He sat in a cramped, dimly lit apartment, the smell of antiseptic and stale coffee clinging to the peeling wallpaper. Spread across the scarred wooden table were the fragments of a ghost: blurry photographs of a blonde woman, police reports from 1986, and a hand-drawn map of the Czech border.
Tenma looked at the surgical kit sitting next to his ammunition. He thought of the boy with the bullet wound in his head all those years ago. He thought of the monster he had brought back to life. Monster Episode 37
"No," Tenma whispered, his reflection in the glass looking like a stranger’s. "He’ll find us." He sat in a cramped, dimly lit apartment,
"I’m looking for a pattern," Tenma lied. He was looking for a reason. He was looking for the moment Johan Liebert had ceased to be a boy and become a void. He thought of the boy with the bullet
Tenma exhaled, the tension leaving his shoulders in a jagged rush. He opened the door to find the boy shivering, clutching a loaf of bread like a shield. Dieter’s eyes, once clouded by the trauma of Kinderheim 511, now searched Tenma’s face with a terrifyingly pure devotion.
He wasn’t a doctor anymore. His hands, once capable of the most delicate neurosurgery, were now calloused from the grip of a rifle. He looked at his fingers, tracing the faint tremors he could never quite suppress. He had saved a monster, and the weight of that "mercy" had bent his soul until it snapped.
Should we continue this journey toward or focus on a flashback to Tenma's days at the hospital?