Sakiko Toyokawa was the first one sent to the infirmary.
At first, she felt a slight rumbling in her stomach before physical education class, but she didn't pay it much attention.
Sometimes, when you go too long without eating, your stomach feels like it's beating a drum—she was already used to it. Besides, no pain meant no illness, and no illness meant no need to worry.
However, anyone familiar with recurrent gastroenteritis knows that stomach trouble is much like the mechanized motorcycle divisions of Nazi Germany: launching a blitzkrieg on your gastric mucosa and shredding your intestinal flora takes mere minutes.
Our classmate Sakiko squatted for a while at the edge of the volleyball court, and was promptly hammered by the sudden pain until she collapsed, twitching and unable to get back up.
The P.E. teacher didn't seem particularly surprised by this, unhurriedly organizing a few classmates to send Sakiko Toyokawa off to the infirmary.
By this time, the school nurse, having braced herself for battle, examined Sakiko and promptly decided to call for backup.
"Dr. Kashiwagi, the symptoms that appeared at Hanasakigawa Girls' High School have started showing up here."
Since no deliberate attempt was made to keep it secret, Sakiko Toyokawa, whose consciousness wasn't yet scrambled, lay on the bed and listened quietly to the phone call.
Actually, it was more that her condition was already so severe she didn't even have the strength to speak.
"Saline... glucose... hot compress..."
"Oh, I am so sorry! We only have some powdered glucose here in the infirmary!"
"I don't know why either. They were keeping up with the deliveries until recently, but right now we really have zero stock."
"You can make it here in ten minutes? Good... Right, I'll keep a close eye on the students' condition!"
"Thank you so much, Dr. Kashiwagi!"
As a side note, Haneoka and Hanasakigawa in this world were managed by the same board of directors. Coupled with a controlling stake in Tsukinomori Girls' School a dozen kilometers away, these three schools were effectively run by the exact same group of people.
The ordeal Sakiko was currently suffering through was actually related to this arrangement.
Whether it was five minutes or ten didn't make much difference to Sakiko anymore; a bit of hot water was completely useless against the relentless torture of the pain.
She was suffering either way.
About twenty minutes later, a sound of hurried footsteps—distinct from the swarms of sick students—rang out, accompanied by the friction of suitcase wheels on tile flooring.
Hey, hey, hey, the hero has arrived!
"Sorry, it took a little time to prepare the medicine." A leg in a shiny leather shoe kicked open the infirmary door, followed immediately by a tall, thin man wearing a checkered black vest and a black long coat. A wide-brimmed flat cap shielded his bangs, and a pair of sharp black eyes peered from deep-set sockets. "Who's the worst case? I'll handle them first."
At that moment, there were over a dozen students with stomachaches in the infirmary—boys, girls, and a young female school nurse who was sweating profusely as she tried to boil water.
It looked like the first thing to run out in this room might not be Sakiko, but the disposable paper cups.
"I remember warning your school a long time ago to prepare for a mass food poisoning incident?" Miki Kashiwagi gave the school nurse a meaningful look.
Looking somewhat guilty, the school nurse averted her eyes. "Well, that's true, but..."
Miki Kashiwagi sighed.
A mandatory ritual of Japanese culture.
"Alright, big boys and girls," Miki Kashiwagi took off his trench coat and hat, hanging them on the coat rack to reveal a white shirt and a vest with a Bronze Pocket Watch attached. He then unzipped the suitcase he had brought, which contained various jars and bottles—such as low-dose painkillers, oral glucose solution, and a pre-mixed electrolyte solution—alongside a roster of personnel on leave. "Those who can still stand, come over, register your names, contact your guardians, and grab some painkillers to tough it out for a bit. The more severe cases, go lie down on the beds and rest. Nurse, help me hand these things out and stop obsessing over your damn kettle."
To be honest, Miki Kashiwagi's British gangster look was genuinely intimidating. The boys thought, *"Holy crap, that's so damn cool,"* and *"Good grief, that's literally me,"* so they obeyed the instructions without really knowing why. Most of the girls present, having never seen such a stylish and charismatic man up close before Haneoka converted into a co-ed school, similarly found themselves obeying on instinct.
