Chapter Text
Almost one month has passed, and Ranmaru Kageyama still hates hospitals.
He feels like he’s stuck. A standstill between life and death - a clock stopped at midnight, between night and dawn, and he can’t make it start ticking again.
There are two visitors on his list now. Anzu comes once every two days, as the hospital he’s in is an hour long train ride from where they live. And Shin, as constant as ever, always comes at the same time every day.
In the days since Sara left him, he’s figured out how to walk on his own. Often, he makes trips to that garden they’d visited, or just walks around the halls. With each step farther from his body, he feels weaker and sicker, but he pushes through.
Sometimes, he sees Shin, talking at the nurse’s station. And sometimes, he stands there to listen to their conversations, just to have something to do.
This proves to be a mistake.
It’s late one morning, when Ranmaru can’t seem to sleep. He still hasn’t quite figured out if he actually sleeps or if he just kind of…closes his eyes. So he’s decided to watch Shin fail horribly at flirting with another nurse.
“Shin.”
A doctor Ranmaru’s seen only a few times stops Shin as he’s going through files - having given up on the pretty nurse from earlier.
”Yes?” He asks, not looking up from his papers.
”You are the primary care nurse for Ranmaru Kageyama, yes?”
This gets Ranmaru’s attention. He turns from his spot behind the desk and leans forward.
“Yes.” Shin answers, brow furrowing. “Is something wrong? I thought his doctor was Dr. Safalin.”
The doctor sighs, shaking his head.
”She is. However, she’s consulted me on quite a few cases. And in this one - Ranmaru Kageyama is running out of time. Hospital policy states that coma patients only remain in care for 30 days, if they show no improvement.”
It’s a devastating blow. A horrific reminder that while Ranmaru may be stuck in limbo, the rest of the world is not. His body is not.
“So Ranmaru has -“
”He has five days left.” The doctor coughs and awkwardly straightens his glasses.
Suddenly, the broken clock in Ranmaru’s head starts to tick again.
Five days.
Shin looks almost sad at that, running a hand through his hair.
”Since he has no will, no insurance, and no family to prolong his life support, we will have to let him go. Unless his next of kin is able to move him to a more long-term care facility.”
”Thank you, Dr. Hayasaka.” Shin murmurs. “I’ll inform his next of kin.”
Dr. Hayasaka nods and walks briskly down the hall.
”Five fucking days.” Ranmaru whispers to himself, the nausea that almost always stays with him worsening considerably.
He knows his finances aren’t enough for Anzu to put him somewhere. And he knows he can’t leave her with a debt like that - especially if he doesn’t wake up.
Especially if he can’t wake up.
Anzu’s question weighs heavily in his mind.
Can you wake up? Do you even want to?
Unable to ignore the growing pain in his stomach, he stumbles back down the hallway to his room.
His hand touches the wall for support - but he can’t feel the smooth paint under his fingertips. His bare feet shuffle across the white tile floor - but he can’t feel the cold. Even his clothes, a basic hospital gown, sways against his legs, but he can’t feel the brush of cotton.
Ranmaru can’t breathe.
I don’t even need to breathe, he thinks as he gasps for breath, one hand gripping his doorframe. Or do I? Did I breathe before?
He can’t remember. His body is in front of him, laying on the bed, tubes sticking out of his throat and barely-healing cuts littering his skin. It’s him and it isn’t at the same time, and in this strange space between alive and dead, he doesn’t know what’s real anymore.
Maybe I’m dreaming, he thinks distantly, flopping onto the bed. Maybe I’m already dead.
”Are you finally losing it?”
Hearing her voice, he’s sure he has.
Ranmaru sits up, mouth open in shock.
It’s Sara.
She’s standing at the foot of his bed - nearly identical to the first time they’d met. Her hair is done in a neat braid that hangs over her shoulder like a shiny, ginger rope. This time, she wears a pair of loose white shorts and a white shirt.
She looks so young. Almost normal; as if she’s headed to the beach with friends on a summer day.
