organization-issued phone; it was his own. He took the phone out of his white coat pocket and glanced at the screen—unknown number.

His heart sank. It wasn't one of Gin's unknown numbers; it was another. The number on the screen was longer than Gin's, and the format was slightly different, but the feeling of "no contact name, no location" was exactly the same. Lin Ye pressed the answer button and held the phone to his ear.

There was no sound on the other end of the phone. It wasn't the silence of a blank recording, nor was it the kind of silence where the other person is waiting to speak first. Rather, it was a quieter, more ancient, heavier, as if it came from the deepest, deepest part of the earth.

Then the voice rang out. It was old, slow, and each word seemed to have been squeezed out of the throat after a long journey.

Madeira.

Lin Ye's fingers tightened slightly as he gripped his phone. He recognized the voice. He'd heard it on Gin's phone last night, outside the operating room at 2 a.m., and it'd haunted his nightmares. Boss. It was Boss on the other end of the line.

"It's me," Lin Ye said, his voice low. There were other doctors and nurses walking around in the corridor, and he didn't want anyone to hear the call.

"How's Gin?"

"Vital signs are stable," Lin Ye responded. "The rib fracture has been treated with internal fixation surgery, and the recovery is going well. He is expected to wake up today or tomorrow."

There was a few seconds of silence on the other end of the phone. Lin Ye could hear the Boss's breathing, slow and even, like the gentle swaying of an old pendulum.

"That's good."

The boss's tone softened slightly.

"Madera, are you free? I'd like to see you."

He took the initiative to speak.

"Huh?" Lin Ye stood in the middle of the corridor. To his left was a row of floor-to-ceiling windows, and the afternoon sun shone through the glass onto his white coat, illuminating the wrinkles clearly. He held his phone in his right hand, the phone pressed against his ear, cold and heavy.

See the Boss.

See Karasuma Renya.

To meet the true mastermind of the Black Organization who had lived for who knows how many years? His mind was racing, but his voice sounded calm.

"When? Where?"

Lin Ye knew he couldn't reveal that he wanted to run away.

"No rush." ​​Boss chuckled. "You go ahead with your work. When Gin wakes up, have him bring you over."

The call was then disconnected.

Lin Ye took the phone away from his ear and stared at the words "Call Ended" on the screen for a long time. A doctor walked past him in the corridor.

Nurses pushed wheelchairs past him, and cleaners mopped past him. No one stopped to ask him what was wrong, because his expression seemed perfectly normal. A normal, professional, and trustworthy doctor stood in the corridor looking at his phone.

Like processing a work message.

"Tsk tsk..." Lin Ye put his phone back in his pocket and continued walking. His pace didn't quicken or slow down; it was exactly the same as before.

But his mind was already in turmoil.

The Boss wants to see him, so Gin takes him there after he wakes up.

What does this mean?

This means his position within the organization has changed.

He went from being "Gin's henchman" to "someone personally overseen by the Boss".

Is this a promotion or a death sentence?

Lin Ye didn't know.

All he knew was that in this world, every seemingly accidental encounter was a pre-written script. And he, a thoracic surgeon who only knew how to perform circumcisions, was being pushed forward by this script, step by step, toward the center of a stage he didn't know where.

We've arrived at the emergency room.

The smell of disinfectant in the corridor was much stronger than in the inpatient ward.

The air was thick with tension, a sense of readiness to deal with any unexpected situation. A nurse in a green first-aid uniform immediately came to greet Lin Ye upon seeing her.

"Dr. Hashimoto, the patient is in emergency room number three. He is a 35-year-old male who was injured in a car accident. He has fractures of the fourth to eighth ribs on the right side. Chest X-ray shows hemopneumothorax on the right side and 40% lung compression."

Lin Ye took the CT scan from the nurse.

I looked at it against the light.

"Where is Dr. Miyagi?"

Lin Ye knew that it was time to let the truly skilled people take over.

"I don't know... We haven't seen Dr. Miyagi since that surgery this morning," the nurse replied honestly.

"Um?"

Lin Ye suddenly had a bad feeling.