I wasn't snooping. I was... standing by the fire-drill notice outside the guidance office, definitely reading it with my eyes and absolutely not using my ears like satellite dishes.
"Have you decided on a career plan, Arima?"
A soft pause. Then Kousei's voice, calm like a weather report: "Science. Medicine."
The corner of the notice crumpled under my thumb. Science..? Medicine..?
Not piano. Not "liberal arts." Not even the polite "undecided." Since when did he keep a lab coat hidden under that crooked uniform? The most I've ever seen him dissect is a pencil.
Through the glass I caught a slice of the room: the teacher nodding; a pen scratching; Kousei standing straight, hands at his sides, expression steady in that way he gets when the floor inside him is tilted but he refuses to show it. He looked... okay. Also far away—like part of him was listening to someone only he could hear.
Relief arrived first, quick and cool. Good. Get away from the thing that keeps cutting you. Leave the metronome, the judges with tiny handwriting, the rooms that made you gray around the edges. Pick anything else.
But confusion shouldered in right after. Why the opposite of music? Why the world with white lights and beeping machines and forms in triplicate? He's never said, "I want to be a doctor." He's never cheered in chemistry. Goggles make him complain. When did this seed get planted? Did it sprout overnight, or has it been growing in the dark while I wasn't looking?
The door clicked. I flattened the paper like that would iron my face too. He stepped out with those careful steps of his—quiet enough to not wake a hallway. He passed my patch of wall without seeing me. For two heartbeats I saw his eyes clearly: intense and tired, like storm glass. He's been wearing that look a lot lately.
He turned the corner. The teacher called another name. The hallway buzzed on like nothing had rerouted my brain.
I should have been happy. I told myself to be happy. See? He's not choosing the thing that hurt him. He's not sliding back under anyone's ghost. We can celebrate. I'll drag him to the family restaurant, order too many parfaits, take pictures until he glares.
Except.. the relief wouldn't settle unless it could grab an explanation, and the explanations I reached for made my stomach small. Is it the life he's lived? All those disinfectant hallways, results, checkups, the way machines own the air? If you grow up under that sky, maybe you want to learn the weather. Maybe this is him deciding to fight back in a language that listens. That makes sense. And it makes me weirdly mad too, because it's so like him to decide something heavy and then carry it alone.
No—that's not fair. He didn't say why. He just said what. I'm the one stuffing reasons into the quiet.
I thought of last weekend and winced. Saitou-senpai took me for shaved ice near the station. He told me I looked nice in yukata, and I said "thanks" like an adult for maybe three minutes. Then I started talking about Kousei. I didn't notice until I looked up and saw that patient smile Saitou does, the one that's kind and a little far away, like he's gently moving a fragile thing down from a high shelf. He never said "can we not," never made me feel dumb. He just asked if I wanted another syrup flavor and pretended my face wasn't burning.
I wanted to apologize, and also crawl under the table, and also order the blue one and start over. Instead I made a sunburn joke. He laughed. He always laughs. He deserves someone whose mouth doesn't default to "Arima, Arima, Arima."
I leaned my head back against the wall. The tiny window over the doors showed a swatch of sky: flat yellow, heat sitting on the town like a heavy cat. Somewhere a ball thumped. Someone laughed. The day refused to notice my tiny crisis.
Okay. So he's not choosing piano. That's good, right? Less hurting. Fewer nights I want to smash metronomes. But it also felt like watching a bird hop down from a branch and just...walk. Normally. He can walk. He'll be good at it. He's good at whatever he decides to learn. Still, I've always pictured him flying—on his own terms, not anyone else's.
I ran through snapshots in my head, as if one of them would explain this: little Kousei in a too-big blazer, flat bangs, hands swallowed by sleeve cuffs; Kousei in middle school with his hair finally arguing back and the way he stands like he's apologizing to air; Kousei at the riverbank counting stones because I made him; Kousei on that stage with the circle of light and the cold sound I hate; Kousei lately, eyes like a storm he keeps inside his skull.
His mom. I don't like thinking about her. I like even less the way her shadow sometimes sits on his shoulder and changes his shape. But right now, it wasn't one person I thought of—it was the whole weather pattern of his life. Maybe he's not running from music. Maybe he's turning toward something else. Maybe he's tired of being the instrument and wants to be the hands or something like that.