But it’s not summer, Sara’s not so young, and Ranmaru isn’t either.
”Sara.”
She smiles, bright like the sun.
”Ranmaru.”
…
He has so many questions, he’s not sure where to start.
Sara sits in the chair next to his bed, facing him. One hand twirls the end of her braid in what looks like a nervous fidget.
”I…” Ranmaru sighs, then tries again. “You’ve been gone for weeks.”
“I know.” She shifts in her seat. “I’m really sorry about that. I didn’t…want to leave you.”
But you did, he wants to say. You were supposed to be with me, like you said. I wasn’t supposed to be alone.
“It’s not the leaving.” He says instead. “It’s about the not coming back.”
Sara has nothing to say to that. Her gaze settles on Ranmaru’s body; on the thin blanket that covers him and the tubes attached to him.
“Why did you leave?” He asks quietly.
Almost instantly, he regrets it. His voice sounds small; like a child’s. Sara looks at him with something like pity - something he hates being on the receiving end of.
“I had to.” She tells him. “When the sun goes down, I have to go with it.”
“But why?” Ranmaru presses on, leaning forward just a little. “You’re not…I don’t even know what you are.”
I don’t even know what I am.
“Neither do I.”
The admission is quiet. She, too, sounds like a child; confused and hurt.
So where does that leave us, he wonders. A ghost and a ghost. Two in-betweens.
Anzu comes in the room, then, running through the door and stopping herself at his bed.
”Miss Anzu, please -“
Shin’s voice follows her, and he, too, appears in the room, clearly more disheveled and out of breath than Anzu. His face is red and his hair is more wild than usual.
He reaches a hand out, barely brushing Anzu’s shoulder. She smacks it away.
“Don’t touch me!” Anzu snaps.
“Oh.” Sara says quietly, standing up. “I can leave, if this is gonna get weird.”
“No!” Ranmaru says, a little too quickly. “I mean, uh, you don’t have to. They can’t see you anyways, right?”
Sara nods, but still looks uncomfortable.
“Miss Anzu, I’m going to have to ask you to calm down.” Shin tries, hands on his hips. “Please. Otherwise I’ll have to call security in.”
”Calm down?” Anzu scoffs. “You just told me my best friend has five days to live and you want me to calm down?”
”There are options -“
“I don’t give a damn about the options -“
”He can be transferred -“
”I don’t have the money!” Anzu yells. “If he dies I barely have the money for a fucking funeral! And he deserves that at least!”
“I know he does.” Shin replies, voice calm and firm. “I know this is hard for you. I lost my best friend too, when I was younger. But I need you to calm down, or else I will have you removed.”
Anzu glares at him with such ferocity that Ranmaru’s surprised Shin doesn’t melt under that gaze.
“I haven’t lost him yet.” She says coolly, and stomps out of the room, knocking Shin’s shoulder on the way out.
Shin rolls his eyes and gives Ranmaru’s body a glance.
”Surprised that racket didn’t wake you up.” He grumbles, then follows Anzu out.
”Fucking hell.” Ranmaru mumbles, blushing.
“So.” Sara sits on the edge of the bed this time, arms folded over her chest. “Five days.”
Five days.
The reminder is painful. He glances at the clock. 12:07.
”Closer to four and a half.”
“What are you going to do?”
The question is so absurd to him that he barks out a brief laugh in disbelief.
“What am I gonna do?”
He stands up, right in front of her.
”What am I supposed to do?” Ranmaru snaps. “I can’t do anything. I’m stuck here!”
Sara reaches her hand out, then snatches it away with a flush on her cheeks.
”And you -“ He continues, voice shaking, “ - you were supposed to help me. And you left. You didn’t come back.”
She doesn’t say anything to that.
Ranmaru, feeling a little guilty about the way he raised his voice, sits back down on the bed.
”Sorry.” He finally says. “I’m not mad at you.”
“You are.” Sara sighs, and sits next to him. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone gets like this.”
There it is again. That reminder that he’s not the only one. It’s foolish to expect to be someone special, he knows - but is it so wrong to want to be special to someone? To want Sara to be for him, and him alone?
