Chapter 2

“What kind of chance?” she asked. The way she cocked her head was adorable, which made me panic a little. If I didn’t make the most of this opportunity, someone else would snatch her away before I could blink. “Let me see you again. Can I come see you?” “I’m out of the hospital.” “Right, and I want to see you when you’re healthy, too!” She laughed again at how sure I sounded, and then, with a touch of bashfulness, she told me her address. “I really like you,” I reiterated. She just looked at the ground. Even the way her long hair brushed her cheeks was adorable. I couldn’t care less if people were staring at us anymore. “Y-yes. I see that now.” “If you… If you’ll go out with me, I’ll tell you how much I care about you every day!” I said. “That’s too much!” “It’s the truth.” She shrugged me off with a half-exasperated “Sure, I hear you!” I saw her to the nurse’s office, then went back to my classroom, still wishing I could have done more. Her family took her to the hospital, where she ended up being admitted again after some tests. So, starting the next day, I visited her in her sickroom several times. She finally gave me her answer in March, on the day she left the hospital again. I learned that sometimes she was only in the hospital for a week at a time, but often it was a month or more. Even when she looked healthy, she told me, she could become ill suddenly, and it could drag on as she struggled to recover. Her problem was something respiratory, but it manifested as a wide range of symptoms and didn’t have a specific diagnosis. I hadn’t realized how common it was for someone to be sick without being diagnosed with a specific condition. She told me that her rule of thumb was “Just try not to catch a cold,” and bearing that in mind, I took every precaution to be sure I didn’t get her sick. She attended an online high school whenever her health allowed, and I figured the fact that she was able to go to school in any form meant her physical strength was doing better than it had been in middle school. Things are never that simple, though, and she was back in the hospital as summer began. Midterms were at the end of May, after the Golden Week holiday. My schedule was so haphazard that Yuki and I spent a lot of time texting each other when we weren’t able to meet in person; when I sent her a message saying I would come see her and she replied, You need to focus on your tests, Tasuku. I couldn’t really argue. Instead, we promised to talk in the evenings—only for a short while, though. I would go out on the veranda and look at the sky in the direction of the hospital and listen to her voice, so soft, it was almost a whisper. “Can you see it? The summer triangle?” I asked. The constellation Cygnus was featured in one of her favorite series, and she wanted to know which one it was. I heard her grunt slightly over the phone, no doubt squinting to try to make out the sky. “I see lots of stars, but I don’t know which is which,” she finally said. “I wish I was with you. I could point it out.” It was awfully hard to tell what she was looking at just over the phone. “Guess what. I looked for it yesterday, too. But I couldn’t find it. I thought maybe taking a photo would make it easier for you to tell me which one it was…” “Mm-hm.” “But it didn’t come out at all!” she groaned. It wasn’t like her to sound so frustrated. “Yeah, I know. Smartphones aren’t the best for getting pictures of the stars. Believe me, I’ve tried.” She chuckled, the sound of her voice tickling my ear. It was such a bittersweet moment; I couldn’t help laughing, too. It made me feel better that we could spend time like this, even if we couldn’t physically be together. I really wished I could hold her in my arms, but this was enough for now. I fell more and more in love with her every day. The moment I tried to channel the feelings welling up in my heart into the words “I love you,” though, there was a coughing fit on the other end of the phone. “Are you okay?” I asked. “Don’t make yourself worse. Close the window, and make sure you’re dressing warm.” “You’re such a worrier!” “Well, yeah. You’re my girlfriend.” I talked to my classmates sometimes about having a girlfriend, but I deliberately tried not to use the word too much with her. It was almost like saying those three special words but a little different… It could be kind of embarrassing. Without quite realizing it, I think my nerves had gotten into my voice. She was feeling the same way; she made a sound that wasn’t quite an acknowledgment and wasn’t quite a laugh and finally just said, “Yeah.” I could easily imagine her nodding. “Next time you’re out of the hospital, let’s go to the planetarium together. I’ll show you where the stars