"Excuse me…" the voice called out to Ryuuji. He felt a hand shaking him gently on the shoulder and started to stir out of his sleep.

"Ryuuji, was it?" The nurse he had spoken to earlier was leaning over the bed, talking to him quietly. He jolted awake, aware suddenly of where he was. He had been sleeping sitting up, while Taiga slept peacefully on his lap. He hadn't even remembered when they had fallen asleep.

"Ah!" he said, "Sorry! I didn't realise… I, we… must have dozed off."

"It's ok" she said calmly.

"I didn't mean to stay here, I just… um… uh…"

"Relax." She put up a hand to assure him. "I just need to check up on her, run her temperature and go over her stats."

"Oh… I see." Ryuuji said, flustered. "Sorry again… I'll get out of here—"

"It's fine, seriously" she said casually. "You can stay with her. It's the middle of the night—it's not like there's anywhere for you to go at this point anyway."

"Ah, ok" he said, relaxing back down on the bed. So embarrassing! He thought to himself as the nurse read over Taiga's chart. Ahhhhh, what should I do here? He felt trapped as he stared off into space. The nurse got out a thermometer and then stood there for a moment, looking in his direction. Waiting for him to return to this planet.

"Hey, kid?" she said, her eyebrow raised.

"Y-yes?"

"When I said you could stay with her… I meant on the chair there. It might be tough to run tests on her while she's in your lap, after all."

"URP!"

She snickered.

"S-S-S-Sorry!" he carefully removed her head from his lap, holding onto it with one hand as he got out of the bed and put her pillow back in place, and gently put her back onto it. He sat in the chair, resting his hands at his side, looking down at the ground.

"I wouldn't mind so much" she said as she placed the thermometer down Taiga's gown and into her armpit, looking back at him with a smirk, "except… you might throw off the temperature readings. I don't know if this thing goes that high."

Ryuuji went a new shade of crimson. "I… Um…. w-well…"

The thermometer started beeping. She took it out and read it, writing down the numbers. "She's back in the normal range already. Isn't that good?"

"Yeah" he replied, looking up with a smile on his face. "I'm glad. I was so worried… this whole time."

"You did a great job, you know" she said, as she continued with her tests. "Finding her when you did, running out into the snow like that. Pretty bold."

"I didn't even really think about it" he admitted. She smiled as she wrote down the details in the file, looking back and forth between the monitor and Taiga's chart.

"That's just how it is when you're in love" she said matter-of-factly as she worked, causing him to go back to his previous crimson shade.

"Ah… woops" she said, looking at his expression. She laughed a little. "Ok, ok… I'll stop teasing you now." He looked to the side. "Hey, you know, she was talking in her sleep before." He kept his head turned away, but his eye moved towards where she was working.

"What did she say?" he said. She looked over at him, seeing the concern on his face. Ah, I feel bad for teasing him now, she thought. It was only natural that his mind would wander. After all, he must have been terrified, thinking the worst all this time.

"Don't worry, it wasn't anything bad." He breathed a small sigh of relief.

"She said: Ryuu…ji… pork… pork cutlets… don't forget… the sauce…"

He chuckled at that, the tension easing in his shoulder as they came back down from his ears to their normal position.

"You must be a good cook, for someone to be dreaming about your food."

"I guess so…" he said, feeling a little embarrassed. "I do like cooking a lot, after all. I do all the cooking for the household."

"Oh?" she said, looking up. "Pretty impressive."

They passed the time chatting while she worked over Taiga. She asked him about his interests in cooking and cleaning, and Ryuuji asked questions about what it was like working at the hospital. He was intrigued by the way it all worked. He found it impressive, how easily she could carry a conversation while being completely focused on all of her tasks.

"Well" she said, packing up her instruments, "that's it for me. I'm sure you must be tired. I'll turn out the lights for you when I go."

"Ah.. thanks" he said, feeling shy again.

"Nice chatting with you."

"You too" he replied. He stood up and bowed at her as she was leaving.

"Thank you so much for all your hard work caring for Taiga. And… for letting me stay here with her. I never actually properly introduced myself…I'm Ryuuji Takasu."

She returned his bow with a slight one of her own. "Kyo Takami. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"Thank you, nurse Takami."

She switched out the lights, allowing him to be returned to darkness.

"You really are an easy target for teasing, aren't you?"

"Taiga?!" Ryuuji exclaimed. "You're awake?"

"Duh. Did you really not notice?"

"I didn't. I guess you're a pretty good actor, aren't you?"

"That's right!"

"Sneak" he muttered. She poked her tongue out at him.

"How long have you been awake, anyway?"

