Chapter Nine

Outside the hospital room window, a pale, cloudy sky slowly stretched across the horizon. The strong sunlight of late July, just past the rainy season, filtered through the curtains, casting the deep green of the pines and the white sand into a scene of summer at its peak. Inside the room, if you listened carefully, the mechanical hum of the ventilation fan marked the languid passage of time, as if inviting a nap.

Yuta lay on the bed with his eyes closed. The pain in his body was gradually easing, and his breathing was quiet and steady. The restless noise in his mind softened, and the sound of the fan wrapped the room in a profound stillness.

“Nao hasn’t come yet,” he whispered inside his heart.

After the nurses’ rounds ended and with Nao still absent, this time passed quietly like the gentle flow of a slow river, without disturbing the rhythm of everyday life.

The past sufferings and anxieties about the future slowly dissolved into this silence. When he closed his eyes, distant memories faintly surfaced, wrapped in a warm light.

That light was the warmth of his mother’s outstretched hand in childhood, the kindness hidden beneath his father’s sternness, and also Nao’s gentle smile.

Slow ripples spread quietly inside his heart. Loneliness and sorrow were nothing but fluctuations within a single current.

Outside the window, birds chirped. The small voices of life spoke of the endless chain of existence.

“Maybe this is what it means to live,” a thought quietly filled the depths of his chest.

He opened the small notebook in his hands. On the page lay the vocabulary list the tutor had given him, gently opening a door to a world yet unseen.

“A hundred times, no, even a thousand times is fine. Meet each word, and make it your own.”

He told himself this, and a new light flickered behind his eyes.

That light was a quiet and certain hope, one that could only be gained by those who had stared into the abyss of suffering.

One of his few pleasures, after finishing lunch, was to silently review English vocabulary like a mute madman. He lost himself in it to forget time. As the moment when Nao would come grew near, he checked the clock repeatedly.

While passing the time this way, Nao entered the hospital room.

“I brought the book you asked for.”

Nao handed him the book—Crime and Punishment.

“You read difficult books, don’t you, big brother?”

“It’s just boring.”

He felt a slight superiority from reading such a complex book, yet he was ashamed that no matter how many times he read it, he couldn’t immerse himself in the story. That was why he had answered so modestly.

“Just trying to read such a long book makes me think you’re really something.”

He felt that if he couldn’t understand these kinds of books, he had no right to talk about life.

“Yu-chan, my tanka poem won first place in the school contest.”

“Wow, that’s amazing. What’s it like?”

“Wait a moment.”

Nao wrote her tanka on a piece of memo paper and showed it to him.

Crimson glow

The sea at sunrise

A ferry running fast

Dyes everything pink —

“That’s wonderful. The colors vividly come alive. The idea of dyeing things pink feels fresh.”

Although he didn’t fully understand the art of tanka, he sensed the innocence of a middle school student shining through. He thought it was no surprise she won the school contest.

“I’m glad big brother liked it.”

Nao’s joy was genuine, with no hint of a hidden face.

“I wrote it when I saw the ferry running through the sunrise when I woke up this morning.”

Bathed in sparkling morning light, the ferry shining pink seemed like Nao herself. She was running straight toward something—toward a hopeful future. There was no shadow of death there at all. She was so far from death that it was as if the grim reaper avoided her, pretending not to see.

Yuta squinted slightly as he looked at the memo with the tanka written on it. Of course, no actual light spilled from the paper. And yet, the rhythm of the poem and Nao’s presence were undeniably radiant.

He picked up Crime and Punishment and began to read. He had gone through it many times already, and the opening pages were etched into his memory.

Nao sat nearby, flipping through a magazine.

When he grew bored of the long novel, his eyes wandered to her magazine. It featured a section titled “Gourmet Explorations,” introducing restaurants and sushi bars in Tokyo.

“Hey, can I take a look at that?”

She nodded lightly and handed it over.

