The clinic was a modest building on the outskirts of a small fishing village, distinguished from its neighbors only by the red cross painted on its wooden door and the herb garden that grew wild around its foundations. Yuki led me inside with the practiced efficiency of someone who'd done this many times before, settling me on a examination table that had seen better decades.
"Grandfather?" she called out as she began gathering medical supplies. "I've brought a patient."
An elderly man emerged from a back room, his hair white as mountain snow and his face marked by the kind of deep lines that spoke of a lifetime spent smiling. He took one look at me and frowned, not with hostility but with the professional concern of someone assessing a complex medical case.
"What happened to him?" he asked, pulling on clean gloves.
"Knife wound between the ribs," Yuki replied, carefully cutting away my bloodied shirt. "I stabilized the bleeding, but he'll need stitches and observation for internal damage."
"Knife wound," the old man repeated, his eyes sharp despite his age. "And how exactly did you come across someone with a knife wound in our peaceful little village?"
Yuki's hands paused in their work. "I... was out collecting herbs when I heard fighting. By the time I found them, he was already wounded."
It wasn't exactly a lie, but it wasn't the full truth either. The old man—her grandfather, presumably—gave her a look that suggested he knew there was more to the story but was willing to let it slide for now.
"I'm Dr. Hayashi," he said to me, beginning his own examination of my injuries. "And you've already met my granddaughter, it seems."
"Thank you for treating me," I said quietly. "I know I'm a stranger, and—"
"Nonsense," Dr. Hayashi interrupted, his fingers probing gently at my wounds. "A healer treats whoever needs healing. That's the most basic principle of medical practice."
As he worked, cleaning and stitching with the careful precision of long experience, Yuki busied herself with preparing tea and organizing supplies. There was something peaceful about the domestic routine, a sense of normalcy I hadn't experienced in years. The clinic smelled of antiseptic and dried herbs, with underlying notes of the ocean breeze that drifted through open windows.
"You're lucky," Dr. Hayashi said as he finished the last stitch. "Whoever wielded that blade missed your lung by less than an inch. A little higher or deeper, and my granddaughter would have found a corpse instead of a patient."
"Maybe that would have been for the best," I muttered, the words slipping out before I could stop them.
Both Yuki and her grandfather looked at me sharply. "That's a terrible thing to say," Yuki said, her voice carrying a note of genuine distress. "Why would you think that?"
How could I explain? How could I tell this kind, innocent girl that the world would genuinely be a better place without me in it? That every day I continued to exist was another day the scales of justice remained unbalanced?
"Some people cause more harm than good," I said carefully. "Sometimes death is preferable to a life spent hurting others."
"That's nonsense," Dr. Hayashi said firmly, settling into a chair beside the examination table. "I've been practicing medicine for forty years, boy. I've seen murderers and saints, heroes and villains, and everything in between. You know what I've learned? People aren't fixed things. They can change, grow, become better than they were."
"Not everyone," I said.
"Everyone," Yuki chimed in, bringing me a cup of tea that smelled of ginger and honey. "My grandfather taught me that. He used to tell me stories about the patients he'd treated over the years—some of them had done terrible things, but many of them found ways to make amends."
I accepted the tea gratefully, wrapping my remaining hand around the warm ceramic. The simple gesture of hospitality felt foreign after so many years of suspicion and hostility. "What kind of stories?"
Yuki settled into another chair, her own cup cradled in her palms. "Well, there was a man who used to be a bandit—robbed travelers and burned villages. But after grandfather saved his life following a battle with other criminals, he became a protector instead. Started hunting down the very bandits he used to work with."
"And there was the woman who'd been an assassin," Dr. Hayashi added. "Killed for money, no questions asked. But she fell in love, had children, and spent the rest of her life running an orphanage for war refugees."
"My favorite is the story about the ninja who destroyed my family," Yuki said quietly, her voice carrying a weight that made me look up sharply.
The room fell silent except for the soft whistle of wind through the herbs outside. Yuki stared into her tea, her expression distant and melancholy.
"What happened?" I asked, though I was afraid I already knew the answer.
"It was about three years ago," she said. "There was a battle nearby—something about capturing a tailed beast. The fighting was intense, and our village got caught in the crossfire. My parents were medical ninja, like grandfather. They were trying to help evacuate civilians when a blast of chakra leveled half the town."
My blood turned to ice in my veins. Three years ago. A tailed beast. Fighting that caught civilians in the crossfire. The details were horribly familiar, pieces of a nightmare I'd tried to forget.
"My parents died protecting a group of children," Yuki continued, her voice steady but her hands trembling slightly around her cup. "They stayed behind to make sure everyone else got out safely. Grandfather says they were heroes."
"They were," Dr. Hayashi said softly. "Your mother and father saved seventeen lives that day. Seventeen children who grew up because your parents chose to stay."