"Right from the beginning!" she exclaimed, as if it were obvious. "You were making such a racket, after all. Flubbing about all flustered and everything. What a display!"

"Of course I was flustered!" he shot back, leaning forward in the chair towards her "W-We, we fell asleep together! In a public place!"

"Eep!" Taiga jumped back on the bed, clutching the bedsheets to her chest. Her eyes went wide and she grimaced as her face went red, as if she was only just now realising what had happened between them.

"W-Well, whose fault is that?!" she said, pointing a shaky finger at him. Even now, backed into a corner, the palmtop tiger still had fight in her.

"What?!"

"T-That's right!" she continued, placing a hand on her chest. "I am the sick one here, after all!" she stuck her nose into the air, her confidence returning to her as her sense of victory felt assured. "I simply can't be expected to take stock of all these things in my condition." This time the finger that pointed at him was straight and steady. It was as if she were aiming a sword at him "You should've made sure that embarrassing things didn't happen!"

"Ahhhhh" Ryuuji exclaimed, feeling bewildered at Taiga's unreasonable statements once again. "Anyway!" he exclaimed, rising to his feet and pointing a finger of his own back at her, "You were awake the whole time, you sneak! What were you plotting, anyway? Were you just being opportunistic and waiting for me to do something embarrassing so that you could tease me?"

"No!" she yelled back, a serious tone to her voice. "I was…" her finger dropped, and sadness swept itself across her face. The air between them grew still.

"Taiga…?" Ryuuji said. This hurts, he thought, as he looked into her eyes, observing the pain in them. It hurts when you hurt. The pain spread through his chest and landed in his stomach, making him feel almost sick. Ah, he thought. It's because I feel this way about her. It's because... I've always felt this way. The feeling wasn't unfamiliar, after all. Looking back on it all, it had always hurt when she was hurting. He could always tell that she was alone and in pain, and he had always, always wanted her to not be in pain. He just hadn't realised, up until now, what that actually meant about the two of them.

"Ryuuji…" Taiga said, staring back at him. "When I woke up, I thought… I don't know… I, I felt you place my head back on the pillow, and…" the tears started to well up in her eyes now. "I got scared. I thought… maybe you thought that this, that this was all a mistake. It was like 'oh, he's returning me, he's putting me back and going away.'" She looked down as she wiped her eyes with her sleeve. Fresh ones followed right behind.

"So I pretended to be asleep… so that I could just listen to you. I thought… if you were going to disappear… then I wanted to stay awake and hear as much of your voice as I could."

"I know it's stupid" she continued, pulling her gaze back up to him, "but... hey! Ryuuji!?"

Across from her, Ryuuji was crying. His face was in a grimace and his forearm was across his eyes, while tears flowed down his cheeks. His body was shaking with the sobs that were escaping from him.

"Tai..ga" he sputtered.

"Ryuuji!" she leant over the bed and hugged him, pulling him to her and clutching him with all her might. He leant forward onto the bed and hugged her back, wrapping his arms around her completely. "I'm sorry!" I didn't—"

"No! It's ok, it's just… it's so sad, it h-h-h-hurts so much, to see you cry.."

"I know" she said, spluttering from her tears. "Ryuuji… it hurts… seeing you cry, too. Always, always, always! It always hurts so much to see you sad… Ryujji…"

"Taiga" he whispered into her ear, trying to hold back his crying. "I-I… I won't leave you! Not ever."

"D-Do… do you promise?" she said, barely able to ask. He pulled back from the hug and looked into her eyes. She looked so small, so far away. There was a desperation to her stare, as if she couldn't decide if she wanted to believe it was true, and be afraid that something would take him away, or believe it a lie, some horrible prank that the world was playing on her.

"Of course I do! Taiga… I… I've known for what seems like so long now. I knew but… it was as if there was some part of me that refused to believe it. refused to believe that you would love me. It was always easier to pretend, to pretend that we were just helping each other out, that really I was chasing Minori through all of this time that we spent together."

"Me too!" she exclaimed, the fear on her face slowly being overtaken with joy at realising that she really, truly, absolutely wasn't alone. "All this time I… I thought that I was trying to be a good friend to you, and to Minori. But really… really I was just too afraid to believe that anybody would actually care about me."

