Maki stared at the hospital wall.

The wall was a stark, harsh white, with a little smidge of dirt at the corners. The dirt wouldn't have been visible to the casual observer. There was a small, dark painting of a collection of fruit: cherries, strawberries, oranges, bananas, in a murky olive bowl. Every time Maki looked at the painting her disgust for the still life grew stronger. Each passing glance gave her a new unsavory detail: bruised skin, a fly on the strawberry's stem, the threadbare sheet behind it. But what Maki really didn't like was the table the still life sat on. It was a spring green, bright and luminescent in the staged light.

To Maki's left was the window. Outside. The real world. Maki couldn't bring herself to look through. Instead, she watched laced curtains shift in the wind as she wondered when Honoka would come back, when her parents might visit next.

After a few moments of watching the shadows dance from the curtains, Maki would bring her attention back to the room.

The TV was playing. Maki could hear laughter, stilted lines, commercials. A game show. Maki had asked the nurse to change it several times, but somehow the channel would return to the seeming 24-hour coverage of some barbaric comedy bit. In Maki's worst moment's, she'd allow herself to watch the boorish stunts. When Maki couldn't forget what Honoka had said the other night in the hospital room.

None of this was supposed to happen. Any of it. You were supposed to be the one who did it…

What did Maki do? What was supposed to happen? Was Maki supposed to make… the strange, space-time phenomena that seemed to follow her? Her dream loomed: another Maki, another Honoka, another life. Idols again. Something about that idea made her feel nauseated. Tight little skirts and puckered lips and endless interviews and tours… tension boiling on long plane rides… whispers in hotel rooms... Maki shook her head. She didn't know where this came from.

Nothing made sense to Maki anymore. Every time she looked forward - every time she saw what her hands had become - her head would begin to spin, and her throat would choke up with an overwhelming feeling.

Maki slept, when she could, and dreamt of far away places and strange figures in foreign cars.

Maki stared at the wall and imagined herself somewhere else.

A forest, maybe. Shade and light and warmth. Honoka's bed. The soft pillows piling on top of her. The cool pressure of the duvet. Maki imagined herself slipping into the bed with Honoka, who had fallen asleep atop her notebook. Honoka, who tossed and turned in her sleep and would mumble phrases about love and terror, Honoka who said her name sometimes…

Maki would snap into awareness under the harsh light of the hospital and there would be someone else to see her.

Her father came to the hospital several times. Each time with some pleasant but infuriating story about some battered soul overcoming the odds and still becoming the grand surgeon, politician, or violinist. He'd ask her to keep fighting each time they spoke. Maki didn't want to tell him that she'd felt sick relief in having that surgeon's future taken away from her. Something in her father's eyes irritated Maki, and when he spoke she had to bite back a rising screed: You should be grateful for the daughter you have, haven't I become famous enough for you? Wasn't my experiment enough to launch your career skywards?

Her father had given her a startled look, last time he visited. Maki's bizarre resentment must have shown on her face. She felt at a loss. Famous? Experiment? Whose thoughts were these? They were not her own. Maki knew she was a dried up school idol, and she had conducted no such experiment.

Maki imagined herself going to an ocean after her father had left. As if she were washing away his expectations. Blue light filled her. Swirls of salt and foam.

There was a sunset on the white-sand beach. Someone had made a fire. Maki basked in the last rays of the sun, letting them fill her up.

Maki stared at the wall and did not look anywhere but the ceiling.

The hand specialist was coming today.

Maki had gotten skilled at ignoring her hands in their metal imprisonment. She didn't watch the window. She didn't see the doctors and nurses coming in and out.

She only saw the night sky.

Star-filled heavens hung above the woman on top of Maki, her blue eyes gleaming low and dark in the night. Only the thin pointed knife of the moon offered any illumination; their bare skin appeared to glow in shadows. Flesh was periwinkle, jade, lavender, flickering under the veil of starlight.