God, I don’t even know what she is, he thinks.
It’s gotta be the loneliness. There’s no other explanation for how he feels whenever he thinks of her. She’s the only person who can even see him, after all.
”Everyone?” Ranmaru asks.
“You knew there were others.”
Sara twists the end of her braid in between her fingers in that same nervous habit.
“I didn’t lie to you, Ranmaru. I don’t know exactly what I am. All I know is that I show up, and talk to people that no one else can see.”
Ghosts. Ghosts like me.
“And in five days, when I’m…” Ranmaru takes a deep breath. “What happens then?”
“I’ll be with you.”
In this moment, Sara looks different. Her lips are pressed together in a sad smile. Even though she’s looking at him, her eyes look like they’re seeing something far away.
Something unreachable.
“Will you stay, this time?”
God, there’s that childish voice again. He hates it. Hates feeling so young; hates feeling so out of control, and hates the fact that despite everything, he’s seeking comfort in her now.
“Yes.” Sara tells him. “I promise.”
…
She keeps her promise.
He almost doesn’t expect her to. But for the next three days, when he wakes up, she’s there. When he goes to sleep, she’s there.
When Anzu is by his side, sobbing into the cool white sheets that cover his still body, Sara is there, too. She often places a comforting hand on the other girl’s back, and Ranmaru wonders why she touches Anzu so freely, and not him.
On the fourth day, she is still there.
Ranmaru knows his time is running out. The hours pass as swiftly as sand falling through his fingers, and despite how much he wants it to slow down, it only seems to speed up.
It’s almost funny. For so much of his life, he wanted things to speed up. To jump to the part of his life where he’d finally be satisfied. Instant gratification.
“Do you have any regrets, Sara?”
She’s standing in front of the window. At the sound of his voice, she turns, and moves to sit on the edge of his bed.
“Regrets?”
She sounds confused, and looks the part. Her eyebrows are furrowed together and her eyes are slightly narrowed as she stares at him.
”Things you wish you did.” He explains. “Stuff you wish you said. Stuff like that, y’know?”
Sara’s quiet for a long moment.
“I have one.”
”Just one?”
She takes a deep breath. From out of nowhere, she produces the silver coin she’d shown to him the first day they met. As she speaks, she flips it between her fingers.
“I don’t know what I am. But I know that I was like you, once.”
Human? Alive?
“I don’t remember much from back then. But my best friend, Joe…he died.”
Her voice cracks on his name.
“And all I’d wished for was to be able to tell him I loved him. Just once.”
Tears slip from her eyes, falling into her lap. Still, she does not look at him.
Ranmaru’s never been in love. He’d given up on the love of his parents long ago, and he’d accepted the love of Anzu long ago, too. He’s never had a boyfriend; never had a girlfriend. There had never been time for it, not when he worked so much to keep himself alive, and not when he had all the companionship he needed in Anzu.
Now, he wonders if that’s one of his regrets.
“Sometimes I wish he didn’t love me at all.” Sara murmurs, so low he can barely hear her.
”Yeah, but what’s worse?” He mumbled absently, not fully intending to finish his thought aloud.
She finally turns to meet his gaze, and his heart squeezes painfully. Her eyes are wide and shining, and he knows she’s waiting for him to say more.
“Loving someone and losing them…or never loving anyone at all?”
And the way she closes her eyes and stays silent gives him the answer he seeks.
…
His regrets haunt him.
It’s a whole list, at this point. It’s embarrassing, but he’s got it. Never left Japan, never went in a plane, never got drunk - the list goes on and he’s not sure it will ever end. The more he thinks about it, the more he adds to it, and the more he hates himself for it.
There’s less than an hour left until he dies, and Ranmaru Kageyama is worried about the fact that he’s never been on a plane.
Anzu has been by his side since the night before. Shin lingers in the doorway for far longer than necessary.
Sara stands by the window.
”I love you.” Anzu sniffles, squeezing his hand. “I’m really sorry. I’m really, really sorry. I didn’t wanna do this, ‘Maru, m’sorry.”