are.” “Yeah. That sounds like fun. Good luck with your studying,” she said. Twice a week, we shared these evening conversations. They were always too short, but I found them encouraging. They motivated me to focus on my work so that I wouldn’t embarrass her by totally bombing my exams. I wasn’t sending her as many text messages these days, to convey how seriously I was studying with exams looming. Instead, I took comfort in thinking about the day when I would be able to see her again. On the afternoon of the last day of exams, I was finally able to go visit her. I was shocked to discover that her hair was short! Her long, beautiful hair now barely reached her ears. “Huh?” I said, freezing the moment I opened the sliding door. I’d seen something like this on the news—they’d talked about how some illnesses made your hair fall out, or how a patient’s hair might be cut before surgery so it wouldn’t be in the way. Her mysterious illness—could it be that while I hadn’t been able to see her, they’d figured out what it was? My heart started pounding, and an unpleasant bead of sweat ran down my back. I was filled with a consuming anxiety that gnawed away at me. I gently closed the door, and finally I managed, “Is it okay if I ask?” “Hmm? Ask what? Aren’t you going to sit? Here, set your bag down. It must be heavy.” “What happened to your hair?” “I cut it. There’s a barbershop on the first floor of the hospital.” Her voice was so light and cheerful, I was almost swept away by the sound of it. But I forced myself to stay focused. “Is that all? There’s no, like, reason?” “I just felt like a new look. Surprised?” She didn’t appear to be or sound like she was hiding anything. Nearly collapsing with relief, I looked out the window, which I noticed was still open. Or at least, I pretended to look, but mostly I was trying to calm my spiking heart rate. “Don’t do that,” I said. “What? Don’t you like girls with short hair?” she asked. It wasn’t how she usually talked—I guess she’d been hoping for a better reaction from me. Fair enough, after all the times I’d exclaimed about how cute she was just because she’d put on a new color of lipstick. So much so that she finally said, “Enough already!” although it was with a smile. Personally, I never felt it was enough. After a moment, I said, “You could even shave your head. As long as you’re still alive. You look really cute.” I wished I could have just burst out that her hair looked great. It did—it made her silhouette even more distinctive than when she’d had long hair. “Hee-hee! Hee-hee-hee…” “Aw, why you gotta laugh like that…?” She was genuinely bashful, and it twisted me into knots, too. She was so unbelievably lovely, I felt shy just meeting her eyes. Oh, I see. That’s really all there is to it. When I caught on to her embarrassment, I finally started to feel my anxiety ebb away. I almost slumped into the visitor’s chair. “Hey, change of subject,” I said. “I’m going to take the Star Test in August.” “Star Test?” The Astrology Certification Association’s Star Test was a knowledge exam for laypeople. It was offered twice a year, in March and August, and tested general knowledge about space and astronomy. I’d been busy with school tests in March, but the August exam would fall during summer break, and I wanted to try my hand at it. I adored everything about stars and the cosmos. I’d even chosen a high school with an Astronomy Club, and I hoped to study the subject in college. The origin of my passion could be found far back in my childhood. My parents had taken me on a trip to Iwate Prefecture, north of Tokyo, where we’d visited Kenji Miyazawa Fairy Tale Village, a theme park with areas based on children’s stories by the famous author Kenji Miyazawa. It was a dream come true for a small child. I was especially taken with one corner that was all about the stars. I was too young to go walking around at night, so this was my first exposure to that world of mystery. It seemed like a place of wonder I shouldn’t have been able to experience until I was old enough to go out on my own after darkness fell. I knew about the moon and the stars from picture books, of course, but in my books, they all had faces, nothing like the real heavenly bodies that shone in the night sky. That was what first prompted my interest in the stars, and seeing Night on the Galactic Railroad, a movie that was based on one of Miyazawa’s stories, further stoked my infatuation. It seemed only natural that I should want to find a job that had something to do with the stars. Unlike some other exams, the Star Test didn’t actually certify you for anything; it was just for hobbyists. You could say that made it impractical, but I was hungry for every opportunity to