Chapter 4 – Who visits?
A shred of light comes in through the white curtains. The sun is rising. I tossed to the other side of the bed, yet I couldn't stop looking at that shred of light. Thin as a wire, like my hope.
As the days pass me by, my illness gets worse. At first, it was my foot that was unable to move. It moved up to my leg, freezing it now. My left leg is useless. Worst of all, I can't swim. Soaking in the bath isn't enough. Just when we had established the club, just when we had the outdoor pool for ourselves, just when I thought I could swim again, just when I thought I could meet him, all this happened. 'Mutation of the genes...' Why is it me? 'No cure or treatment for it...' Why did it have to be me? 'Trapped in his own skeleton.' I thumped my fist on the bed, making the mattress jump. Why me?
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There was a knock on the door. "Haru-chan?" Makoto and Nagisa walked into my room. Makoto had a huge stack of bentos in one hand and a bag of books in the other. Nagisa had brought a blue and white binder with him, probably about the swim club. It has been four months now. Four months since the day I found out that my foot was unable to move. Four months I have been stuck here, unable to swim an inch. Four months Makoto and Nagisa came visiting everyday without fail. Four months, and I haven't heard a word form him. "Haru-chan? Are you okay?" asked Nagisa with those eyes of his. I nodded. I'm okay. I'll be okay.
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The club was doing well. Other than the freshman that Nagisa had wanted to drag (his name was Rei I think), Makoto and Kou had gotten a few more members. A seinor at our school, Yamamoto Tora was joining. There was another called Kinkyouku Gin, a freshman. They also managed to rope in Watanabe and Hiroko form our class.
Other than that, my homework was piling up day by day. What was the point of doing it, since I was never going to walk again. I looked down at my hands. There will come a day when I won't be able to hold a pen again. A day where I can't even move my neck. And that day is closing in, little by little. I wonder for a brief moment as I set down my book, what will happen if I was smiling when my face froze? Would it be stuck that way forever? Creepy.
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Moonlight, when it shone into the room, made the world seem less cruel. I had had a long and relaxing bath, with a leg still unable to move. The room was quiet since I didn't have any roommates. How many people from the same district could have the same extremely rare disease in the same hospital? Not many if I thought about it.
The time on the digital clock showed 2a.m. The green digits on the screen were like eyes in the dark, glowing at me. There was a sound coming from the window. My eyelids felt so heavy. Yet I couldn't bring myself to sleep. Something was nagging at the back of my mind, begging me not to sleep, to find out what it was at the window, but my eyes were closing quickly. The last I remembered was seeing a flash of white teeth and the whispered words "Haru...".