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Act 1: Fumi
“Fumi, you’re incredible!”
She smiles, stepping forward to hug Claudine and kiss her, rather chastely as they’re in public. They leave the presentation hall, stepping out into the old, stone foyer of the college. “I messed up twice,” she complains. “Once majorly!”
“Well for the uninitiated, it sounded perfect.” Claudine takes the plastic-wrapped poster from her, tucking it under one arm. Outside, it is raining, and they pause, rearranging and pulling up their hoods. Fumi pulls out her umbrella and covers them both as they step outside into the darkness. It’s early spring and the sun still sets early in the evening.
Fumi sighs, relaxing against Claudine, who has slipped her hand into Fumi’s and is massaging her thumb against the back of Fumi’s hand. “Well in any case, it doesn’t matter,” she says, mostly to herself. “I’ve already defended my thesis earlier today, the poster presentation was a formality.” She doesn’t think about how only Claudine has come to see her, how neither her parents or sister have made it out to see the culmination of her work. Or rather, of course she thinks of it, but she pushes the thoughts aside, turning back to Claudine’s teasing smirk.
“My little genius.”
Fumi is so relieved at the fact that she’s finished her advanced degree, she doesn’t even have the energy to argue at the blow against her height. “Gotta be a genius. Can’t lose that scholarship,” she quips back. And it’s true, she thinks. With all the money in the family going to hospital bills, she has made sure she could be self-sufficient since high school.
“Well, if we’re being frugal, let me buy you dinner.”
Fumi knows Claudine has a full time job at the university hospital, so one dinner will cost her far less than it will cost Fumi, who has been eating mostly cup noodles to finish this thesis and prepare to begin her internship at a law firm. “Alright, spoil me,” she says, her voice teasing lightly.
“Wow, you never let me spoil you,” Claudine says. They approach Fumi’s apartment, just off-campus, and run inside to get out of the rain and stash the poster. “I think I will.”
They’ve only been dating for a couple months, but Fumi likes Claudine a lot. She likes how easy it is to talk with her, and how flexible she is with Fumi’s busy schedule. She has her own busy schedule, working 12-hour shifts and sometimes overtime as a nurse at the hospital. She likes how Claudine moves just as fast as Fumi wants to: which is to say rather slowly, but never seems impatient.
Now, Fumi takes just a minute to change from her formal presentation clothes into a more casual outfit, and they return into the rainy Tokyo night to eat dinner. Claudine wraps an arm around her lower back as they huddle together under the umbrella, planning TV shows and projects to fill Fumi’s time on her time off before the next part of her life begins.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Fumi wakes up Monday morning of the next week, amazed that she has nothing to do. In another two weeks her law internship begins, but for right now she has a break, which is a fairly foreign concept to her. She thinks of that fateful day - her middle school graduation, when no one attended because her parents were with Shiori in the hospital. She thinks of that evening, overhearing her parents worried about expenses, and realizing she needed to get a job if she wanted to have things of her own, if she wanted to go to university. Since then, there had been little leisure, only studies and labor. Now, with a wide open day for the first time in years, she wonders what to do.
She supposes she ought to earn some money. School is over which means her scholarship money is no longer available, and she is only going to get paid a pittance at her internship. But for the first day, she finds herself laying in bed extra late, turning the pages on some trashy romance novel she picked up at a convenience store one evening and never found time to read. It is the first time she can remember wasting half a day away doing absolutely nothing. It is incredibly fun.
She wonders, for just a moment, if Claudine has the day off, if they can spend the afternoon together, but it is Monday, one of Claudine’s usual work days. Fumi gets up anyways, unable to while away an entire day, and begins dressing. A strange instinct overtakes her, one that hasn’t hit for a while, and she searches her dresser for her rose hair clips to pin her loose hair back. But she knows they’re gone, and have been gone for years, careless Shiori having lost them around that same time Fumi started working. Her favorite accessory, not only taken by a covetous sister, but lost. She mourns them even still, ten years later, as she tucks her hair behind her ear.
As soon as she slips on a sweater, her cell phone rings. She rushes around her bed in the cramped student housing to pick it up.
“Hello?”
“Onee-chan…”
Fumi’s hand nearly trembles on the phone. Speak of the devil, indeed. Suddenly the bright and sunny morning is cloudy, tinged with gray. It probably has been the whole time, she realizes, but the illusion of the open day is shattered, and the gloom of March permeates. “Shiori…” she chokes out. She wonders if perhaps word got to Shiori that she finished her degree, if Shiori has called to congratulate her. That must be it, she assures herself hollowly.
“Onee-chan, I’m at the hospital.”
Fumi takes a deep breath, settles the misplaced frustration that springs forth with this phrase. This is her little sister, admitted to the hospital. She steadies herself. “How are you doing?” she asks.
“I’m ok,” Shiori says, but the breathless way she says it tells Fumi she has another lung infection. “I’ll probably only be here for a few days.”
Unless she needs IV antibiotics, in which case it’ll be more like two weeks, at least…. Years of this routine have made Fumi an expert on medical topics she didn’t wish to know about. “Which hospital?” she asks. She wonders if she’ll go to visit.
She thinks of her childhood, spent in the children’s wing of the hospital accompanying Shiori. Playing with Shiori to keep her from crying when the doctors would poke and prod. Sharing the rose hair clips, one apiece, since Shiori was always asking. Shiori always wanted them to be the same. She always wanted to be like Fumi. Fumi hasn’t set foot in a hospital since starting university.
Shiori’s voice is soft, as if she’s straining a bit, as she says, “University.”
Fumi swallows, sitting on the edge of her bed. She knows who else dwells on the pulmonary unit at the university hospital. She feels restless, suddenly desperate that Shiori and Claudine do not meet. She turns back towards the window, and the clouds open up at last, March rain pouring down cold on the panes.
“I was just calling because mom and dad are still-”
The rest is missed as Fumi hangs up the phone, her chest a cloudy mess of foreboding and dark memories. She tosses the phone back onto the bed, her fingers still trembling. She doesn’t want to go. She wants to stay home and never see another hospital corridor ever again.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
But in the end, Fumi can’t stay away. Her desire to know, once and for all, that Shiori and Claudine are indeed not on the same floor is too strong, so she gets on the train around 5PM, a couple hours before the end of Claudine’s 12-hour shift.
The university hospital is just two stops away from Fumi’s apartment. It would be easy to walk there on a normal day, but currently it is pouring rain, so she shelters on the train, disembarking on the underground platform that exits directly into the basement of the hospital. She carries the romance novel, intending to give it to Shiori. She hasn’t finished it, but she figures she’ll be getting to work again now anyways, so it doesn’t matter.