learn before I got to college, and this would make a good benchmark to see how I was doing. I wanted to spend as much of June and July as I could studying for it. I had to prepare for finals too, of course. And even though the Astronomy Club only met once a week, there was a mountain of things I wanted to do. It meant I might not be able to visit Yuki as often, so it was with some trepidation that I brought up the subject, but she promptly replied, “Don’t worry about coming here, then, Tasuku. Work hard!” Since I had some leeway until around the middle of June, I was able to keep visiting her once or twice a week. The end of the month was approaching, though, and final exams with it, so I had to stop going. Even when I had a free moment, she sometimes turned me down. My parents are here today, she’d say, or I’ve got lots of schoolwork to do. A hospital room is basically a patient’s living space, and she treated it like her home; she felt that if someone came to visit her, she had to entertain them. I knew I couldn’t intrude when she had told me exactly why we couldn’t meet, so I fought down my burning desire to see her and contented myself with a text message or two before hitting the books again. She didn’t get back to me until late—she must have been really busy. The day of finals came at last, and afterward, I was able to go see Yuki for the first time in almost two weeks. In the lobby’s hallway, I bumped into her mother. “Hello, Ms. Fujimi,” I said, dipping my head in a polite greeting. We’d met each other before but always in Yuki’s room. Never alone like this. Anyone would have a case of nerves upon suddenly encountering their girlfriend’s mother. The woman in front of me looked very much like her daughter, although without the worrying thinness. Sometimes when I saw her, I almost had the impression that I was seeing how Yuki would look when she was healthy. “Oh, Kuresawa. You came,” Ms. Fujimi said. “Yes, ma’am. I haven’t had a lot of chances recently. I’m sorry for that.” She motioned me down the hallway. We went to a lounge area on the far side of the floor—a carpeted space with a few sofas, some vending machines, and little bookshelves. A window framed a lovely view of a small green space with a playground for young patients. “It’s all right. I’m sure you must be busy.” “It could be worse. Yuki must have it rougher than I do. She sounds just about snowed under with schoolwork. Do you think everything’s going okay?” “Yes…I should think so. I’m sorry; I really don’t know for certain.” The way she said that felt strange. Why? Yuki said her parents came at least once every couple of days to collect her laundry. And since she was going to a correspondence school, her parents would have to be involved in submitting her homework by mail. It didn’t make sense. “I’m sorry, but what do you mean you don’t know? Come to think of it, Yuki mentioned that her extended family was coming last week. They all live far away, right? They were supposedly in town for something else.” Without really meaning it to, my voice was getting harder and harder. I couldn’t shake the sense that Yuki’s mom had let something very important slip. I knew this wasn’t the way to behave with my girlfriend’s mother, but a very not-calm emotion was flooding my chest at that moment. “I’m sorry. That text last week… My daughter didn’t send it. I did,” Ms. Fujimi said awkwardly. The words I was about to say abandoned me. “Really?” I choked. I couldn’t come up with anything else. “Yuki caught a cold. It was nothing serious, but the fever wouldn’t go down. You’re busy studying to make your dreams come true, aren’t you, Kuresawa? It would be such a shame if you were too worried about her to focus on your work. I talked to her about it, and she agreed.” The words were kind, thoughtful, but they cut me to the quick. In short, she was still treating me like an outsider in all this—saying the right things but using them to keep me at arm’s length. When Yuki was at her lowest, that was exactly when I wanted to be there for her, but I hadn’t even been told that she wasn’t feeling well. A chill went through me and my vision seemed to swim. I said quietly, “If Yuki had died and you had never even told me, I would never have forgiven you for as long as I’d lived.” I wasn’t shouting, but I was as firm as I could be. I didn’t have a chance, however, to see how Yuki’s mother reacted. “Tasuku!” Yuki herself called out before our conversation could go any further. She was wearing a thin cardigan over her hospital gown and was staring at me wide-eyed. She stood straight, walking so steadily, you would never have guessed she was dangerously ill. “Wait… I thought you had a fever,” I said. She looked from me