Hello, I'm Haruto Fujimori. Nice to meet you. May I ask your name?"
Hinato suddenly laughed. "You don't have to be so serious."
Aiko stammered shyly, "My brother is absolutely right. You don't need to speak so formally with me. You can be more relaxed."
"I understand, thank you. You can think of talking to me as if you're talking to a friend, after all, Hinato is my best friend."
Hinato interrupted Haruto. "Of course we are, like siblings. But didn't I tell you to relax a bit? You're exhausting yourself with this work, even giving private lessons to students at night. What are you saving all that money for? Enjoy life, my friend. Because of this work, you almost stopped talking to me. You need to take better care of yourself."
Haruto smiled slightly and thanked Hinato. He looked around the café calmly. His eyes caught the wall clock in the corner, and suddenly he stood up.
"I have to give a private lesson to a student. I have to go immediately," he said apologetically.
"At least finish your coffee," said Hinato. "This café has the best coffee in the city."
Haruto apologized again and left the café. He called a taxi from his phone. A strange sense of peace fell over him, and a snowflake landed on his nose. Suddenly, he became angry.
"Naturally, if there's a warm and fun season like summer, I can't like a cold and boring season like winter," he muttered.
He remembered that he hadn't taken a summer vacation in years; even then, he was giving private lessons to some students. He thought about the meaning of money: was it just a piece of paper or a tool for happiness? If he kept using it this way, it would be nothing more than paper. Smiling slightly, he thought to himself, "Maybe I should take a summer vacation."
He looked down and saw the ground was slightly wet. Most likely, the snow wouldn't accumulate because of this. As he looked at the small puddle on the ground, he noticed it was shining. For a moment, he was surprised. The brightness in the puddle reflected a shooting star in the sky. He quietly made a wish.
At that moment, the taxi reached Haruto. He got in and, feeling that sense of peace, started looking outside.
Haruto sat rigidly and uneasily in the taxi seat when the driver suddenly asked his name. Surprised by the sudden question, he thought, "Why am I surprised? As if I'm the main character and if I don't interact, nothing will happen. Where does this 'main character aura' even come from?"
These days, all he did was push himself down. He took a deep breath and replied to the driver, "Hello, my name is Haruto. What is your name?"
The driver said, "My name is Subaru," which Haruto found a bit strange because the name Subaru belonged to a character in a novel he had been following—someone who betrayed the main character and was his closest friend. He thought, "Wow, what a coincidence."
The taxi entered a forest road. Suddenly, it started to rain. The taxi's speedometer showed 113 km/h. At that moment, the driver suddenly said, "Got you," and turned the car sharply. Haruto froze.
The car began to roll down the cliff, tearing through trees at high speed, and finally crashed into the ground with incredible force. Haruto was almost about to faint from the impact, but Subaru remained insanely calm.
At that moment, the driver pulled out an axe hidden by his side and said, "We have to put an end to this, Haruto."
Terrified, Haruto started kicking the glass that was cracked in many places. The glass shattered. At that moment, Haruto tried to jump out of the window, but the driver, in the narrow space of the car, managed to strike Haruto's leg with the axe.
Haruto screamed so loudly that it could be heard for miles. He immediately tried to crawl away, then get up, but his leg started disappearing from where the axe hit. At that moment, Haruto tried to feel his leg with his hand, but it was useless; he felt like his entire body was starting to vanish.
He began breathing very quickly, but suddenly a sentence stopped his breath: The driver looked up at the sky and said, "I don't want to suffer anymore." His voice sounded sincere and bitter.
The driver reached for a gun at his waist. As he slowly raised it, Haruto shouted, "You're insane!" but suddenly the driver pointed the gun at himself and pulled the trigger.
At that moment, along with the pain in his leg, Haruto felt the calmness in his mind vanish. He thought he was going to die.
He noticed objects around him starting to blend together, and the few colors faintly visible in the forest darkness mixing with each other. For a moment, he closed his eyes and hit his head on a sharp stone, but he didn't care. With or without pain, it didn't matter; he was going to die anyway.
