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Ehime-sensei! The Cherry Basket has been stopped at the gates.

That had been the first warning that his day was about to go steeply downhill in a matter of minutes.

They are with Minobe Korin of the Masagao Party.

That had been his second.

To say that Kin was fond of Korin would have been a blatant lie. He liked the man about as much as he liked anyone - which left much to be desired, of course. The fact that he was now the representation of the Masagao Party only made it worse. The Master Healer had been fending off Masagao emissaries for weeks, ever since Lord Ozawa had got it in his skull that the Healers would be a good faction to have support 'the good of the country'. Kin didn't buy that. The good of the country really meant the good of the party, and even if it hadn't, he still would not have joined. The Healer Hall was a neutral faction amid a world rife with social boundaries and conflict, and that was not going to change because a few dozen people had decided to pester him with speeches about this is what all the popular kids are doing these days. Needless to say, when Korin walked in, he didn't have a lot of hope for the coming conversation. He was just glad that it was just Korin.

Korin and his sister, he corrected, when the child flung herself across the room and latched to him. Kin placed his hand on Aiko's shoulder and pat her slightly, awkwardly, as though he were not quite sure what to do with the child currently clinging to him (truth of the matter was, he wasn't). "Hello to you too," he said, in a tone apart from the one he usually spared others. In a show of good faith, or possibly mild affection, he did not immediately attempt to pry her off. Instead he lifted his eyes to Korin and spoke in a flat voice far closer to the usual gruffness he displayed, giving the newest Masagao Hero a look that asked whether or not the question had been necessary. "This is my quarter, Minobe, and when the 'hero' of the Masagao Party walks up to my door flanked by guards and tabloid reporters, I would think it an event to be aware of." He looked Korin up and down. "What business have you with the healers - and if you are here to try and buy our support, you can turn 'round and walk back out the way you've come."

The Minobe Korin standing in front of him was not the same Minobe Korin that he had locked in his office for three hours , and who had indignantly treated him to lies and subterfuge for the entire duration. There were similarities of course, and nothing about his appearance had changed save his wardrobe. It was in his manner and Kin spared him another glance, sizing him up more closely. Between the time he had seen the man last and now, Korin had become a member of the aristocratic nobility - what was the world coming to?

But a healer's job did not discriminate between nobility and commoner, nor did it discriminate between people he liked and didn't. "This way," he said, and waved Korin forward. Chest pains, was it? Kin ran down a list of possibilities while he turned and walked into the depths of the healer hall, leading the other man and his sister (who had let go of him to clutch his hand instead, idly swinging from it with no complaint from kin) to one of the examination rooms.

He stopped outside the room however and caught another healer as they were passing by. Words were exchanged, among which included 'take care of Ms. Aiko-san', and 'show her out back to the pond'. The girl seemed reluctant to go at first, but Kin didn't pay her any more heed and drew Korin inside the room with him, intent on his work.

"Please sit down," Kin said professionally, indicating the bed by the wall with a gesture of his hand. Korin moved to it soundlessly and when he had sat down on the edge of it the Master Healer approached, stepping inside what was supposed to be Korin's personal space. Kin had long since stopped feeling odd by the idea of getting so close to another person, let alone a man, desensitized to the fact that it was inappropriate. He was a healer after all, he couldn't do his job from arm's reach. Everyone knew that, including his patients.

"Have you been doing any over-strenuous physical activities?" he asked, placing his fingertips to Korin's chest. The easiest way to determine the source of pains was to locate the area through touch and work from there. Kin suspected a muscular injury over any kind of disease or failure - Korin had been a healthy person, ate properly (from what he had understood) and had no previous history in his family with such things. "Tell me if this hurts," he said, applying a light pressure to the ribs and muscle, working his way from one side and area to another.

Kin suppressed the urge to frown in thought, keeping his face as impassive as usual. Korin had failed to answer his question, but that was not what was bothering the Master Healer. What was bothering Kin was that the spot of Korin's supposed pain was moving. A fraction, not enough to be immediately noticeable, but each time he inspected the area it got further and further left. He ran his fingers over the area and applied harder pressure, listening to the almost mechanical ow that it created, and finally withdrew his hands entirely. There was something entirely not right about the whole thing and Kin would have called himself an idiot if he hadn't recognized it. Korin was lying.

"Well," he said, folding his arms across his dark-clad chest speculatively. He lifted a flat look to Korin's eyes as he spoke, commanding hold of the other man's stare with the sudden intensity of his own, and he did not seem all that impressed. "It seems you have a case of mendaciousness rather than chronic chest pain, Minobe," he said, voice dripping with impatience. "Why don't you tell me why it hurts now, so we can both stop wasting our time."

The Master healer ran his hand tiredly across his face and sighed raggedly, feeling his age biting at the edges of his consciousness. He had often told himself I'm too old for this, or made sarcastic comments about today's youth when he could get away with one. Most of the time what he said was entirely mockery, however. He wasn't quite forty yet and didn't really have a reason to spout that kind of nonsense. But here, dealing with dramatics he didn't even want to start guessing at, he felt as though he were forty already. The weeks had become longer lately, dragging sluggishly out with the move from winter into spring, and the recent Masagao Party activity had been the source of so much trouble. Forget nagging missionaries sent from Ozawa - the rallies occasionally ended up in riots, and someone came back to the hall with something broken. Not to mention the stress of his heritage - in the span of a handful of months two people had found out about it in different ways, and that was far more than comfortable.

"Tamakazura is unconscious," Kin replied. And extremely unwell, he added mentally, but did not say that aloud. He was not going to break the confidentiality of a patient just because Minobe Korin was having a semi-breakdown in one of the examination rooms. "Why do you need to know so badly?" he asked, and was confident that Korin really did need to know badly. The kind of desperate agony that had been in his voice just then - there was no hiding the significance of it. There was feeling and sincerity there.

"And you can't tell anyone because you're afraid that the love of your life is going to end up in terrible peril because of your connection, and that jeopardy follows your every waking move," Kin replied sardonically, rolling his eyes with a theatrical sigh that was entirely sarcastic. "Are you sure you you're in the right building? I'm certain a theatre may serve your purposes much more adequately than the Healer Hall can." It would also have a far more attentive and willing audience, because I couldn't care less. Fact of the matter was, Kin didn't care as much as he should have. Court politics, secret plots, manipulation - it was all so far out of his jurisdiction that it no more effected him as it did plague his thoughts. Sad as it was, it was a human method of control that existed everywhere in varying degrees, and no one in the society was truly safe from it. Everyone was hurting in different ways in different places, and it was hard to be sympathetic when one was exposed to it as often as he was.

But he was a healer, whether or not his personal opinions matched up to his code of honor, and like it or not he had been ingrained since childhood with the selfless attitude of kindness. Gruff he may be, but he was always fair. He treated everyone who came into the healer hall equally and took care of each injury with unbiased skill. And unbiasedly, he knew that this was something different, something desperate, but equally important. This was Korin asking him for a favor when he knew that Kin didn't like him, practically begging for the chance to get a glimpse of his lover to make sure that he was alright. As far as he was concerned, this was a method of healing in itself - the will of the human heart would always be the most powerful healing that anyone would ever know. That, Kin believed above all else.

"He's been moved upstairs," Kin said finally, turning toward the door with a swish of his robes. "I will take you to see him, but you will not be permitted inside his room without a healer present. If his condition looks any worse than I remember it, then you are not to be permitted to see him at all. You will remain quiet while in the vicinity of Tamakazura," he added, as he slid open the door. He stepped into the hallway, then glanced over his shoulder at Korin. "And you will leave when I tell you to. Is that understood, Minobe?"