Part 3
I said to the cat fused with me, “We’ve already drained all the groundwater within a few kilometers. But just spraying bubbles — no matter what kind of bubbles — probably won’t work on him anymore. There’s no way to escape now. The moment he touches us, we’ll both be vaporized. This guy has already gone insane. He refuses to face reality and has chosen to use his own cells as fuel. For his so-called fusion of science and art, he’s basically as crazy as Deidara.”
The cat said, “If we stop spraying water, the temperature in this hallway will rise even higher. He’ll burn through the hospital walls.”
Fig. 15
Director Woo put his glasses back on. His body really had started to self-ignite, but there were no open flames, only flame tongues like sunspots. And yet his tank top was not getting scorched. Strange. Strange. Very strange. Once ninjutsu reaches a certain level, it can no longer be explained by ordinary laws of physics.
A web-like structure shot out from his mouth and his heart at the same time, spreading like a pair of wings. Every node was dazzlingly bright, but the overall temperature was not as high as I had expected. That was the most frightening part.
He said, “Watch carefully. This is my secret jutsu: Fire Neural Network.”
I said, “Oh. At first glance I thought it was graph theory. I thought you were plotting something again.”
I understood now. His Computing Power Knife had actually been burned into ashes by the heat. The other blade, the Data Knife, could still hold its shape for now because it was made of plasma, but sooner or later it would disappear too.
He said, “Doesn’t look that hot, right? That’s because all the energy is sealed inside each node. The pathways between the nodes are all bidirectional. The weights of these connections are all dynamic. Once I trap you in this network, you won’t just be burned to ashes. You’ll never be able to escape from it.”
I said, “My god. This is just as evil as Brandon Superior’s fascia web.”
He said, “Heh. Because the substrate is the fascia web itself. He had several of them, and he gave me a smaller one, because I told him it would help with my jutsu research. The hyaluronic acid inside it helps me control the energy, so it doesn’t leak out like it did in those earlier, more traditional fire-style jutsu.”
I said, “So you’re a mad scientist too. Any sympathy I had for you is gone now. The fascia web is refined from the corpses of living people. You really are an accomplice.”
He said, “Is there ever one hundred percent good or evil in human nature? My attitude toward Brandon was never one hundred percent love or hate either.”
I started discussing it with the cat: how exactly were we supposed to deal with this move of his? I did not want to get trapped in a net again like last time. He was using his own cells as an energy source, so the total energy had to be finite. But a neural network could store and release energy very efficiently. This guy really had been calculating all along. And up to now, all I had done was keep adjusting the parameters of my water-style jutsu to match the parameters of his fire-style jutsu. That was too passive. Shall we drag out the fight? Is this the only option for us?
The cat said, “No. Since he dared to use this method, the energy is probably not going to disappear quickly. But once you get trapped in his net, he can kill you in one strike. The energy efficiency of this secret jutsu is too high. This ain’t fire-style jutsu in a traditional sense.”
I said, “Then we can’t die here. Should we attack his network with snowflake-shaped shuriken? Or use ice spikes against his nodes? But cooling things down also takes a huge amount of energy. My spiritual power is definitely insufficient now, and I don’t have ice chakra either. Who am I supposed to borrow it from?”
The cat said, “Let’s summon the Water God.”
I said, “Which Water God are you talking about? I don’t remember ever making a contract with any aquatic animal. I’ve only known ninjutsu for this short a time. The only thing I know how to summon is orthotic inserts.”
The cat said, “When you traveled in Kyoto that year, didn’t one of your Airbnb Experience guides take you to a temple? The dragon on the ceiling of the main hall was the Water God.”
I said, “Right. That guide did say back then that in Japanese mythology, that water dragon was in charge of rainfall.”
The cat said, “I said hello to him at the time, and we exchanged contact info. An encrypted address.”
I said, “A public key or a private key?”
The cat said, “You don’t need to know that much.The animal world has communication methods that you humans can’t understand.”
I said, “Hurry up. That vice professor is coming to kill us. After the Water God gets summoned over, what are the two of us supposed to do?”
