I get a B on my mock exam and it feels like a sunrise.
"B!" I shout anyway, because subtlety has never been my thing. I hop up onto the chair; the chair wobbles; Nao yelps and grabs my sleeve to keep me from eating the floor. I hold the paper over my head like a trophy. A couple of kids clap. Someone whistles. It's corny. I don't care.
"Down, you menace," Nao says, grinning. "Before a teacher walks in and cancels your letter grade for being a public hazard."
I hop down, still buzzing. It's not an A. But it's mine. I earned it. Late nights. Dumb flashcards. Rewriting the same paragraph three times until it stopped sounding like a brick. It means maybe I can do this. Maybe I'm not just a tomboy who swings a bat and drifts through classes. Maybe there's a road with my name on it.
Nao leans her hip against the desk, eyes soft. "Proud of you."
"Say it louder," I tell her, flicking her ponytail.
She smirks. "Proud of you, menace."
The bell thrums in the hall. Backpacks zip. Desks scrape. The classroom turns into a river of noise. For a minute, I let myself float. It's been a while since anything felt easy.
Then Nao says, "Have you seen him today?"
The river drops out from under me.
"Who?" I ask, which is stupid, because we both know.
She doesn't even bother to say his name. She rolls her eyes at me like, Don't play. "The ghost."
I put the paper down. "He's not a ghost."
Nao pierces me with a look that could staple things to the wall. "Tsubaki."
I swallow. She isn't wrong. He's been missing in this way that doesn't leave footprints. He'll show up second period without his bag, hair a mess, eyes a million miles away, then vanish again after lunch like the building shook him loose. Teachers mutter. Students whisper. People call him zombie boy under their breath like it's funny, and I want to throw my shoe at them, but I don't. We're fourteen. People are cruel because they're scared.
"Coach asked me if he was sick," Nao says, softer now. "I didn't know what to say."
"He's... busy," I say. The word feels thin. "You know. With—"
"Kaori," Nao finishes for me. She isn't mean about it. It still stings.
I nod. "Yeah." I twist the hem of my uniform sweater. "The hospital. And other stuff."
"What other stuff?"
I don't answer. I don't have real answers. Just pieces. The way he keeps looking through windows like he's expecting time to melt. The stack of science books he borrowed and never returned because he never returns anything anymore, he just moves. The way he told the guidance counselor, very calmly, that he wanted to go into medicine or science, and I was outside the door pretending to hunt for a vending machine, and I heard it, and for a second I couldn't breathe.
Not piano. Not music. Medicine.
I wanted to barge in and say, Since when? But the words froze. Who am I to tell him what road to take? Who am I to keep him tied to a thing that hurts him?
Nao watches me. "You look like you swallowed a pencil."
"I overheard him," I admit. "That day in the office. He told Sensei he wanted to study medicine. Or science. I don't know. Something... big."
"And you've been chewing on it ever since." Nao taps my head with her pen cap. "You always get quiet when it's not about a game."
I make a face. She isn't wrong about that either.
At lunch we grab bread from the kiosk and eat by the windows. The winter light is thin; the glass is cold under my wrist. Kids keep drifting past, tossing little rumors behind them like candy wrappers. "He slept through math." "He missed chem again." "Sensei's going to call home, right?" "Does he even have a home?" A joke, then laughter. I hate it.
"People are worried," Nao says. "Even the ones being jerks. They just don't know how to say it."
"I know how to say it," I mutter, and then stop, because if I start I won't be able to stop. I take a breath. "He looks worse."
She nods. "He does."
"The other day," I say, "he came in during homeroom and I thought... he forgot his glasses again, which, fine, looks cool or whatever, but then I realized he wasn't seeing anybody. Not really. He just sat. Like furniture."
"Zombie boy," Nao says, not joking this time.
"Stop calling him that." I glare
She raises both hands. "Okay."
I look down at my hands. My nails are clean for once. My knuckles still have that old scar from when I crashed my bike three summers ago. Kousei sat on the curb with me and held my elbow while I cried and told me the sky was the exact color of lemon popsicles. I wanted to punch him and hug him at the same time. We were kids. We still are. Somehow everything got heavy anyway.