to her mother and back, as confused as I was angry. “That was last week. I’m fine now. But, Tasuku, about what you just said…” She sounded conciliatory. But I realized: She knew. She knew her mother was pushing me away. The revelation made my breath catch in my throat. Maybe I should have figured it out sooner. You could see it in our chat history. She’d even encouraged me not to visit as often, hadn’t she? If she hadn’t been in on that lie, she could’ve told me during one of our conversations that her mom had sent the text without her consent. “You heard that? Do you get what I’m saying, then?” “I didn’t want you to worry,” she said slowly. “It was just a cold.” So I was right, I realized with a rush of disappointment. If she’d overheard my argument with her mother and still thought this way, then there was no point. She didn’t understand my feelings. If something happened, I would just be left out of the loop again. “I’d like to talk. Can we go to your room? Or are you in the middle of something?” I asked. “No, nothing in particular. I was just checking on Mom since she hadn’t come back.” She glanced at her mother. “Take your time. Have a good, long talk,” her mom said. I felt my cheeks flush. I’d been mistaken that she was forcing us apart. It was Yuki and I who failed to understand each other. We were supposed to be dating, but it seemed like we weren’t on the same page. I squeezed out the words “Let’s go,” but they were much quieter than I’d meant them to be. I swallowed hard, a bitter taste in my mouth, the truth of the matter weighing me down. “I told you, the test doesn’t give any special qualifications or anything. I just wanted to see if I could do it. It’s not so important that I would set everything else aside to study for it.” Yuki was sitting nonchalantly on her bed. I could see her in my peripheral from where I sat on a small sofa in a corner of the room—it was where her mother often sat. I was deliberately trying to keep myself at an angle to her, afraid that if I faced her head-on, I would only get angry. “But you had finals, too,” she pointed out. “Yeah, but those are about stuff I’ve already learned. I’ve been studying the topics all along. I wasn’t trying to cram. One visit a week wouldn’t have hurt.” “Fine, but… Really, it was only a cold.” “With a fever that didn’t go down for days, right? What would you have done if it had gotten worse?” The thought of my girlfriend tormented by vomiting and rashes made my heart sink in my chest. We hadn’t been dating very long, but it was enough time for me to have gotten glimpses of how hard it was on her when she was feeling sick. I thought of how helpless and lost I felt each time she finally couldn’t take it anymore and had to press the nurse call button. “It was just a cold! It’s not like I was going to die!” She sounded more forceful than normal, and I realized she was pushing back at me for my own angry tone earlier. I had let my emotions take over and effectively belittled her mother. I looked guiltily at the ground. “I… I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have talked to your mother like that,” I said. “But I wish you would understand why I’m worried. You can say it’s just a cold, that you’re fine, but they haven’t let you out of the hospital yet. Besides, colds do kill people. It happens. You shouldn’t be so apathetic about yourself.” “I’m not going to die.” She was a bit confused, a bit embarrassed—but she still basically sounded unconcerned. Was I overreacting? Or was she so used to being sick that she was just numb to these things? “I didn’t really think about it when you were just another kid in class to me, but I’ve never met anyone whose health is as delicate as yours, Yuki. Each time I hear you’ve been hospitalized, I’m afraid you’re going to die. It’s so scary. So now, to find out that you were getting worse and no one even told me, it just…” She only repeated that she was fine, as I’d known she would. We were parallel lines running beside each other. A long moment of silence hung between us. Finally, she broke it. “I’ve always been glad that you love the stars so much, Tasuku. I was happy whenever you’d come and talk to me back in middle school. People who don’t share my interests only ever ask how I’m doing. It’s always, ‘Feeling better?’ But all I can say is that nothing’s changed. I know it’s not their fault, but I feel bad that I can’t give them a real answer.” “Ah… I didn’t know.” “Yeah. That’s why I wanted to get to know you better, because you talked to me about something that interested you. You know, since I met you, I sleep with the window curtains open at night sometimes. The nurses always close them when they come around, but thanks to you, I think the night sky is more interesting than I did before.” “Oh…” I thought of that May evening when she’d been on the phone, looking for that constellation. I thought of other times, even before that, when I had looked up at the night sky with her. “And I know your test isn’t for some special qualification or whatever, but I see how hard you work on studying for it, even when we’re together. I wish you wouldn’t act like it wasn’t important.” She pursed her lips, which only accentuated the lines of her painfully thin cheeks. That was what stopped me from agreeing completely with what she was saying. “Could you at least tell me, then, if you have a fever or catch a cold? I won’t be able to concentrate on studying if I think you might be hiding something from me, and then when I find out, I’ll feel like you don’t trust me. I know I’m not family, that maybe you can’t tell me everything, but still…” She looked straight at me. “Tasuku…” I didn’t want to see the expression on her face. I grabbed my bag and stood up, looking down the whole time. “All right. I guess I’ll go home,” I said. Yuki’s mom was waiting outside her room. “I’m sorry for what I said to you,” I told her with a bow of my head. Then I hurried out of the hospital. It was the first real fight we’d had since we started dating. I was still upset when I got to school the next day. Yuki had sent me a text the night before saying she wanted to talk again, to make sure we understood each other, so I’d agreed to visit her that afternoon. But I was still feeling out of sorts, and it was hard to get excited about it. Our graded exams started coming back to us, but even the fact that I’d gotten a good score wasn’t enough to lift my spirits. I knew I’d paid for it by being pushed away from Yuki. Once our short homeroom meeting was over and I had submitted the daily class reflection, I wanted to head straight home, but it was my day on after-class duty, and I’d been asked to do a few chores. I couldn’t leave yet. I even found myself thinking, I guess that could make a good excuse if I wanted to tell Yuki that I won’t be in time for visiting hours. I sighed to myself. My partner for after-class duties was Miyano, a guy I hadn’t talked to much. He seemed sort of awkward, even as he went to deliver the ethics report he’d gotten from the social studies prep room. Some people insisted that Miyano’s face looked like a girl’s, but even when I saw him close-up, I didn’t really think so. True, his eyes were on the large side and he seemed particularly thoughtful, but he was just a guy. I was still lost in thought when a teacher called, “You there—Miyano, right? You’re on the Disciplinary Committee, aren’t you?” I watched out of the corner of my eye as Miyano followed the summons to a nearby classroom. As for me, I bowed and showed myself into the hallway. If this was about Disciplinary Committee business, then maybe I could afford to be on my way. Still, I hung around for a few minutes, just to be absolutely sure—and that was when I heard some students prattling on by the stairs. “A six PM curfew? What are we, middle schoolers? What a prissy little princess. ‘Ooh, I have dinner at seven!’ So, what, I rank lower than food?” “Can you really call her a princess with an appetite like that?” Someone was busy badmouthing his girlfriend, I guessed. “Her family is, like…so normal! She goes right home on the weekends, too.” I couldn’t believe he would insult her like that. Who cared about her schedule? At least he could see her when he wanted to! “With that curfew, you’d have to split around five PM! God!” “Don’t I know it. This sucks! And to think, she’s the one who asked me out!” So walk her home, then! “You two went to the same middle school, right? Sounds like it could get pretty ugly if you got in a fight.” I stood there listening to the ingrates, getting madder and madder. You could only talk that badly about someone if you didn’t care about them, never mind that you were going out. Where did he get off blaming his girlfriend for her curfew? If there’d been a door around, I would have slammed it just to let off some steam. Without any doors to work off my anger, though, my impulsiveness got the better of me. I stomped into the hallway and glared up at the guys on the landing from the bottom of the stairs. “I’m sick of listening to you! What gives you the right to talk that kind of shit about a person?” Their eyes locked onto me. Even with the sun at their backs and faces in shadow, I could feel them looking at me with contempt. “’Scuse me?” There was that unmistakable crackle in the air that you only felt when someone was really, really pissed off. Well, now I’ve done it. “Er…” My throat hurt as a sharp breath escaped me. I made