"Oooh, kitty!"
Kaori's voice came out bright and careless, the way you talk to vending machines that finally surrender your drink. She pointed down the quiet side street. Under the early streetlight, a black cat sat right on the center line like it had rented the road. Tail curled. Ears up. Calm as a metronome that knows it's in charge.
I didn't move. The sight hit me sideways—like the dream had followed us out of the nurse's office and found legs.
The cat turned its head. Green eyes caught the weak light and held it. Not a glow—just that crisp coin color that dares you to blink first.
The swing. The pool of light. That voice like the part of my brain that only talks in final drafts
You are scarred eternally.....
My throat got tight. Something in my chest slid.
"Hey," Kaori said, half laughing, half shushing. "You're going to scare it if you stare like that."
I couldn't answer. It was stupid. It was an animal and a street and a too-early streetlamp. But the dream didn't know that, and apparently neither did my hands, because they had already clenched into fists inside my pockets.
The cat blinked once. Slow. Like a door closing in perfect silence.
And then I wasn't on the street anymore.
—
Fluorescent hallway. That thin hospital smell that lives in the throat. Footsteps bouncing off tile because the ceiling refuses to help.
Watari walked beside me, jacket over his shoulder, hair a mess, grin less of a grin and more of a reflex. He nudged my arm with his elbow.
"Can't wait to see my Kaori-chan," he said in that drawl he used when he wanted to sound cooler than a middle school uniform would allow.
I snorted. "Your Kaori-chan, huh."
"She becomes everyone's Kaori-chan the second she smiles," he said, not even embarrassed at how true it was. "I'm just smart enough to admit it."
The paper bag in my hand rustled—her favorite pastries, the ones with the custard that always got on your fingers no matter how careful you were. I pictured her face when she saw them. The ridiculous little gasp, the fake scold: You're going to make me fat! The bite anyway. The wink. She would break the piece in half and shove the bigger half at me like that solved something.
We turned the corner toward her room. The floors always looked newly mopped but never felt clean. The numbers on the doors marched like soldiers. The hallway air had that cool, filtered quiet, like sound didn't stick here on purpose.
I heard it before I saw it.
Not loud—just wrong. A monitor beeping too fast. A metal tray bumping against something it shouldn't. Shoes moving like they were deciding whether to run.
Watari kept talking because he hadn't heard yet. "We should get a pic of her with the pastry. For the montage at my wedding later, you know? 'The day I knew she liked sugar more than me.'"
"Shut up," I said, automatically, and then the beeping sharpened, and Watari's mouth forgot what it had been doing.
We stopped just short of the door.
From inside: a nurse saying something in a voice that doesn't want to sound scared. Another voice—older, lower—answering, "Call the doctor." A rustle that sounded like a bed being moved fast and not wanting to.
Watari's face went pale in two seconds, like someone shook all the color out of him. "What—"
I stepped forward because my feet hadn't gotten the memo. The paper bag crinkled in my fist. My shoulder hit the door. It wasn't closed all the way. The gap widened when I breathed.
She was there.
Of course she was there—she'd been there in our heads even when she wasn't in the room. But this was small and terrible and real. Kaori lay on the white bed that made everyone look like they'd been erased halfway. Her hair was too clean. Her mouth was open on a breath that didn't know if it wanted to be a sound. Two nurses braced her shoulders and wrist—gentle, quick, practiced—like they were holding the edges of a map that wouldn't stop folding itself.
Her body jerked.
Not a big movie jerk. A stuttering, stubborn one. Hips and chest. A shiver that decided to become an argument. Her hand—the bow hand—twitched against the sheet.
The nearest nurse said, "Doctor, now," in that same not-scared voice that makes you hear the scared anyway. Another nurse turned for the alert button. Something metal clacked against the side rail. The monitor beep found a faster gear and rode it.
The smell in the room changed—the cold in your mouth when you bite a coin by mistake.
Watari made a sound I'd never heard him make. "K—"
His hand reached for the door and didn't touch it. He took half a step forward and froze like he'd run into a glass wall.
The paper bag in my fist got heavy. I should have moved. I should have walked in and been useful. I should have done anything except stand there and watch the person who made rooms feel like unassigned music become a body that didn't belong to her.
Her leg jerked again. The sheet dragged. The nurse said, "Breathe, sweetheart," like you can ask a storm to remember how.
Someone shouted down the hall. Fast feet. The bed controls whined. The nurse by the alert button looked over and didn't see us and looked back because of course she didn't; we were nothing in that doorway. We were clutter.
The pastries. The stupid pastries. I remember looking at the bag and thinking I had never held anything more useless in my life. Custard and sugar and paper and bright. She was being called back from the edge by people who knew what edges looked like and my big idea was to bring dessert.
