There's No Love In the Deathzone (BL)
Chapter 404 - 396. Forgotten Bomb

Chapter 404: Chapter 396. Forgotten Bomb

Bassena was scared. He was as scared as the day he woke up finding Zein was gone, being taken to a temple.

He had never, in the time knowing Zein, seen the guide this pale and in agony. Zein had a high tolerance for pain and was the kind of person who could hide it well. The fact that Zein was writhing now meant it was the kind of pain that he could just endure silently.

Bassena felt like his blood was drained from his body when he saw that. It was his fault--he was too impatient, too rough, the surface was too hard and...

And he told himself to stop thinking about useless things and take action. Fortunately, the thought of Zein’s well-being kept his head straight, and he immediately brought Zein inside. His storage ring was on the kitchen table, and he swept a high-grade health potion and a pain-reduction serum, swiftly bringing it over to the couch where he put Zein down.

"Can you drink both?"

Zein, however, only took the pain-reduction serum. He knew the pain wasn’t caused by disease or injury--not a new one at any rate--so a health potion was useless.

After chugging the whole vial, the excruciating pain was gradually lessening until he could take a breath normally. His complexion, however, was still pale, and he was drenched in sweat, not lake water. Bassena had to clench his jaw to control himself from panicking.

"We’re going to the hospital," he said.

"Bas--"

"We’re going to the hospital."

Bassena held his gaze, looking at the blue eyes sharply without blinking. His gaze was not allowing Zein to negotiate, and in the end, the guide exhaled slowly and nodded. "Alright."

It didn’t take long for Bassena to tidy up the place. He left the groceries and the utensils here, and let his children of darkness clean the place while he helped Zein dressed. But even though Zein said he was no longer in pain, Bassena didn’t let him walk, carrying the guide to the helicopter.

Zein would have told the man off usually, but this time, he let the esper be. He knew Bassena was beyond worried; the esper was scared. Bassena said nothing during the flight aside from asking if Zein was alright and calling the hospital for a reservation.

A team of physicians already waited for them on the rooftop by the time they arrived. Zein recognized some of them as the people who treated him when he collapsed from burnout during the black gate anomaly. The lead doctor, unsurprisingly, was the one in charge of his physical examination the first time.

All of them were people from Mortix; those who received scholarships from Mortix and worked exclusively for the Mallarcs. No words about Zein’s visit today would ever leak out.

They brought Zein for an examination, including a full body scan, while Bassena was waiting in the VIP lounge by himself. It was a separate lounge usually reserved for the Mallarcs, so no one was there. And he needed that, because the pressure emanating from his anxious self would have been detrimental for the people nearby.

That pressure only disappeared when he was told that the examination was over and that Zein was alright. He let out a breath of relief when he saw the guide sitting in front of the doctor’s desk; his color was back and his eyes were bright.

"You’re really alright?" Bassena crouched beside the guide and held his hand, rubbing the skin that was cold from the temperature in the examination rooms.

"Don’t I look alright?" Zein patted the esper’s cheek, smiling softly. "It’s fine, I’m no longer in pain."

"What happened? Did they tell you?"

"Well, we’re waiting for that now--ah," Zein looked up as the door creaked open, and the familiar doctor came inside.

She was the one who oversaw all of Zein’s physical condition while he was contracted to Trinity, so they could say that she was Zein’s doctor. Bassena stood up and repeated the question he asked Zein earlier, but instead of answering immediately, the doctor looked at Zein.

"Sir Ishtera, the report in my hand is closely linked to the matter you wish to be kept hidden before," she said. "While I know Sir Vaski is your current medical proxy, I would have to ask you again if you want to disclose it in front of him."

Bassena frowned, but Zein grabbed the esper’s hand and told the man to sit down. "It’s fine," he said. "He should...he needs to know."

"Very well," the doctor nodded and sat down, while Bassena’s frown only went deeper; his initial annoyance was now mixed with confusion and curiosity. The doctor looked at both men, before training her gaze at Zein. "From your reaction, I believe you already know what was causing the pain you felt earlier."

