I sit on the shrine steps and pretend the stone doesn't hurt. The cicadas won't shut up. A breeze pulls at the red bear clips in my hair and makes the paper streamers at the torii whisper. I dig the heel of my sneaker into the lip of the step and grind. If the step could feel it, it would say "ow." Good. Something should.
I ran out in the middle of the lesson. I know that was dramatic. I also don't care.
"Again," he'd said. "Not like that. Here—listen."
Then he took my right-hand figure and played it with one hand, lazy and exact, the way you might fix a ribbon on a child's hair. My face got hot. My hands are small. I can't help that. He didn't even look angry. That was the worst part. He looked... tired. Like he wanted to be anywhere else. Like correcting me was another chore on a list he didn't make.
Stupid Kousei. Stupid dead-fish eyes. Stupid long fingers that don't get stuck on the black keys. Stupid silent daydreamer face.
I came to you to knock you off that dusty throne in Takeshi's head, and you won't even sit in it. What is the point of revenge if the target won't care? What am I supposed to aim at—your back while you walk away..?
I stare at my hands and flatten them on my skirt. The lines on my fingers look like cracks in a dried riverbed. I can play fast. I can be clean. I can push. I can even be musical. I can. But when he says "not like that," the notes I was proud of turn thin. My chest feels empty, and I want to shout at him until he says "fine, it's fine," just so I can breathe again.
Footsteps scrape the stone below. I don't look. I can smell it before I see it—sweet, warm, a little smoky. Of course.
"You're late," I say to the air, because I am not giving him the satisfaction of seeing me look first.
"Nagi," he says, like a question he already knows the answer to. "I'm sorry. I... I'm not the best teacher."
I whirl around just enough to give him a side-eye and a scoff. He stands two steps down, a paper bag in one hand, the other hand free and empty. His shirt is wrinkled. His collar is wrong. He forgot his glasses again, which is infuriating because it means those dull blue eyes of his are somehow clearer. He looks like he slept in a different century and dragged himself here.
"What's that supposed to mean?" I say. "You can play with one hand, but your mouth can't say 'good job' even once?"
He lifts the bag a little, almost embarrassed. "Tribute," he says. "Stone-roasted sweet potatoes. Beni Azuma. Still hot."
Does he think he can buy me with a potato? I raise my chin. "Do you... think you can buy me with a potato?"
"It's a very good potato," he says, dead serious, as if this is a fact from a textbook. "Please eat it anyway. I was wrong to be sharp."
I want to keep being mad. I really do. But the smell climbs up and curls into my nose, and my stomach makes a tiny sound that betrays me. I snatch the bag, like I'm saving it from him, not taking it. The paper is hot. I juggle it from palm to palm, then nestle it in my skirt and tear the seam of the bag open with two fingers.
Steam floats up. The skin is spotty purple, the flesh bright gold. I tear a chunk and bite.
It is soft. It is sweet. It is everything a potato can be and more. I hate him.
"Mmm.." I say before I can stop myself, and want to fall down the steps and die.
He chuckles. It's a low, tired sound that somehow makes my neck want to prickle. "I thought you'd like it."
"Shut up," I say around another bite, because my mouth has decided to betray me twice.
He sits one step below me, not close, not far. He doesn't look up into my face; he looks out across the shrine yard. The stone foxes on their pedestals are chipped on the ears. The rope is fraying. A kid laughs somewhere, chasing a bug with a net. The evening is soft and sticky.
"You come here a lot," he says.
"It's peaceful," I say. "He used to play with me here."
"Your hero.." he says, not a question.
I nod, chew, swallow. I peel the skin with my thumb and set the strip aside on the step, neat. "He started piano first. I copied him. He was always ahead. I'm always behind. That's how time works for us."
"Do you want to catch up?" he asks, simple.
"Yes," I say, and the word comes out too fast, like it tripped.
I pull my knees up and wrap my arms around them. The bear clips tug. I stare at my socks. "He doesn't look my way much. Not really. He's... busy. With someone else."
He's quiet. Not empty quiet. The kind that makes room.
