Honkai Star Rail: My Death Feeds Their Madness — Chapter 14

Chapter 14: It Was Never Fair

The quiet of the late night was broken by a sudden, muffled sound. Kagashi turned his head away, sneezing a few times in quick succession into the crook of his arm.

“What’s wrong, Mr. Kagashi? Do you have a cold, or is someone talking about you behind your back?” Clarice looked at him, her brow furrowing with concern.

“No one is talking about me. It’s probably just a sudden drop in the temperature.” Kagashi rubbed the bridge of his nose.

They had been chatting for a long time, the hours slipping away until the dead of night settled over the room.

“…Then why don’t you wear more clothes?”

“Two reasons.” He offered a faint, placating smile. “The first is likely a habit formed from my childhood experiences… though I don’t remember those days very clearly anymore.”

Kagashi searched through his Remembrance, his tone gradually softening, tinged with a quiet, distant emotion.

“When I was a child, a world war broke out in my hometown. Devastating weapons rained from the sky, polluting the land, the atmosphere, and the sea.”

“The air was choked with an extremely unpleasant stench all day long. The flames of war spread across the entire planet, and countless people were displaced, left to wander the ruins.”

“They used biological weapons. Countless strains of deadly viruses were born from the fallout. No infected person could survive.”

“When I was lying in a pile of corpses, waiting for the end to come, my Teacher appeared. She was a scientist who studied life. She picked me up from the rot and gave me a chance to live…”

This was the first time Kagashi had ever spoken of his past. Clarice leaned in, her gaze fixed on him, listening with rapt attention.

“Perhaps I was just stubborn.” Kagashi’s eyes crinkled slightly. “Teacher said I had at least a dozen different virus sources warring inside my body. A few of them kept each other in check, maintaining a fragile balance that allowed me to hold on just long enough for her to arrive.”

“From then on, I became her test subject. To survive, I spent my first two years completely submerged in a Cultivation Pod.”

“If I left the fluid for even a moment, there was a high probability the viral outbreak would consume me.”

“Even after I was finally cleared to leave the pod, I required frequent check-ups to monitor the viral activity in my bloodstream, watching for any real-time mutations.”

“Wearing too many layers of clothing would make those constant examinations troublesome. So, I basically just threw on whatever clean hospital garb was available, all year round. My Remembrance of that time is a bit blurry, but that is roughly how it went.”

“And the second reason?” Clarice asked softly, her voice barely above a whisper.

Kagashi fell silent for a moment. He looked down at his hands, then explained with practiced nonchalance.

“…Although the viruses in my body were eventually eradicated, they left behind sequelae. Sometimes, I lose my physical sensations.”

“Physical sensations?” Clarice tilted her head.

“Touch, smell, pressure, temperature, pain…” He listed them off casually. “For example, occasionally I can’t taste my food, or I fail to sense shifts in the weather. It isn’t that serious.”

“It didn’t affect me much when my body was in peak condition. But now, perhaps because of my age, I’ve actually grown rather sensitive to the cold. Haha…”

“Mr. Kagashi, you don’t look like an old person at all.”

He spoke so lightly, brushing off the severity of his condition, but Clarice didn’t entirely believe him.

What she had observed over the years refused to align with his casual dismissal.

When faced with shifting climates, ordinary people added layers when they felt a chill and shed them when the heat rose.

The frequency with which Mr. Kagashi lost his physical sensations might not be occasional at all. He might be entirely numb to the winter frost, only knowing to add a coat because he read the temperature on a monitor.

Right—and his sense of taste!

A sudden memory struck Clarice. The last time she visited, she had brought a basket of Red-Blue Crystal Fruits. After taking a bite, Mr. Kagashi had smiled and praised them for being very sweet.

But those fruits were notoriously sour-sweet. Even when perfectly ripe, the tartness was sharp and distinct.

At the time, she assumed it was just a difference in personal preference. But looking at it now… Clarice’s chest tightened, a sharp, needle-like pain piercing her heart.

