The doctor fed a few coins into the machine. It whirred to life and dropped a paper cup before splashing it with orange juice. He handed the cup to me before he procured himself a cup of coffee. With our drinks in hand, we settled onto the adjacent bench. He waited for the mood to settle a bit before breaking the silence. “So, how’s Shizuku?”
“She’s doing well,” I replied. “Stable, at least, thankfully.”
He took a moment to absorb the news. “I see.”
I felt a twinge of guilt. This is the doctor who had cared for Shizuki through countless challenging days, I reminded myself. He deserved more than my guarded words. After a brief pause in which I contemplated my answer, I said, “She, um. She might make it in time to receive that experimental treatment after all.”
“Is that so?” he returned. “I thought that might’ve been the case.”
His insight caught me off guard—it didn’t seem like he was trying to trick me into revealing that. “You did?” I asked, my voice spiking with surprise.
He shrugged gently. “The person who came by to handle the transfer paperwork clearly had ties to the zaibatsus. It’d just been a hunch, but…seeing you today, in that uniform, I thought maybe I could dare to hope.”
“I…I see.” The guilt intensified. “I apologize for keeping you in the dark.”
“Not at all. I’m relieved, in fact.” He tipped his head back and downed the rest of his coffee in one, long gulp. “In my line of work, good news can be rare. But hearing that Shizuku might have a chance…I’ll take that. I’ll take that any day of the week.”
Our conversation devolved into silence. After a moment, he stood and tossed his cup into the nearby trashcan. “It was good talking to you, Mio. Take care getting home.”
And that was the end of it. Watching him leave, I quickly downed my own cup. I was about to get up and throw it away when I felt a gentle tug on my sleeve. Startled, I whipped around to find a small girl next to me. When did she get there?
“Are you the doctor’s girlfriend?” she asked.
“Am I the…what?”
“The doctor’s girlfriend,” she repeated. Her eyes shone with innocence. Clearly, she meant nothing by this question… I hope?
“No, I’m not his girlfriend,” I replied. “We just, um, know each other.”
“Really?” the precocious young girl tilted her head in confusion. “What a coincidence. I know him too—he’s my doctor!”
“Oh? Is he?”
This was an inpatient ward. Looking at her, about as young as Shizuku was when she was admitted, my heart softened in sympathy.
No, no, no. What was I doing feeling sympathy for just any random girl in this hospital ward? Cases like Shizuku were rare. Not every kid here was suffering from a terminal disease like her. This girl would probably be in and out in a few days, never to be seen by me again. “Did you need me for something?” I asked.
“Oh!” she realized. “Could you help me? I had a question about my studies.”
“Like homework?”
“Sort of. Here.” She pulled out a book, which seemed to be a guide on understanding modern manners and etiquette written in an easily digestible comic book format.
Wait, manners and etiquette? This girl isn’t some corporate heir, is she? No, if she were, she’d have protection; she wouldn’t be out wandering by herself like this, would she?
But no, that was a poor metric. There was already one zaibatsu girl sitting on this bench without an escort, and it wasn’t her.
At any rate, it seemed prudent that I find out for certain. My carelessness when it came to random encounters had already raised enough flags to last me a lifetime. “I could teach you—but first, would you mind telling me your name, young lady?”
Look at me. I’m learning!
“My name?” She paused for a moment. “It’s Miu.”
“Miu?” I repeated.
“Yep, Miu!”
“I see. Very nice to meet you, Miu.”
Phew. For a second there I almost thought she might’ve been Nonoka’s young friend. She definitely said Miu and not Miyu.
And also, paranoid much, me? Considering the number of hospitals in the city, the likelihood of little Miyu being at this particular hospital was already slim. And even if she were here, what were the odds that we would just happen to run into each other?
“And yours?” Miu said.
I snapped out of my thoughts. “My name? It’s Mio.”
“Then you’re big sister Mio! Nice to meet you!”
My heart melted. The way she said that just reminded me way too much of Shizuku back then. Before I knew it, I was fired up. “Nice to meet you too! Now, what was your question? Ask your big sister anything!”
“Thanks! I was having trouble with this part here.” She gestured toward the open page.
