They slotted me into third-period PE to make up missed laps. Not detention, but close. Our class jogs the same oval twice a week; I'm usually with a different group. Today it's kids I barely know. No Watari to drag the pace, no Tsubaki to chirp at the teacher until the drills turn into games, no Kaori waving a juice box from the fence and yelling advice no coach would endorse. Just twenty teenagers, a clipboard, and a track.
"Six laps," the PE teacher says, tapping the board with the butt of his whistle. He's got the calm eyes of a man who has seen every excuse. "Steady pace. Don't be heroes."
The pack goes out fast anyway because that's what packs do. I go out last because that's what my body allows.
The cinders chew my soles. First lap, I try to find rhythm: inhale steps one-two-three, exhale four-five-six. It doesn't stick. My chest is tight in that way that says I slept badly and ate worse. Tea, half a rice ball, and a protein bar murdered by my bag. That's it.
Second lap, the pack spreads into clumps. Shoes slap. Someone's speaker leaks a beat until a teacher's glare kills it. I'm already trailing, hands cold even though my face feels hot. Every forty steps, my brain reminds me of everything I haven't done: scales, arpeggios, the Chopin Kaori wants brighter, the sight-reading I promised myself I'd touch, the SOP I cut last night for Saitou, Monday-Thursday-Friday afternoons blocked out like bricks across my week. I keep hearing the same sentence from three directions: eat, sleep, practice.
Third lap, my stomach complains. I should have skipped this. I should have written a note. I should have lied. But I could hear Tsubaki's voice if I did—Don't turn PE into a ghost. Run, then rest. So I came. Good job, me.
I pass the 200-meter mark again and try to count heartbeats to settle down. Bad plan. Counting makes me hear how uneven they are. A few kids lap me. One mutters "You got it, man," like I'm eighty. I give him a thumbs-up because using my mouth seems expensive.
On the fourth lap, the wind shifts and hits me square. My legs go stiff, then jelly. I try to stretch my stride on the back straight; my hamstrings argue. Sweat crawls into my eyes and burns. I blink; the lane line wriggles like a bad download. Don't be dramatic. Keep moving. I shorten up, aim for survival.
Fifth lap, my vision narrows. Sounds stretch out. The teacher's whistle chirps at a kid cutting the corner; it takes a year to arrive. My feet feel a half-second late. I'm not running anymore; I'm keeping up appearances.
Sixth lap should be the victory lap. Instead it's a negotiation. My lungs pull and get nothing. My hands tingle. I taste metal. I tell my body: straightaway, curve, straightaway, done. My body replies: no guarantees.
Middle of the straight, my left foot lands wrong. Nothing big, just the angle of a tired step. My right follows with less confidence than a foot should have. The white line goes soft. Someone's ponytail, three lanes over, smears into a stripe. I tell my knees to lock, then tell them not to. Both orders are ignored.
I try to coast it in. The ground has other plans.
The world tilts a little, like a tray in a cafeteria when you catch it too late. I hear my breath hitch. I remember Kaori saying, don't vanish, and Tsubaki saying, eat something with color, and Saitou saying, write, cut, verify. I think about how stupid it would be to face-plant in front of twenty strangers. Then I do exactly that.
It's not dramatic. No flailing. Just a soft fold, knees first, hands late, cheek to cinder. The track is rough and cool and near. There's a scatter of sound—sneakers scraping, a girl saying "oh!" too high, the whistle turning shrill for real.
"Don't crowd him," the teacher says, which is the only thing that prevents a circle of kids from standing over my face, diagnosing me. I feel a hand roll my shoulder careful. "Arima? Hey. You with me?"
"Yeah," I say. It comes out under the track instead of over it. I am surprised to discover how heavy my tongue is.
"You're done for today," he says, already knowing the joke I was about to try. "Sit. No, lie. We're calling the nurse."
I comply because compliance is easier than inventing a valiant lie on low oxygen. A shade moves over me—someone holding a jacket near my face to block the glare. A water bottle touches my lips. I sip; it splashes my chin. I laugh once, a dry cough pretending to be humor. Then the edges of the world go soft, and the middle follows.
—
I wake to ceiling tiles, a thin curtain, and the sweet-clean smell of antiseptic. Nurse's office. The pillow under my neck is the flavorless kind every school buys from the same catalog. My eyes take a second to work out how far the ceiling is.