It wasn't the beginning. It wasn't the end. It was just a minute where the room lost gravity and I watched what happens when it gives up.
My brain did something ugly to protect itself. It made the scene smaller by cutting the sound and smearing the edges. I looked at the shape on the bed and decided she was some other girl. I looked at the way her fingers jumped and told myself I was seeing an instrument and not a person. The bag crinkled. The crease dug into my palm. I held tighter because otherwise I would drop it and I didn't know what it meant, dropping it, whether that would be a kind of admission.
Watari whispered, "No, no, no, no," under his breath like he could staple reality back together with repetition.
A white coat slid past us. The doctor's eyebrows were already pulled together. He didn't look at us. He looked at the numbers. He looked at the nurse. He looked at the shape. "Seizure," he said, confirming a thing air had already learned.
I couldn't move. The floor wanted to pitch me forward. The doorframe felt like the only solid in the building.
Kaori's face—there are expressions you never get to see on people and you should never have to. It wasn't pain, exactly. It was like her body was a room where the lights flickered and someone was scraping a chair back across the floor in another apartment and no one could find the switch.
Someone said, "Step back, boys," and a shoulder eased the door shut the rest of the way.
The sound came back first. The monitor, the voices. Then the hallway returned. A visitor cart squeaked by at the far end, oblivious. A woman in a coat checked her phone and frowned. Two orderlies argued softly about a score from last night's game. The world kept doing what it does when you want it to stop and learn some respect.
Watari put both hands on his head like he could keep it from coming apart. He laughed once, a crushed little thing that bounced against the tile and died. "What—what are we—" He didn't finish, because there wasn't a sentence after that.
I looked down. The bag in my hand had a wet spot where my palm had sweated through the paper. Custard made a tiny, cheerful smear like a sun in a child's drawing.
My soul took a step toward a darker room.
—
The street came back with the smell of warm asphalt and gyoza from three houses over. My stomach flipped. The cat was still there. It flicked one ear like it was bored of us and looked away.
I didn't. Couldn't. The past and the present knocked into each other like two trains that had never met but were built to collide.
My body made the decision for me.
I covered my mouth and lurched for the nearest trash can by the lamppost. The first heave took everything I had left in the polite part of my stomach. The second was worse. The sound bounced off the quiet street and came back to hit me in the back of the head. My eyes watered. The night tasted like acid and sugar. My ribs ached from the suddenness of it. Knees met pavement—soft, but enough to make my bones remember they were attached.
"K—Kousei!" Kaori's voice broke in the middle like it had tripped. "Over there! Restroom over there! Go!"
I waved her off without looking. The trash can did its job and held the worst; the rest I scrubbed off my mouth with the inside of my wrist because my pride was on vacation.
Air came in shallow jerks. I put the back of my hand against the cool metal rim and waited for the spin to stop. It didn't. Not right away.
The cat had stepped off the line into the gutter, casual, indifferent. It cleaned one paw and pretended the street belonged to it. Maybe it did.
"Hey. Hey." Kaori crouched next to me, hand hovering in the space between my shoulders. "You okay? Can you—look at me."
"I'm fine," I said, which is a word people use when they've decided lying is a form of courtesy. My voice sounded wrecked. I cleared it and tried again. "I'm okay. That was—" A breath. "I ate too fast."
Kaori looked at the can, then at me, then back at the can, then up at the sky like she wanted to request a replacement human. "You just—what? Won a speed-eating contest with an egg sandwich and decided to decorate the neighborhood with the trophy?"
"Don't be gross," I muttered, wiping my mouth again. The taste had settled into a film you couldn't argue with. I swallowed water. It hit my stomach and made a face.
"Stand up," she said, not quite a command, not quite a plea.
I pushed myself upright slowly. The world tilted a degree to the left and then, grudgingly, leveled. My legs wobbled once and remembered how to be legs. Kaori stayed close enough to catch me and far enough to pretend she wasn't there to catch me.
"We can go to the restroom," she said, nodding toward the park entrance across the street, the one with the chipped sign and the swing set that sounded fifty years old. "Rinse. Sit. Breathe. You know. Being-a-person verbs."
"I'm fine," I said again, because if you double down maybe it becomes true.
She narrowed her eyes in a way that made every excuse feel like cheap plastic. "You are a terrible liar."
"Thank you," I said. "I work hard at it."
"That's the problem," she shot back. "You're working hard at all the wrong things."
The cat looked at us one more time, decided we weren't worth the story, and slipped between two hedges like it was smoke with opinions. The street felt bigger once it was gone. Worse, somehow.