“Let’s see, let’s see…” I scootched over to Mio so that the open book could rest evenly across our laps. The exercise she was stuck on was seating order when hailing a cab, something I’d just recently learned myself. The memory of the “animated” discussion Shizuki and I had during my lessons brought a wry smile to my face. “Seating order, huh? Which part is giving you trouble?”
“So, I understand how the seat right behind the driver is for the most important person. Then the seat behind the one next to the driver is for the second most important. The third important goes in the middle seat in the back, and the least important sits up front next to the driver.” She paused here.
“Exactly. That’s very good,” I praised. It was impressive for an elementary school student to have already grasped so much, but I could sense she was just building up to her question. “So? What’s the question?”
“I was just thinking that if it were me, I’d like to sit in the front seat, next to the driver. Because that’s the seat with the best view, isn’t it? So, why’s it the worst? And then, the third-best seat being in the middle at the back? What if the person sitting there was really big; wouldn’t it get really cramped?”
My eyes widened, then I nodded my approval. I’d asked the same question about the middle seat in the back to Shizuku, but that bit about the front seat was new to me. Leave it to a child to shake up your perspective in unique and imaginative ways. “So, the thing about this seating order is that it prioritizes passenger safety. The ‘best’ seat is just another way to say the safest seat in an accident. And by that logic, the front passenger seat is the most dangerous, which makes it the worst.”
She blinked at me. “Oh. I think that makes sense.”
“Yeah,” I replied with a smile. “But that doesn’t mean a super important person can’t ask to sit in the front just to see the view. It’s not so rigid as that.”
“Really?! Okay, okay… Then what about the seat in the middle?”
“Well, that’s only in the case that there are four passengers. If there are only three, it’s common for the last person to just sit up front.”
There was nothing wrong with a subordinate acting even more deferential, after all.
Ultimately, however, our lively discussion was purely theoretical. In the real world, things worked differently—or so Shizuki had taught me. “If it were me,” I began, “I would simply arrange for additional transportation.”
More cars. This was the simplest and most elegant way to avoid complications. And then if there had been some reason that everyone simply had to ride together, it could be in a more spacious car instead, like a limousine.
Hearing this special cheat strategy, Miu’s mouth dropped open. “Then…is everything in this book wrong?”
“Not at all,” I answered. “What I’m trying to say is that etiquette is not a set of strict rules one must follow. It’s a mindset of sorts—a way of thinking that always has you putting others first. If you get that, you won’t need to sweat over every little rule in some etiquette book.” I paused, looking at her to gauge her reaction. “Does that make sense so far?”
She brought a finger to her chin, hummed in thought for a moment, and then said: “Nope! Not at all!” and gave me an adorable, toothy smile.
“Perhaps I am jumping the gun a little bit,” I said. “But don’t worry. You’ll come to understand it.”
“You think so?”
“I think so. If that was the only question you had so far, then I’d say you’re firmly ahead of the pack. When I was your age, I didn’t even know what seating order meant. So yeah—you should be proud of yourself.”
Her face lit up. “Thanks, big sister Mio!”
With that, she took her book and hopped off the bench.
“Was that everything?” I asked.
“Yeah!” she nodded. “Oh. Did you say you were staying at this hospital?”
Her question was no doubt innocent, but I still hesitated for a second. “No, it wasn’t me, actually.”
Even if the secret about my identity was out, it still didn’t feel right to parade my sister’s business out in public like that.
At my vagueness, Mio’s face fell. “‘Wasn’t’? Are they… Are they okay?”
“Oh, no, no, no, nothing like that,” I quickly reassured her. “They just transferred hospitals is all.”
“Really?” she uttered, still a little gloomy.
I nodded.
“Okay. That’s good, then.” She paused. “Then I hope they can get better soon and leave the hospital far behind them!”
“Thanks, Miu. That means a lot. And I hope the same for you.”
At this, the young girl gave me one final smile full of childlike innocence and a quick “bye-bye, big sister Mio!” before she sprinted out of the waiting room door.
It had barely been two seconds before a nurse could be heard chiding someone for running in the halls.