Chapter 3: For Whom

In a room in the city’s general hospital.

She slept on clean white sheets.

Watching the blanket slowly rise and fall with her breathing, and her long eyelashes occasionally quiver, Yuto felt relieved.

From the hospital room window, he could see the mountains embraced by twilight.

It had been almost a full day since Kotoha was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Yuto had gone to the hospital with a teacher last night and returned home once in the middle of the night. After that, he came back to the hospital, but Kotoha still had not woken up.

He recalled the conversation he had with Kotoha’s mother who had rushed to the hospital the previous night.

“Are you Hiiragi-kun?”

While Kotoha’s mother was worried about her daughter, her expression and voice carried a strange calmness.

It wasn’t the calmness of being reassured. Rather, it was the opposite—like someone accepting something beyond their control. That calmness deeply disturbed Yuto.

At that moment, he heard a faint groan and snapped back to reality.

Kotoha had slowly opened her eyes.

“Kotoha! Are you okay?”

He struggled to keep his voice down, trying to ask quietly. But there was no response. Kotoha slowly scanned her surroundings before focusing on Yuto. Gradually, her gaze became clearer.

“Senpai… I…”

“Wait a moment. I’ll call the nurse.”

Yuto reached for the nurse call button. However, Kotoha placed her hand on his, gently stopping him.

“Kotoha, what’s wrong—”

Kotoha stared intently, and Yuto found himself looking away.

“…I collapsed at school, didn’t I?”

“Yeah…”

“…I’m sorry. I caused you trouble.”

“No, it’s alright, but—”

“…How’s Haruka-chan?”

“After that, her father picked her up, and she went back to Nagoya. She was worried about you.”

“I see… I feel bad. She came all this way… I wanted to talk more with her.”

The conversation paused, and a heavy silence filled the room.

Kotoha looked out the window at the early autumn mountains. Seeing her so naturally in the hospital room struck Yuto deeply.

“Why…”

Yuto struggled to find words, and Kotoha looked at him curiously.

Clenching his teeth, he took a deep breath and forced out his words.

“Why… Why didn’t you say anything?”

Kotoha’s eyes widened in surprise, then her expression softened.

“…You heard, didn’t you?”

Her voice was quiet yet firm.

Yuto nodded slightly.

“Yeah, I heard.”

Hearing his response, Kotoha sighed deeply and looked up at the ceiling. Free from her gaze, Yuto felt a small sense of relief.

“From my mother?”

“Yeah.”

“How is she now?”

“She went to get a change of clothes. She said it might be a long hospital stay.”

“I see… So it’ll be long…”

Kotoha muttered, her voice mirroring her mother’s.

A tone of loneliness and resignation.

As Kotoha stared at the ceiling, Yuto wondered what she was thinking.

He couldn’t tell.

“Is it true?”

“It’s true. Unfortunately.”

Yuto recalled what he had heard from Kotoha’s mother as he watched her profile.

‘Kotoha is ill.’

“There’s an abnormality in a part of her brain.”

The calm confession from Kotoha and the trembling voice of her mother overlapped.

‘It was discovered when she was about ten years old. There are hardly any cases worldwide, and without any effective treatment, it’s been slowly getting worse.’

“Her body suddenly loses strength, and she gets fevers.”

‘Right now, she’s just barely…’

“She can still go to school, but the doctors say it wouldn’t be strange if she couldn’t anymore at any time.”

From the moment he first heard it, he couldn’t believe it.

Even if he understood it in his head, his heart refused to accept it.

But hearing it from Kotoha herself made it an undeniable reality.

“Why did you push yourself so hard in such a condition…?”

Since they met, Kotoha had always been free-spirited and full of energy.

She barged into the third-year classroom, fell into rice fields, jumped off bridges to persuade Yuto, pulled all-nighters for script meetings, and ran around preparing for the cultural festival.

But now he understood.

Her free-spiritedness and energy—they were drawn from burning her life.

“I wanted to achieve my dream.”

“Dream…”

He remembered meeting Kotoha’s former classmate at the aquarium.

“Becoming an editor, huh?”

Kotoha smiled vaguely.

“I was happy. When we met that former classmate at the aquarium, you said becoming an editor wasn’t just a dream anymore, it was my plan. But…”

“I still think so.”

Yuto interrupted Kotoha’s words. He didn’t want to hear what followed “but.”

“So, now, focus on your treatment without pushing yourself. If you do that—”

“She said surgery could cure it.”

Kotoha’s voice dropped a tone, filled with quiet anger and frustration.

“Did my mother say that?”

“Y-Yeah.”

Yuto nodded.

‘Medical technology has advanced over the past few years, and now there’s a possibility the surgery could cure her.’

It was a rare disease, but an effective surgical method had been developed, her mother said. And if she didn’t have the surgery, the illness would only worsen. Yuto recalled feeling uneasy about the word “possibility” back then. However,

“The success rate is 80%, right? Sure, there’s a 20% risk. But, it’s better than…”

Better than dying, he was about to say but couldn’t. It was too insensitive. And speaking of death scared him.

He understood that a 20% risk was significant for the person involved. But an 80% success rate seemed better than he had imagined. He thought it might be worth hoping for. Of course, it wasn’t his place to decide.

Kotoha sighed softly and looked out the window.

“When they found the illness around the age of ten, I started losing the ability to do things. I was told not to do anything strenuous. No playing outside, no PE classes. Slowly, I lost friends too. It was partly because I couldn’t play, but also because I became an outsider due to my illness. Children are sensitive to differences.”

Kotoha spoke calmly. Yuto could tell it was because she had suppressed many emotions. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to handle it.

“I found solace in books during that time. I already liked them before, but I started devouring them. Only books could heal my loneliness.”

It was the same, Yuto thought.

Kotoha, like him, was saved by stories in a lonely world.

But for Kotoha, it was even more critical.

“Only stories gave me the strength to live.”

She needed them to live.

That’s why she dreamed of creating books.

“In that case—”