What would you do if you had a single day left? Well, if you were someone like Mirai's younger brother you would do everything...including your own older sister.

Her younger brother, Yuuki, was in and out of hospitals since he was eight years old. Although the two siblings survived the earthquake, Yuuki had suffered a severe head injury

Mirai hardly saw him except when he would come home a few instances to get another stuffed animal to cheer him up. She was genuinely scared of him. However, he consistently beamed at her whenever they met, giving her his big smile. The tubes projecting out of his nostrils made her visualize him as a monster. The intensifying "HUH!" noise he made whenever he inhaled to take in oxygen only amplified her imagination. She had attempted to assist him when he was home and they played together whenever they could. She travelled to visit him in the hospital only nine times out of his many visits, because everything there made it unbearable. She hated the scent of disinfectant, the scent of sanitariness, and the sheer paleness of that unattractive and aseptic place. She informed her parents about her dislike of the hospital. They told that her that it was fine. So she remained at home whenever her parents went to visit him and she nearly forgot she even had a sibling.

When the doctor informed Yuuki that his condition was close to getting fully improved, he returned home enthusiastically and attempted to speak with Mirai. However, the entire situation was still too intolerable for her that she tried to keep away from him. He celebrated his sixteenth birthday with just their parents. He had only returned home from the hospital recently so he did not have a good opportunity to make any friends outside the hospital. She observed from the fort of her room as her parents cheered for him as he blew out the flame on the candles. She appeared out of her room only three times a day and all three times were just to get food. He did not utter anything whenever he spotted her almost like he realized her agitation when she was near him. However, quickly he began to look just like a healthy boy again. He was not the ill and weak little child she was familiar to being dressed in just a hospital robe. Nonetheless, he never failed to have a grin on his face.

They went to the same secondary school together but Yuuki was five grades below Mirai, He still kept the largest grin on his face whenever she passed by him in the passageway. Occasionally he only beamed at her and pass by her if it was really packed with students, but if it was not, he started chatting, asking her if she started dating yet. The answer was always no, until she was in her final year of secondary school. She befriended Kento and they went out for a short time until she found him bullying her brother. Although, she was not that close to her brother, she still felt the obligation to defend him. She ended up breaking up with him in public in front of the entire school. He told her she was a stupid bitch but at that point she could care less.

Mirai often thought about the reason she had defended Yuuki. If he was not there she would still be with Kento, and it would all be fine, instead of constantly needing to care for and look after him. Once she actually wished that she had a different family, but she immediately dismissed that thought, astonished by her own coldness. He was not to blame for all that he went through. It was no one's fault.

"Just my life's fate," she guessed.

When Mirai was a few weeks close to finishing her final year of High School, her younger brother got unwell again. However, this time more terrible than ever. Her father and mother hurried Yuuki to the hospital and they did too many examinations and tests to count. Then on a hot Saturday afternoon in April, the doctor reported that Yuuki had obtained the same fatal sickness again. It had something to do with his brain and it was untreatable unless they did not mind him living with severe brain dysfunction or probably even die in the operating room. Her father and mother had no idea what choice to make. When they talked to Yuuki, he told them that he was sick of surgeries and was willing to let nature take its course. However, Mirai and her parents were unaware that he had already known that he was close to the end of his life at the time. He did not "feel terrible" but mentioned that he was feeling a slight pain in his head a few times a day and then it would gradually fade away. The doctor concluded that he had four months left, which her parents initially refused to believe, because he managed to keep living this whole time even when the doctor said that he had only two months left the first time he was unwell as a kid.

Their dad and mom brought Yuuki back home and told him that there was no need for him to attend school anymore unless he wanted to. Of course since he was a regular teenager, he delightedly discontinued classes. Mirai, on the other hand, remained to graduate. She had worked hard for thirteen long years and was definitely not going to quit.

To be continued…

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