Six
I didn’t see her until the Saturday of that week in her hospital room. It was morning, and the clouds were keeping the heat at bay. She’d texted me the hospital’s visiting hours, and I left to see her—although to say I went wouldn’t quite be right; rather, I had been summoned.
She had a private room. When I arrived, no one else was visiting her, and she was standing by her window, facing outside. She wore a standard hospital pajama set and had a tube hanging from her arm, and she was performing a bizarre dance. I called to her from behind, and she made a startled little jump, then fled shrieking to her bed and burrowed herself under the blankets. I sat on a folding chair beside her bed and waited for her to calm down. All at once, she became quiet and sat up as if nothing had happened. Her mercurial nature wasn’t bound by time or place.
She said, “You can’t just show up without warning me like that. I thought I’d die of embarrassment.”
“If you managed to be the first person in history to die that way, at least I’d have a funny story to tell for the rest of my life. Here, I brought you a present.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “You didn’t have to. Oh, strawberries! Let’s eat them together. There are plates and stuff in that cabinet over there. Why don’t you grab what we need?”
As asked, I retrieved a knife and a pair of plates and forks from a white cabinet against the wall and returned to the bedside folding chair. I’d bought the strawberries with money my mom gave me when I told her I’d be visiting a classmate in the hospital.
I cut the stems from the strawberries and began eating as I asked her how she was doing.
She said, “I’m completely fine. Some of my numbers were a little off, and my parents got all worked up and put me in the hospital, but it’s nothing. I’ll be in here for a couple weeks while they pump me full of some special medicine, and then I’ll be back in school.”
“Our extra classes will be pretty much over by then. We’ll be on summer break for real.”
“Oh, right. You and I will have to make some plans, then.”
My eyes followed the tube from her arm to a metal pole on casters with a hanging pouch filled with clear liquid. A question came to me, and I asked it.
“What are you telling everyone—like your best friend, Kyōko-san?”
“I’m telling them I’m having my appendix removed. The hospital staff are going along with the story. Now that I’ve seen how worried my friends are about me, it’s even harder to imagine telling them the truth. But I don’t know, maybe I should ask the guy who pushed me onto my bed a few days ago what to do. So, what do you think, [Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun?”
“I think you should at least come clean with Best Friend-san—I mean Kyōko-san, but then again, I guess I should trust the decision of the girl who threw her arms around me a few days ago.”
“Don’t remind me! You’re making me embarrassed again. I’m going to tell Kyōko you pushed me over. I don’t want you to cause any trouble when she comes to kill you.”
“You’d make your best friend a killer? That’s twisted.”
She made a face at me and shrugged. She was the same as always.
She’d told me she was fine over text, but I was relieved to see her acting as lively as ever. I’d feared her illness had progressed faster than expected and that she’d run out of time. But as far as I could tell from looking at her, that wasn’t the case. Her expression was bright, and she moved with energy.
Feeling reassured, I opened my school bag and took out a brand-new notebook.
“Now that we’ve had our snack,” I said, “it’s time to study.”
“What? C’mon, can’t we just sit around a while first?”
“I came here because you asked me to help you study. Besides, all you’ve been doing here is sitting around.”
I had a proper justification to come visit, beyond just seeing her. She’d asked me to take notes for her in class over the past several days then catch her up on the review lessons she’d missed. When I promptly replied that I would, she acted surprised that I was being so agreeable. How rude.
I handed her the blank notebook and a pen and gave her a summary of the summer school classes, shortening the lessons by cutting out the parts I didn’t think she needed to bother learning. For her part, she listened attentively. Including breaks, my mock class was over in about an hour and a half.
“Thanks,” she said. “You know, [Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun, you’re great at teaching. You should become a teacher.”
“No thanks. Why do you keep suggesting jobs for me where I have to deal with other people?”
“Maybe I just want you to do the things I would be doing if I didn’t have to die.”
“Don’t say that. That makes me the bad guy every time I reject your suggestions.”
She giggled and placed the notebook on a brown shelf beside her bed, where magazines and manga stood in a row. Being hospitalized must have been tremendously boring for such an active person. The boredom may even drive her to perform bizarre dances.
The time was just before noon. She’d told me her best friend was coming in the afternoon, and I had already decided I’d leave before then. When I told her as much, she said, “Aw, you could stay and join in our girl talk,” but I politely declined. I’d worked up an appetite playing at being a teacher, and I’d already accomplished what I’d set out to do for the day, which was to make sure she was all right.
“Before you go,” she said, “let me show you a magic trick.”
“You learned one already?”
“Just a basic one. I’ve got others I’m already practicing, though.”
She’d chosen a card trick—one of those where I pick a card and she names it without looking. For how little time she’d had to practice, she was good at it. Having never studied magic myself, I wasn’t able to figure out how the trick worked.
She said, “I’ll do something tougher next time, so look forward to it.”
“I will look forward to it. Maybe your last act will be escaping from a box that’s on fire.”
“Like escaping from the crematorium? I won’t be pulling that one off.”
“Yes, that was the joke.”
“Sakuraaa,” called a cheerful voice from the doorway. Reflexively, I looked over my shoulder. “How are you—oh. You again.”
The best friend had come striding into the hospital room, but when she noticed me, she halted and scowled. She seemed to be getting more openly hostile toward me. If things kept going as they were, I didn’t see how I would fulfill the girl’s request that I get along with her best friend after her death.
I rose from the chair, said a quick goodbye, and began leaving. The best friend was glaring at me, and I made an effort to avoid her gaze. I’d watched a nature program last night that said to never look a wild animal in the eyes.
Just when I was feeling optimistic that I’d be able to sneak out without any mutual interference between me and the beast, the girl on the bed remembered something outrageous and said it.
“[Boy I’m Getting along With]-kun,” she called to me. “That reminds me, did you bring my brother’s boxers and pants—you know, the ones I let you borrow?”
I had never cursed my carelessness as much as I did in that moment. I had brought her brother’s clothes in my bag with the intention of returning them.
But there was nothing I could possibly say now.
I turned around to see her grinning. Her friend beside her looked aghast. I did my best to appear composed as I took the plastic bag containing the clothes from my school bag and handed them to her.
“Thanks,” she said. Still grinning devilishly, she looked back and forth between me and her friend.
Just once, I glanced at the friend, perhaps out of some foolish impulse—the primitive desire to look at something terrifying. The friend had already gotten rid of the astonished look, replacing it with a glare that could kill. Maybe I was imagining things, but I thought I heard her growling like a lion.
I immediately looked away from the best friend and scurried out of the room. Just before I crossed the doorway, I heard the friend beginning her interrogation with a harshly whispered, “Boxers?”
Not wanting to get embroiled in any further trouble, I quickened my pace.