Chapter Ten

The high fever persisted.

The prescribed medicine was strong, and in a dreamlike haze, I heard Haruka calling my name.

It felt as though I were cursed by the vengeful spirit of a firefly that had died trapped in a cage. The flickering of its light was terrifyingly vivid.

Had the firefly brought a god of death with it? The fever wouldn’t break, and the nausea wouldn’t stop. The firefly’s glow was calling me: “Come this way! Come this way!”

I heard Haruka’s voice—an illusion—shouting by my ear. A male doctor’s voice echoed too.

Only their voices reached me clearly, somewhere far outside my fading consciousness.

Strangely, only the voices remained. I wanted to scream, “I’m still alive!”—but no sound came out.

Was I really going to die?

I was only sixteen.

My throat burned dry, as if clogged with phlegm.

“Water… I need water!”

Even that thought failed to become a voice.

So this is what it means to die.

I felt it—

That I would never see anyone again.

When I awoke,

there was nothing but the whiteness of the sterile ceiling above me.

And there was Haruka.

She called the doctor over the intercom.

The doctor rushed in.

Soon after, my parents and Nao came running into the room. The tutor was there too.

It seemed that—for now—I hadn’t yet been counted among the twenty percent headed for the afterlife.

“Water...”

Nao opened the cap of a plastic bottle and brought it to my lips.

I couldn’t drink properly. I coughed, spilling water from my mouth.

Nao gently wiped the droplets from my chin with a towel.

I never knew ordinary water could taste so good.

She brought me a fresh ice pillow. Its coldness was blissful.

“Ah... I’m alive.”

That chill on my skin was proof I was still here.

My condition wavered, advancing and retreating.

Nao studied for her final exams in the hospital room.

On good days, I helped her review.

But those moments were fleeting—

Soon, the days of high fever returned.

Water trickled down my chin—cold and sharp.

The chill pierced from my throat to my brain, stealing my breath.

I coughed again, spilling more water.

I knew it was Nao holding the bottle to my lips.

Somewhere far off, I felt her touch.

A towel brushed my cheek—Nao’s hand, soft and dry.

I thought I heard my name, but it was faint.

Like the sound of a bell ringing in the distance,

as if someone far away had laughed.

“Yūta.”

Someone was calling me.

The voice beside my ear was irritating.

Let me sleep, I wanted to say, but no sound came.

I tried to sleep again—

but someone kept trying to wake me.

It was agony.

“...Come this way.”

The fireflies were calling again.

The ones that should have been dead

were flickering once more inside the cage.

So many, so many glowing lights

blinking in the blackness.

Each time they pulsed,

it felt as though my own breathing faltered in sync.

“If I hold my breath now, could I merge with that light?”

But the coldness of the water lingering deep in my throat

tethered me to this world.

Through the fog of half-consciousness,

Haruka’s voice—together with the doctor’s—

pulled me back.

A fierce battle was raging—between the potent medicine and the illness.

That struggle produced the heat burning through my body.

And it was within that battlefield that my mind drifted in and out.

When summer vacation began, Nao started coming to see me every day. She arrived in the early afternoon, had lunch, and prepared dinner before coming.

She replaced the water and opened or closed the curtains in place of the nurses. I was aware of her doing those things.

Nao would quietly read a book in the hospital room. There were no conversations between us. From time to time, she would change the ice pillow or towel. She would wipe my face and body with a damp towel.

“I hope you get better soon,”

she would say to herself.

I wanted to respond, but I couldn’t even manage that.

She even changed my underwear. Skillfully, she made sure I wasn’t exposed, and I didn’t feel any shame. I had the resignation of a fish on a chopping board—do whatever you want with me.

While she fetched water, I watched the light from outside reflected on the ceiling.

Her hands brought the water back. I could surely feel it, and yet, it seemed like something happening far away. Maybe, all of this was just a memory. At that moment, the light in the hospital room blurred, and once again, the phantom of the fireflies flickered before my eyes.

It was endlessly quiet, and even the presence of death felt comforting.

The white curtain hanging from the ceiling swayed slightly, even though there was no wind.

It meant nothing.

But that very meaninglessness felt strangely gentle.

Nao returned.

“Yu-chan, the sunset is really beautiful,”

she said, pulling back the window curtain.

The light of the setting sun streamed in, casting a dull glow on the metal rail at the edge of the bed.

As I struggled to sit up, Nao supported my back. Her fingertips were cold. But I couldn’t tell whether that was because of her touch, or because I myself was drifting away from this world. The coldness felt like a boundary in itself.

The redness of that sunset moved his consciousness more deeply than even Nao’s voice.

The sunset.

That scene was like a sky full of red spider lilies.

The sound of it echoed strangely loudly in his chest.

What we call everyday life—those summer afternoons after school—returned to him like a vision.

That sunset he used to stare at absentmindedly behind the school building.

The notebook he had scribbled poetry in. The insect cage where he’d kept the firefly.

Everything felt like something long, long ago.

“…It’s beautiful.”

His lips moved faintly.

He didn’t know if it turned into a voice, but Nao looked at him and smiled.

“Yeah, it really is.”

She sat down beside the bed.

Yuta didn’t miss the slight tremble of her shoulders.

She wasn’t crying.

It was just that the weight of silence had descended upon her as well.

“I’ve been talking to you the whole time,”

Nao murmured softly.

“I didn’t know if you could hear me or not, but I prayed for you every day.”

Each of her words slowly soaked into the depths of his body. His heart warmed.

Not from the fever—but from something else, something more familiar.

It felt like someone had told him, “It’s okay to be alive.”

His awareness wasn’t clear; he was still in a fog.

“This is real now. This is real,”

he kept telling himself over and over.

In the distance, the footsteps of a nurse approached.

Even that sound felt like part of the kindness of the world.

I’m alive.

I’m still here.

“Nao, what happened to that dead firefly?”

“I buried it by the river. I even placed a stone as a makeshift grave marker.”

“I see.”

In the end, the firefly’s light had already gone out.