"So," I say, and my voice steadies because it has to, "I'll make him look. I'll play well enough that he has to. I'll be good enough that he can't pretend I'm a kid. I'll use the piano to stand in front of him and make him see me."
Why am I telling you this? You, of all people? The one who sits in the middle of his sky like a star he pretends he doesn't notice?
"It's a selfish motive," I say quickly, like I can disarm it if I label it first. "Impure. I know."
"Mm," he says. He tips his head back and looks at the leaves, the small squares of sky between them. "I'm a mess," he adds, and it almost sounds like a joke at his own expense. "Not one to judge anyone's heart."
I put my hand over my mouth to push a laugh back, but it slips out anyway. "Hehe... You're ridiculous," I say. "Tribute potato. 'I'm a mess.' What kind of teacher are you?"
He lifts one shoulder, a tiny shrug. "The kind who doesn't know what he's doing," he says. "But I'm trying."
I look down at his hair. It's a bit too long. He should cut it. I hate that noticing that makes me want to smooth it down. My anger has holes in it I didn't see before.
"Arima-sensei," I say before I can stop the word, because I hate that it fits. "Are you in love with anyone?"
Silence. The cicadas keep screaming. A crow caws once and is done.
He lowers his chin and looks at me. He doesn't pretend he didn't hear. He doesn't tease. He just looks, like he's checking if I really want to know.
"I am," he says.
The potato in my hand stops being interesting. "What's she like..?"
He thinks for a second, and the thinking looks like hurt, which I am not ready for.
"Blonde," he says. "Violinist. Slightly violent."
"Slightly," I say, because I can hear the joke begging.
"Very," he corrects softly. The corner of his mouth moves. "Demanding."
His eyes go darker. Not dramatic. Just a shade the sky turns a few minutes before it realizes it has to be night.
"Frail," he says, and that word sits down between us like a new person. "Fleeting."
Who says that? Who puts those words next to a person they love? I feel my spine pull tight. My fingers crumple the bag. The steam doesn't feel warm anymore. Fleeting is a mean word. It's a word for things that go before you can hold them. It's a word for butterflies and summer and... other things.
"Beautiful," he adds, and it's not the type of beautiful people say when they mean "pretty." It's the kind of beautiful you say when you're talking about the first time you saw the ocean and realized it could drown you. "Scary," he adds, as if he owes me the last piece.
I should say something sharp. I should roll my eyes and say, "Wow, great, you fell for a dangerous girl, how original." I should stand up and tell him he's dramatic and childish and he deserves the headache if he insists on loving a storm.
He gives me an out instead. "Trust me," he says, with that quiet that keeps making room. "The less you know, the better it is."
He smiles. It's small and tired and... not fake, exactly. It's the kind of smile that has to climb over something sharp to reach his face.
I hate that it makes my chest feel tight. I hate that I want to ask him if he ate lunch. I hate that I want to tell him not to go wherever he's going because he looks like a strand of string someone pulled too hard.
He puts his hand on the step, pushes himself to his feet, and stretches until his back makes a small sound. "I have someone to visit," he says, like he's telling me the weather.
"Her," I say. Not a question.
He nods.
"You'll be okay?" he asks. "Getting home."
"I'm not a child," I snap, which is what a child says.
He nods again, like he expected that answer and likes it anyway. He takes the bag from my bad hand and puts it back in my good one because I crushed the top and the steam is leaking. "Eat the rest," he says. "Sugar helps after a fight."
"This wasn't a fight," I say.
"It was for you," he says, and he doesn't make it mean.
He turns to go. The blue of evening is thicker now. The shrine lamps click on one by one and paint little circles on the stone. His steps are slow but not dragging. He moves like someone who has to keep moving or else thinking will catch him and make a mess.
I want to say something. "Don't give up." "Stop teaching me like a ghost." "If you're going to leave piano, leave loudly, not like this." "If you're going to love her, don't say fleeting again because I'm going to scream."
Instead I say nothing. I watch his back go down the steps and past the foxes. The cicadas sing. The paper streamers whisper. A moth bumps the lamp and then calms down and sits in the warm.
I look at the potato bag in my hand. It's stupid that a potato can make a truce. It's stupid that a boy I wanted to crush can make me worry. It's stupid that I don't hate him as much as I did this morning.