"Maybe..." Nao starts, then bites it back. "Never mind."
"What?"
"Maybe his road is just... different," she says. "You can't walk it for him. You can walk near it."
"I know." I hate that I know. I hate that I can't fix it with a yell and a shove like when he called my feet big in fourth grade and I chased him down the street until he apologized. Life shouldn't be more complicated than that. It is.
After school, I stay late to help clean up the gym. Mops squeak. Someone plays the same pop chorus six times down the hall. The sun drags its feet and then gives up. When I finally get home, Mom has left curry in the pot and a note with a heart doodled next to my name. I eat standing up at the counter. It's quiet in a way that can be kind and can also be mean, depending on how much you let it in.
In my room, I lay the mock exam on the desk like it's fragile. The "B" is still there. It still counts. I sit, and for a minute I let myself imagine futures. Phys ed track? Coaching? Teaching? Something with kids. Something where I get to shout and laugh and not be stuck behind a counter or a desk forever. I picture a little me yelling at a little someone to keep their elbow up, and I smile like an idiot.
Then, because I can't help it, I cross to the window.
From here, if you lean just right, you can see his house. Our houses have always faced each other like they were put down by someone who thought it would be cute. Sometimes it is. Tonight it's not.
His windows are dark.
Maybe he's at the hospital. Maybe he's asleep on the floor with his cheek pressed to some notebook because he didn't make it to the bed. He used to text me when he was late. He used to text me for dumb things: What's the math homework. Did you catch the game. Tell Watari he's an idiot. Now my phone stays quiet and too heavy in my pocket.
I try to remember the last time we hung out and it wasn't between alarms. There was the festival. Sparklers. Nao's laugh. Watari doing that ridiculous dance by the pool and almost falling in. Kaori's smile, bright and thin. Kousei standing half a step behind her like a bodyguard who forgot to sleep. Me pretending not to stare, not to count the seconds, not to grip the idea of him so hard it might snap.
I think about that day outside the faculty office again. His voice, so calm, telling Sensei he wanted medicine or science. The quiet that fell in me after, like he had walked through a door I didn't see and locked it softly. The first feeling was hurt. The second was relief. If he wasn't going to marry the piano, maybe it would stop breaking him. The third feeling, the one I'm only starting to say out loud, is something like awe. He picked a mountain. He started climbing.
I touch my "B" and feel stupidly proud. If he can pick a mountain, maybe I can pick a hill. A small one, at first. Something I can climb with my hands. A school I want. A future I can name. Not because I'm following him. Because I'm finally moving in my own skin.
Outside, a scooter buzzes past. A dog complains at a cat. A window shuts somewhere with a little thunk that echoes more than it should. I rest my forehead against the cool glass and watch his house not move.
"Don't disappear on me," I whisper, too quiet for anyone to hear. My breath fogs a small circle. I draw a smiley face in it with my finger and immediately wipe it away because I'm not eight. Then I put my palm flat, a little promise pressed to the night.
"I'll catch up to you," I say.
The words sit in the room like a tiny lantern. Not bright. Enough.
I turn from the window and sit back down at the desk. I pick up my pen. I don't know what page to start with, so I start with the one that's in front of me.
—
Kaori's room is empty.
The bed is made with the kind of hospital neatness that looks like nobody has ever slept there. The curtains are tied back. The vase I brought last week has two stubborn carnations hanging on, edges browned, still trying. Her bunny sits against the pillow like a small guard.
I stand in the doorway and feel my chest climb into my throat. Empty rooms are bad memories with fluorescent lights.
Where is she?
"Arima-kun..?"
I turn. Her mom is there with a cardigan folded over her arm. Her dad is two steps behind, balancing a paper cup of coffee and trying not to slosh. They both look... softer. Not less tired. But there's a lift at the corners of their faces I don't remember from the first life. Hope looks different on parents. It makes them lighter and older at the same time.
"You're early..." her mom says. "She's not here."
The words hit like a cold coin. "Where is she?"
Her dad smiles in a way that almost cracks me. "Come with us."