There were photos of thick Kobe sirloin steaks and seafood hors d'oeuvres lined up on elegant plates. The sushi bar section displayed pairs of tuna, sea bream, sea urchin, and salmon roe gunkan-maki, all captured so beautifully they looked irresistibly delicious. Compared to the bland hospital meals, these were divine feasts from another world.

“They look amazing,” he said.

Nao’s face was so close, he could feel her breath.

“But they look expensive. Which one would you pick, Yu-chan?”

“Hmm... probably the steak. How about you?”

“All of them!”

“Hey, that’s cheating! You have to pick one!”

“But I don’t remember ever eating sushi or steak, so I don’t really know.”

In that moment, her family’s financial situation became painfully clear.

“When I get out of here, let’s go eat together.”

“Yay! I’d love that! But this place is in Tokyo.”

“Tokyo, huh? That’s far.”

“Want me to search for restaurants and sushi places nearby on the tablet?”

She began looking up places one after another, saying “This one looks good,” or “That one’s even better,” and before they knew it, time had flown by. It was already time for her to head home.

“Yu-chan, promise me, okay? When you’re discharged, you have to take me.”

He tried to hide his pinky, but she leaned over and grabbed his hand, firmly catching his finger. He couldn’t resist her. With a mischievous grin, she unfurled his clenched pinky and hooked hers around it.

“If you lie, you’ll have to swallow a thousand needles,” she said, half-playful, half-serious.

It was a Japanese children’s vow — part of an old rhyme meant to seal a promise, sealing it with a pinky swear.

Afterward, since Nao didn’t have a phone, he called a taxi for her. It was coming right away, so she quickly got her things ready, said “I’ll leave the magazine here,” and, smiling, waved as she stepped out of the room.

Haruka was reassigned to another floor for a few days.

The nurse who came in her place was talkative, but Yuta hardly spoke to her.

It was fortunate that he was a moody, quiet teenager with an illness.

He had no intention of pretending to enjoy dull conversation.

Though he disliked how drastically his attitude changed depending on the person, he accepted it as a privilege of adolescence.

After all, he was naturally a taciturn, eccentric high schooler.

The next time Nao visited, she brought a firefly in a tiny bug cage.

““The last firefly of the season.” she said.

“You know we’re in a sterile room—this is forbidden.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. But let’s keep it anyway. We’ll hide it so no one finds out.”

The nurses always came at the same time each day, so as long as they concealed the cage during those hours, there would be no problem.

“Now we’ve got a secret, just the two of us,”

Nao said with a mischievous smile, sticking out her tongue. That little gesture struck him as unbearably pure.

“I wonder if it glows,” she whispered.

They draped a blanket over the cage to make it dark and peeked through a small gap. The firefly glowed a soft yellow.

Nao leaned in, and their heads bumped gently.

“Is it a male or female?”

“Probably a male. It’s glowing a lot.”

“Males glow more?”

“I’ve never compared them, but that’s what they say. This light is how they attract a mate.”

“You know everything, don’t you? That it glows like this to find a lover… That’s so romantic.”

For the brief moments when the firefly glowed, Nao’s profile—her nose, her outline—lit up softly.

The next time Nao visited, she brought a firefly in a little bug cage.

They watched the firefly’s glow through the gap in the blanket for what felt like a long time.

He didn’t know how much time had passed—only that they kept looking until they got tired of it.

“When they’re larvae, fireflies eat river snails,” he said. “But after they become adults before the rainy season, they only live a week or ten days. And during that time, they don’t eat at all.”

“So they have to find a partner before they die? That’s kind of lonely if they can’t,” she murmured.

They placed the insect cage on the nightstand beside the bed and began browsing photos of restaurants on the tablet again, excitedly commenting on each dish—this one looked good, that one looked even better.

And so, the firefly cage remained hidden in the sterile room.

At night, he would tuck it away in the small locker.

Just before closing the door, the firefly began to glow.

He shut it fully, imagining the little creature glowing on in the darkness.

The firefly continued to shine quietly—and died four days later.

Strangely, he found himself envying it.