"You with me?" The nurse stands at the foot of the bed, a clipboard in one hand, the other hip cocked in a way that says she has done this exact conversation too many times this year.
"Yeah," I say. My voice sounds like someone else used it and forgot to clean it.
She checks my pulse, glancing at her second hand. "No fever. Pressure dropped on the field. You're dehydrated and you look like you owe sleep to two nights, minimum."
"Three," I say before I can stop it.
She lifts an eyebrow. "Don't brag. Water." She hands me a paper cup and waits until I drink the whole thing. I do, because authority plus thirst equals obedience.
"What did you eat today?" she asks.
"Half a rice ball. Tea." I hesitate. "And a protein bar. I think it was real."
"You think." She makes a face. "You're not built like a sprinter, Arima. If you want to keep that brain working, you have to feed it. And if you're running on fumes, you skip the lap, not breakfast."
"I'll write that down," I say.
"Write down 'sleep,' too." She pulls a thin blanket up over my shins like she's tucking in a five-year-old but won't admit it. "I already told your PE teacher you're done for the day. Rest. If you stand up and the room tilts, you yell. I'll call your homeroom if I have to."
"Please don't," I say, automatic.
"Then don't make me," she says, automatic back. She steps away, pausing at the door. "You kids try to live three lives at once. Pick one body to carry them with. Close your eyes."
I do, if only because the light is making my skull feel like a jar with a lid tightened too far. Sleep comes in clumsy pieces. I drift, surface, sink. In the in-between, I see a swing in a circle of light and a black cat sitting just outside it, tail curled around its feet. It doesn't speak. It just looks. I open my mouth and the picture blurs into the hiss of the heater and the distant squeak of a rolling chair.
Footsteps. The door opens without a knock. I don't have to turn my head to know who it is.
"Idiot." Tsubaki's voice lands like a baseball in a glove: loud, accurate, and familiar. "You scared me."
"I scared you?" I look over. She's standing there with a convenience store bag clutched like contraband. Her uniform is rumpled from a rushed sit and stand; her ponytail has lost a battle with gravity. There's a flush across her cheekbones that could be sprinting or anger. Both, probably.
She drops the bag on the bedside table and starts taking things out with decisive hands: five plastic triangles—egg sandwiches—the good kind from the store across from the station. A small bottle of water. A pack of wet wipes. She is a one-person disaster kit.
"Eat," she says, sliding a sandwich into my hand, already peeling the corner so I can't procrastinate. "All of it. Don't pick at it. And don't try to be cute."
"Hi to you too," I say.
"Hi," she says, deadpan, then points at the sandwich again. "Eat."
I take a bite because refusal would be pointless and also because my body is suddenly so grateful it might cry if I let it. The bread is soft and sweet; the egg and mayo are cold and bland in a way that tastes like mercy.
She watches me chew like she doesn't trust me to swallow. "When did you last eat something that wasn't an accident?"
"Lunch," I say around the mouthful. "Sort of."
"Not convincing," she says. "Breakfast?"
"Tea," I say.
She gives me a look that could peel paint. "You can't do this."
"doing it right now," I say, lifting the sandwich.
"You know what I mean." Her voice pushes and then pulls back to keep from breaking. "You look worse every day. Your eyes look like smudges. You're so thin your blazer hangs like it belongs to a different person. You're running yourself into the ground and you won't even tell me why."
"I told you," I say. "PE. Laps. Poor planning."
She takes a breath so long I can hear it fill and empty. "Don't lie to me."
"I'm not—"
"You are." She sits on the edge of the chair and leans forward, elbows on her knees, hands clasped so tightly the knuckles go pale. "I'm not asking you to put your whole brain on the table. I'm asking you not to pretend I can't see what's right in front of me."
What's right in front of her is a half-eaten sandwich and a boy who can't decide which keeps him alive more—science, music, or the people who yell at him to chew. I look at the plastic and take another bite.
"I'm handling it," I say, aiming for calm and landing somewhere near tired.
"You're not," she says. "You're triaging yourself and calling it a plan."
The nurse passes the door and looks in. Tsubaki straightens on instinct, then slumps again when the glance moves on. She reaches up without thinking and touches my forehead, then drops her hand like the contact burned.
"No fever," she mutters. "Just classic Kousei nonsense."
"I prefer 'strategy,'" I say.
"Your strategy is dumb." She points at the second sandwich, still in its plastic. "After that one, start the next."
"Yes, Coach," I say.