The cat said, “I forgot to mention, this kind of contract is not the same as the summoning jutsu you saw in Naruto. This is a three-way human-cat-dragon fusion. This kind of contract is meant to stop summoned animals from being used as shields. You should know that when Sasuke Uchiha used Manda as a shield in the past, that violated the contract. Later, the Giant Animal Alliance issued a new rule: if you want to use summoning, there has to be an equivalent exchange. This time, the gas fee for the exchange is my… Oh, the other side has responded. Get ready. Time to transform.”
Fig. 16
Within a few seconds, my body fused with the water dragon. Aside from the fish scales on the dragon’s body, you could still clearly see the cat paws, which were different from real dragon claws. The long cat fur was also obvious, still dripping with water and dragging through the wet mess. Cats do not even like baths, but after ending up with a person like me, there was no choice. In the reflection on the water’s surface, the dragon’s body looked graceful and curving, kind of like the shape of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge. This dragon in real life was as unbelievable as those legendary creatures in the Pokémon movies. It clearly did not belong to our world, yet it felt more real than those AI-generated videos online.
After being possessed by the Water God, I felt a heavy coldness inside my body and started shivering.
The hallway was thick with water vapor. It instantly went from feeling like summer to feeling like winter, from hot dampness to cold dampness.
That vice professor was so shocked by the giant dragon that he froze and did not dare make a move. His Fire Neural Network was nowhere near enough to cover the dragon’s body. And by this point, his clothes had already started smoking, not to mention the spinal pain he must have been enduring.
The Water God closed his eyes, slapped a claw onto the ground, and roared, “Water Style: Aerosol Jutsu.”
Within a few seconds, all the bubbles on the ground burst. The water level gradually dropped, and water molecules filled the space in the form of high-pressure aerosol. Everything suddenly went quiet. A deathly silence.
Fig. 17
Gradually, the firelight on the vice professor’s body dimmed. He slowly dropped to his knees, breathing hard. His Data Knife and Computing Power Knife both turned back into phones and fell to the floor. And they had water damage too. The screens were ruined, the batteries were ruined too, and the motherboards were probably ruined as well. In that misty, drizzling hospital hallway, the IT expert from the Information Department knelt on the ground in silence. The posture looked like a Japanese military officer right before committing seppuku.
I said, “You probably never imagined that a punk like me could summon a Japanese water god. People who don’t understand think I’m just out there expanding my horizons. They don’t realize I’m networking with spiritual entities from all over the world.”
He said, “You don’t need to say any more. I get it. You’re not someone to mess with, okay? I just didn’t expect you two to use aerosol like this, directly letting the water vapor seep into my cells and sealing off all my fire-style chakra.”
I said, “After what the whole world went through with Covid-19, everyone should have a deep memory of how powerful aerosol can be. And honestly, you should thank me. I stopped you from burning up even more of your own cells. Why do this to yourself? Even without Brandon Superior, there’s no need to abuse yourself like this. Medicine is still developing. There will be other options in the future. And the drugs used in different countries today have already reduced side effects as much as possible. As for that so-called chakra thread, I think he was just hoping to open up my Ren and Du meridians. But it can’t solve everything. He didn’t even know where the lesion was. I seriously doubt that technique could solve your problem either. If it were forcefully implanted into your body, it might even trigger a stronger immune reaction. You also watched the video of my fight with him. All those Kimimaro-like bone spikes on my body were an immune reaction.”
He said, “You may be right. There was always an information gap between me and him. He kept giving me hope, and I kept giving him technical support.”
I said, “Then why did you have them call you vice professor, huh?”
He said, “Sigh. The people in the hospital who used to listen to Brandon Superior’s lectures started calling him Professor Superior. Then they started calling me ‘Associate Professor,’ signaling that I was associated with him. I objected to that term, since I’m not even a doctor. Guess what? They came up with the title ‘Vice Professor’ to ridicule me even further. It really shouldn’t have been used that way.”
I said, “I see. Director Woo really does fit better. But you said they all knew you were close to him. That sounds pretty ambiguous. Did Brandon Superior ever know how you felt about him?”
