The heart monitor's steady beeping had become the rhythm of Mizuki's world.
She stood at Arashi's bedside, her fingers wrapped around his hand so tightly her knuckles had gone pale. The machines hummed. The IV drip counted its slow, indifferent seconds. And Arashi lay still — the way he had been lying still for days now — his face peaceful in a way that felt less like rest and more like departure.
"Arashi."
Her voice broke on the single word.
"Arashi." She said it again, softer this time, as though she were afraid to disturb him. As though he were only sleeping and she didn't want to be the reason he woke up too soon.
But then the fear won.
"Arashi!"
Somewhere far away — in a place that had no walls, no floor, no light — Arashi was sinking.
There was nothing beneath him and nothing above him. Just darkness, deep and quiet, pulling him down the way water pulls at something heavy. He didn't fight it. He wasn't sure he remembered how to fight anymore. The darkness was gentle in a strange way, the way exhaustion is gentle — the kind that tells you it's okay to stop.
Where am I?
The thought drifted through him slowly, like smoke.
He couldn't feel his arms. Couldn't feel the weight of his own body. There was only the sinking, and the black, and the silence —
And then her voice.
Arashi.
It came from somewhere above him. Far above. Like light trying to reach the bottom of the ocean.
He stopped sinking.
Not because he fought it. Just because the sound of her voice made something in him pause — some deep, stubborn part of him that hadn't gone quiet yet.
That's Mizuki.
He tried to move. Nothing responded. His arms, his legs, his hands — they belonged to the darkness now, and the darkness did not give things back easily. He tried again. The sinking resumed, slow and patient, and the voice grew distant.
Arashi.
You promised.
He heard it clearly this time. Clearly enough that it cut through the dark like it had edges.
You promised to stay with me. Then why — why are you always going into trouble? Why, Arashi?
There was something in her voice he had never heard before. Not just sadness. Sadness he had heard. This was something older than sadness — the sound of someone who had been afraid for so long that the fear had worn through her like water through stone.
Did you forget?
He stopped sinking again.
Did you forget that time—
The memory came before he could stop it.
They were small. The school hallway was too bright the way school hallways always were, and the afternoon light fell through the windows in long yellow stripes across the floor.
Arashi had been walking alone — the way he always walked, unhurried, hands in his pockets, looking at nothing in particular. He wasn't the kind of kid who looked for things. He had learned early that if you looked for things, you usually found them, and most things weren't worth finding.
But then he heard it.
Laughter. The kind that has a target.
He turned a corner and saw them. Three girls standing in a loose circle near the stairwell. One of them had her hand raised. The sound of the slap reached him a half-second after he saw it happen, and in the center of the circle — stumbling backward, one hand pressed to her cheek — was a girl he recognized from his class.
She sat alone in class. She always got perfect scores. She never said anything to anyone.
He had never thought much about her before that moment.
He didn't think much about her in that moment either. He just walked over.
"That's enough."
His voice came out flat. Not loud. Not angry. Just flat, the way a door closing is flat — final without being dramatic.
The girls turned.
One of them looked him up and down with the particular expression of someone who has decided they don't need to take you seriously. "Mind your own business, loser."
Arashi looked at her for a moment. Then he looked at the girl on the ground — still holding her cheek, still trying to figure out what was happening — and something in him settled into a very calm, very deliberate place.
He looked back at the girl who had spoken.
"I'm genuinely trying to figure out," he said, "why three of you are circling her like she's the last piece of food on earth." He pointed at the girl leading the others.
The girl's expression flickered. "Excuse me—"
"Actually, don't answer that." He tilted his head slightly. "I think I know why. You look like an alien who had to beg Earth to let you live here. And you have the audacity to bully someone else while you're built like a whole vending machine."
Dead silence.
The girl's face went through several colors. "Say that again and I'll—"
"Please get out of my face," Arashi said pleasantly, "before your radioactive smell melts my skin off. You're not a normal person. You're a failed Area 51 experiment they released in public just to see what would happen."
The silence stretched one beat longer than comfortable.
Then the girl turned sharply. "Let's go. I don't have time for this." She shot a look over her shoulder at the girl on the ground. "We'll meet again, Mizuki. And next time — he gets the treatment too."
Then they were gone.
The hallway was quiet again. The yellow light came in through the windows. Somewhere far away a door slammed.
Arashi hadn't moved. He was still standing in the same spot, the same way he had stood from the beginning — like none of it had been a particularly big deal. He turned now, and he looked down at her.
She was still on the floor. Still staring at him. Her cheek was red and her eyes were wide and she looked the way people look when something has happened that they don't have a category for yet.
He extended his hand.
"Are you alright?"
He was smiling. Not a big smile. Just a small, quiet one — the kind that doesn't ask for anything back.
And Mizuki, for reasons she would spend the next several years trying to understand, felt something shift in her chest. Something that had no name yet. Something that would take time.
She didn't take his hand.
She stood up on her own — shakily — and then she ran.
That was the day I started watching you.
Her voice again. Still from above. Still far away, but a little closer now — or maybe he was a little closer to it.
You became my friend. And then — without me even realizing it — you became everything.
You used to come to my house every day. We'd play until your mother called. And even when she punished you for coming home late, you came back the next day anyway. You never learned.
Something almost like a smile moved through him in the dark.
But then something happened. You lost your memories — everything, me, our childhood, all of it. And I prayed. I prayed so many times just to find you again. Just to have the chance to remind you of what we had.
So please, Arashi.
Her voice cracked.
Please don't leave me.
Back in the hospital room, the heart monitor changed its tone.
The beeping stretched. Slowed.
A nurse appeared in the doorway and went still for half a second before moving fast. "What's happening — someone get the doctor, his heart rate is dropping—"
"No." Mizuki didn't move. Her hand tightened around his. "He needs me. I'm not leaving."
"Miss, please, you have to step back—"
"I'm not leaving."
The nurses moved around her. Voices overlapped. Someone called down the hallway. The monitor's slow, dragging beep filled the room like something trying very hard to hold on.
In the dark, Arashi heard all of it.
He couldn't see anything. Couldn't feel anything. But he heard her voice, and he heard the fear in it, and somewhere in the place where his chest used to be, something quietly refused to let go.
He was still sinking.
But he was smiling.
She's still there.
He tried to move. Nothing.
He tried again.
Arashi, please.
Again.
His fingers — somewhere, far above him, in a world that still had light — twitched.
Just barely.
Just enough.