And then there's Ka— I stop the name before it forms. It's not about one person. It's about all the hospital rooms we've drawn maps through in our heads, all the "she's fine" we've said with smiles too wide. If you live with that long enough, "medicine" stops being a job and starts being a verb.
I still wanted to shake him and say, Explain it to me. Let me in. I still wanted to grab his sleeve and drag him somewhere with air and ask the questions I practice and never ask: Are you okay? What are you really chasing? Where do I fit if you leave music behind?
I don't even know when "music" became a place I thought we all lived in together. He and I. And her. And even Watari, orbiting with his jokes. Maybe I've been imagining a house that never existed, and now I'm mad that he's walking out of a door that was only in my head.
The bell rang. The hallway jolted. A first-year sprinted past with his tie over his shoulder like a flag. A teacher yelled about walking feet. I smoothed the notice I'd mangled and pretended to read it one more time so I could pretend I wasn't waiting for my heart to catch up.
At lunch we were under the camphor tree again, I didn't ask any of it. He was asleep yet again against the trunk, arms folded, mouth barely open, uniform rumpled, faint remnants of a coffee stain where only I would notice. No glasses—so his face looked different, older and younger at once. Peaceful and exhausted. The leaves ticked in the heat. The sun pressed down.
I sat on the roots and opened my bento as quietly as the clasps would allow. After a minute he made a small sound in his throat and blinked at me like he was remembering how to wear his face. The questions lined up behind my teeth and then marched right off a cliff.
I shoved the box toward him until it tapped his sleeve. "Eat." I told him.
He did. That was the whole conversation, and somehow it felt like enough for the length of a lunch period.
Later, when I remembered the guidance office and the sky and the way my stomach had felt too small, I told the warm air what I hadn't told him. "You're so confusing, Kousei. But... fine. I'll keep up."
I don't know if I can. I don't know if I want him to keep walking or if I want to push him back up into the branches. I don't know where I'm supposed to stand if he chooses a hallway with white coats instead of a stage with hot lights. I only know this: I'm not letting him walk it alone. Even if he tries to.
Science. Medicine.
Okay. Then I'll learn that weather, too.
———
The lab hums like a tired refrigerator. Fluorescents press the afternoon flat. Notes and printouts are taped everywhere, curling at the corners. Whiteboard math we keep not erasing sits like a dare. The steel table is cool under my forearms. A small pill near my elbow catches a thin line of light—Skyclars, blue and green color, pretending to be ordinary.
Saitou flips a clipboard page with his thumb and makes the sound he makes when numbers line up. "Rabbits: clean." Flip. "Frogs: clean." Flip. "Felines—blood markers stable, motor tests improved." He taps a column. "Canines... cleaner than expected."
The incubator ticks as it corrects half a degree. Alcohol wipes, warm plastic, stale coffee—that's the room's smell. The centrifuge light blinks three times and settles, like always. I could draw this layout from memory now, right down to the notch in the linoleum near the sink.
"They keep behaving," he says, dry on purpose, as if that will stop hope from getting ideas. "It's almost suspicious."
"Almost," I say. Suspicion is for people with time.
He scribbles the date, circles two numbers. His eyes slide to me, then to the vial. "You said you had that meeting today," he adds, like he's fishing in calm water. "Career plans."
"Yeah." I look at the vial, not him. "I put science. Medicine."
He doesn't react for a second, then his shoulders let go half an inch. "Good," he says. "The world needs people like you."
Praise used to arrive with a score attached. Ninety-eight, first prize, excellent control. It didn't touch me; it went through me to someone else. This lands. It sits there. I don't know where to put it. "Thanks," I say, and the word feels new in my mouth.
He turns the clipboard around and taps the top line—our initials, the batch tag. Skyclars. We wrote the name on a sticky note months ago and never upgraded it. "If the board doesn't get cute," he says, "we could be cleared for a small human cohort in a few weeks. Maybe a month. With these animal data, I can make a strong case."
Weeks. Maybe a month. The numbers drop into my stomach like stones. I pull off a glove and toss it toward the bin. It kisses the rim and skids under the counter. Of course it does.
"We should apply now," I say. It comes out too fast. "We've done rabbits, frogs, cats, dogs. We repeated dosing. We re-ran panels. You walked every line with me. It's clean, Saitou. It's—" I stop before I say perfect.