Kaori took my elbow with two fingers—just enough pressure to say you're coming with me, not enough to make a scene. She steered me across the street when the light changed without telling me we were moving, which is how she won fights: she turned them into errands.
The park smelled like dust and old metal. Someone had drawn a lopsided heart on the slide in blue marker and written two initials I didn't recognize. The swings creaked politely. A vending machine by the restroom hummed, full of drinks that promised to fix you and would not.
She pointed at the outdoor sink. "Rinse."
"Yes, Mom," I said, and it came out meaner than I intended. She flinched, then shook it off.
"Don't make me wash your mouth out with ramune," she said. The joke landed. I cupped water, splashed my face. The cold helped; the world stepped half a meter back.
When I turned, she was watching me with that look she used when she'd run out of clever—accusation mixed with worry mixed with don't you dare do that again. It sat wrong on her; she was built for brightness, not this. Seeing it there made something inside me try to hide behind my ribs.
"What was that?" she asked again. Simple. No sparring. "You made me worried."
I opened my mouth. The hospital hit between my ribs again. The bag. The custard. Her hand twitching on the sheet.
"I ate too fast," I said, because the truth had sharp edges and tonight I didn't have gloves.
"That's not what I asked," she said. Calm. Worse than yelling. "What was that."
The answer I didn't want lifted through my throat like a hot balloon. I swallowed it and grabbed the nearest safer thing.
"Black cats," I said, and even to me it sounded like I was changing the subject with a hammer.
Her eyebrows went up. "What."
"I used to have one," I said. "Chelsea."
"That's a fancy name for a cat," she said automatically, but her eyes stayed on mine.
"She scratched me once," I went on. My voice found that flat place it likes to hide. "A nasty cut on my hand. My mom saw. Next day, Chelsea was gone. 'Too distracting,' she said. If I wanted to touch something, touch a keyboard."
Kaori's mouth opened, closed. "That's—"
"I didn't protest," I said, cutting her off. "Mom said it was necessary and I believed her because believing her was how you survived in our house." I stared past her at the swings. "I don't hate her. I can't. She was trying to beat a clock none of us could see. She wanted to see me succeed while she was still alive. It turned her into something sharp. I got used to being held by the sharp parts."
Wind nudged the leaves. The park light hummed. Far away, a train announced itself like it had good news and was lying.
"That still doesn't explain why you puked," she said, bite under the care. She didn't let me off. She never did. That's why I let her talk to me at all.
"It's fine," I said. "It's not—" Words scattered. The rest of the sentence hid under the bench with the ants.
Kaori planted her hands on her hips and looked down at me like a coach who had tolerated exactly enough idiocy. "We're not done," she said, voice steady. "Go sit. Over there."
I walked because she told me to and because sitting sounded like the best idea invented in weeks. The bench boards were warm from the day. I sank into them and felt suddenly, overwhelmingly old for fourteen. She sat too, an inch of air between us and a whole novel of things refusing to say themselves.
"I'm fine," I said again, softer, because maybe if you lower the volume it sneaks past defenses.
She didn't answer. She stared at the empty swings, one foot flicking dirt in short impatient arcs.
Her worried look wasn't loud. It didn't need to be. It sat on my skin and reminded me you can't outrun the people who have already learned your pace.
She didn't fill the silence with jokes. She just kept looking at me the way you look at a problem you intend to solve. It felt like heat on my cheek.
"That story," she said finally. "About Chelsea. I get it. I do." She turned her head. "It still doesn't explain why you puked."
"I told you—"
"Don't do that," she cut in, not loud, just sure. "Don't slap duct tape on it and call it repaired."
I stared at the ground until the pebbles turned into notes. "You sounded worried," I said, because it was easier than answering.
"Because I was." She blew out a breath, rubbed her wrists. "I had a whole speech ready for when you did something dumb in practice, not for when you collapsed on a sidewalk."
"I didn't collapse," I said, automatically.
She angled a look that could file paperwork. "You folded like a cheap chair."
I didn't have a comeback. The quiet stretched. A dog barked twice far away and then thought better of it.
"You do this thing," she said. "Where you turn into a robot. You decide what looks efficient, and then you erase the parts of you that get in the way."
"That's dramatic..." I muttered.
"It's accurate," she said. "And boring. You don't even make a cool robot noise."
"I'm fine."
"You're not a machine," she said, turning so her knee bumped mine. "You are you. Understand?"
The words landed and sat there. Simple. Heavy.
She lifted a finger, started counting, weirdly official. "You like milk with the cute cow logo—the one that tastes like a refrigerator hug. You are a terrible athlete—facts. You can't say no to Tsubaki—she says please and you fold. And you're a little jealous of Watari's popularity."