I take another bite while it's still hot. I chew slowly. I tell myself it's just the sugar. I tell myself I hate him. I tell myself a lot of things. The shrine listens and says nothing back.
__
The room smells like lemon and warm plastic. Afternoon light pools on the blanket. The bunny plush leans on Kaori's shoulder like a tiny guard. The IV taps every few breaths—soft clicks marking time I hate.
"Where is it?" she says, eyes bright, already teasing. "Canelé. You promised."
"They were sold out," I say. Too flat. Too fast.
She gasps like I confessed treason and flings a slipper. It thumps my chest. I catch the second one mid-air. "Assault," I deadpan. "Ten to life."
The door slides wide. Watari barges in with boxes stacked to his chin, Tsubaki with napkins, Nao with clinking drinks. The room warms. Kaori points at Watari like he's prime minister.
"Behold! A man who keeps promises."
I almost smile. Watari flips a lid. Sugar air rushes out.
"Melon pan, éclairs, cream puffs, and—drumroll—the last canelé on earth."
Her outrage melts to reverence. She reaches like he's holding a star. I look away. I went to three shops first. Also somewhere I can't tell her about. Two clocks are running; only one is visible.
Nao taps a straw against her lip and says, too light, "Speaking of promises... how's the first-year middle schooler you're teaching?"
A coin of silence drops into the room and rings.
Kaori's smile tightens. "The what?" Voice sweet. Not her eyes.
Tsubaki blinks at me. "Teaching... who? Since when? You didn't tell me. Don't you usually ask me about this stuff?"
Watari's grin widens like it's TV. "Arima, are you poaching the future? Am I complicit?"
I roll a shoulder. Aim for casual. Miss. "Hiroko roped me into helping someone," I say. "A first-year. It's not—"
"Not what?" Kaori cuts in. "Not a secret unless someone blurts it out?"
Nao winces. "Oh— I didn't know—"
"It isn't," I say, which isn't an explanation. "It's nothing. I'm just... helping."
"With piano," Kaori repeats. "You had time for that."
The IV ticks. The bunny stares. Something brittle forms under my ribs.
"You promised me," she says, calm in the way that hurts worse than shouting. "You promised we'd play again. That you'd try. That you wouldn't run."
"I'm not—" I start.
She laughs once, joyless. "You're always not doing the thing you're doing. Do you hear yourself? 'I'm not' is your favorite sentence."
"It's a kid," I say. "Hiroko asked. That's all Kaori ."
"So you had time," she says, "for a kid. For a first-year girl. But not to—what? Practice? Breathe? Be who you are?"
Watari raises both hands like a ref. Tsubaki shifts closer to the rail and stays quiet, holding in things she knows she can't say for me.
"I'm doing enough," I say. The closest safe piece of the truth.
"Enough?" Her mouth trembles. "There are kids who practice until their noses bleed, Kousei. Kids who live at the piano because it's how they exist. And you—" She swallows. "I hate your tired eyes."
My throat closes. I want to tell her about the pill, the trial forms, the schedule grinding forward. About choosing time where she can't see it. But opening that door means cutting her with the blade that's been living in me.
"Don't you dare waste your life," she whispers. "Don't you dare waste what makes you you. Before you know it, time—" Her voice fractures. "It runs out."
The words land like a small, honest break I can't fix.
Kaori was crying..
"I—" She rubs at one eye with the heel of her hand. "Sorry. I got weird. Forget it. You know me. Loud. I don't mean things."
No one believes her. Not even the bunny.
"I'm trying," I say, quiet. It sounds weak. "I am."
She looks at me over the rim of a juice Nao slides into her hand. Her eyes are wet but holding. If I breathe wrong, it will flood.
"Okay," she says finally, so soft I almost miss it. "Then... okay."
Watari says something about dessert to scare the heaviness off. Tsubaki nudges the tray closer. People move, the way people do when there's nothing useful to say. The IV taps. The light shifts.