“I love you too.” He says back quietly, patting her head. “It’s not your fault.”
Anzu, as if in reply, sobs louder.
Ranmaru squeezes his eyes shut.
Dammit. Dammit.
Oh, he doesn’t want to die. He’s never wanted that. He’s accepted it, but it doesn’t mean he wants it. Ranmaru’s spent too fucking long coasting along in his life, and now, at the end of it, he wants to put up a fight.
”Is there nothing I can do?” He asks desperately, standing up to move closer to Sara.
”Please, Sara. I can still wake up. I can - “
”You can what?”
Her tone is cruel. Far crueler than he’s ever heard it. And when she turns to meet his eye, her face is neutral.
”I can’t help you.” She tells him. “I’m sorry, Ranmaru. It’s not what I’m meant for.”
He makes a noise of frustration and runs his hands through his hair.
This is it, he thinks. I really have lost it now. Delusions of a dying man? Desperation? And where will that get me?
I’m already dead.
He stops. Turns back to Sara.
“I’m already dead.” He whispers.
That realization changes everything.
Anzu’s question, so many moons ago, makes sense. All of it does.
Can you wake up? Do you even want to?
That’s the goddamn point. It’s always been the goddamn point.
Ranmaru’s been wandering the halls of this hospital like a ghost. He’s compared himself to one so many times. It’s nothing like the books; nothing like the movies - he’s been stuck here, for a month, outside his own body, because he never had a choice.
At the beginning, Sara made it seem like he could choose. Like he was in control of his own fate.
“I was never gonna wake up.”
Ranmaru covers his face with his hands. Even now, he can’t feel them; can’t feel the rough texture of his skin against his face.
When he takes them away, Sara is right in front of him.
This close, he can see every detail of her face. He can see the way her nose curves and the flutter of her eyelashes and the orange hair that falls just above her eyes; can see the way the afternoon sun lights up that hair gold and the way her purple eyes shine so bright they almost look like they’re glowing.
“I’m sorry.” She offers the apology easily, with a sad smile. “You weren’t.”
And then she takes his hands in her own.
Ranmaru looks down at their joined hands, alarmed, and looks back up at her just as quickly.
He can feel her. Really feel her, how warm she is, how the roughness of her palms slides easily against the bandages wrapping him.
“Sara -“
“Don’t you get it, Ranmaru?”
With each second they remain touching, more of him can feel again. He feels the drag of cotton against his skin; the warmth of the sun through the window. The tile is cold under his feet, as he always imagined it was.
“You’ve been gone for three minutes now.”
At her words, he turns around.
The heart monitor that’s been attached to him for a month has flatlined. Anzu sobs, holding his hand, while Shin attempts to comfort her. He can’t hear a thing. It’s like watching a silent movie - except he doesn’t know what’s blocking out the sound.
Ranmaru stares at his own dead body, and thinks that he must be so cold.
When he turns back to Sara, she’s different.
She wears a white dress. It’s simple; shimmering like silk in the light. Her hair is down, falling over her shoulders, and he can’t help but try and commit the sight to memory.
She looks beautiful.
“Sara…” He whispers. “You’re…”
Glowing.
She really is glowing, now, the paleness of her skin turned into a dim white light.
“It’s time to go, Ranmaru.”
One of her hands comes up to cup the side of his face.
God, she’s warm. So warm.
”I’m not ready.”
“No one ever is.”
Sara’s almost blinding. He feels so hot, his skin almost burning, as if he’s been in the sun for too long. All he can see is her face.
This is it, he thinks. This is the light at the end of the tunnel.
She’s the light.
“Thank you.” He sobs, and this time, he can feel the tears running down his face.
Sara nods, and leans closer.
For one moment, their lips touch, and Ranmaru realizes that she’s crying, too.
And then he doesn’t think anything at all.
He can only feel her warmth.
(Because I could not stop for Death, he kindly stopped for me. The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.
- Emily Dickinson, “Because I could not stop for Death”)