Suddenly, he began hearing some sounds in front of him, and the colors and objects returned to normal. But the colors he saw now were very different from the forest; he saw lighter tones. Gradually, the sounds became clearer. He realized he wasn't dead.
Suddenly, he sprang up. Everyone looked at him in surprise, but Haruto, without thinking about where he was or who the people in front of him were, asked, "Am I still alive?"
The people around him laughed. Haruto became angry; he felt frustrated that such an important question wasn't taken seriously.
As the uncertainty and blurriness in his mind disappeared, he saw Hinato and Aiko in front of him. Two doctors were also standing next to them.
The doctors thought, "Could there be a disruption in his consciousness?" and began asking him some questions, but Haruto didn't have time for them. He turned to Hinato and asked in a serious tone how they found him and how long he had been there.
Hinato laughed, "I didn't think hitting your head would cause this much trouble."
Aiko asked sadly, "Are you okay, Haruto?"
Haruto, with his ears ringing, said, "I had a car accident! I was almost killed by a madman, and the only thing you care about is my head?" His voice carried a bitter mix of incomprehension and disappointment.
Hinato suddenly became serious and calmly said, "Haruto, you didn't have a car accident…" Haruto looked at Hinato frozen.
Hinato continued, "You fell and hit your head, you fainted. Luckily, you were at the student's house giving a private lesson. Don't you really remember what happened?"
Haruto didn't know what to do or how to react. He lay down on the bed calmly and tried to sleep, but it felt like his eyelids were useless; his eyes constantly drifted toward the cemetery visible from the hospital room's window.
He turned his head toward Hinato and Aiko. Slowly and innocently, he said, "Thank you for taking care of me. But can I be alone for a while? I need some rest."
Hinato looked at the doctors. The doctors looked sadly at the floor. Hinato's eyes filled with tears. He said to Aiko, "Let's go," and looking at Haruto, "See you, Haruto. I'll come again tomorrow. Don't overwork yourself."
Aiko's eyes seemed unable to leave him, as if carrying a sense of guilt, standing strangely. Both of them left the hospital room; the doctors followed immediately.
Haruto tried to process the events after they left, but he felt incredibly tired. He forced himself to sleep.
It was late at night. Haruto slowly opened his eyes with the weight of pain. He wanted to reach for the half-full glass of water beside him. Just as he was about to grab it, he noticed something.
The glass slipped from his hand and broke on the floor, but he didn't care about the glass, the water, or the disturbing sound it made.
At that moment, he began to feel his body. He felt nothing. He felt no injuries, no pain from the car accident. He found it very strange.
He paused and thought about how long Misato and Aiko had been waiting beside him. "Had it been weeks or months?" He knew nothing, but suddenly, his phone vibrated with a notification. He grabbed it slowly. First, he checked the time: it was 03:13. Then he looked at the date: January 4th. He felt truly relieved. He whispered softly, "Only one day has passed."
The accident had occurred on the evening of January 2nd, meaning he had only been in the hospital for one day, with a few extra hours of sleep.
He looked at the ceiling of the hospital calmly. The more he looked, the more a sense of relief, worry, and mystery took over his face.
"How is this possible? Only one day? This is impossible. I'm sure technology hasn't advanced this much, and the doctors don't have magical powers either… What happened?" His anxiety grew. He didn't know what to do.
Then he suddenly looked at his leg, which had mysteriously started to disappear when he was struck by the axe. "How could I have forgotten?" Lifting the blanket, he saw his leg completely intact, with no wounds. He took a deep breath and, to satisfy himself, muttered, "What a strange nightmare," but what he experienced felt almost real, aside from a few differences.
He didn't want to think about those details now. He just wanted to sleep and escape these thoughts and events.
He laid his head back on the pillow. He gazed at the endless sky beyond the window. Just as he was about to close his eyes, the cemetery next to the hospital caught his attention again.
He muttered softly, "How absurd! Putting a place that saves lives next to a place where those who can't be saved lie. If I had a serious illness and was constantly facing death, I would definitely hate this cemetery. It would secretly eat away at my hope."