She goes up one floor to the main entrance, asking the volunteer at the desk about Shiori’s location. She gets a foreboding feeling as a roll of thunder comes through and she is directed to the fifth floor pulmonary step-down unit: not quite an intensive care unit, but not quite a general floor. She isn’t sure where Claudine works exactly, but this sounds like the place.
She rides the elevator in silence, a dietary worker beside her, and realizes that it is the dinner hour. She hasn’t eaten since breakfast. She hates that even now, after all these years, Shiori can still get to her in the way that she does. All Fumi wants is her freedom, to live her own life away from the sister who has taken her childhood, but even now the bonds of family linger, sticky with their complicated webs of affection and resentment.
The fifth floor is quiet, tranquil. There is none of the beeping and scurrying that Fumi has grown accustomed to in hospitals. When she finally does hear some sort of alarm go off, it is allowed to beep only thrice before it is promptly ceased. The walls are painted a light blue, and curtains are navy, the nurses in similar navy scrubs. She does not see Claudine.
506… 508… she walks a bit further. 514. She knocks, and sees Shiori’s face light up in surprise and happiness. Shiori is surrounded by books, so many books on the bed beside her, and it makes Fumi feel silly bringing her another one. The familiar site of oxygen tubing is laced around her ears, coming to rest under her nares, and an IV is inserted in her arm. She looks tired, with dark circles under her eyes. But still, she looks like Shiori, a smaller, softer version of Fumi. She’s older than Fumi remembers, and Fumi searches her mind to remember the last time she’s seen her sister? A year? Two?
“Onee-chan!” Shiori calls, despite the fact that they are both bonafide adults by now.
“Shiori,” she says, unprepared for the emotions that have overcome her, seeing her little sister in the hospital, once again. It doesn’t matter that she has her law degree. For all intents and purposes, she could be eight years old again, here to keep Shiori company while their mom takes a break to get some errands done. “What’s going on? What are they saying?” she asks. Somehow it’s so much more real seeing Shiori here, than it is on the phone. She washes her hands and puts on a mask, only then moving close enough to see her sister, to move her hair from where it’s fallen into her face. A sudden lump in her throat as she thinks of the rose that used to sit in Shiori’s hair, and a small tremor of anger as she thinks of Shiori’s carelessness in losing the clips.
“The book cart was by earlier,” Shiori says, her voice hoarse, as if she just finished a breathing treatment. “I got this book on horoscopes. It says February 3rd - you - is depicted by a train entering a tunnel.”
Fumi has to take a minute to digest this. She wonders what Shiori is up to, avoiding talk of her condition to feed her some astrology drivel. Knowing Shiori, she’s either putting on a brave face for Fumi’s sake, or she’s just exhausted and wants to be babied. “And what did the doctor say?” she asks.
“We’re still running cultures.”
Fumi does a double take as a beautiful woman in a long white coat enters, her silvery hair flowing behind her. She washes her hands, puts on gloves, and pulls out her stethoscope to listen to Shiori’s lungs in an entrancing routine. “I’m Yukishiro Akira, the pulmonologist. Are you Yumeoji-san’s sister?”
Fumi nods, rather dazed by this whole display. “This is Fumi-onee-chan,” Shiori says, choking a bit on whatever sputum is lodged in her throat. Fumi and Akira wait for Shiori to compose herself, and Fumi thinks about trains entering tunnels. That can’t be right, she thinks. She just finished law school. She is a train leaving a tunnel.
Shiori composes herself finally, and Akira listens to her breathing. “Right now we’ll stick with the regular IV,” Akira says. “If the culture comes back positive, we’ll need a PICC line.” Akira bows politely and leaves the sisters to their visit.
Fumi sighs, leaning back in the chair. “How did you even get sick?” she asks Shiori. “You need to be careful.”
Shiori looks ashamed, and Fumi feels a bit bad for laying into her with something she’s sure Shiori already knows, but at that moment, Claudine enters the room with a polite knock, eyebrows raised as she spies Fumi. She is all professional demeanor, however, placing a tray on Shiori’s bedside table, and sliding the table over the bed.
“Sorry for the delay,” she says. “Sometimes the kitchen doesn’t get everyone’s preferences on the first day.” She smiles. “But you did let me get my daily steps in running down there. And I got to bully a doctor friend of mine on the way.”
Shiori beams back. “Thank you again, really.”
Fumi looks on, unamused, as Claudine pulls Shiori’s hair out of the way and tucks a bib around her. She’s unamused as Claudine raises the head of the bed for Shiori, something she knows Shiori is fully capable of, and moves books from the bed. She’s still unamused as Claudine brings over a sanitizing wipe, opens Shiori’s milk carton, and asks her if there’s anything else she can do, before nodding politely to them both and clearing from the room.
“You made her get you a second meal?” Fumi almost spits as soon as Claudine is out of earshot.
Shiori just starts in on the meal, pudding first, which is just wholly incorrect to Fumi, and an affront to her, when she’s so hungry. “You can have the first one, it’s on the counter over there,” Shiori says.
Fumi is almost proud enough to refuse, but she’s so infernally hungry that she grabs the tray, eating the vegetables, rice, and soup first like one should. She sees why Shiori turned this one away: there are both carrots and shellfish in it, both Shiori no-nos. But Fumi likes them fine, so she digs in. “You shouldn’t make her do everything for you, she’s a nurse, not your mother,” Fumi chastises between bites. And she wonders if she’s mad at Shiori, or if she is just tired, really really tired, and thinks that having someone tuck her in for a meal and wait on her hand and foot might not be so bad.
Shiori bites her lip, as if reflecting on her actions, but then her eyebrows contort into a puzzled expression. “Onee-chan. Is this about me? Or is this about the nurse?” she asks.
“Whatever you’re implying, don’t,” Fumi warns. She’s been away from Shiori for a while now, she let her guard down from Shiori’s cleverness.
“You like her.”
Fumi does her absolute best to maintain a neutral expression, to not react at all, but she knows it’s not enough when Shiori’s eyes widen in surprise at her own sharpness. “Oh my gosh, you do!”
They haven’t kept in touch enough for Shiori to know that Fumi is dating anyone, let alone for her to know it’s Claudine, but her intuition is as good as ever. “I don’t,” she denies in vain.
“Wait, do you know each other, or is this a love at first sight thing?” Shiori has moved on to her fruit cup, the next sweetest thing on her tray, staring at Fumi with rapt interest.
“Text me about the results,” Fumi says, placing the novel down on the table beside Shiori’s dinner tray. She places the half empty first dinner tray back on the counter, washes her hands, and leaves.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________
She waits in the lobby for Claudine to finish her shift. It’s nearly 7:30 by the time Claudine gets downstairs, and Fumi is thrumming with energy, imagining Shiori demanding Claudine stay late, read a book by her bedside, maybe the romance Fumi left with her.
