Chapter Eleven

When I was feeling well, I took on the challenge of reading Crime and Punishment.

I tried my best to make sense of it, carefully reading each word as if peering into a microscope.

It was a battle against boredom, a kind of ascetic ordeal like that of a monk.

Yet it might not have been the hardship of language itself, but rather the silent premonition that my sense of self was slowly crumbling.

A certain silence began to fill my mind.

The sound of someone removing their shoes outside the room, the ticking of the clock at the nurse’s station—such trivial realities lost all meaning and reached me as mere sounds.

The sounds indeed made the air tremble. But whose footsteps were they? Why was the clock ticking? The stories that should have existed behind those sounds had collapsed.

It was as if I had missed the subtitles of the world, like watching a silent film that kept playing without sound—a tangible sense of absence.

Words slipped past my eyes, and my thoughts couldn’t catch up.

I felt like I was the only one left standing among a swarm of letters.

It was as if someone else had temporarily borrowed my body and was lying in bed.

I was on the outside, watching through glass. I couldn’t touch, couldn’t ask.

It wasn’t a breakdown. If anything, it was an overwhelming quiet.

The flame of my ego slowly drifted away beyond frosted glass.

Even when I tried to speak, the voice was no longer my own.

No images arose from the words.

Though I was reading carefully, my mind was slowly taken over by thoughts of lunch and dinner, the time Naoko would arrive, and things someone had said long ago.

I tried to shake those off and follow the words.

Eventually, I stopped following the words altogether, and just stared at the book.

My focus was gone; I was simply looking at it without any understanding.

The tutor came to my hospital room for a lesson.

He had a new reference book in his hand.

We had finished trigonometry in math and were moving on to calculus.

At that point, we were already covering material beyond my grade level.

“So you’re reading Dostoevsky. How is it? Difficult, isn’t it?”

“I’ve tried it many times before, but for some reason, today nothing is sinking in.”

“That’s not because Dostoevsky is hard. It’s probably because your thoughts are descending into another layer.”

“I feel frustrated that I can’t understand it.”

“Guilt, the absurdity of the world—he deals with things that can’t easily be put into words. Something sinks inside the reader. But since you’re recovering, don’t push yourself. Just skim through the first time, with the plan to read it three times.”

His words somehow felt like a salvation.

I closed the book, opened my math textbook, and we began working through calculus.

As I solved the examples and tackled problems from the workbook, it felt as if someone far from my own consciousness was writing the answers.

There was no doubt I was the one solving them, but I did it fluidly, without the usual struggle of thought.

I became absorbed in the problems, though not in a trance.

My awareness remained awake somewhere, spinning spider webs across the room.

I sensed the quiet presence of someone entering the room—Nao.

The spider’s web trembled gently in her breeze.

When I glanced in that direction, Naoko gave a slight bow in response.

The tutor noticed her too and nodded back.

Naoko quietly took out neatly folded towels and underwear from her tote bag and arranged them silently in the locker, just as she always did.

She also refilled the water jug quietly.

No one had told her to do any of it.

But she was the only one who ever did.

Her routine never disturbed my studies.

Even the opening and closing of the door were silent.

In fact, I could sense what she was doing all too clearly.

During the morning rounds, Nurse Haruka came into the room.

"Studying, I see."

Her gentle tone felt like a kind of salvation.

"You’ve gotten a lot better. How are you feeling?"

"I'm doing well."

She handed me a thermometer, and I tucked it under my arm. In that casual act, I felt a sense of connection to Haruka. The thermometer she had held seemed like something special, a one-of-a-kind item not sold anywhere. Her hand—one that knew every part of her own body—had touched it.

"Your little sister is always doing so much! She really cares about her big brother."

Nao gave a slight shrug and smiled faintly.

"Take care."

With that, Haruka left the room.

The tutor looked after her and said,

"She's a beautiful woman. Could she be the one Yuta’s in love with?"

"Not at all."

"It’s normal at your age to admire older women. Women are most beautiful between twenty-two and twenty-five. That’s why guys your age tend to fall for women in that range. Of course, beauty isn't everything, but young men usually only see that part."

There was a bit of embarrassment at being seen through so easily, but somehow, with the tutor, it felt acceptable.

After the lesson, Nao said,

"Thank you for your hard work,"

and saw the tutor off with appreciation.

"You’re lucky, Yu-chan. Today's round was with Haruka."

He didn’t answer. He flipped through his book absentmindedly but soon lost interest and reached for a magazine instead.

"I want to eat something delicious."

"When you’re discharged, I’ll cook for you. What do you want to eat?"

"French cuisine, Italian, Turkish, Chinese... anything good."

"Those are all dishes I’ve never made before."

"I want curry."

"That, I can make. Sweet?"

"How did you know I like it sweet?"

"Just a feeling."

"What do you usually cook?"

"Mostly Japanese food—nikujaga, chikuzen-ni. My mom taught me."

Chikuzen-ni was a home-style simmered dish made with chicken and root vegetables like carrots and lotus root, gently flavored with soy sauce and mirin.

"That’s fine. Anything but hospital food is good."

"I bet I’ll make a great wife someday. I love cooking, and I’m good at it!"

"I see."

"I’m good at laundry and cleaning too."

Yuta thought that Nao had a strong desire to be a bride.

He lay on his back and sighed deeply.

"Are you thinking about Haruka?"

"Does it matter?"

On the ceiling, a white altar stretched out lifelessly, and the image of the Virgin Mary floated there. The Virgin Mary had to be pure—she had to be untouched.

"Haruka must have a boyfriend. I wonder what she wears when she's not in uniform. I’ve only ever seen her in that white coat."

"You want to go on a date with her, don’t you? Adults have it easy."

"It’s not that simple."

"You can’t go outside freely, huh?"

That’s right. He couldn’t leave freely.

He often imagined himself and Haruka running hand in hand through a vast meadow. Walking along the sandy beach together sounded nice too. Even Disneyland, the kind of place young women liked, would’ve been fine. They could scream through the terror of a roller coaster. If he saw her in a yukata at a summer festival, he would have said, "It suits you well."

Was it wrong to spend time lost in fantasies like this? Was living itself a sin?

There was no sin in imagining things. It was a man in love’s privilege—to conjure up all kinds of situations, cast Haruka in different roles, and dress her in every possible outfit.

But in reality, he was nothing more than a sick man—trapped in a cage of a hospital room, a patient with no future, one who could die at any moment. That was the truth.

"Haruka is too beautiful, so people keep their distance. I bet she doesn’t have a boyfriend."

"What do you even know? You probably think I'll be heartbroken no matter what."

"That’s not true."

"If I ever got together with Haruka, you’d just assume we'd break up eventually."

Nao fell silent and pulled a book from her bag.

She looked slightly sulky.