And that was it. in that moment, all of their fears evaporated. All the wounds, the barbs and the landmines, all the damage that existed in their hearts ceased to be relevant to them, and they launched into a spirited conversation, trading stories of all the times they had thought that they might be developing feelings for each other. Ryuuji hopped back onto the bed with Taiga, sitting crossed legged and flailing his arms around as he regaled her with an anecdote of the time they were sitting in the diner, when he showed her the photo of his dad and she told him about eating the salty cookies. She bounced around excitedly, switching between taking in what he was saying and telling him what was going through her head. One by one, they replayed all their key memories, sharing the evidence of their love together through the thoughts and feelings they had kept hidden from each other, and even themselves, all this time. they became giddy, delirious, as they learned more and more about what the other had experienced through all of the memories they developed together.

They became more and more elated together, grinning like idiots with bright, sparkling eyes. The more they talked, the more they realised how similar they were, and how much they had both longed for each other all of this time. For Taiga, she felt the way she had felt when Ryuuji come over on Christmas Eve in the bear outfit, dressed as Santa. Only this time, she knew it was real. She didn't have to hide behind the idea of a dream in order to feel happiness.

And neither did Ryuuji. He didn't have to protect himself with layer upon layer of denial, shielding himself from the potential hurt he imagined Taiga could deliver to him by pretending that he loved her like a friend or a co-conspirator or a sister.

It was real, after all. It was really, really, real.

They talked in this way for over an hour, until they had exhausted their memories and themselves. More things would come to the surface, in time. more memories they shared, more moments, more connections would be made between the things they had said over the past few months and everything they both now knew about how the other had been feeling during those times. That's just how it was with these sorts of things. Realisations would come jump up to the front of their mind and they'd share it, basking in them together.

But for the time being, their supply was dwindling. They were starting to feel tired, and they relaxed into a comfortable posture, letting everything that had talked about wash over them. Taiga let out a big yawn stretching into Ryuuji as she got closer to him.

"God…" she muttered, "We really are hopeless, aren't we? Two idiots doing the exact same thing obliviously."

"Seriously" he said, looking down at their interlocked fingers. "No wonder everybody kept talking about how we were a couple. I guess we were the only ones who didn't know, huh?"

"Yeahhh" she sighed, clutching his hand. "All that time we wasted, plotting to get together with those two."

"Maybe it wasn't wasted."

She smiled at him. "No… you're right. Maybe if we'd had some silly crush on each other from the start, we would've been using Kitamura and Minori to get to each other instead." Ryuuji laughed at that.

"Maybe that's happening in a parallel universe somewhere right now" he replied.

"Maybe…" the smile settled on her face as she became lost in her thoughts. "But… because we were as stupid as we were… we got show our true selves for once."

"Yeah…" he said, smiling to himself. "I'm really glad… that I got to see so much of you."

"I'm glad too" she said, stroking his hand with her thumb. "I'm glad that I got to see you too, and that I got to be seen." She snuggled up to him, resting her head on his chest.

"Yeah…" he said, exhaling with contentment through his nose as he place his chin on her head. He closed his eyes, thinking over everything they had just shared, the giddy euphoria giving way to a peaceful warmth that spread through his chest.

"Hey, Ryuuji. Guess what?"

"Hmm?" he said absently.

"I love you."

"GAH!" he exclaimed, his eyes shooting open as he instantly turning red. "T-T-T-Taiga!" his neck craned around slowly towards her, moving like a creaky machine arm.

"Hmmmm?" she said sweetly, feigning innocence as she looked up to meet his gaze.

"Y-You… You just said it like that!"

"Like what?" she purred.

"L-L-Like… out of nowhere! You didn't even give me any warning or anything! You did that on purpose, didn't you!"

"Ohhhh? Whatever could you mean?" she said, struggling to contain her laughter as she toyed with him. "Besides… don't you have something to say to me?"

Fine, Ryuuji thought. I won't lose to you! "Taiga" he said, steeling himself as he looked into her eyes.

"I love you too." Her heart skipped a beat as he said it to her. They watched each other as something changed in both of their eyes. Something very special, that both of them had locked away a long time ago. It came out in that moment, and it would never go away again.

It was the realisation of the truth. That somebody could come into their lives and truly love them. what they had thought of as love, before, was now filed away in some different category of their brains in a miscellaneous folder.

They had maintained a crush on each other's best friends, and thought that had been love. They had admired them from afar, but had never really closed the distance between the fantasy versions of those people and who they actually were in reality. Instead, they had used that time to get closer and closer to each other, without having realised it.

And now, as a result, they had been able to close the distance in each other's hearts, and create a new world where they were both loved, and cherished.

"Now that you've said those words to me" Taiga said as she buried her face in Ryuuji's chest, "You really, really reaallllly can't ever leave me."

He smiled, resting his forehead on top of her messy hair. "I'll be right here, by your side. Forever."

Slowly, their breathing became slower and more rhythmic, and they fell asleep once again in each other's arms.