I hook two fingers over the bed rail and stay there so I don't drift. I watch the tiny bruise at the bend of her elbow, the neat tape holding the IV, the way her hands steady when she lifts the fork. I watch her mouth try to be brave, and her eyes fail at it, and her smile reassemble itself because that's what she does for other people.
The sugar smell is warm. The room is full. I am here, two steps away, useless and necessary at the same time.
And as she laughs at some dumb thing Watari says, I feel it—clean and heavy:
I am crushed under how much I can't tell her, and how much I still owe her, and how little time either of us has to get this right.
—
The lab is too bright.
Fluorescents buzz like a tame swarm overhead, steady as a metronome I can't shut off. Benches wiped to a surgical shine. Laptops breathing warm air. On the steel cart: orange-capped bottles and blister packs of Skyclars, film-coated tablets lined like tiny moons. The cardboard sleeves look harmless—dosage grids printed neat, safety leaflets folded into patient-friendly origami.
My jacket still smells like hospital soap. I didn't realize until I set my backpack down and the scent climbed my throat. Kaori's room, the thin click of her IV, the way her smile cracked and held—those things are still on me like dust.
Saitou doesn't say hello. He points at the monitor, glasses low on his nose. "Day seven uploads finished."
I step to his shoulder. Graphs step upward in cautious little stairs. Ambulation scores tick better. Handwriting samples—digitized loops and lines—smooth by a fraction. Tremor plots thin. Nothing dramatic. All the right kinds of boring.
"Side effects?" I ask.
He flips a page on his clipboard. "Nausea in two, one day each. Mild fever in three, resolved with rest. One headache. No drops in liver enzymes. Kidney function steady. No flags on QT. Vitals... unremarkable." He says the last word like a prayer. "So far, so good."
So far, so good. It lands in my chest like a coin I can't spend.
I stare at the blister pack nearest me. Eight tablets left in the card. Ten already gone, if the log is right. The chalk-white discs catch a sliver of light and pretend to be answers.
"She told me not to waste my life," I say. I don't say her name. The room already knows it.
Saitou glances over. His face folds softer for a beat. "How did she look?"
"Bright," I say. The word comes out wrong. "Bright and... tired. She was trying not to shake."
He nods once and turns back to the screen, making it easier for me to breathe. "We're past first week in Cohort A and B," he says. "If these plots hold another several days, we'll have the skeleton of a safety dossier worth showing to nervous people."
"Nervous people with stamps," I say.
"Exactly." He taps the clipboard with his pen, a slow metronome. "And before you ask—yes. I'm drafting the expanded access petition tonight. Compassionate use, limited slots, narrow inclusion. It's thin ice with seven days of human data, but I'll argue risk versus benefit till my throat gives out."
My fingers curl around the bench edge. "Thank you."
He lifts a hand like he's stopping a dog from jumping. "Don't thank me yet. The board will ask for longer observation. Late-onset effects, immunologic weirdness, off-target issues—those ghosts don't show up on day seven just because we glare at the calendar."
"I know." I do. Knowing does nothing to the clock in my head. "But if this keeps up—"
"If," he says gently, "then the next 'if' gets easier."
He scrolls through the patient notes. Each line has a number where a name should be, a little container for a person I want to meet. Patient 03: walking distance +12%. Patient 07: handwriting legibility improved. Each entry a small brightness that doesn't reach the room where a girl with a bunny plush told me she hates my tired eyes.
"I want this to be over," I say. Voice even, because if it isn't it will break. "I want to wake up and not choose which fear to work on."
Saitou sets the clipboard down, palms flat. "Honest sentence," he says. "Keep those. They make fewer messes."
He returns to the data, the ritual of it. "Cohort A shows consistent improvement in ataxia scales—SARA, ICARS—nothing huge, but not noise. Cohort B mirrors it. Cohort C is slower, but trending. Endocrine and hepatic panels are boring. My favorite adjective. Frataxin expression..." He squints, then tilts his head. "There's the faintest uptick in PBMC assays. Could be assay drift. Could be the leading edge of mechanism. We need more points before we claim a syllable."
"More points," I echo. More days. The fluorescent hum is louder than any piano in my bones.