Fig. 18
Seeing that the fight was over, the Water Dragon God separated from my body and gradually absorbed the water from the ground, returning it to nature. Only then did I realize that his true form was the 3D version of the 2D image I had seen on the ceiling of Kennin-ji Temple in Kyoto that year. His body looked like a water snake, but his face looked like a cat’s face. No wonder he was willing to form a contract with a cat spirit. Another cat face appeared on the surface of my T-shirt. I guessed that the cat spirit who had taken part in the fight had gone back to sleep from exhaustion, though it was also possible that he had already ascended to heaven, because he had said earlier that summoning required equivalent exchange — and the network fee was his soul. R.I.P. Since both my chakra and spiritual power were almost used up, I also dropped to my knees. Director Woo had already collapsed onto the floor from back pain and had started sobbing.
Woo said, “You’ve questioned me so much that I don’t even know how to answer anymore. Whether he knew how I felt about him or not, in the end he still chose to marry Kokoro. We were both students from outside town. You can’t get everything you want all at once. It’s true I never confessed to him directly, but I already told you that my feelings for him were mixed with self-interest from the start. If he hadn’t been a genius medical student, and if he hadn’t promised me that he would find a curefor my chronic illness, I never would have treated him that well. I never would have let him control me for so many years. I never would have given up what I originally wanted.”
I said, “I’ve seen similar cases online. You developed an attachment to him. It definitely wasn’t pure love, and it wasn’t just one-sided love either, but it was definitely a toxic relationship.”
He said, “Good. Then you understand. He didn’t treat me badly, but by marrying Kokoro, he could marry into an elite family, and that made everything easier afterward. As the saying goes, let some people get urban household registration first, and then let the people who got it first bring along the ones who get it later. I also got this position because of his relationship with Dr. Divine. And as you know, this hospital gives hiring priority to people who can use ninjutsu.”
I said, “So you had already calculated it from the beginning. Even if you couldn’t become family with him, you could still become coworkers, exchange flirtatious looks at work every day, and look out for each other, right?”
He said, “Why do you have to make things sound so ugly? I was the one who completed the two of them. One person’s sacrifice is better than three people being stuck in emotional entanglement.”
I said, “Then what was your original dream? Someone with your abilities doesn’t seem like the type who would willingly stay in a small hospital doing IT.”
He said, “Of course it was to build a startup. But my body just couldn’t handle it. I heard that if you start your own business, you have to work around the clock. I can’t do that. I can’t sit for long. Later, he convinced me to work at the hospital, where I could get to know people from every department. I thought, out of ten specialists, at least one or two would eventually figure out what was wrong with me.”
I said, “That take is very naive. This is a global-level problem. It takes a real breakthrough, and it was never something Dr. Superior could solve on his own.”
He said, “Why are you so blunt? You sound like someone from New Jersey. Yes, the medicine I’m taking now is bought in the 1st-tier city. People at the pharmacies here have never even heard of it. And even if they do carry it, it’s very expensive. And don’t be fooled by how muscular I look. The places that hurt still hurt. Completely unrelated.”
I said, “I understand that part. You really don’t look like the typical programmer build.”
He said, “What? Programmer? People in our hospital hardly write code at all, hahaha. You really are a layman.”
Fig. 19
The Water God said he was sleepy, and drilled back underground together with the water vapor. I collapsed too, completely out of strength.
I said, “Don’t worry. I won’t tell anyone your secret.”
He said, “What secret? Didn’t I already tell you? You made that up out of nowhere. There was nothing going on between me, Brandon, and Kokoro. It was just ordinary classmate relations.”
I thought to myself: huh? He changed his story again that fast?
I said, “Oh, no, I meant the part about you tampering with data.”
He said, “Heh? After Dr. Superior died, Dr. Divine ordered me to delete all the data related to Brandon’s department. We even replaced the hard drives. Even if people from above want to investigate, they won’t be able to. If they come one by one, we’ll deal with them one by one. And we still need to keep collecting fascia webs.”
I thought to myself: so you really are an accomplice. If I had any strength left right now, I would finish you off for good. Luckily I already drenched your chakra just now. You also ruined your own mitochondria. Let’s see what you do after this.
