After a while, the doctors kicked Horohoro out of Ren's hospital room, claiming that they needed to run some more tests, and they couldn't have him interfering. He was pretty angry, because he didn't see why he couldn't be with Ren during those tests.

By Ren's coughing up blood, they suspected he may have had cancer, or lukemia, or something like that. It was nothing close. Horohoro couldn't bring himself up to tell the doctors what really happened, but that all didn't matter, seeing as they'd probably find out sometime or another.

That is, if they weren't as stupid as they looked.

Horohoro had nowhere left to go but back to the apartment. It was horribly lonely and empty without Ren's company. He found himself eating dinner alone, watching T.V. alone, and saying goodnight to himself.

Sleep did not bless the blue-haired boy that night. Not that he wanted it to, anyways. He was scared that he'd have another of those horrible nightmares.

He tossed and turned, staring unhappily at the white plaster ceiling. He kicked and rumpled his white sheets, flipping his pillow this way and that. He got up several times to go to the bathroom, get a drink, to look out the window, or to sit hopefully next to the phone, waiting for it to ring; the hospital calling to say that Ren was going to be okay and nothing was wrong. But of course, he knew that Ren was everything but okay, though he kept telling himself things would work out.

And that was how Horohoro developed insomnia.

Things were like that for a whole week. And even beyond that. Everyday he was forbidden to see Ren by the doctors, he thought a little piece of his sanity was being whittled away by a knife of guilt. And every time he had that feeling, it became harder and harder to fall asleep.

You would think that Horohoro would be happy for that, but it wasn't quite that way. At first, he had taken his insomnia optimistically, telling himself that at least he wouldn't have nightmares. But those horrible images kept coming to him in the day. He'd randomly space out sometimes, lost in a hurricane of his fears and concerns for Ren.

Many times a day, his mind would play a mental movie of Ren. Ren lying helplessly in a hospital, with doctors who barely cared to take care of him. Ren suffering, Ren in pain. Ren feeling homesick, feeling lost, feeling lonely. Ren dying with no one to be with him, no one to hear his last words, no one to witness his last breath, no one to say goodbye.

He thought he was going to go crazy. He'd walk to the hospital various times on each day, requesting to see Ren. And all these walks came out with the same result: the receptionist would always tell him Ren was to have no visitors.

He was painfully aware of the fact that slowly, but surely, Ren wasy dying.

On this particular day, his patience seemed to entirely snap, right when his ears picked up the words he faced everyday and he loathed like poison to his senses.

"I'm sorry, sir. Tao Ren is being closely supervised by our caring doctors. He is to have no visitors today."

"I DON'T GIVE A SHIT!" he screamed, slamming his hands on the reception desk. "You don't know anything about Ren! Neither do those stupid doctors! You bitch! Let me see him! I wanna see him! Can't you see he's dying!? You're all insane to do this to him! He's dying alone, and none of you are doing anything to help him! You can at least let me in so he'll have someone with him when he...when he...when he dies for god's sake!"

"I assure you, sir, the interests of our patients' comforts are our first priority. I hope that now, you'll calm down-"

"SHUT UP!" With a wild swing of his arm, he sent papers and pens flying off the desk. The receptionist screamed, and in an instant, Horohoro felt his arms being grabbed by security guards.

"Let me go!" he screamed, struggling furiously. "Let me go, damn you!"

Tears were streaming down his cheeks. He immediately broke down, sobbing uncontrollably. He felt so stupid, like a spoiled child who was throwing a temper tantrum.

"I...I'm sorry..." he managed to choke out from between sobs. "It's just that I...I miss him so much...I shouldn't have done that..."

The security guards and the receptionist didn't put any charges against Horohoro. They pitied him, they treated him kindly like a child whose pet was being put to sleep. But Ren was no pet. He was much more. And he was going to die.

For Horohoro, that night was another sleepless one.