"Nothing is perfect," he says automatically, but his eyes are still on the vial.
"Perfect enough," I push. "Perfect enough to stop waiting while people—" The word I almost say catches. I swallow it and the room tilts for a second.
He studies me. He's good at it. He's looked at grief long enough to make it blink first. His wife's photo sits on the filing cabinet, turned slightly toward the wall like a candle in a draft.
"If we rush to humans and anything looks wrong," he says, quieter, "we don't just lose a week. We lose trust. Funding. Time we can't buy back."
"Time we can't buy back anyway." My voice frays, then holds. "You said it yourself—data like this doesn't show up often. You can convince them. Your name opens doors mine doesn't."
He exhales, long. I can see him weighing two kinds of failure: the kind the world writes down, and the kind that lives in your bones. The incubator ticks again. Down the hall, a cart squeaks, pauses, squeaks.
"Tomorrow," he says at last. "I'll submit to the ethics board and the hospital partners. We'll request an early-start protocol. I'll add compassionate-use language. It won't be fast—nothing is—but I'll push."
Relief doesn't feel like fireworks. It feels like a fist unclenching enough to let blood back into the fingers. "Thank you," I say, and I mean more than you know.
He isn't done. "You also need to be ready for the part where the answer is no," he says. "Or the part where it's yes and the first human result is messy. You don't get to come apart. Not here."
"I know." I do. I already came apart once this week under a hot light. The pieces found each other again. Maybe they'll keep doing that. Maybe that's my only trick.
He sets the clipboard down and leans on the table, palms flat. "You're fourteen you know ," he says, half to me, half to the air.
"So?" I want to ask what age has to do with molecules, with math, with clocks that don't care. Instead I watch the vial throw back its thin line of light.
"Eat before you fall over." He opens the lab fridge, pulls out an onigiri, and tosses it without looking. I catch it because my hands remember how even when my head doesn't. " Just Becuase your an anamoly doesn't mean your not human, take better care of yourself"
"For the record," he adds, eyes on the old desktop while a template loads, "you don't have to pretend you're not scared. Being scared and being ready aren't opposites."
I strip the plastic and bite. Rice, salt, sea. "I'm not scared," I lie, because the fear I have isn't sharp; it's heavy. "I'm impatient."
He grunts. In his language, that's approval. The keyboard clacks too loud for the room.
When the food is gone, I wash my hands and hang the lab coat back on its hook. I stand next to the steel like a soldier at a river. The vial is right there: ordinary and impossible.
"Tomorrow," Saitou repeats, not looking up. "Go home. Or go...wherever you go."
I nod. Hospital, my head supplies. The word is a room now. West window. Two chairs, one that knows my shape. A beeping that learned to whisper.
At the door I look back. Saitou's face is a lit rectangle above a field of forms. He's already three boxes ahead. "Thanks," I say again.
"Don't thank me yet, kid," he says, and the corner of his mouth tilts like he might, one day.
The hallway smells like someone mopped and then got tired. I pass the animal room and the autoclave and the cabinet with labels that shout three times. My reflection keeps pace in the glass: thin, tired, school uniform under a lab badge like a bad joke.
Outside, the evening air is warm and soft. My phone buzzes once—nothing urgent. I tuck it away. My feet already know which way to turn. Toward disinfectant and soft-voiced nurses. Toward a window that catches late light. Toward a person I won't name to anyone, whose time feels like it's shrinking while the world insists on moving at its own speed.
Hold on, I tell the empty sky. Please hold on.
———
I cut across the station square toward the hospital, the kind of late afternoon that glues your collar to your neck. The brick path is warm through the soles of my shoes. She hasn't been at school all term. The empty chair in homeroom has learned to make its own gravity. I go anyway. Sit, listen, collect seconds I missed last time.
Something cold bursts against the back of my head.
I stop. Water snakes down my neck and hides under my shirt. A thin arc drips off my ear. I turn slowly. Vending machine hum. A salaryman with a dead face. A pair of elementary schoolers herding a kickball. No one holding a balloon. Just a red rubber band lying there like a clue that doesn't care if it's found.
