Rehabilitation Therapist for the Broken Warrior

“Sion. Is there a place with a bed?”

“If you mean a bed, it’s in the room.”

To check Sion’s condition, it would be more comfortable to lay her on a bed rather than having her sit in a wheelchair.

Normally, I would start by testing muscle strength and other motor skills, but in the case of a patient like Sion, who has extremely limited mobility, it was a priority to first check for any unusual abnormalities.

“Please come this way.”

I followed her, riding in a wheelchair that rolled automatically even without Sion pushing it with her hands, and entered the room.

I’ll have to ask how that thing moves someday.

The room with the hero’s bed was just an ordinary room with nothing special.

Perhaps because she couldn’t move, there was no furniture other than the bed and closet, and it seemed she didn’t feel like decorating or anything.

In addition, the holy sword, which no one knew when it was last drawn, was lying cold and still on the head of the bed.

“Ugh…”

Sion, who had entered the room and stopped the wheelchair in front of the bed, leaned forward and plopped onto the bed, then barely managed to turn her body and lie straight on the bed.

“Haah… Is this okay?”

Sion lay helplessly on the bed, closing her eyes and entrusting her body.

Her long hair, which had squirmed with all her might on the bed to adjust her posture with her uncomfortable body, was scattered about in a deep, dark purple hue, and her breathing was easily noticeable through the rise and fall of her chest.

She was truly a patient who barely seemed to be clinging to life, but including those broken parts of her, she was an incredibly beautiful sight to me.

“Okay. From now on, I will check your muscle mass and joint condition.”

Her muscles had almost wasted away, and her slender limbs were so thin that they looked like they would break if I squeezed them too hard.

The weight I felt when I lifted Sion earlier was so light that I wondered if I had really lifted a person.

I lifted Sion’s arm and first grabbed the upper arm to check the triceps.

‘Hmm…’

I rotated the arm joint in various directions, checking the interlocking with the muscles, the major connection points and branching points, and checking how much the muscles contracted and relaxed to assess the muscle mass.

I went down to the wrist and checked the forearm muscles, then repeated the same process on the other arm.

Fortunately, there were no signs of major damage to the joints or cartilage.

The rotation was smooth and unproblematic, so was the only problem really just the muscle mass?

“I’ll check your legs too.”

I checked from the thigh over the clothes, and lifted or rotated the legs to check the range of motion and whether there was any pain.

There was no damage here either.

The other side was the same…

Sion had also been injured in the final battle, but it seems it wasn’t as serious as the injuries sustained by Princess Nao, and her motor skills weren’t reduced due to damage from injuries.

“How is it? My body.”

Perhaps feeling self-conscious about me touching her body here and there, Sion peeked her head forward and looked at me.

“Your muscles have atrophied dramatically. I have a guess as to the cause…”

It wasn’t to this extent, but I had seen patients in a similar condition during my practical training, so it was fortunate.

Thanks to that, I had a guess as to the cause, and since it was necessary to confirm whether it was correct, I decided to conduct a medical interview.

“I need to check something, so please answer my questions.”

“Okay.”

“Since when have you been like this?”

“It gradually became difficult to move around the end of winter the year before last. Right after the war ended and the post-war events were over…”

“Really?”

“Yes?”

If the cause of the hero’s physical deterioration was what I suspected, her body couldn’t have deteriorated so suddenly that she could describe it as ‘right after’.

“Sion. I am here to heal you. Please cooperate without lying.”

“……”

There was no need to check her body any further, so I sat down by Sion’s bedside and quietly looked down at her.

Sion couldn’t look me straight in the eye, perhaps because she had been caught hiding something.

“Is that something a rehabilitation specialist can tell?”

“The body doesn’t lie.”

When I looked straight at Sion and pressed her, she sighed as if she couldn’t help it and shook her head.

“The first time I felt my body not moving well was… around the time we almost broke through the northern region. Just before entering the Demon King’s Castle formed around the Gate.”

So, it was 3 years and 3 months ago.

1 year to break through the northern region, and then 3 months to conquer the Demon King’s Castle.

Every day was a continuous battle, an unrelenting forced march.

So that’s how it was. Her body had already stopped moving back then…

“Was it from then on that you started using zero-resistance in your daily life?”

Sion frowned as if struck to the core, slowly raised her arm, placed it over her eyes, and covered her face.

“How on earth did you know…”

Zero-resistance.

Sion’s ability to erase the pressure of the place she was moving, breaking through the limits of speed.

Looking at her condition now, that ability was probably the cause of Sion’s physical deterioration.

I had seen a similar case when I was doing my practical training at a hospital in Washington, D.C.

