I remember kneeling on cold stone as if the world had chosen to fold me into its palm and press.
The door to Hotaru's home loomed above me like a judge. I could still hear the echo of the slap—the sharp, cleansing crack that left my cheek burning—and now her mother's voice tore through the dusk.
"Do you know how hard I tried? Do you know how many nights I stayed awake so my daughter could see the sunrise even once?"
"She would have been able to see if you hadn't done this! If that bandage hadn't been taken off—if you hadn't been cruel!"
My throat closed. Tears stung my eyes though I had not meant to show them.
"I'm sorry," I said, voice small and raw.
"It was my fault. Please forgive me."
I set down the small stack of rupees on the door step—my last money. The bills slid and stopped at her shoe, like a clumsy offering.
"If you want it, you can keep it," I whispered.
"It's not much, but—"
Her mother scoffed and spat the words like nails.
"We do not want the charity of a boy who has no parents, who lives off what was left to him. Keep your pennies."
Anger flashed in me—part shame, part something fiercer—and before I could think the words slipped out.
"Then I will give her my eye."
Her face froze. The air between us turned thin and sharp.
"What?" she barked.
"You think you can give an eye?"
"I will," I said, and the truth of it steadied me. "My left eye. Give it to her. I don't want your money. I want her to see."
Her voice trembled now—less anger, more disbelief—trace after trace of something I'd never intended to be a part of me.
"You're a child. Where will you get the surgery? Where will you get the money? Who will watch you?"
"I don't care about the money," I said. "I have nothing else. Just tell me the hospital. Tell me the doctor."
She slammed the door without another word.
As the wood closed, her last look landed on me—less fury now, more like the exhaustion of someone who had long ago stopped expecting mercy from the world.
I sat on the step until the streetlights blinked awake. Inside my chest, something heavy and difficult had been set in motion. A promise made in the dark; a small, stubborn flame.
The next morning, I followed her mother from a distance. I did not intend to be brave. I intended only to see where she went. She moved quickly, shoulders folded against the cold, and entered the hospital two blocks from town.
I pressed myself behind a pillar near the automatic doors, ears straining. Through the glass I heard voices—flat, clinical, a language of facts where grief could not take root.
"We need a donor now. Without one, her chances to recover useful vision are gone," a doctor was saying.
"If the cornea is damaged and the globe is injured, a donor tissue may not be sufficient—"
"We cannot delay. If we cannot find a donor, she may never regain sight."
Her mother's voice was small, brittle. "Please—please find anything. Anything at all."
My heart slammed so hard I could feel it in my throat. For a terrifying second the world narrowed to a single simple clause: donor. Buyable by money, yes—but the more important, immediate question was something else: could someone be willing to give?
I had rehearsed the next thing in my head a thousand times, each time it felt less like a plan and more like the last possible lookup of an answer. I stepped into the automatic doors as if drawn. A nurse glanced up, then frowned at my small frame.
"Can I help you, child?" she asked.
I swallowed. The hospital smelled of antiseptic and sleep. The doctor who had been speaking came out, a tired man with soft lines at the eyes.
"Can I help you?" he echoed in a tone that suggested he had seen too many tragedies.
My voice was a thread. "I… I want to donate an eye. To Hotaru."
The doctor blinked, then raised his eyebrows. "How old are you?"
"Ten," I said.
There was a long beat of stunned silence. "Ten years old?" the doctor repeated. He lowered his voice and checked the name on the clipboard. "Is this your classmate?"
"Yes. Please don't tell her mother I came alone. I just want to help. I will do anything."
He studied my face like a man weighing brittle glass. "This is—this is very unusual. Medical ethics, consent, physical compatibility… there are many factors. Are your parents aware? Where are they?"
I looked at my hands and held nothing but the memory of their faces. "They're gone."
The doctor's expression softened in a way that unsettled me. He sighed. "We cannot perform such major procedures lightly, and a full ocular transplant as you imagine is not a standard operation—"
"I know." I blurted it. "I don't know the details. I just… I want to help. If there's anything I can do to be a donor, please tell me."
The doctor wore the tired patience of someone who had to decide what broken things to repair. He spoke quietly now.
"Bring him in," he told the nurse. "We'll run the necessary tests. If he is a viable candidate for any type of donation, we will consider options. But understand this—there may be legal guardianship issues and ethical reviews. A child cannot consent in the same way an adult can. Also, ocular tissue donation typically comes from deceased donors, and 'transplanting an entire eye' is not how we usually treat corneal or globe injuries. But there are procedures—if your tissue can help, we'll explore it."
The nurse guided me to a small examination room. The cool examination light made my palms sweat.
I did not sleep that night. The tests rolled out like a long, merciless tape—blood work, compatibility checks. The doctor asked me questions about my health, about illnesses in the family. He asked who would provide consent.
I had no one. My legal status was a blank line. But I also had a stubborn, unyielding will. I wanted Hotaru to see, even more than I wanted to be forgiven.
When the doctor finally stepped into the room again, he carried a folder and a gentle exhaustion in his face.
"There's a possibility," he said. "Not the simple miracle your words made it out to be, but a possibility. We have a program for pediatric cases where living related donation can be considered—usually for older donors—and there are prosthetic and graft options. There is a long legal process. I can't promise anything. But if you are willing to begin the process and your guardians or a legal representative approve, we can try to do everything we can."
I did not understand all the medical words. I heard only the single golden chord: possibility.
"I will do anything," I said.
When I left the hospital, a strip of gauze covered one of my eyes. It felt absurdly light as if pretending mattered. The nurse had insisted on a temporary patch; the tests had included a small, precautionary procedure on my left eye to check corneal tissue and blood markers. It wasn't an operation, the doctor had said—it was a measurement in a line of things that might lead to an operation months from now, if all the boxes could be ticked.
I walked home with that odd bandage feeling like a secret I had promised to keep. People glanced at me in the street—sympathy, curiosity—and I kept my head lowered. At home, I sat on the floor by the door and touched the bandage with fingers that trembled.
At times, I let myself believe the lie that it was enough. I had done something. I had offered my eye. That should be enough to make the weight lift.
But the guilt was not a single stone that could be moved once. It was a tide. It kept coming.
That night, when I closed my one unpatched eye, I imagined Hotaru opening hers and seeing everything: the green of the park, the sunlight through leaves, the tired relief on her mother's face. I imagined her smiling in a way that would meet me halfway—no pity, no scorn, only the shy, honest smile she gave even when the world cut her.
I had no idea then if the promise would become anything but a foolish dream. But I clasped my hands and whispered into the dark.
"See for me, Hotaru. See for both of us."
Then I slept with the gauze still over my eye, the thin white a band of both shame and resolve. The next morning would be a thousand small hard steps, and I was ready to walk them—one clumsy, contrite step at a time.
✨ End of Chapter 4 ✨