On the first day, Akihiko paces. Back and forth, across the hall, as though he himself is the very arm of a pendulum.
On the second day, Akihiko sits, his knees to his chest, arms slung loosely over top with hands dangling forward and down. Hopelessness seeps into his heart, quelling the rate at which it thuds.
In the third day, he begins talking to her. He doesn't know what to say, but he hopes the words help. Nothing but silence beyond the closed door, meets his ears.
Frustrated, and once more at a loss for words on the fourth day, he rests his forehead against the wood, and sighs. The silence is heavier than any weight he could lift with his hands, yet when he opens his eyes, there's a small scrap of metal at the toe of his shoe. Careful, as though the soft invitation could and would still rescind, he bends down to receive the small, offered token of trust. Keeping it clutched in the palm of his hand, he turns back towards the stairs, willing to give her more time that she needs.
On the fifth day, Akihiko uses the key.
He is entirely certain how to feel in the very first moment following the click of the lock as it unwinds. He doesn't dare to push on the door, unused to this new Mitsuru, a Mitsuru that willingly lets him in.
In the sixth day, he turns the knob.
Akihiko decides it won't be any different than it has been for the rest of their lives, nudging the door back closed with the heel of his foot, arms filled with a bundle of stuff. He deposits most of the bundle straight onto the floor, pausing a moment in the vain hope that she'll laugh; disappointed, and yet not surprised, when she doesn't. She doesn't react much at all, his eyes adjusting to the nearly- pitch darkness to find her back to the door, and her face toward the wall. Asleep, he muses fondly, adjusting the lock back into place at the door. He makes quiet note of the absolute mess of her floor, a room otherwise nothing shy of pristine thrown into sudden disarray, and catalogues it away for the next day. He'll fix it, he vows, take care of the things the same way he'll take care of her; but Mitsuru comes first this night, after all.
He takes just a few, lengthy moments that draw out in time, to place his things close beside the end of her bed, and then scrapes the backs of his knuckles over the prolific curves of her side. There's no shiver, no finite twitch to alert him that she is even remotely awake, plush of the blanket he brought tucked carefully against every bit of exposed skin. He's even more careful as he moves tangled hair, takes his place against the curve of her back, chest pressed gently to the arc of her spine.
It's as one arm slips beneath her head, the other laying its weight over her ribs, that he feels her first gentle sigh; a long exhale of breath as she leans into his touch. Some small part of him had known she was awake, despite every lack of the signs, and it draws a smile to the corner of his lips as he reaches out for a cup. Tapping a straw to her mouth, he presses the edge of his finger to the line of her mouth, feeling her groan.
"Drink." He goads, tone as soft as he finds it in him to be, because he knows that she hasn't. Knows that she hasn't moved, for most of the six days, and it scares him straight down to the core. But she does so, without any more of a fight, feeling her swallow against the back of his hand.
The next thing he does is press the pad of his finger to the lower swell of her lip, and with it a pill. He doesn't have to tell her to eat, much the same as he doesn't have to tell her to drink once more; she simply does so in time to the gentlest pressure of the touch of his hands.
With the two most important things out of the way, he tucks the plush of his blanket back up to her nose, nestles his own to the top of her head. It's a silent sign that he won't bother her more for this night, and she sighs once again before fingers creep towards where his rest beneath her head. Her touch is frigid, much like Penthesilea's ice when they touch, and Akihiko finds himself absently rubbing at the back of her knuckles much like in repeat of the strides of his pacing from days not so long ago.
"Aki-" Akihiko buries his nose into her hair at the sob that escapes her, clutching openly at her hand as she clings to his fingers with her own.
"C'mere." He hardly recognizes his own voice, feels her fight the plush of his blanket as she rolls within his grasp. "I've got you." He simply soothes, feeling every exhausted twitch of her muscles as arms snake around the back of his neck, settling her nose against the hollow of his shoulder. "I've got you." Akihiko repeats again, quieter, burying his nose back into her hair as she muffles her sob against the swell of his arm, clinging with a prolonged desperation to the fingers of his hand. She's not proper like this, he understands. She's neither perfect, nor refined, but simply raw and exposed within her grief. Akihiko repeats his words again, and then a fourth time, tucking the blanket against the back of her neck before resuming to stroke her back and her hair, toying and untangling knots he's certain have been there for days.
He neither knows how long the bought of her tears lasts, nor does he much care to count. And yet, he feels her twitch against him to wipe at her face with the heel of her hand, barring her way with a silky- soft cloth before she can make more of a smudge from mascara already stained over her cheeks and the rims of her eyes.
"Sorry-"
"Don't." He rubs her cheek with his own thumb, guiding her head back to the wall of his chest, feeling her sigh against the place where their hands are still twisted and joined. "It's okay."
Akihiko doesn't tell Mitsuru he loves her, any more than Mitsuru tells him.
It's something that is simply felt, and shared, in the finite space between them, encapsulating them in a halo of safety and home; filled with soft touch and softer breath, long after they've both fallen asleep.
Nobody says anything on the seventh day, when Mitsuru finally comes out of her room, striding directly across the hall to the bathroom with purpose once more in her step. They say nothing else, when she later leaves the very same room, Akihiko not more than a half step behind.