Disclaimer: Your Lie In April and its characters belong to its rightful owner but my own characters are mine. No plagiarism!
Arima Kousei woke up feeling a bit heavy and his eyesight seemed to have returned to normal but as he slowly become conscious, he does seem to have felt a bit out of place. He was discharged from the hospital that night after he weren't in any more danger and he can stay as an outpatient again. His head aches disappeared and his fever had gone down, too. Dr. Brown reminded him inside his room that he must take his pills seriously. "You must know that you are still very sick. Even more, you have to keep on going here every week for radiation therapy."
Kousei understood. "Can I go back to school?"
Dr. Brown looked at Takahiko and Dr. Arima Sui. "He wants to go back?"
"He really wants to play his piano with an audience again. He miss his old life before he had cancer," Takahiko explained to him.
"I think he can next week," Dr. Brown answered. "Make sure that he will keep drinking his medicines, sir."
Kousei's eyes brightened. "Thank you, doctor!"
"It will also be good if he shows up for rehabilitation," Dr. Brown told them. "He's required to have it."
A week later, the whole Piano Department was actually surprised to see the prodigy, Arima Kousei return back to school. He still can't walk that much but he appeared standing up and with a beanie on his head. His two best friends in Juilliard quickly welcomed him back. He was looking through his locker at that time when Catherine and Nathaniel went closer to him.
"Are you alright, now?" Catherine asked. "How are you?"
"I'm an outpatient. I'm still sick, though. I just finished talking to the Dean and other important people today," he answered them. "I won't be able to play the piano intensely and almost every day unlike when I was completely healthy. They moved me to tutorial sessions. I can't study with a room with a lot of people anymore."
Nathaniel grinned. "You're free every lunch, right?"
"Yes. I am," he told them. After a while, he already got the book he was actually looking for. "Tell Maestro Alessandro that I'm dropping his subject. My doctors told me that I can't work with a lot of people."
He walked away and went to his private room in his school. He would be tutored by his original mentor for now.Seto Hiroko got herself in Juilliard Music School. "Welcome back."
She's wearing a black casual clothes while Kousei is wearing his uniform, of course.The room was disinfected and with only the piano and seat at the center.
"So, what will I study for today?" he asked. "What will I do for today?"
"I want this to be a part of your rehabilitation, too. So, I want to check if your cancer didn't affect your musical ability," she told him. "Play Do- Re- Mi."
Kousei laid his hands on the keys and he easily got the tones correctly.
"I won't advance to complicated ones for now," she told him. "You just got out of the hospital and you missed a lot of piano competitions and exams this year. You'll be repeating them, too."
Kousei had just played pieces and studied musical pieces composed by Chopin and Mozart for weeks.
Catherine and Nathaniel never missed to accompany Kousei to eat at lunch times at the cafeteria inside their school for a few weeks until they had noticed that something was wrong with him. Arima Kousei's obviously exhausted, his breathing's very labored and heavy, most of all, he had lost so much weight. They were all eating spaghetti at the time when they watched Kousei drink his pills after he finished his meal.
Nathaniel was also able to observe that his immigrant friend's wearing a beanie and it looks like he's going bald again.
"What are those pills for?" he asked him.
"Anti-seizure," he answered them, glumly.
"Are you still taking chemotherapy pills?" Catherine asked him.
"Yes, I do at home. Dad gives me the other pills. I always feel horrible after drinking them. Radiation therapy is every week," he answered them. "I'm still sick."
"You lost your hair. Are you really alright?" Nathaniel observed while playing with his straw.
Kousei held his blue bag beside him and stood up after he was severely hurt because of what his friend spoke. He wondered why he felt so sensitive with that fact. "I'm sick."
Catherine looked at Nathaniel unbelievably so much after Kousei left. "Kousei does have cancer and you ask him about his hair?"
"What's wrong with that?" Nathaniel asked her.
"Most cancer patients hate their heads!" Catherine shouted at him. "You have to apologize."
"You seem like you understand him more than me," he told her as they stand up and go to their classroom.
"I lost my five year old sister when I was fifteen due to leukemia," she answered him.
Seto Hiroko found Kousei crying inside his tutorial room on his piano in which he hasn't opened up yet the lid. "What's wrong, Kousei?"
Kousei looked away. "Will I ever grow back my hair again?"
She smiled at him. "Did someone made fun of you because of your disease?"
"No," he answered her. "I easily got hurt when Nathaniel asked me about it."
Seto Hiroko understood. "He didn't mean to hurt you. You're his friend. It maybe his first time to have a friend like you."
"My life totally changed after I was diagnosed with cancer, Seto-san," he told her. "Will it return to the old days, soon?"
"Kousei, you can't wallow on the past, okay?" she advised him. "You'll get better soon."
"I want to go home," he told her. "I'm not feeling well."
As she noticed that Kousei seemed lightheaded, she quickly sent him at the clinic.
"I'm feeling dizzy," he said after lying down on the bed. His heart was racing so hard and he's sweating so much. "I feel so bad!"
"Go to sleep. I'm calling your father to pick you up," she said to him as she pick up her phone. "You can't go home on your own."
"Thank you, Seto Hiroko- san," he said as he close his eyes to go to sleep.
Moments later, when he opened his eyes, he found his father in front of him already. Behind him is Nathaniel.