“Sorry, sorry,” Claudine says, out of breath. “I got your text. But someone coded like an hour ago, and it’s been a mess since then.”
And Fumi can see it: the way Claudine is sweating just a bit, how her hair is falling from her ponytail, the way her forehead can’t quite uncrease. She knows she can’t ask if that person made it, but she wants to.
“Let’s go back to my place first,” Claudine suggests. “I need to shower.”
Fumi waits in Claudine’s living room while she showers, curled up on her couch and scanning the job postings on her phone for something she can do to earn a bit more money in the time off between her law internship. Frustrated, she sets her phone down, spying a piece of paper set down on the table beside Claudine’s lanyard and keys. Paper written in Shiori’s handwriting.
August 1: Glassblowers shaping perfect vases with controlled breathing. You are the Sun. Focus your energy before you burn out.
Fumi wants to tear it up.
When Claudine emerges, her hair is still damp and she’s in sweatpants and an old T-shirt, indicating to Fumi that she has no plans to go out again that night, especially not in the ceaseless rain.
She pulls out a tin of cookies from the kitchen and puts on a kettle for tea, pouring them each a mug when it’s done. “I take it that’s your little sister?” she says, when she comes to sit down. Her voice isn’t pitying, which Fumi appreciates. But still, it reminds Fumi of being in school, before she went to university and stopped telling people she had a sister. Every day, her classmates and the underclassmen would ask for updates on Shiori, ’How’s Shiori?’ ‘When will Shiori be back in class?’ ‘Can you bring this to the hospital?’ She thought she might disappear then.
“Mm,” Fumi confirms. “Shiori’s been sick since we’ve been kids. You don’t need to dote on her like that, she can do things for herself.”
“What’s wrong? It’s just a bit of attention,” Claudine asks her.
But Claudine doesn’t understand. Attention is finite, like the oxygen in the tanks beside Shiori’s bed. And like money, like time, attention was no different. Shiori consumed them all.
The next morning, she gets a text that the cultures came back, and Shiori will indeed need a central catheter and two weeks of IV antibiotics. She realizes suddenly that she is a train entering a tunnel, and realizes with fear that it curves midway through. She cannot see the exit.
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Act 2: Claudine
“Gosh, I wonder if I really am stupid,” Shiori laughs, pushing away her mostly finished breakfast tray. She is watching a quiz program on the hospital room’s television set, trying to play along and failing quite badly, Claudine has to admit, but Claudine would not call her patient in room 514 ‘stupid’ by any means. “Fumi onee-chan would have won the fifty million yen by now.”
“You should tell your sister to go on this program,” Claudine jokes, detaching an empty oxygen tank and replacing it with a full one in seconds. “Your sats don’t look great. If you don’t start breathing better, they’re going to make you wear a proper mask instead of just the nasal tubing,” Claudine warns.
Shiori shudders at the thought, and though she doesn’t respond, Claudine knows she understands. Shiori is interesting. She’s like a sponge, taking in everything and responding only to what she finds interesting. “Fumi would never listen to me. About anything. You’d have to tell her to go on television,” she says.
Claudine raises an eyebrow, warning Shiori that she is on the clock, and that her personal relationship with her patient’s sister is off-limits, and Shiori just smirks back. Claudine is an only child, but she wonders if Shiori is what it would be like to have a younger sister. Certainly, it’s fun to dote on Shiori the way she would imagine doting on a younger sister. “You want solids or polka dots today?” she asks, holding up two options of hospital pajamas, a rare service, as normally she hands patients whatever is top of the pile.
Shiori shrugs, but Claudine sees how she stares longer at the pink of the dotted pair, so she tosses those to Shiori. It’s really quite drab in here, without friends, family, flowers, cards, so she takes care making sure Shiori has the colorful pajamas, the curtains open, a good selection of books and music, at least. “There was a man on the second floor with stripes,” Shiori says, grinning a bit, and it’s the perkiest Claudine has seen her in a couple days. She wonders if she ought to ask Akira about a pass to take Shiori off the floor.
“Stripes, huh? I’ll have to keep my eyes peeled,” she replies, turning to move the tray to the counter across the room. “I’m not even gonna ask how you got to the second floor.”
“You only come in three times a week, you miss stuff.” Shiori’s teasing is interrupted by coughing, enough to dislodge the oxygen tubing around her ears. Claudine returns to the bedside to adjust the angle on the bed to help her clear her throat, and sets the tubing right again. After, Shiori looks pale, winded.
“Come on, let’s not have so many adventures this early in the morning.”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________
On her break, Claudine catches Yachiyo with two coffees in hand in the elevator. She takes one, grateful for the energy boost.
“What are you doing, that was for-”
“Tendo Maya, I know. Give her my regards.”
“You’re the worst,” Yachiyo mutters, shaking her head.
“Definitely not as bad as two surgeons who hook up in the on-call room,” Claudine says, causing the orderly in the elevator with them to widen her eyes, exiting at the next floor.
“Thanks for that,” Yachiyo says.
“No problem.” Claudine laughs, smirking at her friend as she escapes when the elevator reaches the fifth floor, leaving Yachiyo to battle it out with Maya over the single remaining coffee.
She drinks the coffee quickly, then rounds on her three rooms: one patient on a ventilator who needs to be turned every two hours to prevent bed sores, one older woman getting over an infection whose husband is there daily tending to her every need, and Yumeoji Shiori.
She is surprised when there are two people she doesn’t expect in Shiori’s room. The first is Isurugi Futaba, the physical therapist, helping Shiori with exercises to maintain her strength and muscle tone while she’s holed up in the hospital. The other, curled up in a chair in the corner, and reading a law tome, is Fumi.
“That’s it, excellent. Now we’re going to repeat that ten times.” Futaba’s voice is gentle, and she watches patiently as Shiori completes the task she’s set forth with a resistance band. Claudine can see a light sheen of sweat on Shiori’s forehead even from such a small effort, and checks her vitals on the overhead monitor, even though she knows Futaba’s already doing so.
“Wow, it’s a party in here,” she says, by way of announcing her presence. She nearly blushes at the way both Yumeoji sisters’ faces light up at her arrival, so she turns to Futaba instead. “Thank you for your help,” she says.
“Of course. If it’s alright with you and the charge nurse, I was thinking about adding Yumeoji in around this time each afternoon.”
Claudine nods. “That works out well. It doesn’t interrupt meal time or breathing treatments. She can even walk around as long as you’re fine with taking that IV pole.” She thinks about earlier, Shiori lighting up with even just a little freedom outside the confines of the room. She doesn’t say anything about the charge nurse, hoping maybe it will set Kaoruko off for some unforeseen reason.
“Nine… Ten… I don’t know if I can do this everyday,” Shiori says, her voice taking on the ‘little sister whine’ Claudine noticed she lapsed into when she was feeling especially tired or sick.