Could it be that he… had long since lost the ability to taste true flavors, yet hadn’t even realized his own deterioration?

But if his sense of taste was ruined, how could he continue to brew such exquisite Wine Dew and bake such flawless pastries?

Unless—his senses were perfectly fine before, and this decay had only started recently.

“Can’t even your Teacher cure it?” Clarice asked, fighting to suppress the ache in her throat.

“…If it could be cured, it wouldn’t be called a sequela.” Kagashi offered an open-minded, gentle smile, though a silent apology echoed in his mind.

It was a half-lie.

In truth, these symptoms had only begun to manifest in recent years.

It was the inevitable functional decline brought about by the aging of a mortal body, not the lingering ghost of a childhood virus.

He was a Short-Life Species. His original biological limit was, at most, a century or so.

He was only sitting here today because Ruan Mei had forcibly extended his lifespan all those years ago.

But he had no intention of speaking those words aloud.

A dying man should carry his unpleasant truths into the grave alone, rather than weaving them into the Remembrance of those left behind.

Kagashi understood his position with absolute clarity.

To Clarice, he was merely a passing figure in the grand play of her life—the doctor who happened to cure her mother’s amnesia.

Nothing more.

Unaware of the heavy thoughts weighing on his mind, Clarice let out a faint, heavy sigh.

“Why the sudden sigh?”

“I just feel sorry for you, Mr. Kagashi. Fate has been far too unfair to you.”

“Haha, it was never fair.” He chuckled softly. “I understood that when I was just a child in the ruins. But this is simply a part of life.”

Kagashi smiled, his gaze warm and entirely devoid of bitterness.

“If you strive to live as the person you wish to be, the so-called unfairness of fate loses its weight. You can simply treat it as if it doesn’t exist.”

“Then, Mr. Kagashi…” Clarice pressed, leaning forward. “Have you lived as the person you wanted to be?”

“I suppose I have.”

“…You don’t sound very confident.”

Kagashi’s smile remained unchanged. “There is no standard answer to a question like that. It is like pi; it can never be calculated to an absolute end.”

“Fate left me displaced and drowning in suffering, yes. But it also allowed me to meet my Teacher and find redemption.”

“Thinking about it that way, fate has been quite fair to me.”

Hearing those words, Clarice realized that the man sitting before her was not a pessimist, but a deep optimist.

He possessed an incredibly open mind.

Or perhaps, those who had waded through death since childhood, standing on the very precipice of the abyss, naturally developed a more philosophical view of existence.

Clarice thought of her own homeland.

There were no open, bloody wars between nations there, but the shadow-draped struggles for power never ceased.

Even within her own borders, court politicians constantly clashed, fighting tooth and nail over conflicting interests and petty grievances.

Yet, regardless of the political strife, compared to the apocalyptic hellscape of Mr. Kagashi’s youth, the environment she grew up in was nothing short of paradise.

Being socially rejected or isolated… it wasn’t even worth mentioning in the face of true despair.

Perhaps that was exactly why she struggled to comprehend how he could remain so gentle, so philosophical.

“Mr. Kagashi, you really respect your Teacher, don’t you?”

“Of course. Without her, there would be no me today. And consequently, there would be no you today, nor Ms. Durand.”

“To be able to raise a doctor as gentle as you, Mr. Kagashi, she must be an incredibly gentle person herself.”

“Yes. Teacher is the gentlest person in the world.”

Kagashi answered from the very bottom of his heart, without a single second of hesitation. As he spoke of her, the lines of his face softened even further, bathed in a quiet reverence.

“She always claimed she was just using me as a convenient test subject to study viral eradication… but for the sake of that study, she worked tirelessly for six whole years.”

“During those six years, I cannot count the number of times she went without sleep for days and nights on end, just to find a single glimmer of hope inside my failing body and preserve it.”

“After clearing the viruses, seeing that I had nowhere left to go in the universe, she took me in as her student. She imparted her knowledge to me without a shred of reservation.”

“From the most fundamental theories to the absolute advanced of scientific study, she taught me everything personally.”