Born To Die (Muichiro x OC)

02 • Misted Minds

Ring around the rosie,
Pocket full of posies,
Ashes, ashes...

...We all fall down.

Like an illness with no cure, a broken heart could never mend.

"Is he here?" Tokito asked his doctor. Something he did every week on visiting day. He never expected a positive answer to that question. In fact, he only asked it out of habit. He completely disregarded his twin brother, Yuichiro. He didn't care for him anymore, since the little prick decided to shun him the moment their mother died from ceptophrenia.

She was born with the illness as well and was one of the few who surpassed the usual lifespan. She fell in love with her doctor, gave birth to twins, and then died when her sons turned ten. Their father, who left to tour the world just before their mother died in hopes of finding a cure, died in a tragic plane crash the same day.

That week, Tokito lost three people he cared about, one of them being his twin brother. He used to ask for him on visiting day each week, excitedly awaiting his return, but he never came. As time went on, the will to live disintegrated. With nobody left in his life, Muichiro became desensitized to the thought of having nobody. He didn't mind it as much as he used to. The only reason his hospital bills were paid through-and-through was because of the legacy his father left behind. He was a pillar in that hospital, discovering many cures and saving the hospital from bankruptcy over and over again. As a token of gratitude to him, they were more or less determined to keep his son alive.

But despite their efforts, they all knew it.

Tokito would die.

His doctor held her clipboard a little tightly. "No, I'm afraid not," she replied. Muichiro didn't even react. He just turned and looked down at his bedsheets. "I'm going to take your temperature now. Say 'ahh.'"

Getting sick was out of the question for ceptophrenic patients. If their temperature was up by even one degree, it could prove fatal. It was important to monitor that every single day.

"Alright," Doctor Kocho said, satisfied with his temperature. She headed for the door. "Be down in the crash room at two for your shot and pills. I'm taking your results to the lab. Maybe there's a pattern in your health."

Muichiro pursed his lips. There isn't a pattern. You know it well. You only say that to get your patients to believe they have a chance at being saved. Good-for-nothing doctors. But his thoughts held no malice whatsoever. He genuinely believed that his fate was inevitable. And as for the crash room, its name was pretty insensitive given the fact it held the most crash carts in there, as if that room had to be physically prepared if any of the patients suddenly croaked. If Muichiro was more bitter, he'd laugh.

"To make the most of life?"

Make the most of life. What does that even mean? Aren't we all going to die one day anyway? Tokito kicked his legs over the edge of his hospital bed, circling around to stop at his window. He thought back to that girl. The one with the scarlet eyes and the dark hair. The one who had deliberately stopped him from leaving just to say a bunch of meaningless things about living. Even if his response silenced her, she didn't seem to want to give up.

But, to say the truth, Muichiro wasn't living. He was a moving corpse, encaged in a room of people trying to save him. He might as well have been comatose since the difference was none. Out the window, where he always hoped would have been the sun and clouds, grass and a lake, or perhaps just bystanders, was instead an empty hallway. A never ending hallway of a shitty hospital in a shitty world.

Then his gaze caught onto her. Little Miss Scarlet-eyes. She was sitting on one of the benches in the hallway, her knees pressed up to her chest. Is her room right across from mine? I never noticed. The few doctors who passed by waved at her with a smile, a smile that said they knew she was going to die soon and wanted to treat her with nothing but kindness.