I didn't wait. The thought of waiting another second, another seven hundred and thirty days, was physically impossible. I pushed through the double doors before the nurse could move or my parents could grab me, leaving the muffled sound of their worry to flatten against the sterile wall behind me.
I moved down the corridor, propelled by a terrifying, desperate momentum. This place, smelling of antiseptic and order, was supposed to prove my belief was wrong. Instead, it was confirming a miracle.
I stopped at the first partially ajar door, marked by an illegible note. My momentum died instantly. The silence emanating from the room was the only thing that managed to stop me—a deliberate, thick absence of sound, heavy and absolute. It was the silence of a truth too large to be contained.
I didn't take a breath; I took a shuddering inhalation that felt like drinking dust. I slid the door open, stepped through, and closed it silently behind me.
The room was small, filled with the soft, steady beeping of the monitors. The sound was a mechanical heartbeat, mocking the two years Jun had supposedly been gone.
And there he was.
Lying in the center of the bed was the boy the sea had given back.
My legs betrayed me. They didn't lock up or seize; they simply dissolved, forcing me to lean heavily on the doorframe. The world, which had been a harsh, colorless nightmare for two years, didn't slowly return to reality. It exploded back, blindingly real and over-saturated.
This wasn't the fifteen-year-old boy I had frozen in my mind, the one with the mischievous summer smile. This was a Jun who had aged without living. He was taller, filling out the gown awkwardly. His jawline was sharper, the soft edges of youth gone. His dark hair was long and damp, clinging to a face that was impossibly pale—the color of fine, aged porcelain.
The specific curve of his brow, the faint mole below his left ear, the slightly thicker knuckles—these were the maps of my childhood, burned onto my soul. Despite the terrible changes, there was no doubt. This was him. Jun Kuroda.
My heart, which I thought had been a mere stone in my chest, lurched and began to hammer against my ribs, demanding to be heard. The vow, the coin, the loneliness, the grief—all of it was instantly, violently justified. I wasn't crazy. I was right.
"Jun," I choked out. The sound was raw and unrecognizable, barely audible over the monotonous rhythm of the machine.
I forced myself away from the door and toward the bed. The saltwater dripping from my skirt stained the blue protective sheet on the floor, a mundane mark of the impossibility I had just survived. He was breathing. The line on the monitor, however faint, was still moving.
I lifted a trembling hand and reached for his. It was a gesture I had performed a thousand times in the cold simulation of my dreams. But this time, it was real.
The moment my cool, wet fingers closed around his hand, the last of my psychological defenses dissolved. His skin was warm. Not feverish, not cold and dead, but alive. He was solid, anchored to this plane of existence.
Tears that had been frozen for two years finally flowed—not tears of sorrow, but of pure, world-shattering, blinding relief. They dripped onto Jun's pale wrist. I didn't care about the Silent Princess anymore. She was dead. I was only Yui, kneeling at his bedside, burying my face into the blankets.
You came home. You actually came home.