He said, “I know what you’re thinking. You need to understand what kind of chaos this hospital’s IT system would fall into without me. So if you make a move on me, Dr. Divine won’t let you off.”
I said, “When did I ever say I was going to make a move on you? I was clearly stopping you from self-harm. You really have become unable to tell right from wrong after soaking in this gutter for so long.”
At that moment, I heard Abigail’s footsteps. As soon as she appeared, she hurried over with a medical kit and started treating our wounds.
Abigail said, “Come on now. Dr. Superior has already been dead for so long, and you two are still fighting over him. No wonder people say men are just little boys on the inside forever. Do you two realize you burned the hospital doors? Because of the temperature and humidity, a lot of the hospital’s equipment has stopped working and the alarms keep going off. Every department is panicking right now. Are you two going to pay for the repair costs later? Are you going to handle the patient complaints too?”
I said, “Where there are men, there’s the jianghu. Where there are women, there’s palace drama.”
Abigail said, “Watch your mouth, or I’ll report you to HR.”
I said, “Heh. I don’t even work for this hospital.”
Abigail said, “True. You come here so often I almost forgot you’re not one of us.”
I said, “ And he was the one who started it. I was on my way out. You can’t cover for your own staff.”
Woo said, “A gentleman uses words, not fists. That’s my ninja way. I’m the model of restraint. I already tried very hard to keep the damage limited to this hallway. I didn’t expect the other floors to get affected too. Mainly because this guy got me so worked up that I started throwing out all my big moves.”
I said, “Yeah, I kept telling you to stop, but you just wouldn’t listen.”
Woo said, “It’s because your mouth is too vicious. You kept prying into other people’s private lives.”
I said, “So now you can’t use fire-style anymore, right?”
Woo said, “I still have genjutsu. My eyes will recover their eye power in a couple of days.”
Abigail said, “Oh, give it a rest. At this hospital, your genjutsu isn’t even one of the key specialties. Just do your own specialty well enough. Otherwise you’ll just stir up more conflict between departments again.”
I said, “Wait, there are people even stronger at genjutsu than a descendant of the Uchiha clan?”
Abigail said, “Your understanding of the ninja world is still based on anime watched by the previous generation. There are some real masters in our hospital that you haven’t even met yet.”
Woo said, “That person isn’t as simple as us coder types. You’d better stay away from him.”
Abigail said, “Looks like both of you are carrying a lot of dampness in your bodies. I’ll give you two some of my family’s ancestral mugwort foot patches. Stick them on for a few days and your bodies should recover.”
Woo said, “Right. Your family is different from everyone else. Other people’s families form contracts with animals. Yours forms contracts with plants.”
Abigail said, “But people like us usually wouldn’t get admitted to medical school anyway. We usually end up in nursing or medical tech. But you need to understand that in our family history, we were medical ninjas from the start. We’re not like the Quincies, who got pushed into the medical industry by modern society.”
I said, “Heh. So it turns out you don’t just have the Byakugan. Then what department are you in now? Didn’t you say everyone except Dr. Superior discriminated against you?”
Abigail said, “Later Dr. Good took me in, because he also needed the Byakugan.”
I said, “You mean his relationship with the imaging department is bad too?”
Abigail said, “Heh, he literally can’t get along with any department. His metrics are a total mess too. The people he offended all went online and left him bad reviews on purpose. Oh? Director Woo, Dr. Good told me that back then he tried to curry favor with you, and it didn’t work.”
Woo said, “He wanted me to help him alter his statistics. He even said that if I refused, he’d expose my close relationship with Brandon. Heh. Very often he bragged that he understood IT too, that he knew how to use AI agents, and he kept telling me brothers in the jianghu should understand each other and help each other out. Oh jeez. It was so cheesy it made my skin crawl.”
I said, “So Dr. Good guessed that you were helping Dr. Superior behind the scenes? In Dr. Dreamer’s words, Dr. Good isn’t a bad person at heart, but his behavior really is annoying. It reminds me of school, when some teachers of the main subjects wanted to steal class time from teachers of the minor subjects, and if the other side refused, those main-subject teachers would hold a grudge forever.”