She folds her arms. "Don't 'coach' me. Eat."
I eat. It's quiet except for the clock and the careful sounds of chewing we both pretend not to hear. After a minute she exhales, some of the sharp edge leaving with the breath.
"Towa's getting close," she says, not as a scold, more like a date circled on a calendar. "You know what happens if you go on that stage without a body."
"I freeze and embarrass the school," I say. "I know."
"You don't care about embarrassing the school." Her mouth twitches despite herself. "You care about embarrassing yourself. And Kaori. And me. And we care about you not fainting on a grand piano."
"Im sure I'll manage," I say.
"Like you managed the track?"
"Better than that," I say, because it's the only acceptable answer.
She studies me like she's trying to see through bone. "What are you even doing every night?" she asks, quieter now. "You practice. Okay. You do homework. Fine. But this—" She waves a hand at the whole scene: me, bed, nurse smell, wrapper. "—is not just a boy who practiced too much. Something else is eating hours."
I pay for a second of silence by finishing the last bite of the first sandwich and crumpling the wrapper small. "Stuff," I say.
She waits. When more doesn't come, she shakes her head once, quick, like she knew that was all she was getting and still hoped for better.
"Do you think I don't want to help?" she asks. "Do you think I like pretending not to notice? I hate this. I hate watching you rot your battery down to zero and then kick the screen until it lies to you."
"I don't want you worrying more than you already do," I say. The truth sits between us like an unhelpful chair. "It's heavy. I'm trying to carry it."
"I've been carrying you since you were small enough to fit on my back," she says. The corner of her mouth lifts and falls. "Don't act like I'm fragile."
"I know you're not," I say. "That's why I don't want to use you up."
She makes a quiet, frustrated noise in her throat. "You can't use me up," she says. "I'm rechargeable, idiot."
We let that sit until it says what it needs to. Then she pushes the second sandwich into my hand. "Two more," she says. "I'm not leaving until I see mayo on your soul."
"That sounds sanitary," I say, but I open it. The first bite feels easier. The second feels like I might survive the afternoon.
"Water," she prompts.
I drink. She watches the cup tilt like she's keeping score. When it's empty, she refills it from the bottle she brought and sets it within reach as if she doesn't trust gravity to help me.
"What did Kaori say?" she asks after a moment.
"Nothing yet," I say. "You beat her here."
"She's going to scream," Tsubaki says, but there's fondness in it. "Pretend to be deaf."
"I will," I say.
"And don't let her talk you into pretending you're fine if you're not," she adds. "She does that thing where she jokes and then she forgets to rest."
"I won't," I say.
"I'm serious," she says.
"I know."
She sits back and looks at me like she's trying to memorize a before-photo. "You're scared," she says, not asking.
"Of what..?," I say, buying time.
"Of everything," she says. "Of not being enough. Of being too much. Of the stage. Of the days after. Of letting people down. Of the piano leaving without you." She shrugs. "I know how your brain plays."
"It's a loud band," I say.
"Turn it down," she says. "Just for a day."
"I'll try ok..?"
"You promise a lot lately," she says, but she doesn't make me take it back.
The nurse reappears, drops a form on the counter, and gives us a look that says wrap it up in five. Tsubaki stands, picks up the empty wrappers, and shoves them into the bag like she can remove evidence and truth together.
"I have practice," she says, and it sounds like a complaint and a relief at once. "I'm going to be late because of your nonsense."
"I'm sorry," I say.
"You should be." She moves closer, hesitates, then leans in and bumps her shoulder against mine gently so I don't have to react with muscles I don't own right now. "Text me when you get home. Not 'maybe later.' Now. Immediately. One word. Home. Got it?"
"Got it," I say.
"And if you feel weird, you go back to the nurse," she adds. "Don't walk it off. Don't be brave. Be boring."
"I can do boring," I say.
"No you can't," she says, rolling her eyes. "Try anyway."
She takes a step toward the door, then turns back, mouth half open like she forgot a thing. She doesn't say it. Instead she reaches out and fixes the collar of my uniform because I am apparently a mannequin with bad posture. "Eat the last one," she says, flicking the plastic triangle with a fingernail. "I'll know if you don't."
"How," I say.
"I always know," she says, and for once I don't argue the point.
At the door she pauses again, hand on the frame. "Don't make me carry you home," she says, and there's a wobble under the joke, quick and small. "My back hurts today."
"I'll walk," I say.
