SSS-Ranked Surgeon In Another World: The Healer Is Actually OP!

Chapter 375: Just Below Mach

"You were late that time too."

"And the time before that you didn’t pick me up, it was mum that picked me up..."

Bruce sighed, "Lily."

"I’m just noting the pattern." Lily smiled, "I know big brother is very busy I just want you to never forget that lily exists"

Bruce glanced in the mirror. Lily was looking out the window, entirely innocent, her fingers absently scratching the back of Ash’s neck where he’d abandoned the glass and returned to sit beside her. Ash had his eyes half-closed with the expression of something experiencing profound satisfaction.

"Noted," Bruce said. "I’ll never forget or neglect you..."

Lily smiled at the window.

Sophie, facing fully forward, allowed herself a quiet exhale that had approximately the same quality as a laugh without committing to being one.

The Fenrari moved through the evening, warm and unhurried, carrying all of them home.

The road home unfolded at a pace that had nothing to prove. Bruce kept the Fenrari at something comfortable — fast enough to feel purposeful, slow enough that the world outside the windows was still a world rather than an abstraction — and the evening settled around them with the particular quality of hours that have been full in the right ways and are now content to simply finish themselves out.

Lily, for her part, was not content to let any silence go unexamined.

"Aunty Sophie," she said, with the tone of someone returning to a topic they had been thinking about for several minutes, "are you going to come over more?"

Sophie turned slightly in her seat. "What makes you ask?"

"Because you came to pick me up today." Lily’s reasoning was presented with complete logical confidence. "Usually it’s just big brother. Or mum. But today you came too, so I was wondering if that’s going to happen more."

"It might," Sophie said.

Lily absorbed this. "Good. Mum makes better food when you visit."

Bruce glanced in the mirror. "Mum makes good food regardless."

"She makes better food when there’s a guest," Lily said, with the certainty of someone who had conducted extensive empirical research on this topic. "Last time Aunty Sophie came she made the honey-glazed river bird with the crispy skin and I had three servings."

"No that’s wrong Lily, Mum had cooked long before she knew Sophie was coming..."

"She did?"

"Yes, You told her you’d only had three servings to yourself remember," Bruce said.

A brief pause from the back seat.

"I miscounted," Lily said.

Ash, beside her, made a small sound that managed, despite coming from a creature without a human larynx, to convey a fairly clear opinion about the accuracy of this statement.

Lily looked at him.

"Don’t," she said with a playful serious...

Ash closed his eyes with great serenity, playing along, despite knowing Lily was teasing it. It knew Lily’s playful character very well...

Sophie was quiet for a moment, watching the road, and then said, "Three servings is impressive, Lily."

"I know," Lily said, with the reverence appropriate to the subject. "That’s why I had three."

Bruce shook his head once, the motion small and fond, and said nothing.

The road curved through a stretch where the mana-lamps had just come on along the verge, their light warm and even in the deepening evening.

Ash had migrated from the seat to the rear window ledge again — apparently the nose print project had resumed — his small form silhouetted against the passing glow, wings folded, tail curled, looking for all the world like an extremely expensive ornament that had decided to become autonomous.

"Big brother," Lily said.

"Mm."

"Can you allow Ash get bigger and fly next to the mana mobile while you drive?"

Bruce considered this with genuine seriousness. "Depends how much bigger."

"Like, medium bigger. Not full size." She paused. "Yet."

"Medium bigger might be manageable on the quieter roads."

"What about the fast roads."

"Absolutely not."

"What if he’s really fast."

"Lily."

"He’s already pretty fast for his size, if you scale it up proportionally—"

"The answer is still no, it’s too dangerous."

Lily turned to Sophie with the expression of someone seeking a second opinion from a more sympathetic source.

Sophie looked out her window. "Don’t involve me in this."

"You’re already involved," Lily said. "You’re in the car."

"That’s not how involvement works."

"It is a little bit."