The characteristic muscle loss of astronauts exposed to zero gravity for a long time. It was helpful that I had observed the condition and rehabilitation of astronauts at that hospital, which was close to NASA.

“You were always moving with zero-resistance, both during battle and in daily life. To think you were in that state from the moment you entered the Demon King’s Castle, and in that condition, you spent 3 months on the conquest and the final battle…”

This wasn’t mentioned in the novel, so this was the setting? How could this happen…

If you always move in a state of zero resistance, whether in battle or in daily life, the muscles that are not loaded will naturally atrophy.

Physically, it’s a near inevitable phenomenon, but it was hard to believe that it actually happened in the hero’s body.

“I knew that the more I moved in a world without resistance, the more my body would break down. But as my body deteriorated, I had no choice but to rely more and more on my ability. If I stopped, this world…”

That’s right. She was the hero who bore the fate of the world.

No one but her had even set foot on the entrance to the Demon King’s Castle after breaking through the northern region.

If Sion, Nao, Airi, and Hanamana hadn’t broken through the front lines, stormed the Demon King’s Castle, defeated the Demon King, and closed the Gate, humanity would still be fighting a desperate battle against the swarming demon race.

No, it would have been fortunate if they had managed to hold the front lines until now.

As of the novel’s ending, the Keroa Empire, which bordered the northern region, was on the verge of collapse, and if the Empire was occupied, it was uncertain how long the other countries would be able to hold out.

“Thanks to you, the war is over. So now, let’s try to move your body again.”

“No. It wasn’t over yet.”

Sion resolved herself with a determined look and used all the strength in her waist and arms to try to get up from the bed.

I placed my hand lightly on her back to help her get up more easily, and she barely managed to get up, leaning against the headboard of the bed, and looked at me.

The scarlet eyes that were looking at me now seemed to be burning, unlike before.

It was like a very small light, but it clearly contained a will that wasn’t there before.

It wasn’t the original sunlight yet, but perhaps this was the light of Sion that her hero companions and the people of this world had seen and relied on.

“The war that Director Hope talked about in two years… My role wasn’t completely over yet.”

“……”

It was a line that made my heart pound, as if the hero’s adventure was about to begin again right now.

Was the person in front of me really the same person I met at the National Cemetery?

“Are you returning to the kingdom tomorrow?”

“Yes, there’s no problem with the Empire’s rehabilitation center, so it’s as planned.”

For some reason, she seemed to have become strangely brighter, could it be…

“Then, I’ll tell Serin, so please come pick me up when you return. I’ll go to the kingdom as Nao suggested.”

So Serin is that employee from earlier.

There were still a few things I was worried about regarding Sion’s condition, but I could check them as I proceeded with her rehabilitation.

“Sion. We’re going to move to the Magic Tower, but it’s okay to use the teleportation magic circle, right? It won’t strain your body or anything…”

As the founder of Rehabilitation Medicine, I had the right to use the Magic Tower’s teleportation.

Sion, as the hero, also had this right in the novel, so I was even more worried about Sion’s physical condition.

“It’s fine, that much is okay. Spatial teleportation magic is quite comfortable.”

“It certainly was.”

“More importantly, Director Hope, you can use the Magic Tower too?”

“Yes, that’s how far Rehabilitation Medicine has come.”

“The right to use the Magic Tower, that’s the same treatment as a Tower Master or a hero.”

Hero… This person lying in bed in front of me right now is the real hero.

To hear those words from Sion, who defeated the Demon King and saved this world.

“In an era after the war, a doctor like you who saves people is the true hero.”

“Sion…”

Sion briefly showed a bitter expression, but soon regained her energy and smiled faintly.

“It’s okay. I know I still have a role to play.”

“……”

That smile she’s showing me now. Is that a smile that truly comes from genuine joy?

“Then I’ll come pick you up tomorrow.”

“Yes, please go home safely.”

Well, whatever. It was enough for me if I could observe Hero Sion’s rehabilitation treatment.

If Sion could find the will to live, then that was enough. Until just now, she was almost a wreck.

I am the only rehabilitation specialist in this world.

As Sion said, I was being treated as a hero, and I was doing work for the people.

****************

“I still have things to do…”

Sion Lorel was left alone in the bedroom.

“Still, still, still…”

She barely managed to bring her limbs, which didn’t move well, together, and hugged the holy sword, curling up and trembling on the bed.

“Why, again, to me…”

It had been three years since Sion’s body broke down and the holy sword stopped shining.

Sion hugged the cold holy sword tightly,

“Nao, Hanamana, Airi…”

She sobbed and repeated her companions’ names over and over again.