"Good." Her eyes soften, then shutter. "Don't scare me again."
"I'll try," I say, which is the only promise I can make without lying to both of us.
She leaves. The door closes with that soft hydraulic sigh every school door makes. The room is quiet again. The clock clears its throat once a second. My body realizes the conversation is over and asks for more food like a kid who behaved for company.
I peel open the last sandwich. My hands shake less than when she came in. I take a bite. It tastes like egg and relief and a little like defeat, which is fine if defeat means I get to stand up later.
I text her: Working on the last.
Three dots pulse, vanish, return. Good. Don't nap there all day. And drink water.
Yes, boss, I type, because she's earned it.
The nurse glances in. "How's the world?"
"Closer," I say.
"Eat, drink, ten more minutes," she says. "Then you can go." She eyes the sandwich. "And take the pace of a human being on the way out."
"I'll do my best impression," I say.
She snorts and disappears again. I chew, slower now because there's no one timing me. Outside, the hallway runs on normal school noise: lockers, a laugh, the squeak of rubber soles. Inside, it's just me, bread, egg, and the small quiet after somebody who knows you leaves the room still worried but a little less terrified.
I finish the last bite, drain the cup, and set both wrappers and the empty bottle back in the bag so the nurse doesn't have to hate me. The blanket is too warm now. I push it down to my knees and lean back, breathing steady for the first time today.
Ten minutes, the nurse said. I can do ten minutes.
I close my eyes, just to practice resting, and somewhere down the hall a door opens too fast and hits the stopper with a clang. Footsteps rush. A familiar voice hits the end of the corridor like a lit match looking for oxygen.
I open my eyes and sit up a little straighter, the empty sandwich wrapper crackling in my fist.
The door bangs against the stopper and rattles the glass. I'm already sitting up, wrappers crinkling, when Kaori skids in like a small storm that got impatient.
She stops, eyes flicking from me to the IV pole that isn't there to the trash bag to the water cup. Her mouth opens. Nothing comes out for a beat. Then she narrows her eyes like she's focusing a camera.
"...Sup," I say, because my brain has a half-second head start and decides to be stupid.
"Sup?" she echoes, too calm. "Sup? SUP?!"
Her voice rises on the last one hard enough that the nurse down the hall calls, "Indoor voices, please," without even looking.
Kaori slaps both hands on her hips and leans over my bed like she can shake the truth out of me with posture alone. Her hair's a little wild, like she ran from somewhere and the wind took liberties. The usual light in her eyes is there, but there's something sharper behind it.
"You don't get to open with sup," she says, stabbing the air for punctuation. "You pass out on the track, they text the group chat the word collapse like it's a fun vocabulary word, and you—" she flings both hands "—what? You shrug with your mouth?"
"They texted?" I say, because my last two brain cells are committed to bad choices. "How many laughing emojis?"
She glares. And then does a tiny double take at the pile of empty wrappers on the tray. "You ate?"
"Evidence," I say, lifting the last crumpled plastic triangle. "Tsubaki carried out a sandwich intervention. It was... effective."
"Of course she did," Kaori mutters, and for a fraction of a second her face softens like a sigh. It snaps back just as fast. "But also: unbelievable. You're tired and now you're not eating?"
"It's fine," I say. "It's not so bad. Tsubaki gave me a pack of three egg sandwiches."
"That's not a plan, that's an obituary with extra mayo." She grabs the empty water cup, frowns when it's actually empty, and refills it from the bottle on my table like she's calling my bluff. "Drink."
"I did."
"Drink again."
I drink again. My stomach doesn't love it; it agrees to negotiate.
Kaori pulls the chair closer and sits backwards on it, arms folded along the backrest, chin set. It's the posture of a coach who has decided a speech is coming. I brace.
"What happened?" she says, dropping the volume but not the edge.
"Make-up PE. Six laps. My body filed a complaint mid-lap five." I shrug. "I appealed and lost."
"Cute," she says dryly. "How many hours did you sleep last night?"
"Some."
"Is 'some' a number now?"
"Four?"
Her eyes narrow. "Liar."
"Three and a half," I say, because her face is not a face you lie to and walk away unpunished.
"Why," she says, no decoration.
"Practice," I say. "Homework." I add a third thing that is technically true. "Thinking."
"That third one doesn't count toward sleep," she says. "And you can't make up food with thoughts. Or hydration with sarcasm."
"I'm aware," I say.