“We’ll take it slow,” Futaba assures her kindly, at the same time Fumi says, “You will do whatever treatment the doctor orders.”
“But we’ve been at it for a while, please relax for the rest of today. I’ll see you tomorrow, Yumeoji-san.” Futaba stands, bowing to both sisters, and packs her things, washs her hands, and leaves.
Claudine meets her just outside the room. “Futaba,” she says, smirking. “Still taking consults on 5 just to hang out with Kaoruko?”
“Hey Kuroko,” Futaba greets, but she sounds tired. “It’s more like Kaoruko enters the consults specifically requesting me in order to drag me up here and order me around all afternoon.”
Claudine laughs dryly. “Well, what do you think? Is she doing alright?”
Futaba shrugs. “Despite her casual appearance that I can only assume she puts on for her sister’s benefit, she was putting in maximum effort, so she gets the gold star for being a good sport. Still… I stopped us early because her lungs are bad. She has next to no stamina…”
“Yeah I figured as much. Ok, we’ll see you back here tomorrow. Thanks. We have a breathing treatment scheduled before dinner.”
Claudine enters 514 again, surprised to see Fumi has put down her book and taken an interest in her sister.
“Tomorrow you better not waste that woman’s time,” she chastises her sister.
Shiori looks repentant, though Claudine can see her heart rate is still up. But instead of agreeing or apologizing to Fumi, Shiori just continues to stare at her sister, as if trying to forge their connection through sheer willpower.
It’s interesting, Claudine thinks, the limits in which she can act. As a nurse, as a girlfriend, as a friend. There are lines she could and couldn’t cross. Things she knows but couldn’t reveal. Times when it is better to speak, and times it is better to keep silent. So for now, she just turns down the blinds, blocking out the fading evening and the pitter patter of endless rain, props an extra pillow behind Shiori, and pages Akira that Shiori’s vitals are irregular.
She busies herself preparing the nebulizer for the evening breathing treatment, but Fumi doesn’t seem to mind that she is there. “You always do this,” she says to Shiori.
“Onee-chan,” Shiori says, finally responding directly to something Fumi has said. “Tell me what I’m doing, and I’ll stop.”
Fumi leans forward, her arms resting on her thighs as she stares at Shiori. She smiles, but there’s no joy in the expression. “Well, I really can’t tell you to stop being sick, can I?” She laughs, but it’s harsh, more like a bark, really. “Somehow, it’s always the same. Somehow, there’s people waiting hand and foot on poor, helpless Shiori, until there’s no more money to send me to school, no one around to even watch me graduate, people… mad I had the audacity to study law instead of medicine… God… my entire life has been a disaster somehow… because of you!”
Shiori’s face goes through a series of emotions, from confusion to sadness to understanding. Claudine looks back to Fumi and can see tears leaking from her eyes, falling into her mask. She realizes in that moment how much they really resemble each other - Fumi and Shiori - and then Shiori coughs.
It isn’t like her usual coughs, it is wetter and deeper. Claudine is both shocked and unsurprised when blood escapes beyond Shiori’s hand, flecking the crisp white bedsheets with crimson splatters. A little even reaches Fumi, who looks completely unprepared to have both tears and her sister’s blood on her face.
“Shiori!” she calls, on her feet almost immediately, her recovery better than what Claudine predicts. She’s wiping the blood away, her arm around her sister, eyes begging Claudine to do something, anything to help her little sister.
Claudine has taken the time to put gloves on, then a gown and mask, and catches a nurse in the hall and asks her to re-page Dr. Yukishiro and tell her it’s urgent. Then she moves to the sisters.
____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
“What?” comes the muffled voice of Yachiyo through the door.
Claudine rolls her eyes, knocking again at the on-call room door. She knows the code, but she also knows better than to burst in on Yachiyo and Maya during long call. “Let me in,” she demands.
The door opens, revealing Yachiyo in a perfectly tailored white coat, not a hair out of place, though her name badge is on the wrong side. Claudine clucks, unclipping it and putting it back on correctly. “Whatever,” Yachiyo chirps. “I have to go admit someone or something.”
Claudine catches the door before it closes, finding herself alone in the room with Tendo Maya. She reaches into the minifridge, pulling out a popsicle, and sits down in one of the spinning chairs. The doctors always got the good snacks.
“You don’t work nights,” Maya says, by way of greeting.
“Tickets to France are expensive. Working overtime.” She leans back, sucking on the popsicle and lazily spinning in the chair. “It’s hard being Akira’s favorite.”
Maya lets out a rare chuckle. “It’s true. Akira seems like the type to like one type of nurse,” she concedes.
“Well if she likes that, she should work in a clinic. One doctor, one nurse. I can’t be here 100 hours a week like you and she can. I have a life.”
Maya extends her leg, stopping Claudine’s spinning chair. “Saijou-san, are you implying that I ‘don’t have a life?’”
Now Claudine smirks. “Isn’t this just your luxury resort? Room and board,” she says, gesturing to the pathetic mattress and the mini fridge in the on-call room. “Plenty to keep your mind occupied in the hospital. There’s a gym, a gift shop, wow there’s even a pool. And rumor has it, there’s even been some-”
“I’ll stop you there.”
Claudine smirks. “Well, I’m happy for you and Yachiyo, I really am.”
“Funny way of showing it.”
Claudine shrugs, fiddling around with the things on Maya’s desk as she finishes her snack.
“Why are you here? To spend your break annoying me at 3AM?”
Claudine’s hands pause over the model of the brain, and she turns back to meet Maya’s eyes. She shakes her head. “No. I’m here because you’re the most logical person I know. And I trust you.”
She doesn’t expect Maya to blush when she says this, but the fact that it happens nearly makes her blush. It’s by far the cutest she’s ever seen Maya.
“What… what kind of logical problem can I help you with?” asks Maya, trying to regain her bearings.
“Well that’s the thing. It’s not logical. I just want your input.”
Maya nods, trying to follow.
Claudine begins. “I’ve been seeing this girl for a couple months. And well… now her sister is my patient.”
Maya’s eyebrows raise a fraction of an inch, but she makes no other reaction.
“And well… well nothing. I don’t know.”
“You must have come to me for a reason…”
Claudine sighs, unable to articulate what she wants to say. She doesn’t like Shiori, at least not how she likes Fumi, she just… understands her.
“Do you remember Arrie? And Rats?” she asks Maya, knowing the neurosurgeon of all people will be able to keep up with her quick change in direction with this conversation.
“I do,” Maya says calmly.
“I was thinking of that little girl recently. The actress.” Claudine says, turning back to tinker with the items on the desk. “How she was huge for a few years. I followed her closely as a kid, we were the same age. She got sick.”
