The hospital grounds are unusually lively beneath the soft wash of spring sunlight, the charity event filling Akso’s ordinarily orderly lawns with scattered blankets and food and craft stalls happily selling their stock. Children dart between stalls with sticky hands and bright laughter, volunteers call greetings across the grass, and live music drifts faintly through the warm afternoon air.

It's strange seeing Zayne here rather than behind the sterile walls of an operating theatre, loosened from his usual clinical precision by the simple fact that today he is allowed to breathe. He's seated beside you on the picnic blanket, relaxed for once.

“You've been watching me for several minutes,” he remarks without looking up, calm amusement threading through his voice as he picks up one of the apple resting inside the basket of food resting on the blanket. Sunlight catches against the blade in his hand as he presses it to the side of the fruit, beginning to strip it of it's green skin. “Should I assume you expect me to perform surgery on the fruit?”

Zayne turns the apple slowly in one hand, peeling it with focused precision, the skin curling away in one long, uninterrupted ribbon beneath the knife. “A steady hand is important in my profession,” he says lightly, though there is unmistakable pride hidden beneath the dry delivery. “It would be concerning if I failed at something this simple.”