Their hands slipped together, finding each other in the darkness. A spiced citrus perfume radiated from the woman's neck along with her natural scent. A familiar scent, that Maki knew so well.

"We're going to miss the eclipse, if you keep this up…" Maki heard herself say, even with her clenched thighs and warmth rising within her stomach. "I brought you out for that astronomy class, you know. You know you need the extra credit. "

Honoka laughed and kissed her; her lips tasted like vanilla chapstick. "Aww c'mon, it's internet college, it hardly counts. All I had to do was name some constellations! And the eclipse isn't for another hour!"

"Maki?"

Outside her mind, Maki heard the steady beep of a machine and the chatter of a nurse.

Maki opened her eyes. When had they closed? Her daydream had gotten so real. Maki saw a nurse. She knew she was glaring at the poor woman, but she didn't soften her expression. "Huh?"

"The hand specialist will be here this afternoon."

"Okay." Maki closed her eyes again.

"Are you alright? Do you want me to call for some food? You need to eat more…"

Maki opened her eyes again. "That's quite all right, thank you. I will be resting until I speak with the hand specialist."

"Okay…"

Maki tried to will herself back into the daydream. Honoka. The night sky. A glow inside her…Maki imagined Honoka's kiss on her lips, vanilla. Her scent. Her hair running down her back.

"Name one constellation."

Honoka pointed up. "That's uh, that's the big dipper!"

Maki kissed Honoka long and deep. "Tch. That doesn't 're hopeless. I'm going to set an alarm… and then I'm going to educate you on the stars later."

"You're so responsible, Maki!"

"You are hopeless." Maki turned over, grabbing her phone, ignoring Honoka's caresses over her leggings.

"Whatever you want." Honoka said, and kissed her stomach.

Maki sighed and rolled on her back and pushed Honoka's head a little lower down. "I want this then, you bad little student."

Honoka grinned at her, and then moaned into the folds of Maki's skirt, her hot breath warming Maki's insides, her hands grabbing her hips. Maki shuddered. "Um, Honoka…"

Honoka lifted Maki's legs up and grabbed her skirt and undergarments, dragging them down to Maki's ankles. The chill of the night shocked Maki's bare skin. Maki flushed, as if she didn't just demand her girlfriend go down on her.

"Are you ready?" Honoka asked, with her delicate fingers mounted on Maki's naked cleft.

Maki nodded. "Please."

As if a viewer into her own fantasy, Maki watched as an internet-college Honoka with long hair lapped into Maki - not her but another Maki, a more glamorous Maki, with an even more expensive telescope and long layers of wavy red hair and a pair of silver glasses that viewer Maki liked quite a lot.

She watched Honoka's fingers slide into her other self, her tongue prod with gentle slow licks, her little gasps and moans driving other Maki further over the edge. Like she always does. My bad little assistant know how to work me just right… Wait, what? Maki shivered. The drugs must be getting to her.

"Honoka!" Maki heard herself say. "Honoka, I'm ready, I'm…"

Back in her hospital bed, Maki's cheeks flushed hot with her hands still useless in their metal trappings. There was no point to this right now. She willed herself to look away, into the night sky, as she heard another Maki's bliss. Summer constellations: Cassiopeia. Lynx. Cygnus. A vain queen. A wild cat. Swans of various Greek myths. The only one Maki cared for was King Cygnus, a mourning lover transformed into a swan and placed among the heavens.

The sounds stopped. Maki looked down. Just two girls under a blanket now with starlight in their hair.

This felt familiar. Of course it did. This was practically Maki's playbook: a stargazing date before making a move. At least. It was. Once. Before… this.

"Hey." Honoka nudged Maki. "You're gonna get me too, right Maki?"

"Tch. Are you serious? The shower starts in…" Maki grabbed her phone. "Forty minutes, and I know what you're like when you get going." There was a teasing drawl to it.

