Chapter 2: ★ The Empty Desk by the Window
The day after Reina died, the sun still rose.
That felt wrong to me. The streets were still crowded with students in uniforms, the vendors still shouted at the station, the world went on as if nothing had ended. But for me, everything had already collapsed.
When I entered the classroom, her seat by the window was empty. No bag, no crooked ribbon, no smile turning toward me. Just a chair and desk, as ordinary as everyone else's, but to me it looked like a coffin.
I couldn't stop staring.
"Usawa, you okay?" one of my classmates whispered. I forced out something that might have been a nod. Words got stuck in my throat like shards of glass.
The teacher didn't mention her. No one did. It was as if erasing the name Akiyama Reina would erase the fact that she had collapsed, breathless and trembling, right here in this very room.
The chalkboard was wiped clean. Her eraser dust had vanished. The world was already erasing her.
---
At lunch, I sat alone. Her desk tempted me—I wanted to sit there, to feel her warmth still lingering in the wood, but the thought terrified me. If I sat there, and it was cold, then I'd have no excuse left.
She was really gone.
Instead, I watched the sunlight fall across her chair. For years, I had thought sunlight was free, endless. But now it felt like the cruelest thing in the world—that it would touch an empty seat with more tenderness than it ever gave to me.
After school, I walked the same path home. The same bridge. The same view of the river glinting gold. Every step felt heavier, as if my body wanted to sink into the concrete and never move again.
I stopped in the exact spot where she had once pressed her hand to her chest, forcing a smile to reassure me. That day, I had believed her. That day, I had let her walk on, pretending nothing was wrong.
Now the memory cut me in half.
I pressed my own hand against my chest, trying to imagine what it must have felt like for her—lungs grasping for air, a body betraying her piece by piece. She had smiled through that, just to keep me from worrying.
"Idiot…" My voice cracked into the wind. "…You should've told me. You should've let me worry."
But my words went nowhere. The bridge didn't answer. The river didn't answer. Reina was gone, and no matter how loudly I screamed, she would never hear me again.
That night I couldn't sleep. I tossed, turned, buried my face in the pillow until my breath burned, but every time I closed my eyes, I saw hers closing too. I felt her hand slipping from mine again and again, until my chest hurt so badly I thought it might tear open.
When I finally sat up, the room was dark. My phone buzzed with messages from friends: Are you okay? Want to talk?
I didn't reply. What could I say? That my chest was hollow? That breathing felt like betrayal because she couldn't do it anymore?
I stumbled to my desk and opened my notebook. Pages of half-finished equations stared back at me. Numbers and symbols—things that were supposed to be logical, eternal. But Reina had been real, and she had disappeared faster than any number could explain.
The pencil slipped from my hand. Tears blurred the paper.
I whispered her name, again and again, until it didn't sound like a name anymore—just a broken sound, like the cracking of glass underfoot.
---
The next morning, I skipped breakfast. My mother asked if I was sick; I told her no.
She didn't press. Maybe she didn't want to. Maybe she could already see the sickness in my eyes.
At school, the teacher finally said it.
"With great sadness, I must inform you that our classmate, Akiyama Reina, has passed away."
The words were clinical. Neat. Like she was announcing that today's math test had been postponed.
No gasps. No sobs. Just silence—the kind that fills a room too quickly and chokes you.
I clenched my fists under the desk until my nails dug into my skin. No one cried. No one shouted. The world just… absorbed the news.
And in that moment, I hated everyone. I hated how they nodded solemnly, how they whispered, how they looked away from her empty chair as if it had never mattered.
Reina had been sunlight. She had been laughter, crooked ribbons, humming tunes. And all they gave her was a sentence.
I wanted to scream at them: Don't you dare forget her. Don't you dare look away.
But my throat stayed locked. The scream died inside me, rotting.
---
That night, I went to the rooftop. The stars blinked faintly—weak and suffocating, just as she had once described.
"Don't you think starlight looks like it's struggling to breathe?"
Her words echoed in my ears, crueler now than ever.
I looked up until my eyes burned. "Reina," I whispered, "if the stars are suffocating, then so am I."
And for the first time since she collapsed, I let myself cry until my whole body shook. I didn't stop until my throat was raw and my vision blurred into black.
---
That was the second day without her.
And somehow, it hurt worse than the first.
Credits
Written with heart by Author: Rohaan Ali
Editor: Subhan Zahir
English Corrector: Wang Ming
"Even if starlight forgets to breathe, her smile will never leave these pages."