an instinctive decision: run. Dashing away, I flung myself through a nearby open window. I’m not a fast runner, so my plan was to find somewhere to hide. Unfortunately, it was only after landing behind the school that I realized I’d made a huge mistake. My bag was still in the classroom. I’d have to go back for it. I’d left Miyano all on his own, too. Crap. The angry guy wouldn’t think Miyano was me, but he might take his anger out on him anyway. Maybe it would have been a better plan to race back to the social studies prep room and find help. Didn’t matter now. I had to try to get away. Perhaps I could go around the side of the building and make my way back to the classroom. The exterior fire exit seemed like a good, safe path back to my bag. I was hurrying along, thinking about the hopelessness of the situation, when I thought I heard Miyano’s voice. I was probably imagining things, or maybe my hearing had gotten sharper, like a prey animal being pursued by predators. I was immensely lucky. My snap decision to jump outside had sent the angry guys running down a nearby hallway, shouting all the while. I breathed a sigh of relief as they went by. Argh. What am I doing? I thought. I’d just been lashing out. I’d had a fight with my girlfriend, whom I cherished, but the real reason we’d argued was because each of us wished the other would be less concerned about them. The Star Test was just a hobby thing for me. Yuki was more important, but she was trying to keep me from worrying about her because of a condition that was just par for the course as far as she was concerned. We aren’t actually upset with each other, I realized. In fact, the problem was that we were both trying to care for the other the best way we knew how. I hated the feeling that Yuki was holding out on me, but I didn’t and wouldn’t hate her for it. If anything, I loved her more than ever. I’m so completely smitten… I remembered the thought of using after-class duty as an excuse to get out of visiting her. But no, I decided I was going to go. Right at that moment, I heard a very angry shout: “There he is! That’s the guy!” Still crouching, I froze where I was. I wanted to run again, but my body wouldn’t move. The next thing I knew, I was being kicked in the stomach, and as I rolled on the ground, someone hit and punched me. I tried to find an opportunity to escape, but I was surrounded, the blows coming one after another. They’re gonna murder me! Did that really happen? My mind went blank with disbelief. Here I was being punched and kicked at my own school, where I went to learn every day. This couldn’t be real, could it? I curled up against the pain, my breath coming hard, and willed myself to stand. I had to get away. Fast. I had to get out of here! My panicking brain was assaulted by another blow, and there was a nasty crack as the frames of my glasses bent. I’m done for… In the moment I resigned myself to my fate, though, the beating suddenly stopped. “Who the hell are you?” one of my attackers demanded. “Pipe down. I’m trying to clean up here,” said an unfamiliar voice. The voice of my rescuer. “What?! How dare y—oww!” My assailants were half crouched, but the mysterious newcomer had stepped on one of their feet. It wasn’t a kick, just a stomp. “That hurt!” the punk bellowed, enraged to have been interrupted. No, I thought, suddenly calm, I’ll bet it didn’t. “Are you in one piece? Better move,” the new voice said serenely. “Y-yeah,” I said, and scrambled backward. My skewed glasses left my vision blurry. Whoever it was stood between me and the bad guys, protecting my retreat. “Hey, you! You better not screw with us!” one of the bullies said. “Did you hear me? I said I’m trying to clean.” He was sticking to the nice-guy act. From what I could see, he looked like an upperclassman, tall and well-built. He looked like he could hold his own. I continued scrambling in the direction of the school building when I heard someone whisper, “Over here!” It was Miyano, who had a broom and trash bag by his feet. I guess the guy really was cleaning. “Can you walk? We’ve got to get you to the nurse’s office.” Miyano held out his hand. I took it and got unsteadily to my feet—and then I ran. I got some first aid and gave a quick statement in the Disciplinary Committee room—then I broke my promise to go see Yuki. My face was puffed up, I was aching, and I had to do something about my glasses. She would know I’d been in a fight. When she found out I’d picked it myself to blow off some steam, only to end up getting beaten up, she wouldn’t be happy. And the way I looked, I knew she would worry about me. After much agonizing, I sent her a text. Sorry. Don’t think I can make it for the next two or three days. I