Sophie turned back, and the look she gave Lily was caught somewhere between reproach and amusement, which was a combination Lily had long since identified as the most workable version of adult disapproval and therefore the least concerning. Sophie’s mouth curved despite itself. "You’re going to be exhausting when you’re older, you know that?"

Lily smiled with complete contentment. "Big brother says that too."

"Big brother is correct."

"He also says I’m his favorite," Lily added.

"I have never said that," Bruce said.

"You said it last week."

"I said you were doing well in your academy assessments."

"That’s basically the same thing."

"It is genuinely not the same thing."

Lily settled back into the seat with the air of someone who had won the point on a technicality and was comfortable with that outcome.

"I know doing that is dangerous, but big brother is strong, you can protect me..."

Bruce shook his head slightly, "When I say dangerous it’s not dangerous for you... but it’s dangerous for those around..."

"Oh" Lily realised what Bruce meant...

Meanwhile Ash abandoned the window, turned twice in a small circle on the seat beside her for reasons that were entirely his own, and settled with his chin resting on her knee. She put her hand on his head without looking at him. He closed his eyes.

The house came into view around the last curve of the residential approach — warm light in the windows, the familiar geometry of it solid and settled against the evening sky. Bruce brought the Fenrari down the final stretch and eased it to a stop with the same unhurried precision he brought to everything, the engine note quieting into a low hum and then nothing at all.

He sat for a moment, both hands resting on the interface.

"I’ll walk Lily in," he said, glancing at Sophie. "Then I’ll take you back to Reignland. You’re needed there — the preparations will have already started moving."

Sophie nodded, the acknowledgment easy and practical. They both knew it was true. The moment the conversation with Bane had concluded and the shape of the next six months had been agreed upon, the machinery of the Reign family would have begun turning. It didn’t wait. It simply proceeded. Her presence would be required to direct it — to ensure that what was built reflected what she and Bruce had actually decided rather than what the Reign family’s considerable organisational momentum assumed they had decided.

"I won’t be long," Bruce said.

"Take your time," Sophie said simply. "I’ll wait."

He looked at her for a moment — just a moment — and then pushed his door open.

---

The smell reached them before they were halfway up the front path.

Lily stopped walking. Her head came up like something had called her name. Her nostrils flared with the focused intensity of a person conducting a rapid and urgent sensory analysis.

"That’s—" she started.

"Inside," Bruce said.

"Is that the braised short rib with the mana-herb crust—"

"Inside, Lily."

She was already moving, considerably faster than she had been a moment ago, Ash banking sharply to keep pace with her as she pushed through the front door and the smell hit them in full — rich and layered and deeply serious, the kind of smell that reorganised your priorities the moment it reached you. Dark, slow-cooked meat releasing its depth into the air. The warm, almost smoky sweetness of caramelised root vegetables. Something herbal underneath it all, bright and clean, cutting through the richness the way good seasoning is supposed to — not competing, just clarifying.

Lucy appeared from the kitchen doorway, drying her hands on a cloth, her expression carrying the particular quality of someone who has timed an arrival correctly and is quietly pleased about it.

"You’re back," she said. Her eyes moved past Lily to Bruce, then to the open doorway beyond him. "Sophie came?"

"She helped pick up Lily," Bruce said, stepping inside. "I’m taking her back to Reignland shortly. The family has preparations to begin."

Lucy’s eyes held his for a moment — reading, as she always read, the things he didn’t put into the sentence — and then she nodded once with the unhurried certainty of a woman who had already made enough food for exactly this situation without being asked to.

"Sit down first," she said. "Both of you. Eat before you go anywhere."

"Lucy, we already ate—"

"You ate at a restaurant?" Lucy said, in the tone she reserved for statements that were simultaneously true and completely beside the point. "It’s okay, sit down and have good home cooked food."

Bruce looked at her. She looked back. The outcome of this exchange was never genuinely in question. Seeing that Sophie was looking forward to eating he decided not to resist, after all, he himself was looking forward to eating what Lucy cooked, just that he didn’t want to waste time