As for the school nurse? Oh, she was 100% compliant; otherwise, she'd be subjected to corporate bullying and psychological warfare by this emergency doctor parachute-dropped in by the board of directors.
Just yesterday, Hanasakigawa's school nurse had put up a stubborn front in the face of a similar mass incident and refused to follow instructions. By the morning, Dr. Kashiwagi had settled the students and complained a few times to the principal, and by the afternoon, she was suspended.
It was hard not to believe that the school board had been looking for an excuse to fire that unlucky nurse all along. If Hanasakigawa's nurse could be canned, why couldn't Haneoka's?
The moment Miki Kashiwagi drew close to Sakiko Toyokawa, her ashen cheeks, vacant eyes, and faint, low groans—that aura of someone hovering near death—rushed right at him.
"Whoa, this isn't just ordinary food poisoning anymore. We'll have to hit her with heavy medicine."
Just kidding. Girls aren't nearly as durable as boys. The physical fitness of Haneoka's students was actually pretty good—at least better than Hanasakigawa's. As long as they weren't malnourished, taking some medicine and hanging on until their guardians picked them up to see a doctor wasn't an issue. The electrolyte solution was meant to counter potential dehydration and electrolyte loss in severe cases.
Take a student with the surname Hikigaya, for instance—that case had left a lasting impression on Miki Kashiwagi.
That said, for some reason, apart from the nurse at Tsukinomori, the nurses at the other two schools seemed like mere ornaments. Usually, they only had to deal with one or two students at a time, handing them a cup of hot water and letting them lie down for a bit before sending them on their way. Now, faced with a mass incident, they suddenly didn't know how to function.
An hour or so passed like this. Most of the students had been picked up by their parents or had partially recovered, and were let go after signing out.
As the sun set, the gentle light streamed through the window and fell upon Sakiko Toyokawa's face. The painkillers had kicked in, giving her the strength to sit up, lean against the wall, and rest while she watched Miki Kashiwagi quietly writing his report in the remaining sunlight.
The school nurse had been dispatched to report the situation to the principal.
A brief silence hung in the air.
"Toyokawa... Sakiko? Did I read that right?" His pen paused mid-stroke, and Miki Kashiwagi broke the stillness first.
"Why do you ask?" Sakiko asked.
"I'm from China, my given name is Sanhui Ke, but just call me Miki Kashiwagi." Miki Kashiwagi smiled, pulling the wide-open window slightly closed as the wind picked up. "My Japanese isn't very fluent."
"Barring any accidents, from now on I'll be your emergency doctor—meaning a doctor specifically designated to handle days like today."
"Mm." Sakiko gave a soft reply, her head lowered, blue bangs veiling her tortoiseshell-bright eyes as she wondered about something.
"That thing... how many did you eat?"
"......Two."
"......Yesterday it was four."
Naturally, they were a batch of expired red bean buns of unknown origin, priced at 80 yen each, sitting brazenly on the shelves of the school canteen.
Sakiko had carefully calculated: if she replaced her midday bento with two buns, she could save 300 yen every day. Over a month, that came out to over ten thousand yen, and in two or three months, she could afford a fan for her family.
At 3:40 PM the day before yesterday, twenty minutes before the end of the school day, Sakiko had snuck out under the pretext of using the restroom, gone straight to the canteen, and bought forty red bean buns all at once. She carefully tucked six of them into opaque plastic bags folded into her skirt pockets and hid them in a storage room alcove—a place that was left unlocked year-round.
Sakiko knew someone played the guitar there around the end of the school day, but officially it was still a public area; if she left things there, no one could really say anything.
Yet judging by how things turned out, Big Sister Rice-Saver Sakiko had just transformed into Big Sister Rice-Burner Sakiko.
Medical expenses in Japan couldn't exactly be called cheap and cheerful; highway robbery was a more accurate description.
"Sigh......" Miki Kashiwagi pinched the bridge of his nose.
Though he was an isekai transmigrator, he had caught wind of the fact that Sakiko was a young lady from a once-prominent family experiencing a sudden fall from grace.
Still, he never imagined she could be reduced to this level of poverty.