[2025 March 14 — Friday, 4 : 57 PM]
Afternoon sunlight slanted through the tall, half-louvered window of Room 613, painting the off-white walls the color of weak tea. It was a single, of course—Teikyo University Hospital's private oncology wing didn't do wards—and the air smelled faintly of ozone from the silent oxygen condenser parked beside the bed.
Kana Aizawa surfaced from a drug-softened doze with the disorienting lightness morphine always left behind, as though her bones had been replaced by styrofoam. For one startled second she thought she'd overslept an exam again; then the slow pulse of the vitals monitor to her left caught up with memory, and the dream scattered.
Her torso obeyed, grudgingly, when she pushed herself upright against the trapeze bar, but below the ribcage—nothing. No ache, no twitch, no feedback at all. The absence landed like a fresh punch each time. She clenched her jaw, steadied the tremor in her arms, and reached toward the side table.
The charging cable tugged back; phone slipped, wobbled, nearly clattered. A hiss escaped her teeth. She pinched the device between stiff fingers, thumbed it awake.
*16 : 57.*
"School's out," she murmured into the still room. jij would be shrugging on his backpack, perfectly whole, probably ignoring the track-team recruiters again. He could run—reflexive bitterness pricked—he just… didn't.
Kana flicked away a notification and the lock screen brightened to her old middle-school team photo: thirty sunburned girls in red kits, herself in the center with Number 10 and a grin wide as summer. She turned the phone face-down before the memory finished tightening.
The door handle clicked.
A jolt —more echo than sound— thrummed through her chest. She smoothed the hospital blanket as it swung open.
jij stepped inside, loose uniform tie half-undone, hair ruffled by March wind. A warm draft followed him, smelling of pavement, chalk dust, and something sweet from the convenience store downstairs. He paused at the threshold, eyes flicking from IV pole to oxygen line, as if inventorying new attachments.
Kana found her smile and lifted it into place. The effort scraped.
"Hey, jij," her voice came out husky, the morphine's aftertaste still clinging. She cleared her throat, tried again, brighter. "Yo. How was class?"
Outside the window, the last rays pooled over the city's low rooftops—an almost-evening she could feel only through glass and envy. Inside, the monitor kept its indifferent tempo: beep…beep…beep…
For the next heartbeat, nothing else moved.