"Very funny....," I tell the air, and keep walking. The feeling of Deja vu didn't stop
The zelkova at the corner throws a patch of shade big enough to matter. I step into it, grateful—and my heel kisses metal. A bucket, tipped on its side, skates under my foot. My balance does the panicked math that keeps noses from breaking. I windmill, grab the tree, and hiss a breath through my teeth as the bucket rattles away in triumph.
A Tick mark on my forehead . I look up into the leaves. "Oi," I bark. "Who's—"
A laugh emits through the area then, a tiny intake of breath answers me. A high, girlish squeak. Then the sound a branch makes when it stops being a branch and starts being an exit.
"Kya—!"
Oh yeah.... that's what I forgot
Nagi
I have just enough time to put my arms out. Her small body drops like a sack of summer air and collides with my chest. We go down together, elbows and bark and breath leaving my lungs in a flat shape.
I blink water out of my lashes. She's across me at an awkward angle, hair falling across her cheek in clean, blunt bangs. Two red bear hair clips grin from either side of her head, cheerful and unhelpful. Her hands are curled like she meant to catch the sky and forgot how. A black cat materializes by the roots, blinks once at our heap, and vanishes under a fence as if it has paperwork to file elsewhere.
déjà vu slots the photo into the right folder. Right. This is where we meet again.
"Freaking idiot," I tell the canopy, gently. I shift, get an arm under her knees and another at her back, and stand. She's light in the way small, determined people are—more momentum than mass. The bucket bumps my ankle like it wants to finish the job.
Hiroko's building is four blocks if you're not carrying anyone. I am. My arms complain by block two and negotiate a truce by block three.
The door opens before I knock twice. "Yo—" Hiroko stops mid-greeting when the picture resolves: me, damp, bucket handle hooked at my wrist; a girl with bears in her hair, limp in my arms. An unlit cigarette is pinched between two fingers, the kind of habit you hold like punctuation. Surprise crosses her face so fast it looks like wind.
"Are you collecting strays now?" she says, but it comes out more curious than sharp.
"She fell," I say. "From the tree."
"That's Not Helping your case." She said with a raised brow
Hiroko steps aside, mouth chewing on the unlit filter like it can give answers. The entry smells like tea and the ghost of smoke. Koharu peeks around her leg—yellow hair, serious mouth. Her eyes travel from the bear clips to the bucket to my shirt and back, and she pronounces, "Mess."
"Put her on the futon," Hiroko says, voice finding a level again. She cracks the window, perches the cigarette on the sill like she might remember to light it later, and moves with a quick, neat competence that admits worry without dramatizing it.
I lay the girl down. Her lashes flutter like they're thinking about work. A beat. Then she bolts upright, sits too straight, and presses thumb and forefinger to her chin, playing innocent with a stagey face that would be annoying if it weren't so transparent.
"Where am I?" she asks, eyes wide enough to squeak.
"Living room," I say. "Welcome to the land of the living ."
Her gaze clicks to Hiroko blinks and explodes. "Y—You're Hiroko Seto-sensei?!"
Hiroko blinks once. The shape of her mouth does something between a smirk and a brace. "That's what my bills say."
The girl launches forward on her knees until she's shin-to-shin with Hiroko and clamps both hands around Hiroko's like prayer. The red bear clips glare up at us like witnesses. "Please let me be your student!"
Hiroko glances sideways at me, as if to confirm this is, in fact, her life now. I lift both palms. Not my script.
"Names," Hiroko says, trying for dry but not quite landing it. "Start with those."
The girl bows so fast one bear clip leaps for freedom and lands in her lap. "I'm Nagi Aizato! First-year in the music division at Kurumigaoka—piano major. I've admired you for a long time—your recordings with—um—I just—please, please, please teach me!"
Koharu edges closer, evaluating. "She's loud," she tells me, as if I hadn't noticed.
"This is sudden," Hiroko says, and now the shake shows—subtle, in the way her fingers hover over Nagi's as if they might pull away or pull in. "And not entirely polite to your school teachers." She studies the girl's face, the bright engine of it, the undercurrent of fear that lives in real ambition. "How how about this?"
" Make me want to teach you." She points at the piano. "Then I'll see if your worth it"
Nagi eyes widens but she nods." I understand" she said more seriously.
Nagi spins to the upright like a compass snapping to north, scoots onto the bench, flexes her fingers, and inhales like she's about to jump into winter water.
