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

“Come back when you’re ready.” With that final note he looked down at Lily, who was still attached to his sleeves with the determined grip of a child who had been about to cry and had decided, mid-cry, to be brave instead.

He smiled.

He bent down. Got his hands properly under her arms. And before she had time to wonder what he was doing, he lifted her, straight up, smoothly, the way an adult lifts a small child in a way that makes the small child briefly forget about gravity.

Lily yelped.

It was the specific yelp of a child surprised by exactly the right amount, startled but not scared, a sound that went up into a laugh halfway through and stayed laughing.

“Big brother! What—!”

“Hold on,” Bruce said, settling her against his hip. She immediately wrapped both arms around his neck, half indignant and half delighted, exactly the proportions he had been aiming for.

“Hold on to what—”

“To me.”

And he stepped off the ground.

Not jumped. Stepped. The way a person steps onto a stair that has appeared exactly where their foot needed it to be. His aura caught the air beneath his boot the way a current catches a leaf, and Bruce simply, kept walking, upward, smooth and easy, his second step landing on nothing and holding firm, his third taking them above the height of the garden wall, his fourth above the roof of the house.

He was doing this by solidifying this aura…

Then all of a sudden

Swoosh!

Lily made a sound that was not quite a word.

It was the sound a small child makes when the entire shape of what is possible has just rearranged itself around her. Equal parts oh* and what and oh again, all of it pitched up into the high warm register of pure astonishment.

“Big brother, big brother—”

“Look down,” Bruce said, gentle.

She looked.

The garden was below them. The roof of the house was below them. The path Bruce had been standing on a minute ago was a small pale line winding through the green, and the whole estate was laid out beneath her like a model she had only ever seen from the inside before.

“Brother!”

“Mm?”

“You can FLY.”

“Mm.”

“You can FLY, big brother, you can, fly—”

He did laugh then, properly, because the way she said it, like she was breaking the news to him, like he might not have noticed, was the funniest thing he had heard in days.

He tipped them very gently sideways so she could see the river over to the east, and her small body went rigid against his with the specific tension of a child trying to absorb too much wonder at once.

“Watch this,” he murmured.

He picked up speed.

Not dangerously, Bruce was holding her with one arm and a sheath of his aura, and the aura was wrapped around them both in a soft cushion that took the wind off her face and kept the air around her warm, but enough that the landscape began to move.

The garden slid away beneath them. The estate dwindled. The river came up to meet them, and Bruce skimmed them along it for a stretch, low enough that Lily could see the silver flicker of fish under the surface.

“Brother, there’s fish, there’s fish, a very big fish, can you see the fish—”

“I see the fish, sprout.”

“They’re so small from up here—”

“Mm. Everything’s small from up here.”

He banked them, gently, unmistakably the way a bird banked, and Lily’s whole body responded to the lean by gripping tighter to his neck and laughing in a way that came up from somewhere very deep in her, and brought them up over a stand of trees. A flock of small bright birds startled out of the canopy below them and flew past in a brief glittering ribbon, and Lily shrieked with delight.

“Brother! Brother, the birds—”

“I know.”

“They flew right past us—”

“I know.”

Seeing Bruce go even higher up, lily couldn’t help but ask… “Are we, are we higher than birds—”

“Higher than most of them,” Bruce said gravely.

“Brother.”

He took them up a little more, just to make her feel it, and she clung and laughed and made a small breathless sound that was as close to a song as a child of her age could produce without trying. Below them, Velmora unrolled in the morning light, fields and rivers and the dark folded green of forests, the distant pale stone of a town off to the north, the soft haze where the next valley began. The whole world laid out for one small girl who, until five minutes ago, had been worried about her dragon.

Bruce slowed them. Let them drift, hovering, his aura holding them steady the way a hand holds a kite-string.

Lily was quiet for a moment.

He glanced down at her face. She was looking out across the landscape with her small mouth slightly open, her cheeks flushed pink with cold and excitement, her hair lifted in soft curls by the wind that wasn’t quite reaching her properly through his aura. Her eyes were very wide.

She turned and looked up at him.

“Big brother can fly now,” she said, soft and reverent, like she was telling herself a fact she needed to hear out loud to believe.

“Mm.”

“Big brother can fly, and I’m, I’m flying with him, and,” She stopped. Took a breath. Her grip on his neck tightened, not from fear, from the specific overflow of feeling that small children have no other outlet for. “I’m having lots of fun.”

Bruce’s chest did the complicated thing again.

“Want to go higher?” he said, mouth still close to her hair.

“Yes.”

“Want to go faster?”

“Yes.”

“Want to chase the birds?”

She lifted her head. Looked at him. Her eyes were shining in a way that made the whole flight worth it independently of every other thing it had been.

“Yes,” she said, very seriously. “All of it.”

Bruce laughed, a real one, the kind he didn’t laugh in front of most people, and adjusted his grip on her, and tilted them forward, and let his aura push.

They went.

The wind opened around them. The morning light slid past. The small bright flock of birds was somewhere ahead of them, and Lily was laughing into his shoulder, and Bruce was flying, actually flying, properly flying, with his small sister tucked safe against his side and the whole patient green expanse of his world unrolling beneath them, and somewhere in the back of his mind, very quietly, the thought formed:

‘Ash is going to be so jealous when it gets back.’

He grinned, and chased the birds, and let Lily’s laughter fill the morning.

“Hold on tight, sprout.”

“That’s what I’m doing—”

“Tighter.”

Lily gripped his neck with the determined seriousness of a child receiving a serious instruction, and Bruce, grinning, because she had no idea what was coming, tilted.

The world tilted with them.

He pulled them into a long curving glide, banking hard to the left, the kind of slow-fast diagonal a hawk takes when it’s spotted something below and is descending in earnest. Lily’s body went rigid against his, then loosened as she realized he had her, then went delighted as the curve deepened and her stomach did the small swoop and tightened involuntary

“Brother—”

“Watch—”

He arced them down toward the river, the same one they had skimmed earlier, and this time he didn’t level off above the trees. He kept descending. The curve tightened. The landscape rose to meet them as Bruce descended, and Lily leanednouy

She leaned the way he was leaning. Without being told. Her small body shifting with his on instinct, weight tipping with the curve, the way a fledgling bird discovers banking the first time it tries.

Bruce felt her do it and almost laughed out loud.

“That’s it,” he said, low, near her ear. “You’re helping. Lean with me.”

“Like this—?”

“Just like that.”

She leaned harder into the next curve, eyes squeezed half-shut against the wind that wasn’t quite reaching her, a small fierce concentration on her face that was the funniest and most touching thing Bruce had seen all morning.

He banked them through a wide spiral on her account, slower than he’d been going, letting her feel each turn. Letting her feel that she was part of the turn. That her small leaning weight was contributing, in some real if not strictly necessary way, to the geometry of their flight.

“I’m flying…” she announced, somewhere mid-spiral.

“I know. You’re very good at it.”

“it feels so good…”

She made a small sound of pure pride and leaned harder into the next turn, and Bruce, who could have flown this curve in his sleep with both hands full, let her feel like she was steering, the way an older sibling lets a younger one help with something the younger one is technically not strong enough to help with.