"Are you?" She leans in. "Because my phone pinged like it was being electrocuted and I thought oh no the idiot finally died and then the next message was he's in the nurse's and I still saw white at the edges." She thumps the chair back with a small, angry rhythm. "You cannot do this two weeks before Towa. You can't do this ever."
"I've already been yelled at for the 'ever' part," I say. "The nurse did it with professional technique. You are... more freestyle."
"Freestyle wins medals," she says. "Don't dodge me."
"I'm not dodging," I say, which is, in fact, a dodge. I lift the empty wrappers again like a shield. "Look, I ate."
"Three egg sandwiches do not erase the last month," she says. "You've been getting paler, thinner, and somehow more stubborn. It's like you're winning a contest nobody else entered."
Across the room, the nurse glides in, gives Kaori a look that says dial it down, gives me a look that says stay horizontal, and glides out without breaking stride. Kaori lowers her volume to a hard whisper.
"Is it the piano?" she asks. "Are you pushing too hard? You looked fine the last time I heard you. Clean. Boring." She wrinkles her nose. "Soulless, but in a way we could fix."
"Thanks for the compliment-insult," I say.
"I'm a generous person," she says. "And I keep saying things like color because I need you on stage with me not looking like a ghost trying to remember which planet he lives on."
"I know," I say, and try to make it not sound like an apology.
"Do you?" She tilts her head. "Because the voices in your head keep winning, and they're terrible coaches." She taps her finger on the chair back. "You have to eat. You have to sleep. You have to practice like a person and not like a myth. Those are not optional."
"I hear you," I say. "I hear Tsubaki. I hear the nurse. I hear the PE teacher. I hear... everyone."
"And yet," she says, gesturing at my entire situation.
"And yet," I echo.
She looks at me for a long second, the fight in her eyes sharing space with something scared. "Hey," she says, softer. "You with me right now?"
"Yeah..."
"Promise?"
"I promise," I say. Looking at her
"Good." She stands, restless energy leaking into her legs. "Come on. If you can walk, we're getting out of here. The nurse will release you if she sees you upright and not wobbling."
"She told me ten minutes," I say.
Kaori checks the clock. "It's been thirteen."
"Has it?"
"Time moves faster when I'm mad," she says. "Let's go."
I swing my legs over the side of the bed. The floor tilts a degree and then behaves. Kaori watches my knees like she'll kick them if they betray me.
"Slow," she orders.
"Yes, Captain."
We stop at the doorway so the nurse can do her ritual—temperature, pulse, a few questions to make sure I know where I am and what year it is. When I answer correctly, she signs a slip and gives me a warning look that could staple a teenager to a chair.
"Walk," she says. "Don't test gravity this afternoon."
"I'm a fan of gravity," I say.
"You have a funny way of showing it," she says, then nods us out.
We step into the corridor. It's the usual end-of-day mess: lockers clanging, sneakers squeaking, the smell of a hundred different snacks trying to live in the same air. A group of first-years spill past, all elbows and gossip. Kaori slips into their wake and I follow at a non-heroic pace. The automatic doors breathe us out into light.
It's the hour between afternoon and evening where everything gets gentler without promising night yet. The campus walkway is a slow river of students streaming toward the gates. The flag hangs tired. Someone's bike rattles by. Far off, the field has a last cluster of kids kicking a ball around like it owes them money.
Kaori falls into step beside me and glances down at my hands to make sure they're not shaking. They are, a little. I stuff them into my pockets to hide it; she notices anyway.
"Unbelievable," she says, picking up where she left off like there was no pause. "You're tired and now you're not eating."
"It's fine. It's not so bad," I say. "Tsubaki gave me a pack of five egg sandwiches."
She gives me the look she reserves for terrible ideas. "It is bad," she says, each word a separate scold. "You don't get points for crisis-eating in a nurse's office. You need to act like a human before you faint, not after."
"I prefer planned interventions to surprise ones," I say.
She throws me a glare that isn't quite real, then checks my pace, slowing when I slow so I don't have to pretend. "When did you last practice without falling asleep on the keys?"
"Last night," I say. "I didn't fall asleep on the keys. Just... near them."
"How near?"
"Chair-near."
"That's still bad," she says. "You can't show up at Towa with 'chair-near' under your eyes. The judges will press the minus button."
"Is there a minus button?" I ask.
"In my head there is," she says. "And I push it with passion."
