Chapter Nineteen
One of the shadows stood and detached itself from the side, moving closer to the other. The profile seemed strangely familiar. But he was too shaken to note that, now.
Not when a voice spoke, strangled and hoarse with crying, a voice that made him still and his heartbeat grow strangely loud, pulsing in his eardrums.
"I can't find him."
A moment's pause. "What?"
"He arranged to be posted somewhere. They won't tell me where he's gone."
His heart twisted as he took a step back, his emotions racing along with each delicate nuance of the voice within the curtains, missing the next few murmured parts of the conversation.
It's my imagination. He wants to find me, but it could mean anything…it could mean anything…
"Gods, Kourin, I miss Genrou. I miss him so much."
It was at that moment that the high pitched alarm of the electrocardiograph machine rang.
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Houjun spun and stared at the flat line on the machine. Panic flooded him. Kourin's eyes were opened wide as she stepped back, unable to believe what she was hearing, refusing to accept what it meant. And then she reacted.
"Get a doctor!" she screamed, rushing to Hikou's bedside, grabbing the limp hand and squeezing it with a death-grip.
Oh god…no…please…Hikou…
His feet seemed frozen to the ground for a long time, yet in reality it was but a few seconds before he moved and tore the curtains open, stepping out and preparing to run for help.
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The curtains were yanked open and the metal fastenings clinked loudly as a man emerged, his eyes unfocused in shock and his mouth slightly open as he panted. Genrou couldn't move.
Time stood still in that instant, surreal and unlike anything he had ever experienced before.
They had been apart for only a week, and yet that time had spanned centuries in their souls. Even as he took in the sight of Houjun, his heart thirsty for just that sight, the beloved face, the lips whose taste lingered in his memory, the slight posture he remembered, and the eyes that had dilated on seeing him. They stood there, silent, before the whine of the machine and Kourin's screams jerked them, as if in slow motion, back to the present.
Genrou moved first. He spun and ran out the door, calling urgently for nurses and respiratory help equipment, his coat swirling in the bright sunlight that seemed to engulf the space he had stood in only a moment ago. Suddenly, the room was flooded with people, the dull clunk as machines and voices alike filled the air.
"Go, go, go!" Genrou's voice was cracking slightly, but he rang the last intercom for a senior doctor before he turned back and rushed into the room, past the unmoving man, and the hysterical woman, whom the nurses dragged back and out, their eyes filled with sympathy. The nurses made way for him as he pulled on the gloves that were handed him, reaching for the handles of the revival mechanism, nodding to the IC at a hand-sign for voltage. He didn't look back as the stand-by nurses ushered Kourin and Houjun out of the room, didn't spare a glance as the curtains pulled shut around him.