"Enlarge the cohort," I say. "Now. Two more sites. If we can steal staff from that oncology trial on hold, we can stand them up fast. Add remote monitoring so the board can watch in real time. Less excuse to stall."
He doesn't say yes out of habit. He thinks—jaw working, eyes gone far away. "Two sites is plausible," he says at last. "I can call in two favors I've been hoarding. Remote monitoring—yes. If we onboard the platform, the ethics people can peek whenever they like instead of waiting for batch PDFs." He rubs his brow with his thumb. "It will cost us favors, Arima. The kind you can only spend once."
"Spend them," I say. "I'll do the grunt work. Night uploads, sample runs, anything that makes us faster without being stupid."
He snorts. "You already live here at night. I find your labels in racks at three a.m. like I'm collaborating with a ghost."
I don't tell him I like the lab then. The world is smaller. The noise in my head becomes a thing I can put on a shelf.
He picks the clipboard back up and signs the bottom of a form. "All right. We push. I'll queue the petitions. You write idiot-proof protocols for the new sites and harmonize the sampling windows so the monitors have nothing to peck at."
"Done."
I stare at the blister pack until the little tablets blur. The memory lands clean: her voice catching, that single sentence that cut, the way she recovered and made it a joke so no one would drown.
"She had a moment," I say. "It passed."
He hears everything I didn't say. "Then let's earn all the moments that come after."
We work in tandem. He drafts the cover letter to the safety board, threading the needle between caution and urgency. I start building the protocol addendum: dosing windows, pill counts, home temperature logs, call trees for any side effect that wants to pretend it matters. I default to neat—tables, indents, deadlines tight enough to sting. The printer ticks a new page to the tray with small, tidy sounds. If I listen hard enough, it almost sounds like time cooperating.
My phone buzzes once on the bench, a tremor against the steel. Instinct outpaces restraint; I flip it over. No new messages. I lock it and set it face-down, as if that can keep the truth from looking back.
"Eat," Saitou says, not looking up.
"I had half a melon pan."
"Eat the other half."
I tear the plastic with my teeth, chew without tasting. Sweetness sticks in my throat. Hospital soap sneaks in again and pushes it down. I wash it with cold coffee gone sour in the pot. I deserve it.
The door opens; one of the research nurses leans in, hair netted, eyes tired but awake. "Cohort B check-ins completed," she says. "Two patients reported better sleep. No new side effects."
"Thank you," Saitou says. He waits until the door settles. "Better sleep," he repeats to me. "That's not in any primary endpoint. It matters anyway."
I nod. I think of the way Kaori curled around her pillow last night and pretended her eyelids weren't heavy. There is a shape to hope and a shape to denial, and sometimes they rhyme.
Saitou finishes the draft and pushes the keyboard back like a finished measure. "I'll send the pre-read tonight. We'll schedule the board call for Friday. If they don't stall, we open the next tier Monday." He pulls off his glasses, pinches the bridge of his nose. "If they do stall, I call people whose birthdays I forgot for ten years and remind them I know exactly where their skeletons hum."
"Violence," I say.
"Diplomacy," he corrects. "Seasoned."
I look at the pill card again. Eight tiny moons. A week in people's bodies with no monsters showing up to claim ownership. An almost-nothing that could become a something large enough to move a life.
"What if it keeps working?" I ask. It comes out almost like prayer. "What if we get to four weeks and it's still boring in all the right ways?"
"Then," he says, and the word warms something in the air, "we stop whispering. We move to a larger cohort, fast. We ask for expanded access in earnest. We accept praise we didn't have time to want. And we keep our heads, because that's how you keep a good thing from breaking."
I nod. My hands find each other and knot. For a second I see the corridor outside her room, the slant of afternoon light on the floor, the way she looked at me and said don't waste your life like she could feel the secret I'm carrying.
"I'm going to the hospital after logs," I say.
"Good." He caps his pen, slides it under the clipboard clip, neat as a ritual. "Tell her... no. Don't tell her anything yet. Not 'encouraging.' Not 'maybe.' Just tell her you'll be back tomorrow."
"I will." It's the one thing I can promise without lying.
We finish the uploads. I QC the timestamps, chase a stubborn error that isn't an error, just a computer pretending to be capricious. He prints the petition draft and signs it with a quick, practical flourish. The hum keeps time for both of us.