She was about to start
"Wait," I say.
She freezes, hands hovering a centimeter above the keys, and looks back at me, confused. I step in, capture both of her cheeks between my fingers, and pull.
Her voice jumps two octaves. "Ow!-ow!-what are you!—"
"You hit me with a water balloon," I say, stretching until she looks like an indignant goldfish. "You set a bucket trap. You fell on me out of a tree." I continued " Oh yeah let's not forget about the pot! And cans!"
"I'm—ow—sorry!" she squeaks, eyes instantly glossing—real or eyedrops; the jury's out. "The bucket wasn't for you! And the balloon was just a little—ow—test!" Her cheeks were very malleable.
"Test failed." I let go. Her cheeks stay round a beat too long, then snap back. Hiroko coughs into her knuckles to smother a laugh she'd deny later. Koharu nods once, the gravity of justice served.
Nagi glowers up at me, red bears scowling in solidarity. "You're mean," she mutters, rubbing, then sets her shoulders and turns back to the keys. Determination clicks back into place. She breathes, drops her hands, and chooses Chopin.
Etude Op. 25, No. 5. "Wrong-Note." Of course
Hiroko perked up. It was the same song I played... Tried to play for the Maihou.
Her opening is clean; the consonants in her touch make the dissonance read as wit instead of accident. Wrist loose enough. Forearm not cheating the line. The left hand lays a sensible floor. She keeps the tempo tight without suffocating it. Kurumigaoka written all over the knuckles—tidy, quick, educated.
And then the hollow shows up on cue. The inner voices don't get to talk; she irons the middle to a shine that hides the grain. When the figure returns, she adds pressure instead of depth, as if louder were the same as closer. Two left-hand corners wobble like a table with a shorter leg. The pedal's dry by a thumb-width. Clarity's nice. Breath is better. She gives me ninety and keeps the ten that would make it feel like a person and not a trick.
I lean against the doorframe and let the two timelines line up—the one where I know this kid like my own patience and the one where she's a stranger who is, in alarming detail, exactly herself. In that other life we learned to breathe at the same time again. We laughed at wrong notes until they stopped being wrong and started being ours. The room tilts a degree and settles.
She vaults the last run. Lands the chord true. Freezes palms-on-wood until the ring stops having places to go. Then she turns, a small grin breaking through her trying-to-be-cool face—70% joy, 30% please say it.
Koharu claps with sparkly eyes. "Wow so nice!" she pronounces.
Hiroko stands slowly, as if testing her legs, and walks two steps toward the bench. The unlit cigarette sits on the sill behind her like a witness. She rests a knuckle on the fallboard and taps, thoughtful. "That's Kurumigaoka for you..." A breath. "Hands and head both working. Good wit on top"
Hiroko puts a finger on her mouth.. Nagi watched intently, suddenly she smiled. "Okay, can you start coming next week?" Hiroko said holding a finger up
Nagi's eyes flood. Tears bead at the rim—too shiny, too fast. The bears glare up at us from her lap like red witnesses. She bows so hard her forehead nearly headbutts the fallboard. "Th—thank you! I'll work so hard! I'll—"
"Stop before you promise me your soul," Hiroko says, something almost like relief exhaling out of her. She points with her chin at the calendar pinned to the fridge with a magnet that says NO CHOPIN BEFORE COFFEE. "Next week. Bring ears."
Nagi nods so hard a bear clip finally gives up and tumbles onto the tatami. "Yes!"
Hiroko turns to me then, the decision already written in the angle of her eyebrows. The shaken edge from earlier is still there, but it's turned into resolve. "And you," she says, like it's the second half of a sentence I should have heard already. "Help teach her."
The first answer in my throat is no. My mouth edits. "Why me?" I continue. " At this point I suck ass at the piano I may be worse than her"
"Because you heard what she missed," she says simply. "And you know how to make people find it. Because you pretend you don't care when you do. You got first in Towa easily you have all the skills... Also—" she gives me a teacher look she hasn't earned but wears well "—watch your language."
"Fine, I'll help" I say. I suppose I did bring her to Hiroko so that's the least I can do. Hopefully she doesn't want much dedication from me though I didn't have time for that.
"Good" she says. The corner of her mouth twitches. The unlit cigarette on the sill watches us both like a little gray judge.
