Hospitals never smelled like safety.
Ren hated that.
The sterile air, the muted beeping, the way time felt like it was stalling on purpose—he couldn't stand any of it.
But he sat quietly by his father's bedside, sketchbook untouched in his lap.
His father's face looked older. Not just tired, but used up. The way old buildings sometimes look before they're condemned.
"I didn't know who else to call," his father rasped, half-asleep.
Ren didn't answer.
"I thought maybe you wouldn't come."
Ren still said nothing.
Silence was easier than explaining.
Meanwhile, across the city, Airi watched the rain slip down the windowpane in delicate streaks.
Yui had come over with ramen and a thousand questions she didn't ask.
Instead, she sat beside her and offered warmth in the form of presence.
"He left again," Airi finally said.
"I know."
"It's like every time I reach out, the world just… pulls him away."
Yui tilted her head. "Isn't that what gravity does when you fly too close to something important?"
Airi gave a hollow laugh. "Since when did you become poetic?"
"Since you became tragic."
The next day, Airi wrote him a message.
"I hope he's okay.I hope you're okay.
But mostly…I hope you come back because you want to.Not because you owe me anything."
She didn't send it.
She read it twice, then deleted it.
Instead, she left a letter in his sketchbook.
Yui had offered to drop it off at the hospital.
Airi didn't ask how she knew which one.
To: RenFrom: Airi
"We promised not to say goodbye like it was the end.
So this isn't one.
This is a 'find me again.'
I'll be in the places where the rain slows down.Where the sky hesitates before it clears.
I'll wait, but not forever.
Because love, even when quiet, still deserves to be heard.
And I need someone who doesn't just visit—but stays."
Ren didn't read it at first.
He held it in his hands for a while—too afraid of what it might say.
The truth was, he didn't know if he could come back.
Not because he didn't love her.
But because love had always felt like a luxury he wasn't allowed to afford.
Later that night, after the doctors left and his father finally fell into sleep, Ren slipped outside into the hospital's rooftop garden.
Rain glistened on the railings, and the city below looked like it was dreaming.
He opened the letter.
Read it once.
Then again.
And when he folded it slowly, like something sacred, a tear traced his cheek—not from pain, but from the weight of being seen.
Back in her room, Airi turned on her phone.
No messages.
No missed calls.
She set it down and whispered aloud to no one:
"Maybe this is goodbye."