I don't look away this time.
Her question is still in the air. It feels like a string pulled tight between us. If I breathe wrong, it might snap.
Kaori sits small in the bed, the blanket tucked under her knees. The cheap hospital light makes her look made of paper. There's a faint shine on her lip where she's been biting it. The monitor behind her ticks a soft metronome that doesn't match any song I know.
I take her hand.
It's cool, dry, patient. The tape on her IV crinkles when she shifts.
"Yes...." It comes out soft
Her eyes widen. The word lands. I hear it echo off the window, the floor, the hollow of my chest.
"I'll do it with you… But not yet," I add, and my voice shakes. "Please... wait."
She blinks. It's almost a flinch. "Wait?" The smile she puts on is careful, like she's trying not to scare me. "For what, Kousei?"
"For me," I say. "For a few things I have to do." I breathe once. "For us."
The room goes very quiet. Even the hallway outside seems to hold its breath.
Her fingers twitch in mine. "You keep saying that," she murmurs. "Just a little longer. Just one more minute. You're terrible at clocks."
"I know." I let out something that's supposed to be a laugh and isn't. "I know."
I could tell her about white tablets. About charts with tiny rising lines. About a lab that smells like metal and soap and hope. About signatures and stamps and timeframes I want to strangle into moving faster.
I don't. She doesn't know that part of me. Not yet. Maybe never.
So I hold on to the one thing I can say.
"Wait with me," I whisper. "Stay. Please..."
She studies me. Her eyes are glassy but steady. "You're serious."
"I am." I squeeze her hand like it's a rope over a cliff. "If it... if it doesn't work out—" The words are sand in my mouth. "If it really doesn't, then... yes. I'll go wherever you go. I won't make you walk into the dark alone."
The sentence leaves a tremor behind it.
"But not yet," I repeat, softer. "Not yet."
Her breath hitches. "You would really...?"
"Yes."
For a second, neither of us moves. The beeping behind her counts tiny pieces of us away.
She swallows. Her voice is gentler now, but it has an edge. "You're selfish," she says. "Dragging me forward. Making me hesitate."
"Yeah." I drop my head and laugh once through my nose. "I'm the worst."
Her thumb moves. Barely there. It slides along the ridge of my knuckle like a promise she isn't ready to name.
"What do you need to do?" she asks quietly.
I look at her and lie without lying. "I need more mornings with you." I search her face. "I need to learn the way your hair gets caught in your scarf and how you fix it without a mirror. I need to know how many stairs you skip when you're in a hurry. I need the dumb way you say 'ta-da' when you hand me bread you didn't pay for."
She snorts, but her mouth trembles.
"I need to walk you home without talking," I say. "And talk to you without walking. I need to hear you play again. Even if it's two notes. Even if you have to stop because you're tired. I need to stand next to you and be the person who passes the water and the towel and the chair. I need to make it to the part where we get bored together and complain about the same TV show."
Her eyes brim with tears. "You're painting such tiny things.." she whispers.
"They're the only real ones," I say.
I move closer on the bed. I put our joined hands against my chest so she can feel it. Beat. Beat. Beat. Proof.
"Feel that?" I ask. "It's yours. It's been yours for a long time."
She stares at our hands. "You're going to make me cry..."she says, already crying.
"Too late," I say, because my face is wet and my throat hurts and the words keep tripping over each other.
I lean in. Careful of the IV. Careful of the blanket. I put my forehead against hers.
Her skin is cool. Mine is hot. The difference makes something inside me break open.
"I'm sorry," I say. "For today. For all the days that look like today. I'm trying. I swear I'm trying."
"I know," she breathes. The words land right between us. "I see it."
I don't mean to hug her. My body decides. My arms go around her and I pull her to me, slow, gentle, then tighter when she lets me. She fits wrong because of the chair, and right because she's Kaori.
Her chin bumps my collarbone. Her hands find the back of my shirt and fist there, small and strong. I hear the little wet sound she makes when she tries not to sob and fails.
