12 Roses

2 | Silent Dancing Hands

You sat down beside the hospital bed, your eyes fixed on the hearing aids in your palms, fidgeting with them with your thumbs. A nervous thrum rattled your chest and you breathed in before placing them in your ears.

The sounds of the hospital rushed to your ears and you clasped your hands around them, muffling the sound of the heart monitor's steady sound, the feet striking the floors, the wheels of stretchers and IV stands rolling across the tile.

Someone placed their hand on your shoulder and you looked up, seeing the white haired man once again. "I guess it works, huh?"

"How do you handle so much noise all the time...?"

"You get used to it. Now, you said you wanted to talk, right?"

You swallowed and turned, gazing at Tsumiki's still figure on the hospital bed.

Your eyes swelled with tears and you screwed them shut, your hands still over your ears.

Tears went down to your chin and dropped into your lap. Your shaky breaths were felt in your throat and heard in your ears for the first time and it was a tragic combination.

"Y/N?"

"I can't," you whimpered, now hearing the echo of your voice in the palms of your hands. "I won't hear her voice. She won't hear me." They turned into quiet sobs and your hands moved from your ears and covered your face.

•••

You jolted up in bed, your hand going to your face to find that tears had made rivers down your cheeks and dripped down your chin. You wiped them away with the back of your hand and slipped out of bed to wash your face in the washroom.

Your skin touched everything your could, your hand against the wall, your bare feet against the hardwood floor, trying to make sure that the dream was over.

You wet your hands and washed your face, letting out a heavy, shaky sigh as your palms jabbed into your eyes, water dripping down your arms and soaking your pyjamas.

When your hands finally left your face, you looked at yourself in the mirror, seeing the puffy remnants of tears at the corners of your eyes.

It had been years since you had a vivid dream like that and, while you still thought that the thing about dreams having meaning was nonsense, you didn't like that this one was placed right after you got accepted into a school that Tsumiki wasn't.

The idea of dreams having some secret message was always absurd to you, but this one was more like a memory, vivid and unquiet. It was strange because you had never heard a voice until then.

You remembered a long time ago, back when you were three, when you found her sobbing under the second tree to the right of the first tea shop, when you first met her.

She didn't know any sign at the time, so she was just talking and talking with no one telling her to be quiet. You caught words like "dad" and "miss" but nothing else because of how incoherent she seemed to be.

Eventually, she stopped talking and wiped away her tears. You handed her half of your blueberry muffin, which you had been holding awkwardly as you tried to take in parts of her rambling.

Suddenly, as she spoke, it was as if you could hear every word as her mouth moved with clear confidence for the first time since you saw her, like something between the two of you clicked and you were able to understand her without words.

"It's fine. I don't need him."

A day later, she showed up at the flower shop, fumbling with queue cards that she held up to you, apologizing for the day before when she learned that you were deaf and her words were lost to the wind. "I just thought you were a really good listener."