Chapter Seven

Mealtimes, the joy of seeing Haruka, study sessions and self-study—little by little, life in the hospital began to feel fulfilling. I gradually started to feel motivated to study again.

One day, while I was studying on my own, Haruka came into the room during her rounds.

“Impressive. What are you studying?”

She leaned over and peeked at my textbook.

“Wow! It’s English. I can’t make sense of any of it. Can you, Yuta”

“I studied it once before,” I replied.

“I heard you’re really smart, Yuta.”

“That’s not true,” I said, in a slightly affected tone, though I tried to hide it.

This kind of casual conversation—different from the usual routine questions like “Are you having regular bowel movements?” or “How are you feeling?”—made me happy. It felt like we were growing closer.

On Sundays, my mother sometimes visited in the afternoon, but if it passed two o’clock, it usually meant she wouldn’t come at all. However, one late afternoon, my father arrived—bringing a girl with him.

She was a younger student from my middle school. I had seen her face several times while walking the hallways of our small school building, but it had never meant anything. We were just two students who passed each other without a word—I didn’t even know her name.

That very girl appearing in my hospital room with my father was beyond comprehension. It was too strange, disturbingly incomprehensible.

“You look well today.”

“Yeah.”

A curt and indifferent reply—my usual way of answering him, and today was no different.

“Do you know this girl?”

“She’s a lowerclassman from middle school. I’ve seen her face before, that’s all.”

“She’s the daughter of one of the clerks at my company. Her mother asked me if I knew of any part-time work, so I suggested she help take care of you. She said she’d be willing to do anything, so I asked her.”

I instinctively sensed that my mother had pushed the burden of caregiving onto my father. My mother’s identity was rooted in activities outside the home. She fled the confines of the household and found herself in the world beyond—not to protect her family, but rather to protect herself. And by doing so, she had, perhaps unintentionally, kept the family from collapsing. That was the life she had chosen.

I didn’t love her enough to blame her for it. It was the same with my father. Had my mother come to the hospital every day to care for me, perhaps I might have felt some kind of affection. But the mere thought of her fussing over me like a clinging wet leaf made me recoil.

“She’ll be helping out as a volunteer, legally speaking. Just keep that in mind,” my father added.

I had no objections. If that kept the surface peace of the family intact, I was fine with it.

The girl stepped out from behind my father and, apologetically, said her name was Nao Shiraishi.

She wasn’t beautiful, but she wasn’t unattractive either. I wasn’t particularly drawn to her, but she didn’t put me off either. She lacked charm, but had a kind of unassuming cuteness. Hers was a comforting face—in other words, she was an entirely ordinary girl. Compared to Haruka, her looks were on an entirely different level.

Nao had no superficial cheerfulness, but she didn’t seem gloomy either. She had a quiet presence, but there was no icy stillness in it.

What surprised me was what she called me:

“Yu-chan.”

She called me ‘Yu-chan’, a nickname that made me feel strangely warm—like family, like something more.

Later, she laughed and explained that she hadn’t been told my name.

But somewhere in the back of my mind, I wondered if she’d just wanted to call me that from the beginning.

Still, that sweet, slightly embarrassing word didn’t feel unpleasant—probably because I’d never had a sibling of my own.

Before long, that way of addressing each other became a sort of unspoken agreement between us. She called me “Yu-chan,” and I called her “Nao.” Many of the nurses ended up believing we were actual siblings.

From then on, Nao came to stay with me after school on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, staying until seven in the evening.

Nao, who had been raised by a single mother, said that she wanted to help with the household finances.

Her mother worked two part-time jobs to make ends meet. Managing the food budget was Nao’s responsibility, and she also prepared the daily meals.

On the days she accompanied me—Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays—she would rush home immediately after school, quickly cook dinner, then catch a bus to the hospital.

Her mother would gulp down Nao’s homemade meal and head off to her second job.

Because of the medication, I would sometimes vomit.

Nao always cleaned it up without flinching.

Once, I vomited around seven in the evening, and she was delayed getting home because she had to take care of it.

"I'm sorry, Nao. You’re going to get home late today."

"Don’t worry about it, Onii-chan. I was just going to wait for the bus anyway."

“There’s no earlier bus? What time do you usually take it?”

"The 7:53 bus. I usually just wait in the hospital lobby until then."

"You just sit there spacing out for an hour?"

"I'm not spacing out. I do homework and study."

After that conversation, I called my dad on my cell phone and explained the situation, asking if he could arrange a taxi voucher. He agreed immediately and, despite being in the middle of work, brought it to the hospital the next day. It was obvious that, no matter how busy he was, he felt guilty for not being more present while his son was battling illness.

“If there’s anything you want, just tell me. Even though I can’t visit much,” he said, as if trying to excuse himself.

Nao used the taxi ticket only for her trips back from the hospital.

"You should use it when you come here too."

"There are neighbors watching. If people start saying, ‘That poor family’s always riding in taxis,’ it’ll be a problem. Even on the way home, I always ask the driver to drop me off before my house."

It was a surprising realization—there are people who carry such burdens in their daily lives.

Nao also did my laundry.

At first, she used the hospital’s coin laundry, but sometimes she had to wait her turn, so she began taking the laundry home on Saturdays, washing it on Sundays, and bringing it back on Tuesdays.

When Haruka came into the room on some errand,

she smiled and said enviously,

“Oh, your little sister came to visit today. You two are always so close.”

She was one of the many who had mistaken them for siblings.

I hadn’t bothered to correct her—I didn’t want the person I had feelings for to start reading into things the wrong way.

Even these brief exchanges with Haruka brought a sense of warmth to the sterile hospital room.

Every word she spoke felt like the whisper of an angel, descending from the heavens.

Just a single word, a short line of conversation from her, was enough to brighten my entire day.

Simply recalling it could fill me with happiness for hours.

Those memories always included her scent.

Her scent was part of the memory, too.

Not perfume, but the gentle fragrance of shampoo and soap.

Haruka wasn’t someone who suited heavy perfumes.

She needed something closer to nature—

the kind of scent that seemed touched by the divine,

like fragrant olive or daphne blossoms.

Nao noticed my feelings almost immediately.

“You like Haruka, don’t you?”

she teased, her eyes sparkling mischievously as she poked straight through to the heart of it.

“There’s no way I’d fall for her. She’s six years older than me,”

I protested.

But in time, I found myself confiding in Nao about how I felt.

When I projected Haruka’s image onto the changeless, confined hospital room,

I would gaze into the distance and quietly enjoy the illusion.

Nao, ever perceptive, would ask,

“Are you thinking about Haruka right now?”

“I wonder if she has a boyfriend...

She’s so beautiful—she probably does, right?”

“Maybe,” Nao would say. “But you know, people say pretty girls are hard to approach.”

Sometimes, she even tried to comfort me with things like that.

All I could do was stare at the clean, sterile ceiling of the hospital room.

And there, I saw her—Haruka’s gentle, lingering illusion.