"I'm sorry," he told Kousei. "I apologize to whatever I said back at lunch."
"It's not you," he smiled. "I just hate myself.".
When they got back home, Kousei didn't even change his clothes. He just took his shoes away and laid immediately on his bed. "Dad. Do you have my pain medicines?"
His father looked at him worriedly. "Why do you need it?"
"My body's aching so hard," he answered him.
His father gave it to him and he also gave him water. He drank it all. "Dr. Florence will be here tomorrow. You can talk to her whatever you feel."
Takahiko closed the lights of his room after he placed the blanket over his body. After he closed his door, he heard his son crying under the blankets.
The next day, when he was about to wake him up for him to go back to school, he found his son already awake but he seemed so pale and he's got dried tears. "What's wrong, son?"
"I don't want to go back to school," he cried bitterly.
"When you're in the hospital, you keep asking that you want to go to school but now, you don't want to?" he asked him.
"I don't want to go! I thought that if I go back, I'd feel the same way I am again like before but I felt more miserable. I knew that I'm too sick! I feel uncomfortable now!" he wailed. He turned his back from him and asked his father, "Please get out, dad. Let me rest."
Takahiko took a deep breath and after he went outside his room, he found Seto Hiroko and Dr. Florence outside Kousei's room.
"Kousei seemed depressed," he told them. "Talk to him, doctor."
A few moments later...
"He's already asleep. I gave him a dose of sleeping pill. He's deeply asleep now," Dr. Florence told
"I hate seeing him like this," cried Takahiko. "I hate seeing my son afraid for his life."
"He's going to be fine, Takahiko," Seto Hiroko assured him.
"Did he say anything to you before you gave him sleeping pills?" Takahiko asked him.
"He just wants to go to sleep. He tried his best last night but he couldn't. He was panicking all night long," Dr. Florence told him. "That's what he complained to me. I gave him a calming medicine, too."
A few hours later, Kousei woke up again. He doesn't actually feel fine at all. It wasn't his cancer that's affecting him now. Depression was settling inside him and he was too powerless to go against it. He couldn't even say it to his father.
"How do you feel now, son?" his father asked him.
"I'm feeling better," he whimpered. "What time is it, dad?"
"It's nine o'clock in the morning," he honestly told him.
"Sorry for saying I don't want to go to school. I want to go. It's just that..." Kousei's tears fall from his eyes. He stood up and went to the bathroom. He vomited all he ate last night. His father followed him and found his son feeling so fatigued and tired while he's sitting on the floor of the bathroom. He's awake, though. "I'm so tired, dad."
"Come on, let's clean you up," he said to his son as he carry him on the bath tub. He took his shirt and shorts off and he slowly cleaned his body with soap and a shower.
"I'm too tired that I can't even clean myself," he cried.
"You'll be fine. Just think you will," he told him.
"He's absent for two days in a row," Catherine told Nathaniel while they are walking the street to go to Kousei's home.
"I wonder how he is." Nathaniel looked down. Both of them are wearing brown, winter clothes.
"I heard Seto Hiroko-san decided to tutor him by herself at home. That doesn't mean he is absent for two days," Nathaniel informed her.
"You're acting as if you don't care," she said to him.
"I care! It's just that, I am afraid to lose a great friend like him! He's changed a lot!" cried Nathaniel. "The cancer tortures him! Father even said that I stay away or I might cry over a tomb or urn."
"Sorry. Let's just walk?" Catherine asked him.
"Yes," he said as he dry his tears.
When they came around Kousei's condominium, they rang the bell and Seto Hiroko's the one that opened up the black door. "You came at the right time. Kousei will be delighted to see you."
Both of them entered. Kousei's sitting on the couch. He actually feels better already but he's still not well. "I didn't know you will visit me. I'm happy to see you."
"How are you, Kousei?" Nathaniel asked.
"I feel better," he answered. "Chemotherapy's working again."
Both of them smiled since his answer relieved them even so, they were actually still not that relieved because they already noticed that he'd become thinner than the last time they saw him. "So, when are you going back in Juilliard?"
Kousei looked down. "Due to my sickness, I can't finish school this year. They decided that I must focus on recovering and making sure I survive cancer. My cancer is able to actually respond to stronger chemotherapy pills but it exhausts me faster than my old medicines. I have to go back in the hospital. My doctors assured me that I have a huge chance of surviving. Even so, I need to focus on that first."
"Our friendship won't be severed, okay?" Catherine told him. "You're an important friend to us."
"I need you and my friends in Japan," he told them. "I didn't like to stay in the hospital but I'll be there to hopefully recover."
"You're not crying," Catherine spoke up. "Why aren't you crying?"
"I don't want to cry. I always cried in the past," Kousei said to her. "I'm not afraid of death, anymore."
Catherine sat on the blue couch in front of him worriedly after he said that to him. "You can't lie that you are not afraid. I've known you for a year and I know you. You're an open book. You're easily read by people around you. You are afraid."
Kousei stared at her, to Nathaniel, Seto Hiroko, her husband, his father and grandpa. "I would get more than five years back, right?"
Takahiko went close to him. Tears fall down his eyes. He held Kousei's hands and they both began crying.
A/n: Thanks for reading! I hope you liked this new chapter! Please review if you liked my fanfiction! Arigatou Gozaimasu!