Chapter Ten
"What?" alarm flooded him. Had anything happened to Hikou?
"I tried his cell phone first, but that was a dead line. And then I called his house, but his parents said he hadn't been there in a week. I—I'm worried, Houjun."
He was about to speak when the phone rang shrilly in her hands, making her fumble in shock and drop it. She bent and picked it up, hastily jabbing the call button and intercepting the line. "Hello?"
She listened for a moment, and then her fingers went numb as she looked up into Houjun's anxious face.
"That was his colleague, Soi. She said Hikou didn't turn up for work yesterday and today, and she wanted to know if I knew where he was. Oh, Houjun—"
He was already out the door.
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It was six-thirty in the evening. The solitary figure walked out of the swinging doors of the hospital, a black briefcase clutched in one hand and the jingle of car keys coming from the other where a large white box packed with documents and files was cradled in the crook of the arm. Genrou paused to look up and take in the sunset overhead. The sky was reddening from deep crimson to the shyest of blushes at the far ends of the cloudless sky, and a flock of birds twittered far above before disappearing out of the sight. The setting sun cast a warm glow onto the cement pavements and buildings below, layering across the surroundings with a silent richness. It was almost perfect.
He walked to his car, his eyes blurring with sudden loss of composure.
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Nyan-nyan watched from her office as the young surgeon she had come to care for in his brief period with the hospital drove off noiselessly into the night. She stepped back and let the curtains fall close.
Take care of yourself, Genrou.
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They had been driving around the whole day, Kourin frantically punching various numbers into his cell phone while he sat, tensed and worried, praying fervently for news. Hikou, please be all right.
Cold thoughts had wormed their way into his mind the long hours they had searched. What if he did something foolish? He thinks Kourin and I are—no he wants her back, he told me so. But he's sick—He refused to think of the cancer— and he might…he might…would he…
He pushed the dread away with growing disgust of his own ineptitude and rounded the corner to the intersection, where he stopped the car at the red light. Kourin's urgent questions on the phone seemed distant, faraway, muffled. Let me find him…please let me find him…
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Hikou closed his eyes and breathed in the comforting warmth of the bowl of noodles sitting incongruously in front of him. He mentally ran through a few words of grace before he opened his eyes and reached for the chopsticks.
Suddenly he realized that the soup before him was stained with fresh red blood, and then his vision swooped in a dizzying circle. He tried to stem the nosebleed as his other hand fumbled for the handkerchief in his pocket. The chatter about him seemed to increase in volume, before dying abruptly. He looked up, his focus swimming and plunging into blackness as he fell.