At the door, I pause and look back. The blister packs sit under the light, quiet as teacups. Behind them, the graphs wait to be convinced they're truth and not just neat drawings.
"Arima," Saitou says, not looking up, as if he can feel the way I'm standing, "we're not far."
"I know," I say. The words feel like a handhold.
In the hall, the brightness drops a shade. The world smells like disinfectant and paper. I zip my jacket and start walking. My feet move because hers are tired. My hands are steady because hers shook. The tablets are small and the nights are long and the clock is a cruel instrument, but for the first time in a long time the line I'm playing doesn't feel like a funeral piece.
It feels like something that wants to live.
—
The hallway hums like a refrigerator trying to sound alive. Fluorescent light runs in tired strips along the ceiling, and somewhere down the floor a vending machine coughs coins back at a kid who gave up. I keep walking. Every step sounds too loud, like the building wants me to be gentler with it. My hands are empty. I usually bring something—canelé, melon pan, a book with a dumb title just so she can roast me—but tonight I forgot. Or maybe I didn't forget. Maybe I rushed. I just wanted to get here before the feeling in my chest could talk me out of it.
Her door is half-open. I push with two fingers.
The first thing I see isn't Kaori. It's the wheelchair parked by the bed like a patient dog. My stomach pulls tight. I don't want to make meaning out of metal and rubber, but it makes meaning out of itself. Proof. I look away before it can finish its sentence.
She's by the window. Moonlight paints her cheekbones thin and clean; the city makes a soft, faraway noise through the glass. She turns at the click of the hinge and smiles like she's been waiting to exhale.
"Hi.." she says.
"Hey..." My voice drops a key to match the room.
"Where's my tribute?" Her mouth tilts. "I accept only the finest pastries, Arima-kun."
"I forgot," I say, then shake my head. "No, that's not it. I... just came."
"Just came," she echoes, pretending to weigh the phrase in her hand. "Hmm. Acceptable."
I cross to the bed and sit on the edge, close enough that her blanket brushes my knee. She doesn't move away. Up close the pallor is sharper. Her lashes tremble when she blinks, like they're tired too. The IV line climbs the pole behind her, clear as fishing line. I focus on her face. If I look anywhere else, the future tries to talk.
"You came because you were worried," she says lightly, as if reading a weather report.
"Worried isn't the right word." I take her hand before I can overthink it. Her skin is cool; my hand feels like it might bruise it. "I couldn't stop thinking about you."
"Ah." She lets the sound out on a breath. "You always say the simple version."
"It's the true one."
I can't help cataloging her. The indentation at the base of her throat where the blanket doesn't reach. The tiny nick on her nail where the polish chipped. The full stop of a freckle under her ear. This is what my silence usually is: not nothing, but memorizing. I'm greedy with details. If I blink too long, I'm scared I'll miss something that proves she was here.
"I feel like if I look away, you'll disappear," I say, because pretending otherwise in this light feels like lying.
She smiles, the kind that slips at the edges. "You're strange. You come every day and half the time you don't talk. Just sit there with those eyes like... like a puppy who solved a crime and is waiting for praise."
"Then I'll be a puppy," I say. "As long as I get to stay."
Her thumb twitches against my palm. That small movement hits like a bell. She studies me. The mischief is there, but underneath it is the part of her I hate to see—the tiredness nobody else gets close enough to notice. She's been trying to keep her brightness perfect and it's fraying. I want to tape it back together with both hands. I want to trade places with anything in her that hurts.
"You're warmer than anybody," she says softly. "It's ridiculous."
"I like you accusing me of warmth." I try to make it a joke. It comes out honest.
"But it scares me," she adds. Her eyes flick, not to the wheelchair—I refuse to look at it—but to the window, to the dark. "You don't realize how much you're giving up."
I don't look away. "I don't care."
She hums, like she doesn't believe me but she wants to. The moonlight shifts along the wall. Somewhere a cart rattles past and fades. The world keeps happening, but in here it narrows to a bed, a chair, two hands.
