Chapter 6

After things had settled down, I was transferred from the prefectural capital to a local hospital by my father’s car.

By then, I had already shaved my head by my own will. As we got closer to my hometown, I made an unreasonable request to my father to drive near the beach because I wanted to see the sea. Facing death, my father couldn’t refuse my wish, and without hesitation, he brought the car close to the shore where the sea was visible, saying, "Just for a little while."

The sea shining under the clear May sky, glimpsed through the pine forest, sparkled brilliantly. Not a single shadow of human presence fell on the white sandy beach. The solitude, as if detached from the world, made the blue of the sea and the light of the sky feel like one and the same. Standing before the vast sea, I wanted to throw myself into it. But it wasn’t suicide. It was more like becoming one with the sea, dissolving into it, a sense of unity.

The sea was always close to me.

Simply having the sea there was enough. It wasn’t special; it was just everyday life. No matter how calm or stormy, the sea remained the sea. I couldn’t help but feel pity for those living in towns without a sea. That feeling, when seeing the sea, was similar to the urge to throw a stone into it.

It wasn’t sentimental; it was because I feared this might be the last sea I would see.

When I told my mother this, she dismissed it, saying it was "bad luck to say such things."

“It used to be an incurable disease, but they say eighty percent of leukemia cases like yours can be cured,” she added.

My father said he had looked it up online.

The hospital looked like a resort hotel. Orange French tiles covered the roof and eaves, standing out against the white plaster-like walls and the green of the pine forest.

For a while, my mother came to care for me, but as she became busy with local community activities, her visits became less frequent. My father, a businessman, only took care of the admission procedures when I was hospitalized.

The time alone felt like it would last forever.

The length of time pressed down on me unbearably. I often looked at the clock, wondering if it had broken and stopped. A dull pain slowly gnawed at my spirit rather than my body with every passing second. Like an emergency patient wishing to be “put out of misery” due to pain, I wanted to ask someone to stab my heart with a knife in one swift blow. The way time strangled me gently felt neither frightening nor anything else; it was merely nurturing a heavy spirit while consuming my life.

The excess time gradually transformed into a fear of death. The repressed spirit, fattened like a pig, was finally pushed toward death. The fact that eighty percent of patients survived meant that twenty percent definitely died. I began to be haunted by the fear that I might be in that twenty percent—that I, as an existence, might vanish from this world.

I was too young to accept death calmly. I had too little life experience and too few years to be detached. To die without knowing love was unbearably lonely.

I still didn’t understand life itself.

Yet, within that vast expanse of time, there were two moments that felt like salvation.

One was mealtime, though the taste grew tiresome after three days.

The other was when the nurses took my temperature.

Those moments felt like mere instants. Like light glimpsed through a break in the clouds. When the nurses gave a fleeting smile, they all seemed like angels to me. For a young person with little experience in love or life, falling in love was easy.

Among the nurses, there was one woman whose face showed no hint of darkness, with a cool, refreshing expression. Her features were delicate, and her large eyes left a strong impression.

“Your thermometer?”

Her voice was thin, high, and cool. When she handed me the thermometer, our eyes met. I couldn’t look directly into those eyes. She smiled slightly as she took it, and that smile felt pure. I felt she was the angel among angels. If angels had ranks, she should be at the top.

What if I could experience love with her? I wanted to fall in love.

Her name tag read “Haruka Kaku.”

Whenever Haruka came around, I felt my heart race.

Was this surge of blood, the physiological reaction, what people called a racing heart? Perhaps emotions are just physiological phenomena. But even knowing that logic, I couldn’t believe this excitement was a mere illusion. If this fervor was my honest feeling, then maybe it was fair to call it love.

When overwhelmed by loneliness, just the arrival of a nurse to check my temperature made me happy. Now, if it wasn’t Haruka, the day felt wasted. I was disappointed, wondering what the long wait had been for.