We cross the courtyard. A couple waves at Kaori; she waves back with two fingers and a grin that doesn't fully reach her eyes. She's still watching me in the corners.
"Okay," she says. "Plan. You go home. You shower. You eat something that isn't a sandwich from a triangle. You nap for one hour. One. Not four, because then you'll wake up at midnight and be feral."
"An hour," I repeat, like a password.
"Then you do slow practice," she goes on. "Not the kind that turns your brain into a blender. Scales, a little Chopin, something that makes your hands remember you're friends. Then you stop. Then you text me alive. Then you do homework like a person who cares about not repeating a grade."
"Your plans are always very specific..," I say.
"If I don't do specifics, you do chaos," she says. "I am trying to push against entropy."
We step past the main gate. Outside, the street is busy in that steady neighborhood way—moms with bags, old men walking tiny dogs like they're escorting soldiers, scooters complaining about hills. Kaori steers us toward the direction of the station, then cuts across to the quieter side road where the trees throw a little shade.
She keeps talking because if she stops I think she might start thinking. "Also," she says, "you will not lie to me when I ask you tomorrow if you slept. Your face is a terrible liar. It twitches."
"My face does not," I say.
"Yes it does" she looks at me eyes narrowed "Your face is a snitch," she counters. "I can read it."
We walk. For a few minutes we even do it in silence without the silence feeling heavy. The air smells faintly like gyoza from the corner shop and the late roses that refuse to die in the school's small garden. My head stops ringing. The egg sits in my stomach like a warm rock. My legs remember how to be legs.
Kaori glances at me. "You okay?"
"Better," I say, honest.
"Good." She kicks a stray pebble off the sidewalk and watches it skitter. "Don't do that again."
"I'll try."
She snorts. "You're not allowed to use try as a magic word."
"What's the magic word, then?"
"Do," she says. "Or at least don't."
"Yoda," I say.
"Who?"
"Never mind," I say. "Obscure reference."
She bumps my shoulder with her elbow, gentle, like a cat checking if the furniture is still where it left it. "Hey," she says, almost in a different voice, like she reached for one she doesn't use often. "You're not alone in this."
"I know..," I say.
"Do you?" She doesn't look at me when she says it. "Because you keep acting like you have to do all of it by yourself and then you collapse in PE and make me want to commit crimes."
"I don't want to make you a criminal worrying for me," I say.
"Too late," she says. "I already stole three minutes from class to run to the nurse."
"Theft justified," I say. Shrugging
"Obviously," she says.
We reach the long residential stretch that points toward the station like an arrow. The sun slips behind a seam of clouds and the road falls into that softer kind of light that makes everything flatten a little. Two kids in baseball uniforms race each other, cleats clacking on asphalt. A bike bell rings politely. Somewhere a TV leaks a game show laugh track out an open window.
Kaori inhales like she's about to start up another rant, then stops. Her eyebrow creases. She squints ahead, blinking twice like she's not sure what she's looking at.
"What," I say, following her gaze.
She doesn't answer. She just slows, and because she slows I slow. On the road ahead, under the weak circle of a streetlamp that decided to come on early, something dark sits in the center of the painted line.
A cat. Black. Full black, fur taking the light and keeping it. Ears up. Tail curled around the paws in that neat, composed way cats have when they think they own the scene. It's not moving. It's not afraid. It's just there, exactly where our path points.
"Ohhh kitty!" Kaori says with sparkling eyes and a smile.
I stop because stopping feels like the right thing. My chest does a small, ridiculous stutter. The cat turns its head. The eyes catch the low light and go coin-bright, a sharp green that cuts even in the dull afternoon. Not glowing. Just bright enough to feel like a tap on the sternum.
In my head, a swing creaks. A circle of light. A black shape sitting just outside it, tail wrapped, patient, asking a question I keep refusing to answer.
Kaori glances at me. "You okay?"
I can't decide if I want to laugh or say a prayer I don't believe in. "Yeah," I say, voice lower than a second ago.
We stand there for a heartbeat longer, the street briefly quiet between breaths: no scooter, no voices, just our steps stalled and the cat doing what cats do—judging and not judging at the same time. It blinks once, slow, like a door closing.
The cat's head tilts, listening to something we can't hear. It rises, smooth and silent, like it belongs to a different kind of gravity. For a split second those green eyes fix exactly on me. A chill runs along the rails of my arms as if a small wind remembered my name.
The world waits.