Maya, behind her, remains as still as ever. “And then what happened?” she asks.
Claudine shrugs. “I don’t know. She got better, after a long while in the hospital. Never made it back to the stage, I guess. I feel like… watching that… as a kid, it just… made me sympathetic to the sister’s situation.” She turns back to Maya, who nods.
“It sounds like it’s a problem between the sisters, in the end,” Maya says, after a pause. “I think it’s enough if you’re good to your girlfriend and do your duties at work for the sister.” She purses her lips, considering. “You can care about both of them.”
Claudine nods, grateful, at least, from the validation from someone as level-headed as Maya. She’s surprised when Maya looks tentative, for the first time that evening, and she raises her eyebrows, encouraging her to continue.
“I was a fan of that actress as well,” Maya says. “I was concerned when she fell ill. It’s what made me decide to become a doctor, actually.”
The weight of Maya’s words settles in Claudine’s chest and spreads as a shocking, yet comforting warmth. Perhaps it’s just that they’re discussing this in the wee hours of the morning. Perhaps it’s just that she’s never expected this kind of confession from Maya, her closest friend since she started work at the hospital. But before she realizes it, she has tears in her eyes.
“I was relieved to find out you were able to live a healthy life, even if you didn’t return to the stage,” Maya says.
Eyes blinded by tears, Claudine stands from her chair and crosses the few feet between them to hug Maya, who looks wholly unprepared for this assault. “You stupid, stupid child,” Claudine berates. “You became a doctor because of me? I could hit you! But you’re such a good doctor. Argh, you’re so infuriating.”
“Careful of the hands, those are the moneymakers.”
She laughs a little, releasing Maya from the hug and collecting herself. Suddenly, she feels drained. “Thanks for listening, Maya. Please go home after this shift. Get a hobby. Stay away from here. Meet with Yachiyo like… at a cafe or something. Make it official after all this time.”
Maya slides her chair back to her desk, preparing to go back to work, ignoring the final jabs. “I thought I was giving you advice.”
“Sure. Goodnight.”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Act 3: Shiori
Shiori hurts. The muscles between her ribs hurt with the feeling of being used far too often for coughing, and she is a little dizzy with fever. She is sore from trying to keep up with the exercises Futaba prescribed, which she isn’t sure if she still has to do, since Futaba hasn’t come back, but the resistance band is still there, and she is trying to keep her strength up so she dutifully does them each day.
Her throat tastes like the metallic, slightly salty taste of sputum mixed with blood, and she isn’t sure if it is real or imagined anymore. She continues to see the image of her blood on Fumi’s cheek, and to hear the words Fumi spoke cursing her very existence the other night.
Most of all, she is lonely. The loneliness is pervasive throughout her life, but it’s the most profound when she’s in the hospital, when no one comes to visit, when no flowers or cards appear at her bedside. When Fumi came by, even if it was just to berate her, it was nice, because what were older sisters for if not to nag? She wonders idly if Fumi will make it back before she discharges.
She thinks of when they were children, when she would come to the hospital more often, and for longer, in the colorful children’s wards, and Fumi was dutifully by her side every evening and weekend. How they would watch anime together in the evenings, venture to the activity room together, get all the best snacks from the kind nurses. Staying in the hospital then was still terrible, but with Fumi beside her, it was much more bearable.
Yukishiro Akira enters the room, breaking up her litany of woes to ask her about her pain levels and assess her condition, which is pretty much the same thing she had been doing internally, before. But Akira is beautiful and healthy and smart, so it’s easy to perk up and try to please Akira.
Shiori might be biased, but she does think that Akira has a soft spot for her. She wouldn’t go so far as to say Akira likes her, but she’s encountered enough doctors and nurses throughout her life to get a pretty good read on them. There’s something in the way Akira moves her gown aside to listen to her lungs, or rather the way she ties it back up: like a delicate package.
“Lui-san did an excellent job,” Akira says. “She managed to staunch the bleed with expert precision.” The same woman who inserted her PICC performed an embolization, stopping the bleed in her lung quickly. Now life Is back to normal, just waiting on the antibiotics to finish.
“Yukishiro-san, is it possible to leave this room?” she asks.
She’s pleased when Akira doesn’t ask her where she could possibly want to go. She doesn’t really have a destination in mind, after all, but the hospital is large and this room is getting claustrophobic. Akira considers, putting an elegant finger to an elegant chin. “I don’t see why not,” she says. “But not unaccompanied. You must bring a nurse, or the therapist, and only when they have the time.”
“And Pole-kun.”
“Pardon?”
Shiori nods at the IV pole and the antibiotics, her constant companion. She thinks of when she was a child, when Fumi would stay with her at the hospital all day, decorating the IV pole with stickers and ribbons and other accessories. Childish, but a fond memory nonetheless.
Akira cracks the smallest of smiles. “Yes, and him. I’ll be back after lunch.”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
There are two types of days in the hospital, and they are the Claudine days, and the other nurse days. Usually, when Claudine is not there, she gets the charge nurse, since she is “difficult”, and Hanayagi Kaoruko is not her favorite nurse.
It seems Kaoruko’s method of helping you heal is to put things just out of reach, or to be in and out of your hair as efficiently as possible so as not to disturb the much needed rest of a sick and ailing person. But Shiori is so starved for human contact she risks it, speaking even to the prickly Kaoruko, just for the sake of conversation.
“You have a thing with Isurugi-san, don’t you?” she inquires, as Kaoruko is busy fiddling with her morning meds.
“Who I have a ‘thing’ with is none of your business,” Kaoruko snaps back. “Besides, aren’t you trying to start a ‘thing’ with Kuro-han and Yukishiro-han?”
Shiori had thought that her recent lung embolization was the reason the physical therapist hadn’t returned, but now she wonders if there was a different reason. Now wasn’t the time to get into this. This was a mistake. She decides to back down. “Are you a Leo? No… wait… Pisces?”
Kaoruko cocks her head from the far side of the med cart, and Shiori can’t tell if it’s because she doesn’t understand, or because Shiori is right. She decides to press on. “I’ve only just gotten a book on astrology, I’m not very good yet. I know those are pretty much opposite, but it’s just that Saijou-san is a Leo and you have some things in common. But the more I think about it… you have a soulmate, don’t you?” She pictures the classic image of pisces, the two fish swimming together in a pond. Definitely Kaoruko’s nature.
Kaoruko blushes, finishes with the medications, and per usual, places them and the small cup of water just out of Shiori’s reach on the bedside table. Then she pulls the med cart from the room.
________________________________________________________________________________________________________
She gets Claudine as her nurse most days after that, probably because she scared Kaoruko off, but she doesn’t mind. She likes Claudine. Sometimes she wonders exactly how much.
“What are you working on?” Claudine asks as she sits in bed, laptop open, book in her lap.