didn’t give a reason. I didn’t have any broken bones, but I did get some ugly bruises on my stomach that excused me from swim class. Thankfully, I could get a decent grade on the practical-skills part of the class based on what I’d already done, and I wouldn’t be penalized for observing. Honestly, it was a relief; I’d never really liked swimming. My relief didn’t last long, though: I knew I couldn’t put off seeing Yuki any more. My glasses had been easy enough to repair—the lenses weren’t cracked, so I’d just picked similar frames and had them swapped out. But you could still see the bruises on my face. Well, I was just going to have to bite the bullet. “Hey,” I said, knocking and then slowly sliding open the door to her room. “Hey, Tasu—ohmygod!” I was trying to keep my head down as I came in, but I guess it wasn’t enough. Shock and concern came over her face. All I could do was nod. “I kinda got hurt.” “It looks like more than kinda!” Her big eyes started to well. She must have been really shocked. I’d already seen my family’s reaction to my injuries. I knew how upset she would be to see someone she cared about had obviously suffered from violence. “I’m sorry,” I said after a second. “The day I told you I couldn’t come, it was because…well, because of this. It’s not as bad as it looks.” I slid the round stool over to her bedside and sat beside her. No sooner had I sat down than an adorable little punch landed on my shoulder. It didn’t hurt at all; in fact, I sort of smiled. Her voice, though, was sharp. “I don’t mind that you couldn’t come, but I wish you’d told me why.” “…Yeah,” I said. I understood. “Did you get in a fight? Who with?” “There was this guy at school. I didn’t know him, but he was talking crap about his girlfriend. Shouting it all over the hall. It pissed me off, and I told him to shut up…which earned me a beating.” I threw my head down on her bed, pompf. She sighed, then after a moment, she positioned my head on her knees, her hand brushing gently through my hair. “Did you at least get in a hit back?” “Not even close. I tried to run away, but they caught me, and that’s when they really gave it to me.” She sighed and gave me a karate chop—with the same hand that had been so gentle with me just a second before. Here I’d hoped an honest confession might make things easier. Her blow landed on my bruised cheek, and it hurt, but I smiled in spite of myself. I heard another exasperated sigh from above me, but I thought I could catch kindness in it, too. “Listen, Yuki… About last time. I said some terrible things to your mother,” I started. It was a low blow to bring up the death of her beloved daughter. Even if I hadn’t acted rude, it must have hurt her very much. Yuki’s family had been through everything with her. How could it not hurt them to see their daughter constantly in and out of the hospital? I felt pathetic. “Yes, you did,” she said. After a second, she went on, “My parents actually really care about you, Tasuku. They even said you’re like a son to them. I think that’s maybe, uh, going a little far at the moment…but that’s why they don’t want to interrupt your studying. They see how hard you’re working. And I definitely agree with them about that.” “I had no idea…” “Hee-hee.” I care about them, too. Until a few days ago, I probably would have argued with her about her parents, but now I could see how wrong I was. We weren’t in a competition, her parents and me, and even though I thought their attempt to be considerate had backfired, I no longer blamed them for it. They were trying to do what they thought was best for me. I realized that my frustration and unhappiness about Yuki’s illness had made me weak at heart. I said things I should have kept to myself, lashed out at the people around me. I was profoundly embarrassed by myself. “I love you,” I said. I might have realized it was wrong to behave the way I had, but that didn’t make my anxiety go away. I couldn’t go on without Yuki. I’d never cared so much about anyone before. Even if I knew that was a lot to put on a person. Still, I couldn’t go blaming my inexperience for letting myself get swept up by my emotions… I slowly raised my head. I didn’t want this to be something I only said when we were cuddling—I wanted to be able to look her in the eye and tell her. “I really do love you.” I saw the blush in her cheeks, bashful and overjoyed at the same time. I loved her smile so much, I could hardly stand it. I loved her quiet laughter. Her slim fingers. Everything. “I’m gonna get healthy,” she said. “I know,” I answered. “I’ll be here.” She said it to reassure me, but I knew she meant it, too. I could see the marks from the IV line on her wrist. I clasped her hand, scars and all.