Chapter 27 | Taking Some Part Of My Wives Pain

Chapter 27: Chapter 27 | Taking Some Part Of My Wives Pain

Sunday.

The morning started normally.

Kai pressed his palm to the floor before he was fully awake. Both rhythms. Both present. Shira with the deliberate quality. Mira still sleeping.

He made tea. He started the specialty ingredients. He moved through the kitchen quietly the way he had learned to move through this apartment present without announcing himself, available without hovering.

He knocked on both doors at seven.

Breakfast was quiet and good.

Shira came to the table with the brace on. She had put it on herself again. She ate without commenting on the food, which meant she approved. At some point during the meal she rested her right hand on the table edge and Kai felt through the surface — the finger. Still there. Still answering.

He said nothing about it.

Mira ate neatly and finished before either of them. She sat with her whiteboard in her lap without writing anything, which meant she was thinking about something she hadn’t decided to share yet.

After breakfast Kai and Shira went through the physio sheet again.

The wrist extension. Together this time.

She managed it four times cleanly before the signal dropped. The fourth time was the clearest yet her wrist lifting a full centimeter, controlled enough that she held it for three seconds before it fell.

She looked at her arm.

Kai looked at the sheet.

"Same time tomorrow," Kai said.

"Same time tomorrow," Shira said.

===

He did the dishes.

He was halfway through when the system chimed.

Not a financial notification. Something he hadn’t seen before.

『 HOST ADVISORY — INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY DETECTED. 』

『 Current status of registered wives: 』

『 SHIRA VOSS — Nerve pain level: 4/10. Baseline was 7/10. Current pharmaceutical and dietary investment has reduced pain significantly. However the residual 4/10 is still chronic. It is still there every day. It costs her energy she needs for recovery. 』

『 MIRA ELYS — Optic nerve compression produces persistent low-grade headaches. Discharge papers noted this as a secondary symptom. Current investment has not addressed it. It is still there every day. She has not mentioned it. 』

『 The system is informing Host because Host cannot see what it sees. 』

『 OPPORTUNITY: If Host voluntarily absorbs a portion of each wife’s chronic pain — even temporarily — the relief will allow both wives to redirect that energy toward recovery. The return on this investment will be significant. 』

『 WARNING: The combined chronic pain of both wives simultaneously is not small. The system recommends Host understand what he is committing to before proceeding. 』

『 This is not a requirement. It is an option. 』

Kai stood at the sink with the dish towel in his hand.

He read the notification twice.

He looked at the wall between the kitchen and Shira’s room.

He thought about Shira pressing her finger into the mattress forty-seven times yesterday afternoon. Doing it while carrying 4/10 nerve pain. Doing it quietly and without telling anyone.

He thought about Mira in her room practicing word shapes with fourteen percent vocal function and a persistent headache she had never mentioned to anyone.

He put the dish towel down.

’How,’ he thought.

『 Physical contact. Sustained. The investment must be genuine and unasked for. If Host is calculating the return, the transfer will be incomplete. The sincerity threshold is absolute on this function. 』

’I know,’ Kai thought. ’I’m not thinking about the return.’

『 The system is aware. That is why the advisory was sent. 』

Kai dried his hands.

He went to Shira’s door first.

=====

He knocked.

"Come in," Shira said.

She was at her desk , the chair had been pushed aside and she was at the desk in the wheelchair, the physio sheet open in front of her, annotating something in the margin with a pen held in her left hand.

She looked up when he came in.

He walked to her and crouched in front of the wheelchair so they were at the same level.

Shira looked at him.

"What," she said.

"I want to try something," Kai said. "It’s a function the system unlocked. I can temporarily absorb some of your pain. The nerve pain. Take it onto myself for a while so your body can redirect the energy."

Shira looked at him.

A long pause.

"You want to take my pain," she said.

"Yes," Kai said.

"That’s not — " She stopped. "How does that work."

"Physical contact," Kai said. "Sustained. I hold your hands and the transfer happens through the Nerve Sense."

Shira looked at his hands.

Then at her own , the braced arms resting in her lap.

"And it goes to you," she said.

"Yes," Kai said.

"All of it," she said.

"A portion," Kai said. "I can’t take all of it. The system said the combined load from both of you together is significant. I’ll take what I can manage."

Shira was very still.

"This will hurt you," she said.

"Yes," Kai said.

She looked at him for a long moment.

"Why," she said.

Kai looked at her.

"Because you’re using energy managing pain that you need for recovery," he said. "Yesterday you pressed your finger into the mattress forty-seven times while carrying a four out of ten pain level. I want to see what you can do without it."

Shira’s expression did something complicated.

"You felt the forty-seven," she said.

"Yes," Kai said.

She looked at her hands.

The silence stretched.

Then she said very quietly: "What do I have to do."

"Nothing," Kai said. "Just let me hold your hands."

He waited.

Shira looked at the physio sheet on the desk. Then at the window. Then at his hands again.

Then she turned her chair to face him properly.

She lifted both braced arms and held them out.

Kai took both her hands in his.

========

It hit him three seconds later.

Not gradually. All at once the nerve pain rerouting through his palms and up his arms and into his chest like someone had replaced his blood with static. Sharp and constant and everywhere below his waist and radiating up through his spine in pulses that came every four seconds.

He had known it would be bad.

He had not known it would be this precise. Every nerve that was wrong in Shira’s body announced itself through his.