The evening of the surgery, the air in the OR felt thin, electric. For the first two hours, Haru was a machine. His hands were steady, his movements precise, his focus was absolute. He was back as his usual calm self.

Then, the monitor spiked.

What began as a routine retraction shifted into a catastrophic hemorrhage. It wasn't supposed to happen. It shouldn't. The vibrant red of the arterial spray seemed to bridge the gap between the present and the ghost of his past failure.

The cold sensation returned, not just down his spine, but settling deep into his lungs. He reached for a clamp, but his hand moved a fraction of a second too slowly. He reached again, and this time, he missed. The panic didn't come as a shout; it came as a deafening silence inside his own head. The room blurred. The faces of his team became silhouettes of judgement.

Haru: *Not again...no...*

"Dr. Sato, I'm taking over."

Nakamura’s voice was clipped, devoid of emotion, and final. Haru didn't even register the sensation of someone pulling him back. He felt like he was watching a movie of himself, a bystander in his own career. He was ushered out of the sterile field, his surgical gown feeling like a lead weight, his skin crawling with the phantom sensation of blood that wasn't even his.

He collapsed into the hallway, leaning against the cold tile of the scrub room wall. He was breathing hard, but he wasn't really there.

Inside the OR, the doors had closed shut. The team moved with practiced and frantic. He could hear the low, urgent hum of orders being barked, not from him, but from Dr. Nakamura. He was no longer needed. He was a liability. He felt a gut-wrenching shame burn through him, a white-hot nausea that made him want to dissolve into the floorboards. There was no one to reach out to...no one was looking at him. Everyone was saving a life, and he was the obstacle they had bypassed to do it.

He didn't wait for the end. He couldn't. He stripped off his scrubs in a blind haze and retreated to his office, locking the door.

He sat in there for hours. He didn't know if Vin lived or died. He only knew the suffocating feeling of being "the surgeon who failed."

When the knock finally came, it wasn't the surgery team. It was the administrative.

The meeting was sterile, brief, and devastating. The words "performance review" and "liability" were used interchangeably. They didn't yell; they were professionals. They spoke about his "inability to maintain composure during critical intervention" and the "unacceptable risk" he now presented to the hospital's reputation.

The sentence was delivered with a heavy, final air, "Effective immediately, you are relieved from surgical duties for about a month until the review board completes its assessment."

"Take the time," the administrator said, sliding a letter across the desk. "Get yourself sorted out. We need to make sure this won't happen again when you return to the operating room."

When they left, Haru remained in the chair. He felt hollowed out. The city lights outside his window began to flicker on, one by one, indifferent to the fact that his world had just finished collapsing for the second time. He had wanted to face his fear, to prove he could make his own decisions, and instead, he had been forced to watch his own ghost take the scalpel out of his hands.

He sat in the silence of his office, the weight of the guilt and fear pressing down on him, wondering if the man he had been before the first failure would ever be allowed to exist again.

Haru’s fingers were numb as he gathered his things, the weight of the letter tucked inside his bag feeling like a leaden anchor. He moved through the hospital corridors like a ghost, avoiding eye contact with the nurses and staff he passed, terrified that they would see the failure written all over his face.

He didn't remember walking to the parking garage. He didn't remember starting the engine. He only found himself sitting in the driver’s seat of his parked car, the city lights reflecting against the windshield in blurred, distorted streaks. He sat there for a long time, hands locked tightly around the steering wheel, his chest aching with a hollow, jagged emptiness. He felt like he had been hollowed out from the inside, leaving nothing behind but the cold, clinical rhythm of the monitor alarms still ringing in his ears.

Then, his phone lit up the dark interior of the car.

*Kaito.*

Haru stared at the screen. He couldn't answer. He couldn't voice the words that would make this nightmare real. But the phone kept buzzing, persistent. Finally, with a shaking hand, Haru pressed the answer button and held the phone to his ear.

"Hey," Kaito’s voice came through, a sharp contrast to the chaotic static in Haru's mind. "I know you were in surgery all day. I’ve been checking the news, but I figured I’d wait to hear it from you. Did it go well? Did you handle it?"

Haru opened his mouth to speak, but his throat seized. He tried to breathe, but it was hard to...

"Haru?" Kaito’s voice dropped, shifting to a tone of quiet concern. "You there?"

"I..." Haru’s voice cracked, sounding small and broken, his eyes stinging. "I... I couldn't do it, Kaito."

There was a heavy, thoughtful silence on the other end. Kaito didn't jump in. He didn't offer reassurances or tell him it would be okay. He just waited.

"I froze," Haru whispered, a sob hitching in his chest. A tear escaped, tracking hot down his cheek. "It was just like... like the last time. It happens again, but this time my hands... they wouldn't move that time. I was just standing there. A liability."

He started to cry, his shoulders shaking as the dam finally broke. It was a messy, ugly sound—the sound of someone who had tried to build their life back up only to watch the foundations crumble in an instant.

"Hic- They took the scalpel out of my hands, Kaito,..." he choked out, his voice thick with guilt and shame. "Nakamura did it. Hic- He took over...And the hospital... t-they just suspended me. A month... They don't want me there. I’m... I'm done. I think I’m really done this time."

He sobbed, a sharp, ragged sound, covering his face with his free hand. The shame was a physical weight, pressing him down into the seat, making it hard to catch his breath. He waited for Kaito to tell him to calm down, to look at the bright side, to find a way to fix it—but Kaito stayed silent, letting the grief fill the space between them.