Other Maki was a top, Maki realized. She wondered if this was the same Maki from her dream the other day. Was this some reflection of her deepest desires? She had been dubbed a "powerless bottom" by Nico since sophomore year. And yet here… Honoka was making puppy eyes at her while she smirked and toyed and called Honoka a "bad little student."

Something was glowing in the sky, falling from the atmosphere.

"Miss Nishikino?"

Maki let out gasp, her shoulders knitting together, her heart pounding.

A woman in a lab coat stood before her. She looked tired, with long red hair brushed back into a messy bun. It was the hand specialist, Maki knew. The woman who'd performed the surgery on her.

Back to reality.

"Ah. Doctor Sakurauchi." Maki nodded, unable to wave or motion to her.

The hospital's dull roar filled her ears. Beeps and intercoms and nurses and patients. Maki felt as if she'd been ripped from a dream. Or rather, that she'd been pulled back to earth, away from the world she'd been peering into.

The woman watched Maki with amber eyes.

"Miss Nishikino, do you have a moment?"

Maki grunted. It wasn't like she was going anywhere, she wanted to say, but she thought better of it. "Yeah. Yes. You caught me in a daydream."

The surgeon stepped in and cleared her throat. "You've been recovering well. We're all pleased with the progress you've been making."

Maki laughed, unable to hold back her contrary nature. "Progress? All I've done is sit here."

"Your vitals have gotten much better, and your color has improved. You'll be set for release in a week, with help of an aide." The doctor spoke with such authority, Maki thought, with such clarity. A redheaded woman, a surgeon. An image of what her father wanted, Maki thought with both relief and bitterness.

"A week?"

Doctor Sakurauchi frowned. "Yes. It was a serious fracture. You've already been here for two weeks now, Maki. One more and you'll be set. To tell you the truth, you've been healing much faster than I would have thought. It's unusual. Normally injuries of this severity take much longer." Her frown deepened. "It's unusual. Sometimes your hand appears almost normal, but then… it's like you were just recovered from the accident. And you go right back to where you were in recovery. If I didn't examine you myself I wouldn't believe it."

Maki recalled the strange, space-time phenomena that seemed to follow her. Shifting green glimpses into the past and future, other presents.

"You'll be in recovery for a long time, but you will be able to use your hands normally again." The doctor paused. Something sat on her tongue.

Maki knew this was coming from the first time she saw her father's face in the hospital. "Yes?"

"You won't have the same finesse you once had. I know you're a pianist, and that your father owns that hospital… I know you're in pre-med. You will of course, be able to pursue medicine, and you'll be able to play the piano, still, but…"

Maki laughed, to her own surprise. "I can't be a surgeon or world famous musician?"

"I'm so sorry, Maki."

Maki knew. Maki had already accepted this. And yet. A sob caught in her throat, and her eyes welled with liquid and salt. She knew she was blushing. She unclenched her jaw but words didn't come out. Her mouth was thick and sluggish and ready to shout or scream and it was all she could do to remain silent.

"Miss Nishikino?"

Maki nodded.

No change to be a surgeon, no chance to be a pianist anymore… She remembered her father's diatribe to the surgeon outside the hospital room. Sorrow filled her. Dreams she was never going to fulfill for her father. And yet... there was this relief. As if she'd escaped some unwanted fate. A part of her felt… lighter.

"I'll leave you to it, Miss Nishikino." The surgeon bowed, as if in apology, and closed the door.

Tears began in earnest, running down her face, and she couldn't brush their sting away. Tears for something she'd never dare voice, tears for a future that hadn't been selected for her since she was a child. Tears for the songs she couldn't play. Tears for another life. Tears for the life Maki had been supposed to lead.

But there was another well of melancholy inside her heart, her head. A physical sadness sat inside her, infecting her spirit. It was a sensation that Maki couldn't place or understand, a deeper exhaustion, an older weariness, and yet the strangest… exultation. There was a feeling that everything had gone horridly wrong, and there wasn't enough time to fix it.

But deeper still: Maki knew, deep down, that she had been right.