We walk. The hallway smells like lemon cleaner and warm plastic. Shoes squeak. Somewhere an IV pump ticks a polite metronome. Her mom asks if I've eaten. I say yes. It's a lie. Her dad tells a tiny joke about the cafeteria coffee being "a war crime," and I make the sound people make when they want to be polite and not fall apart.
My mind drifts the way it does when the ground under me is about to change. I remember these same halls in a different year, the lights the same, the air heavy with the same dry heat. I remember her parents moving like the color had been drained from them, speaking softly because speaking loudly risks waking grief up.
Today they walk a little faster.
We pass doors with names taped to them, wheelchairs parked like folded insects, a bulletin board with a flyer about a music afternoon. The little staff lounge is open. A TV murmurs weather to nobody. Down another corridor. A turn. A door with a frosted window and a metal rail across it.
"Here," her mom says.
The rehab room is long and bright. Parallel bars shine down the center like a lane in a pool. At the far end, under a high window, Kaori is standing.
Standing.
Both hands on the bars. Socks planted. Knees trembling. A therapist at her elbow, calm and close.
For one second my vision tunnels. The rest of the world thins to a narrow line; only she stays in focus. She shifts her weight. Her right foot slides. Left follows. It's nothing like the confident stride from before all this. It's a negotiation. But it's movement. It's hers.
My mouth opens and nothing comes out.
"Kaori," her mom calls, gentle.
Kaori turns. She's pale—there's no pretending otherwise—but there's color in the middle of her cheeks from work, not fever. She sees us and lifts her chin like we caught her posing. "Give me a second!" she says to the room, to the air, to herself. "It's a big day."
The therapist smiles. "One more length?"
"One more," she says, a little breathless, and faces forward.
She goes. Hands over the bar, fingers tight, then loose. Right. Left. Right. It's careful and stubborn and alive. When her ankle wobbles she laughs, a small, annoyed sound I've missed so much my ribs hurt. "I'm fine," she tells the air. "Again."
Her dad presses the coffee into a windowsill and puts his hands in his pockets like if he doesn't, they'll shake. Her mom clasps her cardigan in front of her like it's a prayer book. Neither one breathes loud.
In my first life there was no scene like this. There were chairs. There were curtains. There were whispers you pretended not to hear because the truth inside them was too much. There was the slow compressing of a family into a very quiet shape.
I look at them now—at this man and woman who made croissants with smiles they didn't deserve to have to fake—and something in me folds. The air goes thin. A light snaps on behind my eyes.
Kaori reaches the midpoint and stops to reset. She is sweating now, a fine shine along her hairline. She lowers her head and blows out a strand of breath, then looks up at the mirror and gives herself a ridiculous face on purpose. The therapist laughs. Her mom bites her knuckle and tries not to.
I turn my face away before the first tear falls. It's no good. Another comes with it. Then another. It's not pretty. It's not cinematic. It's just wet and hot and honest. I lift my knuckles and press them there like a child. It doesn't help.
It hurt even more a second time. It always does.
"Arima-kun," her mom says softly.
I shake my head once. I don't trust my voice.
Her dad steps closer. He doesn't say anything at first—just stands where I can feel him without having to look. Then, very quietly: "We know."
The two words land like a hand on the back of my neck. Warm. Steady. Permission.
"I—" My voice breaks, embarrassing and high. I clear it and try again. "I thought I'd never—"
See this, I mean. See her moving. See their faces like this.
Her dad nods, eyes bright. "For a long time," he says, also quiet, "we only saw one direction." He doesn't say the word. He doesn't have to. Down. "And now look."
I look. Of course I look.
She starts again. Right. Left. Right. The shake in her knee is smaller this time, or maybe she's better at riding it. The therapist steps back half a pace and lets her own body answer the balance from a distance. When the movement smooths, the therapist glances at us with the kind of pride technical people get when the numbers finally match the hope. I want to sprint across the floor and kiss her forehead like some idiot in a drama. Instead I press my fist to my mouth and breathe through it.
Kaori reaches the end and rests her forearms on the bar. She tips her head to the therapist's shoulder and grins, a flash of her old self right through the pale. "Again?" she asks.
"Again," the therapist says cheerfully, but adds, "and then we're done."