Woo said, “Guess how I dealt with him later. I told him that if he dared threaten me again, I’d do a deep analysis of his data and report it to Dr. Divine. After that, he didn’t dare bother me again.”
I said, “What kind of statistics or metrics are we talking about exactly?”
Woo said, “Heh. You’re an outsider. I can’t tell you.”
I said, “I’m guessing Dr. Good is still pretty wary of you.”
Woo said, “Of course. Even when he parks in the garage, he makes sure to park in a different area from me. He’s terrified that my rearview mirror might catch his license plate.”
Fig. 20
(One month later)
After finishing one session of a new therapy at Hope Hospital, I ran into — no, not ran into, bumped into — Director Woo again in the hospital hallway. He had changed his hairstyle and bought a new phone. It looked like one of those tri-fold models.
I said, “Yo, Director Woo. Nice. Now that you’ve got a new phone, it must be even easier to work overtime sitting on the subway floor.”
He said, “That’s because your water-style jutsu ruined my old phones. Not just the phones. My brain seems to have gotten waterlogged too. I can’t even remember the password to my office computer anymore.”
I said, “So how’s your condition now?”
He said, “What condition? I’m perfectly healthy. I’m not sick. Whatever condition I had, the experts at our hospital already cured it.”
I thought to myself: looks like that final Aerosol Jutsu really was too powerful. It actually damaged the neural network in his brain. What a sin. What a sin.
I said, “I was going to tell you that I heard about a new drug. But since you say you’re not sick, forget it. Maybe I remembered wrong.”
He froze, not knowing how to respond.
I said, “Didn’t you burn up the mitochondria in your cells because of the self-ignition? But right now you seem pretty energetic.”
He said, “Don’t underestimate our clan. We have secret techniques for repair. It just takes time. And at the same time, I took several supplements related to mitochondria. They should help a little, right? Last time, if you hadn’t used dirty tricks, I actually had an even more modern fire-style jutsu that could have sealed off your power. That move had an IT+finance style. It could have kept you down forever.”
I said, “So you got inspired by blockchain? I’m so scared.”
He said, “How did you guess right away that it was blockchain?”
I said, “Data structures plus computing power. Aren’t those the things you’re always shouting about?”
He said, “And what about you? Why have you grown your hair so long? You kind of look like Toma Ikuta now.”
I said, “Because during the festival season, haircut prices in this area get too high. They all raise prices at that time to make up for the income gap during the holiday.”
He said, “So you just kept putting it off?”
I said, “I’m waiting for prices to go back to normal. That way I can save the money and send it to hospitals instead.”
He said, “Saving money makes sense. I also spend a lot of money on medication every year. Most of it isn’t covered by insurance.”
I said, “Now that Dr. Superior is gone, are you still planning to go out and start your own business?”
He said, “With these old bones of mine? Don’t joke around. And besides, I still have a team to lead. Without me, the people under me — those college grads and junior-college grads — would just be a bunch of street punks.”
I said, “Why do you see everyone as a punk? Oh, right. In your eyes, there is only your Brandon.”
He froze.
He said, “Release, Virus Knife…”
I said, “You’re starting a fight again?”
He said, “No. Just trying to scare you. I wanted to show you my new AI-powered phone.”
I said, “No need. You should focus on taking care of your health. By the way, are your eyes better now? Can you use genjutsu again?”
He said, “No. Dr. Divine gave me a direct order not to use any jutsu in the hospital hallways anymore. If it gets caught on surveillance video, he’ll dock the pay of my whole team. And he knows I’ve set fires in the hospital more than once. He already hates me to the core. He just hasn’t found a young IT replacement for me yet, so he can’t get rid of me.”
I said, “What a pity.”
He said, “What’s a pity about it? You’ve got water vapor around you. My genjutsu wouldn’t work on you anyway. Besides, when it comes to eyes, I’m only ranked second in this hospital.”
End of part 3
This is a creative project inspired by the traditions of Eastern shonen manga and Western comics and cinematic storytelling.
All characters, abilities, and world elements are original creations.
Any similarities to existing works are coincidental or intended as respectful homage, without any claim of ownership or affiliation.
I’m open to legitimate collaboration on various levels.
Bloopers