"Am not." I retorted
"Yes, you are. Not in a gross way. You just notice how easy it is for him. Anyone would."
"I don't want applause."
"No," she said. "You want freedom. Sometimes your brain confuses the two." She put her hand on the bench between us, fingers spread, steadying the conversation. "You're not your mother's shadow. You're not the sum of her rules. You're you."
The park felt like it held its breath. I kept my eyes on her hand so I wouldn't have to answer with my face.
She lifted her chin, becoming every old-school teacher at once: "'Study the composer's intention! Respect the style of the times! Immerse yourself in the historical background!'" She sniffed. "We don't need funny wigs."
"We aren't Bach or Chopin," I said, the line falling out on its own.
"We're us. Right now," she said, tapping the bench with each word. "Take the you that you are, living the life you're living, and play from the heart."
It should have sounded like a poster. From her, it was a dare.
"Easier said," I managed.
"Everything worth doing is easier said," she said. "Saying it is how you start."
She turned her palm up on the bench and waited. Not dramatic. An instruction.
I put my hand in hers before my brain could argue. Warm. Small. Enough contact to count. She spread our fingers slightly, comparing the shapes.
"When you're depressed," she said, softer, "it always helps to lean your head on your arm. Arms like to feel useful."
My throat closed. "...And who said that?"
"Charlie Brown," she said, grinning. "Don't underestimate bald kids in zigzags." She looked down at our hands, turned them a fraction. "Big bony hands like a pia.... eh?"
She stopped. Her eyes had jumped back to my face and widened.
Heat climbed into my eyes. A tear slipped, cold on my cheek. Another followed.
"K—Kousei," she whispered, fear finding a grip. "What's wro—wrong?"
I shook my head. Talking would drag something out I couldn't stuff back in. More tears. My mouth tried to joke and failed. A sound came out that was half laugh, half break.
I pressed our joined hands to my eyes like a lid. It didn't stop anything. My breath hitched. Again.
She didn't pull away. She didn't stack *it's okay* and *breathe* like sandbags. She leaned a fraction closer, enough for her shoulder to be there if gravity won, not enough to trip the part of me that runs from help. Her thumb rested on my knuckle like a small anchor.
The hospital door shoved open in my head—the beeping, the rustle, the paper bag sweating custard into my palm. I pushed at it with the heel of my hand and made it sharper. My throat did the jump before the big ones.
"You don't have to be a machine," she said softly. "Be a person. Be you."
It shouldn't have held anything. It held me up. I let my head tip forward until my forehead met my forearm and our hands, making a small, ridiculous cave that hid nothing and helped anyway. My watch was cool against my skin. Her pulse was a quick drummer under my wrist bone.
The swings whispered once. The vending machine hummed. Someone called a child's name beyond the trees, not angry. My breath fought, then decided to work with me. Tears kept finding the corner of my mouth and leaving salt behind like I needed proof.
"I'm sorry," I said at last, wrecked.
"For what?" she asked, not a trap.
"Being like this." I had no better nouns.
"I like 'this,'" she said. "It's loud sometimes. But it's real."
A broken laugh got out and left the door open. Another tear landed on our knuckles like a small cold coin. I wiped at my eyes with the back of her fingers because I didn't want to let go and because letting go would make the moment pretend it was ending.
"Hey," she said, worry unclothed now. "You're scaring me what's wrong?"
"I know," I said, the second word wobbling. "I'm... sorry."
"Don't be sorry," she said. "Be careful." She nudged my shoulder with hers, gentle. "Eat things that have colors. And sleep at normal times"
I counted four slow like my uncle taught me when he pretended breathing patterns were science because he wanted me to trust them.
She said nothing else. She held my hand like a handle and let the quiet do some of the work. In that small circle of lamp and sand and metal and our two stupid hearts, the world got a little less sharp. The tears kept coming, not as an attack now—more like a leak that would stop when it had told the truth.
She watched them fall without flinching, wide-eyed and fierce and scared at the same time—looking at me like I was a person and not a project, ready to fight the air if it tried anything.
"Kousei," she tried again, softer. "What's wrong?"
I opened my mouth and closed it. The answer was a hallway, a door, a paper bag, a word I couldn't put in her ears without putting something else there I couldn't take back. I shook my head. Another tear made the same route. I let it.
We stayed exactly there: me crying because I couldn't not, her holding on because she wouldn't not—swing chains still, vending machine faithful, night air cool on hot skin—until the worst of it washed past and left me with red eyes, a sore throat, and the unfamiliar, impossible feeling that being a person might not kill me.
I guess I was always a crybaby.