She groans like a child sent to bed too early, then shakes her arms out and goes once more.
I think about last time—the rehearsal rooms she never got to return to, the way her parents listened from hallways, the way I lived in my head and missed whole days standing next to her. I think about the way grief makes a person small and the way time makes hard things look inevitable even when they weren't.
"Thank you," her mom says suddenly. It takes me a second to realize she's talking to me.
I wipe at my face with the heel of my hand. "I didn't— this isn't—"
"We know," she says. "But you kept showing up. You kept her laughing. You kept us... pointed at the next hour." She smiles, and it's a tired, beautiful, complicated thing. "That counts."
I shake my head because if I nod I'll start again.
Kaori finishes her last pass and the therapist unhooks the gait belt from the back of her waist. The belt makes a soft Velcro sound that sends a stupid shiver through me—some small, mean part of me afraid they'll take it away. It stays in the therapist's hands. Kaori leans on the bars and shakes her legs out like a runner.
"Hey," she calls, finally noticing us properly. "Did you see me?"
"Every step," her dad says, and his voice is rough.
Kaori beams. "Good," she says, then points at me with mock sternness. "You. Don't cry without me."
I drag the sleeve across my face in one swipe and sniff. "Bossy."
"Always." She grins again, then winces. The therapist slides a stool under her and she sits carefully. The room seems to exhale.
Her mom moves to her side. They murmur about water, about resting. I stand where I am and let the tremor work its way out of my hands.
The therapist brings over a clipboard and speaks in the kind of practical, gentle voice that makes bad news smaller and good news real. "We're increasing duration very slowly," she tells her parents. "Her response is encouraging. We'll keep balancing exertion with rest so we don't trigger setbacks." She glances at me, clocking my age and my too-bright eyes, and adds, "Consistency is our friend."
Her dad squeezes my shoulder once, firm. "Walk with me," he says quietly, and guides me a few steps toward the window.
We stand with our backs to the room for ten seconds, both of us pretending to admire the hospital's tiny garden. The winter grass is stubborn and flat. A sparrow pecks at nothing and makes it look important.
"I used to watch you on stage when you were little," he says finally. "I thought you were extraordinary."
I almost laugh. "You said that already" I pause. "I was quite the machine."
He shrugs. "You were still a boy trying. That's the part I remember."
We look out another few seconds. He speaks again without turning. "I used to pray," he says, "for anything. A day. An hour. Some small thing we could call progress, so we could tell ourselves we weren't just waiting." He breathes in and out once. "Today I got it."
My chest hurts in a good way.
"I'm going to keep showing up," I say, because it's the only promise I know how to keep without lying. "For all of you."
He nods. "We know."
We go back. Kaori is sipping water and tormenting the therapist with questions about "graduating from bars to dramatic hallway strutting." The therapist laughs and threatens a cone obstacle course. Kaori claps, then pretends to groan. Her mom fixes a damp curl behind her ear the way moms have always done since hair existed.
I hover close enough to be useful if she asks, far enough to let her finish being brave without an audience breathing on her neck. She looks over and catches me watching. For one second her expression softens into something private—gratitude, mischief, relief, a word that feels like later—and then she rolls her eyes because being sentimental makes her itch.
"Arima," she says, "tell them I could totally beat you in a race."
"You probably could," I say. "You will."
She nods like I passed a test. The therapist snorts and writes something on the clipboard that probably says: patient responds to praise; boyfriend is a sap.
They start packing up. The belt gets hung. The bars get wiped. Kaori's mom helps her adjust the cuff of her sleeve. Her dad retrieves the coffee he pretended he didn't need. The room returns to neutral, the way rooms do when the reason they were bright has moved on.
As we leave, I look back once. The bars are just metal again. The mirror only shows the door frame. But the air remembers. I can feel it—like heat that lingers in a chair after someone stands.
In the hallway, Kaori holds my gaze a little longer than usual. "You okay?" she mouths.
I nod. It feels small and true and not enough.
Inside my chest a promise sets like concrete: this isn't borrowed time. This is time we made. I will not waste a breath of it. And I will not let their faces—hers, and the two that love her most—go back to the color they were. Not in this life. Not while I can still stand.