She tries to keep it easy. "What's the news, mister? School? Gossip? Did Watari collect more girlfriends like stamps? Did Tsubaki scold you for breathing wrong?"
I could tell her about Watari's latest disasters, or how Tsubaki made me eat half her bento under a tree like I was a kindergartner who couldn't be trusted with autonomy. I could tell her about Nagi's tiny bear hair clips and how she pretended not to cry when she nailed a passage she thought she hated. I could tell her about lab notes in a pocket I washed by mistake and how I rewrote them from memory on the train. Word counts. Vials. Pill coats. The word "Skyclars" stuck to the inside of my skull like gum.
I say none of it. I push our joined hands a little closer to me and anchor them there.
"Everything is better when I'm here," I say.
Her eyes shine. "Flatterer."
"It's not flattery if it's obvious."
She laughs, the small kind that doesn't use lungs. The sound puts cracks in my chest and makes air get in. She looks at me again the way people look at old photos: fond, a little sad, like she's checking for proof of something she almost remembers.
"You keep doing this," she murmurs. "Holding on so tight."
"Because I can't let you go," I say, no stutter. "Not now. Not ever."
Her "oh" is almost silent. She glances down at our hands, then back at me as if measuring whether I know what I just promised. I do. I have no idea how to survive it. Both can be true.
"You know I'm... weird lately," she says, and her smile pulls thin. "Laughing and crying and scaring my parents and then saying it's nothing five minutes later. I keep making people worry. I hate that."
"You're allowed to be weird," I say. "You're allowed to be anything."
"That's very permissive of you," she says, but the tease lands soft. She exhales, a small, careful thing. "Sometimes I feel like if I stop talking, I'll fade out. Like the quiet is a tide and I'll go with it."
"I'll hold you," I say, the words out before I can make them prettier. "Even if you stop talking. Especially if you stop."
She closes her eyes for a beat like she's letting that sentence sit where it can do some work. When she opens them, the guard is down in a way that punches me harder than the wheelchair did. She's letting me see the part that isn't performing bravery for anyone.
"Do you ever think," she says, "that time is silly?"
"All the time."
"That it's like... a room you can't leave, so you draw pictures on the wall to make it feel like yours?" She looks past me, through me. "I drew so many pictures. I don't want the nurse to wipe them off."
I could say we'll make more pictures tomorrow. I could say I'm working on a pill whose name sounds like a sky that opens. I could say wait. Please wait. But begging makes the ground move, and I need the ground to stay still.
"You won't be erased," I say. "Not from me."
"That's a very dramatic promise," she whispers.
"It's the simple version."
We lapse into the kind of quiet that's not empty. Her breath goes in and out, careful. I match it without meaning to. Outside, a siren tests a note and decides against it. The city is always the same and never is.
"Look at me," she says.
I do.
Her pupils are wide from light that isn't bright enough. The blue around them looks like dusk. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and misses; it falls forward again on purpose. She is pale, tired, stubborn, beautiful, terrifying. She is the axis my map is built on. I don't say that. I think it so loudly I'm sure she hears it anyway.
"You're always here," she says. "You look at me like you're trying to learn a secret, but you never ask the question."
"What question?"
She watches me a long time. It feels like she's writing something on my face with her eyes and needs to get it right.
"Why I want you to stay so badly," she says at last. "Why I'm selfish about it."
"I don't need reasons," I say. "You say stay, I stay."
"That's dangerous." There's warmth in it. There's warning too.
"I'm aware..."
The corner of her mouth lifts. It's so small you could miss it if you were a less greedy person. She leans back into the pillow, never breaking eye contact. The room tilts toward her. The chair, the pole, the blue light on the monitor—everything else is scenery.
"Okay," she says, breathing in. The inhale is thin, like silk pulling through a ring. "Then I'm going to be selfish."
"I'm ready," I tell her, and my hand tightens around hers because I can't help proving it with something my mouth can't.
She swallows. Her throat moves like a violin string about to be touched. The night seems to press its ear against our door.
"Kousei..."she says, and my name sounds like a chord I've known since I was a kid and still can't play without shaking.
Her next Words crash into me
"Want to Commit double Suicide with me?"