Nagi peers between us, blinking fast, the bears in her lap upside down and scandalized. "I—I'll bring snacks?" she offers, as if this tips the scale.
"Snacks are important for art," Koharu says with priestly gravity.
The hospital tugs at me from the west like a tide. If I leave now, the room will still be warm with the kind of light that makes her hair look like something you apologize to and then forgive. I should go.
But déjà vu has hands, and they're on my shoulders now, steadying, not stopping. The last time I said yes to Nagi, I got back pieces of myself I thought were permanently filed under Do Not Touch. We mocked, we worked, we performed until the stage felt like a place you could breathe again. I owe that version of us something. Maybe this version too.
"I'll try. Don't complain if my input is useless." I say
Hiroko lets out a small breath she didn't give herself permission to hold. "I won't need to."
Nagi bows again, so low her bear clips kiss the keys. "Thank you, Sensei! Thank you, Arima-san! I won't let you—"
"Start by not dropping pots and buckets," I say, already stepping toward the door.
She flushes to the ears. "Y—yes!"
"Go," Hiroko says to me, softer now, the shaken part melted into care. "Wherever you go."
"Yeah," I say. The word covers more ground than it should.
On the landing the air is warmer than inside. I touch the rail; the metal holds the day's heat like a memory. A crow complains from the electric line. Somewhere a bicycle bell rings twice. I think of a vial on a steel table and a form that says tomorrow. Of a window that faces west and a chair that knows my shape. Of a girl with bear clips and a joke of a Chopin that still manages to say something true.
The street opens. I keep walking.
—————
The corridor hums like a giant refrigerator, all white light and polished floor that doubles me into a ghost. I pad along in hospital slippers, palms brushing the cool rail as I go. The IV pole isn't with me tonight—small victory—so I swing my arms a little and sing nothing-words under my breath, the kind you make up when you're bored in a bakery.
"Ele, ele... canelé," I whisper, and imagine the burnished sugar crust cracking under my teeth. Mom says the syrup should smell like caramel just at the edge of bitter; Dad says that edge is where the magic is. The word edge tastes good in my mouth. It tastes like stages and bright circles of light and the moment before a down-bow.
I take three careful steps and pretend they're onstage steps, the kind that make the audience lean in before you've even tuned. If I squint, the corridor could almost be a backstage hallway—dim, chilled, a current of nerves moving through it. If I really squint, the silver strip of fluorescent catches a dust-mote just so, like the bow-hair catching a single filament of sound.
I think of him. I think of Kousei the way you think of a song that's been stuck all day, even when you're trying to hum something else. He visits more than anyone now; even more than Mom and Dad. He slips in after school, after practice, after the end of the day when the city winds down, and he just... sits. Sometimes he brings books he swears Watari picked, and the library card betrays him—someone else's name first, then Arima in clean letters underneath. Sometimes he doesn't bring anything at all. He takes the vinyl chair by my bed, or even sits beside me, eyes half-lidded like he's listening to a piece only he can hear.
I wanted to tell him to go home. Sometimes I did. He would say, "In a minute," and then the minute became an hour, and the hour became a nurse peeking in and pretending not to be surprised he was still there. When he finally leaves, the chair sighs like it's grateful. My chest does something similar and I hate that it does.
"See?" I tell the empty hall, lifting my chin like a kid showing off a healed scab. "I can still walk, Kousei."
My right foot shuffles forward. The slipper squeaks. I can almost feel the bow in my hand, the old thrill starting in my shoulders, the way music makes the rest of the world scoot back a little to give you room.
Then my legs leave me.
It's not dramatic, not at first. Just a momentary misfire, like a light flicking once before it burns out. The floor tilts; my knee buckles; the rail is a river rushing away from my fingers. I'm sitting before I realize I'm falling. The cold seeps through the thin hospital gown at once. Both slippers have flown off. They stare at me, open-mouthed.
"Huh?" My voice is small. "What...?"
I try again. I clamp the rail with both hands and push, the way you lift a heavy window. My forearms shake; my knees limp like wet paper. I get a few inches off the floor, enough to think there we go, and then the connection is gone—like someone unplugged me. I slump back down. Air leaves my lungs, a soft, embarrassing sound.
Not now. Please, not now...