“Just a little bit of work.”
“Are you a student?”
Shiori laughs, despite the pain laughing causes in her ribs, and the pain the thought of being a student brings her. She imagines a desk, a class trip, sitting in a cafeteria. All vague ideas or imagined concepts due to how much school she’d missed due to hospitalizations. She imagines a friend. There really was nothing funny about Claudine’s suggestion at all, she realizes. “No, I’m not.”
“I suppose you’re a bit old for that.”
Shiori nods. “I’m a translator,” she says, feeling a small knife of guilt in her gut as she confides a secret to Claudine that she hasn’t shared even with Fumi.
“Really? What do you translate?” Now Claudine comes in closer, drawn into Shiori’s orbit.
“I only know Korean, so I mostly translate Korean texts and writings to Japanese. It’s really rare that I get to do a novel like this. Most of my work is captioning videos or translating news articles.”
“It’s work you can do from anywhere,” Claudine marvels, peering at her progress on the screen. The blonde wavy ponytail comes to rest on Shiori’s shoulder, golden and shining, and Shiori thinks about Fumi. She wonders if she is right: that Shiori does want to take and take and take everything that is hers. She can’t deny that at least a small part of her wants Claudine’s attention for herself. She hasn’t seen Fumi since the day she coughed up blood. Half of her wants to ask Claudine how Fumi is, since she knows they see each other on Claudine’s days off. And half of her is content not knowing, because no mention of Fumi allows her to live in the world where Claudine is just her pretty nurse and not also her sister’s girlfriend.
It’s frustrating, she thinks. Fumi is out in the real world. The world where every other woman lived. She could go anywhere and do anything as she pleased. Shiori lives in a liminal world of sanitized rooms and corridors and isolation and procedures. If she’s exposed to so few people and one of them is golden and beautiful and shows an interest in her… shouldn’t she reach out and grab onto such a ray of sunlight?
“Do you think we’d have time today to go to the roof?” Shiori asks, as Claudine rights herself, setting about opening the blinds.
“Your cough has gone way down…” Claudine concedes. It’s true. The antibiotics are ten days in, and Shiori is feeling much better. “Sure. We can go after lunch if you do your exercises and if I can get the discharge next door taken care of without any trouble.”
“I’ll get Pole-kun dressed up!”
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Shiori is waiting around 2PM, having added a sweater from home over the hospital pajamas, and tied a turquoise ribbon around the IV pole for the occasion. But it is not Claudine who returns to take her out, but Fumi.
She is pushing the wheelchair, however, and so Shiori gets in. The pole is mounted on the back and they set off. She wonders, mostly joking, if Fumi is going to throw her off the roof. She supposes she would let her.
They ride the elevator silently, but Shiori is surprised when they exit at the lobby. She hadn’t even noticed they were going down, not up. Fumi pushes her to the coffee shop adjacent to the main entrance, and orders them two cups of tea. She sticks them in a paper carton which she gives Shiori to hold while they get back on the elevator, this time to the very top: the roof.
The air is chilly, cold through her inhale and exhale, but nice. She has been breathing the same air the whole time, the same hospital air mixed with pure oxygen and now this is new air, ‘real’ air, and the crispness only enhances it. It’s not raining, but the clouds are forever gray overhead. The university hospital roof is empty on this chilly spring day, but it is set up to accommodate visitors. There are a few tables and chairs on the flat roof, and a fence across the border to keep anyone from tumbling off. She supposes, at least, that she isn’t going to die up here.
Fumi pushes her to a small table and sits in the chair across, and Shiori passes Fumi one of the teas. She holds the other in her hands, knowing at present it will just burn her tongue, and flinching as Fumi does burn her tongue. Fumi pretends nothing happened, holding the tea in her hands.
“I went to your apartment,” Fumi opens. She has not returned since the night she yelled, since the night Shiori had a bleed in her lung, so Shiori isn’t sure what to make of this statement. Fumi certainly had a spare key, but she had never, ever used it.
“You didn’t bring my favorite plushies,” Shiori complains. She doesn’t know where Fumi is going with this, so she has no choice but to play coy, to be the bratty baby sister she’s grown into, her shy, anxious self plastered over with the facade of someone who has it all together, at least inside the walls of a hospital.
And Fumi looks lost. She doesn’t know what to say. Her eyes are blank like they were once she had said her piece the other night. “You have so many supplements,” is all she says.
Only then does Shiori’s hand start to tremble.
“You have so many books,” she continues. Shiori knows what she’s saying: You have a whole secret life, apart from me. And it was true, she does.
Shiori’s lip tembles as well.
“You know Korean?” Fumi asks, tears in her eyes. Shiori thinks guiltily of telling this secret to Claudine, and realizes then that Claudine had indeed kept it from Fumi.
Shiori wants to shrink away, she is unprepared for the confrontation about the secret life she’s been living, but she’s bound to the spot, brakes engaged on the stupid wheelchair. And Fumi stands, brow furrowed. At that moment, she is older, taller, smarter, better than Shiori, and Shiori loves and hates her for it, just as she always has. She loves the brilliance of Fumi, her humor, her wit, and she hates her vitality, her freedom, she wants a bit of it for herself.
But Shiori can see Fumi is frightened, as well, as if the rift between them is at risk of growing so wide it might never be repaired. “Onee-chan,” she says softly, breaking the tension like a pebble on a placid lake.
“Do you like her?” Fumi asks, her fingers balling into fists. “Claudine,” she says clearly, in case there’s any confusion. “Do you like her?”
And it’s a complicated question. Shiori does like Claudine, but not the way Fumi does. She wonders if she’s even capable of knowing love the way Fumi does. Such a thought gnaws at her, but she swallows it down. “I think she’s wonderful, onee-chan.” And she can see Fumi’s nostrils flare, her patience wearing thin, the notion of Shiori taking and taking and taking proving true once again, so she hurries to continue. “But I know that she’s only my nurse. She rushes out at shift change to meet you, you know.”
Fumi’s face softens into a neutral expression, but she looks thoughtful, in love even, and Shiori could never take that from her.
“I-”
But Fumi cuts her off first. “I loved you so much,” she says, but her brows are furrowed, her fist still clenched. She still hasn’t sat down, as if she has too much pent up energy. “I loved you and… oh God I hated you.”
And Shiori can only nod. It’s what she’s known for years, after all, just spoken aloud on this bleak spring day.
“When we were younger, when you would be in the hospital for weeks, I was always there. I wanted to be with you because I was your older sister, but I also wanted to be there, because that way, someone might look at me too.” Fumi’s words are soft, but the tone is quiet, biting. These are thoughts that have echoed for years, Shiori is certain. “If I sat at home, no one was there. If I went to school, everyone only wanted to hear about Shiori. Eventually, I got my part time jobs and went to university and stopped telling people about my family because it was easier.” She turns away, looking out over the horizon. “But then I miss things. Like you growing up.”
