SHARPER || Chishiya Alice in Boarderland

-35- hospital

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Fyi, this chapter contains a lot of grief, guilt and sadness, so if you don't feel comfortable to read that, better skip this one! Btw, this one is a long chapter. Didn't feel right to cut it in half.
Enjoy 🫶🏼
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The hospital has felt both too quiet and too loud. The beeping of machines, the shuffle of nurses' shoes, the distant murmur of conversations—it has all blurred into the background. I have spent the past few days caught in a strange limbo, where time has moved forward, but I have not.

I have woken up every morning sore, stitches pulling against my skin, muscles aching with every small movement. But none of it has compared to the weight in my chest, the all-consuming grief that has settled deep inside me.

Takeru has died. Mari has died.
And I'm still here.

It's like a cruel joke the universe decided to play on me.

I have called Nio every day since I found out where she has been. The first time, she picked up almost immediately, as if she had been waiting for the call.

Neither of us has spoken at first. We have just listened to each other breathe, the silence filled with the weight of everything we have lost.

Then, finally, she has whispered, "He's gone, isn't he?"

And I have broken all over again.

We have cried together, the kind of crying that makes it hard to breathe, that leaves us drained and empty. There has been nothing to say that could make it better, so we have just repeated their names, over and over, like we could bring them back if we said them enough times.

But we couldn't.

Nio told me she and Mari wanted to go to the convenience store at Shibuya crossing after Keru and I left. That's when the bomb hit. They got blasted away, but both initially survived. Mari has held on for a day. Then she died in the hospital.

Nio and I have clung to each other through the phone, neither of us knowing how to exist in this new, unbearable reality. She has told me she's released from the hospital a day before me and that she will visit as soon as she can.

Meanwhile Kenji and I have fallen into an unspoken routine. Every afternoon, we have met in the hospital garden. Some days, we have just sat in silence, side by side, watching the wind move through the trees. Other days, we have talked—sometimes about our families, sometimes about meaningless things, as if pretending normalcy could bring it back.

He has been observant, always noticing if I have eaten or if I have winced while moving. He has asked if I have been sleeping enough, if I have taken my medication. At first, I have been irritated by it, but I have come to realize that it is just how he is.

He cares.

I have told him he can stay with me until his parents arrive. It hasn't felt right for him to be alone.

"Really?" he has asked, looking at me like he hasn't expected it.

"Yeah."

After a moment, he has nodded. "Okay. Thanks."

It hasn't been just Kenji. The hospital has been filled with people who have started to feel familiar, even though we have barely spoken. Loss has tied us together, strangers clinging to each other in the wreckage of what has been left behind.

There has been the girl with long dreadlocks and a confident kindness in her eyes. We have shared breakfast once—half a piece of toast and some cut-up fruit. She has given me half of her food when she has noticed I haven't been eating mine. She hasn't said much, but she hasn't needed to.