"You can hate me later," I murmur into her hair. "For being selfish. For asking for more time. For not letting you be brave by yourself. I'll take it. I'll take all of it. Just—" I swallow. "Just stay a little longer."
"Kousei," she says, and my name breaks in the middle like a dropped glass. She presses her face into my shoulder. "I don't want to leave you."
Something bright and painful squeezes behind my ribs. "Then don't," I say, useless and hopeful at once.
"I'm scared," she admits, so soft I almost miss it.
"I know." I hold her tighter. "Me too."
We breathe together. It takes a few tries to sync. We miss and then find it. The monitor argues with us and then gives up and keeps its own time.
After a while, she pulls back half an inch. Her lashes are wet. There's a red crescent on her cheek where the blanket edge was pressing. "You said you'd go with me," she says, like she's testing the shape of the promise.
"If there's no other road," I answer. I make myself say it clean. "If every door is locked. If the world keeps saying no. I won't let you go alone."
She swallows "And until then?"
"Until then," I say, "I'm going to be unbearable."
Her laugh is a hiccup. "You already are."
"I'm going to show up at bad hours," I go on. "With bread and stupid jokes and too much tea. I'm going to take you outside when you shouldn't go and bring the outside in when you can't. I'm going to be annoying about water and sleep and medicine you hate. I'm going to make you roll your eyes so hard it counts as exercise."
She sniffles. "That's a plan?"
"It's a life plan."
Her fingers creep up the front of my shirt and pinch. Not hard. Just enough to say I'm still here. "You big idiot," she whispers.
I nod. "Yeah."
She looks past me, toward the window. Night presses its face to the glass. The city is a handful of coins spilled on black cloth. "I wanted to ask you this because I didn't want to be alone," she says, and the honesty is soft and brutal. "But I also... I didn't want to trap you."
"You didn't," I say. "I walked in."
Her eyes come back to mine. We hold each other there.
"Wait with me," I say again, because I need to hear it as much as she does. "Please."
"Okay," she whispers.
The word is tiny. It fills the room. It goes into my lungs with the next breath and sits there, warm.
We let the rest of it fall away. The chair. The light. The beeping. The heavy blanket. The cold metal rail of the bed. The smell of alcohol swabs. The clipboard with boxes. All of it fades to a dim edge.
What stays is her hand under mine and the weight of her head against my shoulder when she leans back in. I press my cheek to the top of her hair. It smells like hospital shampoo and her.
We cry until it gets quiet again. Not dramatic. Not the kind of crying that makes a scene. Just the kind that happens when you're too tired to be brave and too stubborn to let go.
"Tell me something good," she says suddenly, voice gummy and small.
"Mm." I think. "I saw a cat on the way here. He ignored me completely. That means I'm trustworthy."
"That's not how cats work," she says into my shoulder.
"Exactly," I say. "That's why it's good."
She hums. "One more."
"I... memorized the pattern on your curtain," I say. "It's little blue leaves. Every fourth one is upside down."
She pulls back enough to squint at me. "You counted my curtain?"
"Obviously."
"You're a maniac," she says, but there's a smile trying to live at the corners of her mouth.
I let myself smile back. "I'm your maniac."
She blushes at that. Her eyes soften. She reaches up and wipes under one of mine with her thumb, the way you'd wipe sugar from a child's face. "You shouldn't cry more than me," she mutters.
"Trade you," I say. "I'll take two of yours for one of mine."
"That's a bad deal."
"I'm terrible at deals."
She leans in again and I wrap myself around her again. It's quiet enough to hear her swallow. Quiet enough to hear the IV drip whisper to itself. Quiet enough to hear the tiny, stubborn rhythm in my chest knock against her knuckles.
"Just a little longer," I say into the space between us.
"Just a little," she echoes.
I nod against her hair. I don't let go. Not yet. Not now. Not while there's anything left to hold.