The rain beat down on my body as I lay on the ground. My freezing-cold body didn’t move, but I could hear. Mixed with the sound of the rain, I could faintly hear someone’s footsteps—someone was there.
I faintly opened my eyes. Puddles were rippling from the falling rain.
An older woman picking up a collapsed umbrella in the distance was reflected in my faintly opened eyes. The woman looked around and tilted her head, returning her gaze to the umbrella.
“…notice me…”
I moved my lips as if pleading. But my voice, which came from my trembling lips, was drowned out by the sound of the pounding rain.
In my fading consciousness, I, who had run out of strength, quietly closed my heavy eyelids.
The warning alarm was going off. I, carrying a school bag on my back, stood in front of a railway crossing covered in white, with snow falling lightly from the sky.
Snow was also piling up on my head and shoulders, and I moved my foot forward to approach the railway, where the gate had been lowered.
A train passed the railway crossing where the alarm sounded, pushing aside the snow. I stopped the foot that I had raised. A shadow fell, and the snow fluttering from the sky didn’t fall on me. Something was blocking the snow and me.
To confirm what that something was, I gently looked up…
When I suddenly opened my eyes, a white ceiling jumped into my sight. At the same time, a splitting headache hit me.
“Uh…”
I squinted for a moment in pain and then slowly opened my eyes again.
The bright sunshine illuminated the white ceiling. The sound of metal scraping reached my ears.
When I glanced in the direction of the sound, I met the eyes of a woman in a white suit. The woman, with a surprised expression, rushed over to me.
I looked around. A white futon, a bed I was sleeping on, nearby walls, a window, an IV drip in my arm, a bandage wrapped around my head, a monitor screen showing waveforms…
Is this a hospital?
A woman in a white suit peeked at me.
“Do you understand me? Can you tell me your name?”
To that question, I nodded. I understood everything. I remembered everything.
“Fuuka…”
I am Fuuka Ishibashi. I moved to this town due to my parents’ divorce when I was in sixth grade. My current family is my father, my stepmother, my father’s second marriage, and my sister, who is three years younger than me. I am a first-year student at an all-girls school established just two years ago. I don’t stand out in class, and I’m like a spirit that you wouldn’t know whether they were there or not.
“Are you really a spirit?” At that time, a low, gentle voice echoed in my head…
“When you come back to life, tell me, okay? What your real name is, how you lived…”
A boy with a beautiful face talked to me in my memory, and I jumped up from the hospital bed where I was lying.
“I have to go.”
My throat was dry, and I couldn’t form words. The nurse, a woman, hastily restrained me as I tried to jump out of bed. My body swayed because I couldn’t put strength into it. The nurse supported my body, which was about to fall.
My body didn’t move as I wanted it to. But at least it wasn’t transparent.
“Calm down. You’re not in a condition to move yet! I’m calling the doctor,” the nurse said, pressing the nurse’s calling at my bedside.
Shortly after, the doctor who rushed to the ward told me I had been in a coma for nearly three months.