Shiori swallows, gathering her courage. But Fumi said her piece, so it was only right she does the same. “No, onee-chan. I’ve always loved and hated you too.”
Now Fumi turns back to her, her interest piqued.
“I loved you beside me. I loved you being my sister. But I hated that you got to do everything I couldn’t: go to school, play sports, see movies, even doing stuff like getting a job. I wanted it all.” She trails off, then gathers her courage. If she is going to confess, she needs to say it all. “And dating. I wanted a girlfriend.” She looks at Fumi, really looks at her. They really did resemble each other. “I hated that you hated me. I didn’t know what to do. I feel like I have dozens of personalities trying to find one that you would like better. In the end, I just became a recluse because I knew what you hated the most was me getting sick, but you still avoided me.”
“I hate that part of me too.” Fumi bites her lip, drawing a sharp breath. “I… I don’t really hate you, Shiori. Not at all. I just… I’m lonely. I want you to see me. I want mom and dad to see me. I want someone to pat me on the back and tell me ‘you’ve worked hard, good job’.”
Unexpectedly, Fumi leans forward, embracing Shiori. “I’m sorry I left you alone,” she says. “I am here now.” And it’s damp against Shiori’s cheek, as Fumi is crying silently. “I just- I’ve been so selfish and-”
“Onee-chan,” Shiori says, resting her head against Fumi’s shoulder. “It’s alright now,” she says, pulling her closer. “You have done a good job, doing so much all by yourself.”
After a little while, Fumi sits back down, her eyes red-rimmed, and her nose tinged pink as well, and she can’t quite meet Shiori’s eyes. She continues to stare at Shiori’s tea on the table just in front of her, so Shiori wraps her hands on it, both for warmth and so Fumi is staring at a bit of her, at least.
They sip the tea, cooled now, surprised that it’s as delicious as it is for something made in the hospital cafe. “Tell me about your life now,” Fumi prompts.
Shiori releases the brakes on the wheelchair, turning towards the horizon. It’s easier to talk when looking at the skyline, she thinks. “I knew for a long time that I caused you trouble,” Shiori says, “So I made it my goal to stop doing that.”
This seems to surprise Fumi, who pauses with her tea halfway to her mouth.
“I learned Korean online and took my certification exams during a long hospitalization and convalescence a few years back. I work as a translator, completely remotely so I don’t have to worry about getting sick in an office setting. I get groceries and supplies once a week. I mostly talk to my friends online… but we’re not really that close. As you can see, they don’t come to see me. Mostly, I take my supplements to try to stay healthy, I read books for amusement, and I work to support myself.”
“What about Mom and Dad?”
“Mm I talk to them pretty often, but they’re still abroad. They’re celebrating dad’s retirement. You should really make up with them.”
“So they didn’t miss my graduation because they were mad I am becoming a lawyer?”
“What?” Shiori laughs lightly. “No, they were out of the country and have been for months.”
Shiori turns back to Fumi, smiling. The tension is dispersed, she’s looking at her sister of old. Before the calls that went to voicemail. Before Fumi was working every waking hour. Before Shiori no longer had the words to patch the rift. The train is exiting the tunnel now, she can feel it.
But, because she is so stuck in her persona, she can’t help getting one last jab in. “Be good to your girlfriend, or I really will try to steal her.”
Fumi laughs, an eyebrow raised in skepticism. “You? You little awkward twerp?”
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Shiori’s release day is a small celebration in 514. It is a day that Claudine is not working, so Kaoruko, much to her annoyance, is her nurse, and ties balloons around Pole-kun for the final dose of antibiotics. Futaba returns with a set of exercises for her to practice in her apartment for the first weeks after her discharge, and Kaoruko hands her another packet, this one with precautions and care for her general health.
Seeing them together, it’s so clear that they are soulmates that she can’t even tease Kaoruko about it. Their perfect harmony, their pure ‘togetherness’, it only serves to accentuate Shiori’s loneliness and for one small moment, Shiori wonders if Kaoruko was keeping a distance from Shiori as a kindness, to not remind her how truly isolated she was in this world. She shakes her head. This is Kaoruko she is talking about.
Next on the list, late morning, she is taken down to interventional radiology, where the PICC line is removed carefully by Liu Mei Fan, whose precise work is as good as ever, and given a sticker like a child would get. She doesn’t resent it. She wears it proudly back up to the room.
On the way back up, she and the orderly pushing her pass two of the surgeons leaving what looks suspiciously like a broom closet. She glances up to meet the orderly’s eye, who nods at her. An amused smile passes her lips.
She’s barely back in her room five minutes when Yukishiro Akira arrives for a final exam before she discharges her. They work fast here. She’s suddenly sad when she realizes that this might be the last time she sees Akira’s perfect face, and listens to Akira’s confident voice. She wants nothing more than to be free of this hospital, but she might not mind a little more time with Akira.
“Everything sounds good,” Akira says, taking the cool stethoscope away. “The antibiotics worked well, according to the preliminary cultures. We’ll call you if anything comes back on the final swabs.” She feels the soft sweep of her hair being moved back into place by Akira’s hand as her gown is moved back into place on her back. She regrets the departure of that hand.
“Yes, thank you.” Shiori can feel it, the confident facade of herself, the one that she can build up in a hospital room, falling away, with the discharge on the horizon. The ‘real’ Shiori is returning. “Thank you for everything, really.”
Akira nods, graceful as ever, regal even. The way her silvery hair catches the early afternoon sunlight is entrancing, and Shiori saves it in her memory. “This is my card,” Akira says, pulling out a business card. “Do not hesitate to contact me if your symptoms return.”
She sits in the chair Fumi prefers, and for the first time in the two weeks Shiori has known her, she looks the smallest bit flustered. “Listen, Yumeoji-san,” she says, pulling a pen from her pocket. “You have no obligation to see me again once you leave, but I was recently given an assignment from a mentor, and the relevant research papers are in Korean, and I heard-”
“Of- Of course!” Shiori blushes, looking away from Akira’s perfect face for a moment. “I mean, I don’t know if I’ll be of any help, but I’ll try!”
Akira looks surprised, as if she hadn’t expected such an emphatic response. Shiori blushes, suddenly shy, but Akira smiles, relieved. “I’m much obliged. We can meet at the hospital, or the library, or even a cafe, if you’d like, so I can treat you to something. This is my cell phone number and personal email.”
“She likes tea, and sweets.”
They both look up to see Fumi in the doorway, and now Akira does stiffen. She stands, handing over the business card with a slight bow. “I will go prepare the discharge,” she says, nodding to Fumi.
