When we've left our hero, Jin has just been taken from his hospital to some forest in dead of the night and intruded upon a duel between two samurai. Now we begin with a wide shot and it turns out that there are actually five fighters in this picture. The two duellists - whom I shall call Young Dude and Cut-Knee Dude unless their names present themselves - are accompanied by Face-Mask Dude (who looks like he has a very expressive mask on his face), Old Dude (who doesn't seem surprised by Jin's intrusion) and No-Shoes Dude (who's also dead and lying in a pool of his own blood, so I guess he won't be much relevant to the story). The moment of frozen surprise at Jin's arrival doesn't take long as the Young Dude uses the distraction to attack the Old Dude, who doesn't seem very bothered. The Old Dude then attack the Young Dude, and while the Young Dude manages to parry the blow, the katana still somehow cuts his head, which tells bad things either about Young Dude's training or author's grasp on logic. The Young Dude falls unconscious and Old Dude prepares to deliver a FATALITY!, but Jin - who apparently somehow knows that Young Dude is the good guy here - steps forward to defend this complete stranger.
Jin uses Penlight! It's Super Effective!
No, seriously. Remember how last time I've mentioned that this penlight is insanely powerful? Well, it manages to blind the Old Dude and then the Face-Mask Dude who tries to cut Jin. Having thus proven that pen(light) is, indeed, mightier than sword, Jin... doesn't have to do a thing, as someone's approaching and Old Dude and Face-Mask Dude run away, taking the Cut-Knee Dude with them. Well, that was lucky. Soon enough, four guys who look more Japanese than any other character I've seen so far approach and want to know what's up. Young Dude recovers his bearings and we finally learn that his name is Kyotaro Tachibana. Apparently, he was ambushed by some stray samurai because reasons, and while he has no idea who Jin (who's now leaning over the No-Shoes Dude and being existential) is, he's thankful for saving his life.
Suddenly, gratuitous lightning! and Kyotaro falls unconscious again. Jin jumps in and declares that Kyotaro has "acute epidural hematoma" (oh no, medical terms strike again!). Unsurprisingly, the newly arrived quartet wants to know who the hell Jin is, but all he has to say is "a doctor". This, combined with medical lingo, apparently satisfies the quartet's curiosity, as the next shot is of Kyotaro being carried on a door (???) towards some house, with quartet doing the carrying and Jin following. Jin has a How We Got Here flashback about the last chapter before deciding that he must be in Edo era. 'kay, whatever. I guess if I landed in Baroque, I'd probably know that too.
We get into Kyotaro's house and there're two ladies and two dudes (we won't see the dudes anymore, so don't get attached) going "oh noes!" when they see Kyotaro. Jin is quick to assure them that Kyotaro's still alive, which prompts another round of "who are you" questions. Jin gives a really convoluted answer, but in the next panel we see... hey, it's the girl from book's cover! She manages to make sense of Jin's babbling, which already gives her +5 Like points in my eyes, and decides that Jin's a Western doctor. She's ordered by the other lady (her mother, I guess?) to prepare the furnace and for a panel, the Book Cover Girl's upper lip looks like a fancy moustache.
It is at this point that I'd like to note that not only was no-one surprised at Jin's decidedly not period-appropriate clothes, no-one seems to have noticed the decidedly not contemporary electronic penlight. Well, maybe weird stuff is run of the mill in Edo period. Whatever.
While the Book Cover Girl makes fire to sterilize the tools, Jin goes over the equipment from the medkit he's brought to the past with him. You wanna know how many scissors it has? All the scissors. Moving on... Jin's whining about being forced to work in poor conditions while Book Cover Girl's mother's whining about boiling surgical tools. A moment later we find out that those "surgical tools" are... two hammers, a chisel and pliers. And Jin's going to perform an operation with them. This Is Gonna Suck.
Jin thinks the same, but instead of whining like I do now, he thinks about Inca of all people. As he explains (suddenly having Machu Picchu as his background), the Incas used to cure this acute epidural something by cutting the patient's skull open and *insert magic here, 'cause no explanation is given*. Jin decides that if Inca could do this, he won't be worse, but his musings are cut short when the Mother arrives. Our doctor tells her to stay out and she's Suddenly Shouting that how dare he call her unclean! Uh... overreacting, perhaps? Anyway, she enters and says that if Kyotaro dies during the operation, she'll... kill Jin and commit suicide!
Jin has the "what the hell, you crazy woman" expression on his face not unlike mine at this moment (but he has gratuitous lightning! to accompany his shock), but mans up and starts the operation - narrating all of his actions during it, because why not? The Mother gets increasingly disturbed by, y'know, a hole being hammered (yes, he's using a hammer, why?) in her sons' head and threatens to kill Jin again, but he stops her with the power of shouting, which in turn sends her into the realm of gratuitous lightning!.
Then the Mighty Penlight suddenly dies. Well, RIP the Mighty Penlight, you've served your master well. However, this is quite a complication for Jin (did I mention it's the middle of the night? Because it totally is), but he gets over it and enlists help of Book Cover Girl and the Mother to hold a normal, period-appropriate lights for him. The situation thus saved, the manga thankfully cuts to when the operation has already ended. Believe me, this is one of very precious few times Jin doesn't show us the entire gory, bloody process.
Kyotaro is fine, only he's supposed to rest. While the Mother overreacts again, this time with Anger Born of Worry for her son, Book Cover Girl (who, by the way, is rockin' an awesome dress) thanks Jin for his help, calling him Buddha, which I hope is not some comment on his weight. Jin uses the opportunity to ask What Year Is This?, and learns that it's the second year of Bunkyuu era. No, no idea here either. Thankfully, Jin's a quick calculator, as he realizes (with gratuitous lightning! as his background) that he's now in year 1862. Cut to a nice panorama of a village in the morning as he realizes that this is not, in fact, a dream.
End chapter. Coming up next: more Book Cover Girl! More feats of surgery! More Evil Brain Foetus! oh no...