I hook my heels under me and drag. The skin on my shins squeaks against the polished wax. My heartbeat staggers. Sweat prickles at my scalp where the bandage meets hair. I press my shoulder to the wall and try to climb it, as if friction alone could turn me into a person again.
"Stand up," I tell my body. It comes out more breath than words.
The hallway pretends not to hear. It smells like lemon cleaner and sleep.
I bring my fists down on my thighs—tap first, then harder. "Stand up," I say again, louder. "Stand up." Tears are hot on my face before I can be brave about it. They fall and stick my hair to my cheeks.
"You're my legs," I choke, voice breaking into jagged pieces. "You're my legs, aren't you?! Stand up!"
The words echo down the corridor and come back smaller. I pound again, not because I believe pain will fix whatever is misfiring in there, but because it feels like doing something, and doing nothing feels like drowning.
Kousei would sprint if he heard me. He would take corners badly and skid the last few feet and say my name like it could hold me together. I don't want him to see. I don't want anyone to see, but especially not him. He's already carrying too much—whatever invisible cargo he picked up somewhere between yesterday and today and refuses to put down. He thinks he's hiding it; he's not. The shadows under his eyes are beginning to look permanent, like the kind you chisel into statues to make them look thoughtful.
I'm thinking of him even in this situation.
I hate that thought. I hate the part of it where he invades my thoughts so easily.. it was scary
"Stand. Up!" I press my heels to the floor and push hard. For a second I'm vertical—trembling, but upright—palms flat on the rail, chin tucked. The world swings. Black freckles sparkle at the edges of my vision. I take a breath I hope is steady enough to pass for one. My right knee buckles. I fold in half and go down hard, hip catching first, elbow second. A bolt of pain lances up my arm. I swear and then apologize to the empty space.
"Aaaagh—" It bursts out of me before I can bite it down. The sound ricochets off the walls and keeps going long after I stop making it.
I stay on the floor. The tiles are cool. If I close my eyes, they could be the quiet surface of a lake and I could float here, easy, as long as I don't move. I press my forehead to the crook of my arm and count my breaths like I'm back in a practice room timing long tones.
This is not the first time. It won't be the last. There are good days—days I can walk laps, days I can sit up without the world going soft at the edges, days I can laugh without the laugh turning into a cough. Then there are There are days like this. The trick is to stack the good ones into a wall and pretend it can hold back the tide.
I picture Mr. Bunny waiting on my pillow, ears bent, one eye slightly squished where I slept on him. I picture Kousei's profile in the visitor's chair, the way he looks smaller when he thinks I'm not watching, like the shape of the room is too big for him and he's trying to fit anyway. I picture his hands—the way they tremble a little now when he threads his fingers through mine, as if he's measuring the distance between what he can fix and what he can't.
He told me we'd play again. He said it like a vow, like a rope he was throwing across a canyon. I caught it because what else do you do with a promise like that? I wrapped it around my wrist and tied a knot. Tonight, lying on the floor with slippers pointing their soft, accusing mouths at me, I tug at the rope and feel it tug back. Somewhere out there, he's awake. I don't know how I know. I just do. Maybe he's staring at a page full of numbers that might someday turn into a music with a name I can't pronounce. Maybe he's walking under streetlights, counting cracks in the pavement to make the world feel ordered. Maybe he's standing outside the hospital door, deciding if he should come in or give me the dignity of quiet.
A nurse's cart squeaks at the far end of the hall. I drag the back of my hand across my face and leave it wet. I swallow, then push my palms against the floor. My arms shake, but they work. I scoot one hip, then the other, until my shoulder can rest against the wall again. The metal rail is cold and kind. I haul myself up the way you climb out of a pool—slow, stubborn, ugly.
When my knees finally lock, I stare at my traitor legs and try to smile at them, like you do with children who have just scared you half to death. "Okay," I whisper. "Okay. We'll try again tomorrow."
I don't pick up the song. I don't have the breath for it. I shuffle back toward my room, one hand sliding along the rail, the other pressed to the spot where my heartbeat feels a little too fast. Mr. Bunny will be there when I reach the bed. If I'm lucky, the chair will be occupied by a boy who doesn't know how to stop showing up.
"Just a little longer," I tell the corridor, the ceiling, the future. "Just hold a little longer."