“Onee-chan,” Shiori mumbles, sinking into the sheets. “Why did you have to interrupt?”
“What?” Fumi says, laughing. She’s bright today, wearing a green sweater and jeans, her entire demeanor changed. “I was helping you get a date.”
“It’s not a date, onee-chan,” she protests, her voice muffled in the sheet.
Fumi pulls something from her bag, and it catches Shiori’s eye. Two matching hair clips. Two rose shaped hair clips that she must have taken from the top of Shiori’s dressing table. The place where they lay untouched for years since she pilfered them: Fumi’s prized possessions. She knew it was wrong- she was in middle school at the time, of course she knew - but Fumi was disappearing, fading from her life at the time, and she was desperate to hold on to some piece of her precious sister.
“Here, put one on,” says Fumi, picking out a lock of her hair and clipping the rose into place. She doesn’t say a word about the theft. She then ducks into the bathroom to peer at the mirror, clipping the rose’s twin into her own hair, coming to sit beside Shiori. “I talked to Claudine,” Fumi says, “About yelling at you that day in this room, about us finally talking on the roof. I was just so ashamed. I don’t want to be that person anymore.”
Shiori holds onto Fumi’s hand, assured as she has been since they were young by the warmth. “It’s Claudine, I’m sure she understands.”
Fumi nods, seeming to have enough of this conversation for now. She opens her bag again, handing Shiori a white blouse, a pale blue sweater, and a cream colored skirt.
“For once it’s not supposed to rain,” she says. “We’re going out to celebrate your discharge.”
“What?” she puts her hands up in protest. “Onee-chan, I can’t! I should just go home.”
Just the idea of going out raises her heart rate too high, and she takes a few breaths to calm down. She can be cool, calm Shiori in a sick ward all she wants, but she knows nothing about the outside world. She just wants to get home.
“Do you trust me?” Fumi asks.
Shiori nods.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
The celebration takes them to Claudine’s apartment, which is decorated with a ‘Congratulations!” banner and several balloons. Claudine has ordered take-out of all of Shiori’s favorites: fried chicken, dumplings, noodles, and a large strawberry cake. On the way over, Fumi insists they stop in a tea shop so Shiori can pick out the tea to drink that evening, and she picks a fruity white tea she has never tried before.
“Thank you for having me,” she says, bowing to Claudine as she enters. Her hands almost tremble, she doesn’t know what to do. When was the last time she visited someone else’s home, she wonders.
“Please, there’s no need to be so formal,” Claudine says, ushering her in. “I’m just glad to see you walking around, breathing all by yourself, no extra tubes and lines.”
“Y-yes,” she agrees, wondering why it was so easy to talk to Claudine in room 514, and so hard to talk to her now.
They eat, talking about the first days of Fumi’s new job, about Claudine’s upcoming trip to France, and then the conversation turns to Shiori. “She’s got a date with Yukishiro-san,” Fumi says, raising her eyebrows a bit.
Shiori watches the way Claudine’s hand rests on Fumi’s thigh, the way Fumi is leaning into Claudine’s side, the natural way they’re pressed together, even as they sit around the table and talk. A pang of loneliness hits her and she swallows it down. “Onee-chan, it’s not a date!” She whines, purposely turning up the bratty tone to annoy Fumi. She turns to Claudine, normalizing her voice. “I’m just helping her translate some research papers.”
“In a cafe. With sweets,” Fumi adds in a dulcet tone, turning her head so she’s speaking softly directly into Claudine’s ear. Shiori turns back to her plate.
“Ah, tale as old as time,” Claudine says, laughing along with Fumi. And Shiori can see it: the way they light each other up, the way Fumi needs someone who can see the efforts she is making, the way she has walked her own path, all alone, for so long, and Claudine is that person, Claudine sees so much of everyone. “Well I’m happy for you, Shiori. And happy for me. Anything to chill out Yukishiro is good news for me.”
It’s late, after dessert, when Fumi steps onto the patio with an unexpected call from their parents. Shiori wasn’t planning to be alone with Claudine, but she doesn’t mind it, exactly. “I’m glad you’re feeling better,” Claudine says, once again. Shiori knows it isn’t because she doesn’t know what to say, but rather because she truly means it.
“Thank you. I know it’s inevitable that I’ll be readmitted, but I hope I can stay away for a while.”
“Fumi says you take good care of yourself, but you should come out more too. It’s healthy to get some sunlight, to see some friends.”
If Shiori wasn’t already so used to being lonely, she might have cried right there. But as it is, it’s been so long since she’s had ‘friends’ to go see, people to visit, there’s little emotion to dredge up. But she shouldn’t underestimate Saijou Claudine. Perhaps she catches the way her eyes shine a bit, or the way her fingers tremble just momentarily on the handle of the cup. There’s an understanding in her gaze, a sad smile as she watches Shiori’s failure to make an agreement.
“Were you… like me, once?” Shiori asks, not exactly sure what she means.
“I’m a little like you still,” she says. “Maybe that’s why I get along with Fumi.” Claudine sips her tea, finishing it. Distantly, they both glance at Fumi pacing on the balcony, talking on the phone with her parents. Fumi’s free hand, the one not holding the phone, is curled around a lock of her hair, a sign to Shiori that she’s stressed. Shiori turns back to Claudine.
“But you do have friends,” Claudine continues. “I’m your friend. Fumi is both your sister and your friend. I am certain your relationship with Yukishiro will develop at least into friendship. If that’s too few, I know a certain plastic surgeon I guarantee you’ll get along great with…”
Shiori puts her hands up, stopping Claudine from getting ahead of herself. “I’ll start with three…” she says.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Shiori’s non-date with Akira is on the same day as her parents return from Japan. She accompanies Fumi on the train to visit them at the house, but does not go all the way to the door. Rather, she’s just support to make sure Fumi actually makes it to see them - that Fumi reconnects with their parents after all this time. Her parents insist that Shiori wait at least a week, since they have traveled abroad and on a large airplane with recirculated air and aren’t sure what germs they are carrying.
She stands with Fumi at the train platform, a few blocks from their parents’ house, noticing she looks rather nervous, a distinctly un-Fumi-like appearance. “A train coming out of a tunnel,” Fumi says, looking back at the train they just disembarked from.
“You’re nearly there,” Shiori says, nodding at Fumi. She knows how much their parents miss Fumi, how they’re going to embrace her the moment they see her.
“You too,” Fumi says, her face set in determination. “Go put your brain to work for Yukishiro-san.”
Shiori laughs lightly, and hugs her sister before they part, but inside, her heart is hammering. She pulls her mask up on the train back towards the cafe, and double checks the address when she gets off. She is certain she has the right place, but maybe-
“Yumeoji-san?”
“Yukishiro-san.”
“You made it. I’m relieved. Shall we go inside?”
“Yes. Please.”