"I have a hunch," Zein nodded. "But I don’t understand why it hurts again. I had never..." Zein paused, frowning a little bit. "It had never hurt before."

"But I told you before that it’s like a time bomb," the doctor seemed to be holding back a sigh. "What you’ve done is not a perfect countermeasure. The only way to ensure that nothing would happen is by removing it."

Bassena, who had been failing to follow the conversation, cut in with a restrained emotion. "What is?" he looked at the doctor, and then at Zein. "What are you talking about? Remove what?"

The doctor glanced at Bassena before asking the guide. "Do I have permission to disclose it from the start?"

"Yes."

Bassena shifted his gaze to the doctor then, trying hard to hold back and keep himself as calm as possible. The doctor took a deep breath before relaying Zein’s condition. "We’re talking about Sir Ishtera’s womb."

It took Bassena a while before replying. "His what?"

"His womb," the doctor repeated. "Well, to be precise, his destroyed womb."

"...destroyed?"

This time, it was Zein who talked. "I used to have a womb, but I destroyed it myself right after my first...anyway," the guide looked at the doctor again. "Why is it hurting now? I properly checked that it’s still encased in mana."

"Yes, it is, but..." the doctor opened the folder in front of her, which contained Zein’s physical examination result. "Based on your scan, it seems like the remnant of the organ moved."

"Moved?" Zein frowned. He said nothing for a while before exhaling. "Can you explain from the top?"

The doctor nodded and tapped on her commlink. "From what you told me, it seemed like you...destroyed your womb right after you bled for the first time," she frowned slightly as she said it. As someone who worked closely with the sentinel community, she was familiar with Zein’s story that came out through the news outlet. It wasn’t hard for her to understand the reason why Zein did what he did, even though she didn’t approve of it. "And because of that, I presumed that you have minimal information about it since you’re also not attending formal guide education--please correct me if I’m wrong."

"No, you’re right," Zein unconsciously touched his abdomen. "I don’t know anything about it, aside from the fact that it exists."

"In that case, I shall explain it from the beginning," she tapped her commlink and a screen floated above the desk between them, showing a few charts of male anatomy. "As you know, it’s not uncommon for male guides to develop a womb in the past, although it is quite rare nowadays--I understand that not many people know about this. That being said, the existence of the womb is not accompanied by a separate sexual organ."

Meaning, male guides still only had male genitalia even though they had a womb. This was because guides did not become guides since birth, and the womb only developed after they awakened as guides.

"Thus, the birth canal is connected to the rectum wall," she explained while pointing at the screen. "In most cases, the valve connecting the rectum and the cervix is closed, and only opened during ovulation time and menstrual period. In your case," she looked at Zein, "it would have been closed since the day you destroyed your womb because of the lack of activity."

Zein stared at the anatomy chart dazedly. Obviously, it wasn’t something that he could see in the red-zone, but he also never had any interest in this kind of information before. What for? He knew his womb was nothing more than a junk inside his body.

Ah, yes. It was a junk.

"Sir Ishtera, I presumed that you were in the middle of an intercourse when you experienced the pain?"

"Ah, yes..."

"Now, while you had destroyed your womb, it was still inside your body--and so did the connection to the unused birth canal. It was basically a damaged internal organ, and when it was hit from inside..."

"Ah..."

Bassena clenched his fist. In the end, it was because of him that--

Zein grabbed the esper’s trembling hand without removing his gaze from the doctor. The screen had been retracted, and he could see the doctor’s serious gaze.

"As I told you from the start, it’s a dangerous thing to keep a damaged, nonfunctioning organ inside your body," she closed Zein’s folder and put her intertwined hands above it. "I believe it is time for you to make a decision."

Bassena lifted his head to reveal a deep frown. "What decision?"

Staring at the calm blue eyes, the doctor uttered firmly. "Whether or not you will remove it entirely from your body."

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