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Kanata and I had been friends since childhood, but I could not—for the life of me—tell you why we ever became friends. He was annoying, overly dramatic, lied through his teeth, and an all-around pain-in-my-ass. At times, I cursed that it was likely because of our proximity that we were friends—forced to socialize because we just saw each other every day at school. When he wasn't being a lying snake, he was quite interesting to be around.
Still, something seemed... off about him one day and I didn't know what to think about it. We had just started our last year of high school. Kanata was dressed to the nines in a suit jacket that was three times too big for his tiny frame, a bouquet of wilting peonies in one hand and a ring box in the other. Classes had ended for the day and club activities were about to start. He had gotten down on one knee to propose to me in front of the whole damn school.
"Miyahara Rei... Please be my girlfriend!"
"Um, no," I quickly responded. "How many more times are you going to pull this schtick, Kanata? You can't do any better?"
"My, how rude," he huffed as he got back up on his feet. "I'll have you know that the flowers are real this time, Rei."
"Yeah—they're dying," I pointed out. "What's this year's production going to be? Twelfth Night or did you find something less boring?"
"Twelfth Night is not boring," he gasped. "You, my Lady Disdain, can choke a daw withal."
"That's Much Ado About Nothing, but my point still stands," I rolled my eyes.
"Soooooooooooo, will you be my girlfriend, Rei?" he asked again, adding a lot of emphasis on the first part.
"No," I repeated again, "not happening in a million years, Kanata."
I watched him drop to his knees in despair. "Say it ain't soooooooooooooooooooo!!"
At this point, I was ready to walk away if I didn't die from second-hand embarrassment first. All of the first years were staring at us like we were insane. I was waiting until he said his annoying 'just kidding' afterward, but he didn't get a chance to before Tanegashima came by.
"Did you cancel tryouts today, Kanata?" Tanegashima asked his captain, completely ignoring whatever it was that was going on.
"Wow, how rude of you, Shuu-san," he huffed, "you're interrupting my performance."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever," Tanegashima brushed off completely. "Tryouts? Now? Tennis courts? You coming, or what?"
"Ugh, fine," Kanata groaned as he got back up on his feet. "I suppose I shall save my art for another day, my dear Rei!"
"Please don't," I begged him.
"Yeah, ditto," Tanegashima agreed.
Just as Kanata was about to leave with his vice captain (who in their right mind let this guy be partially in charge of this club anyway?), he started coughing violently. It sounded like there was a demon he was trying to hack up from his lungs and it terrified me. He was in tears after that fit—but when was he never teary-eyed to begin with?
"Good Lord, Kanata, did you smoke a pack earlier today?" I commented.
"That sure was impressive," Tanegashima laughed. "You're getting really good at pretending to be sick!"
But Kanata didn't respond right away—he was still trying to catch his breath again. That only made me believe that it was real and not some elaborate, twisted joke coming from him. There was this look of terror in his eyes, but I couldn't tell if it was genuine or not.
"Kanata? Do you need me to go get the nurse?" I asked again.
The minute he heard that, Kanata's face immediately switched to his usual plastic smile. "Haha—just kidding!"
I was used to being lied to by this bastard, but something in my gut told me that this time was different.
Kanata had just returned from tennis camp again, which sounded like a child abuse program disguised as a method of improving one's skills in a sport they likely would never play again after graduation, but that's not something we'll touch on today. He looked a lot worse for wear than Tanegashima did when I saw them both the week after they had returned. Then again, he had been travelling and it was flu season, so maybe he caught something between when he left and now. Either way, he was wobbling about and a part of me wanted to feel concern for him—if only I could tell if this was an act or not.
"I'm not sure I'm glad to see either of you back in one piece," I greeted them. "Wait... How the hell did you get back so soon, Tanegashima? Isn't Australia at least a month-long boat ride back?"
"Hey, don't go pointing out logical inconsistencies like that, Miyahara-chan☆" Tanegashima winked at me. "What's poppin' over here? Anything cool happen while we were gone?"
"It's business as usual here," I shrugged. "Man, you look awful, Kanata."
"Rip out my heart and step on it while you're at it, why don't you, Rei?" he scoffed. "I don't need the obvious to be pointed out."
"Touchy today, aren't we?" was my remark. "Are you sure you should be here? You should probably go home and rest."
"And delay seeing you?" Tanegashima laughed. "Kanata hasn't shut up about you since we left for camp!"
"Um?" I didn't know how to react to this.
"Shuu-san, it's unbecoming of you to tell lies like this," Kanata shook his head.
"Somehow, I believe him more than you, Kanata..."
What I wasn't expecting was for Kanata to grab a hold of me by the shoulders as he stared at me with the most demonic eyes I had ever seen. Normally, I wouldn't be disturbed, but I hadn't seen this twinge of desperation in his irises before. His grin was disturbingly creepy.
"K-Kanata?!"
"Do you want me to be obsessed with you, Rei?" he asked me in the most deranged voice I hadn't heard before.
I shoved him off of me. "Nice try, but it's a bit too forced, Kanata. You might want to try going for a more unsettling angle if you want to come off as mentally unwell."
"Oof, rejected again, Kanata☆" Tanegashima laughed.
"No..." Kanata struggled to get back up on his feet. He was clutching onto his chest in pain. "It can't possibly be..."
"Okay, get it over with," I groaned as I plugged my ears as I waited for his infamous shout.
But rather than getting my eardrums shattered, Kanata started coughing violently again. I watched as I saw red come out of his mouth and dyed his hands in the process before he flopped over.
"Oh, my God, Kanata!"
I dropped down and tried to slap him awake. I picked up one of his arms and let it go above his face. When the arm went limp and slapped Kanata on the head instead of stopping before that point, my panic set in. He wasn't conscious.
"T-this is justa joke, right?" Tanegashima wondered nervously.
"You idiot—get the nurse!" I snapped at him. "This isn't an act—he actually needs help!"
His vice captain ran off quickly, leaving me alone with his unconscious body. I kept trying to shake him awake, but he didn't stir once. What the hell was going on with him?
"This isn't funny, Kanata," I scolded him. "Don't scare me like this..."
I didn't think I would ever be begging to hear that stupid 'just kidding' from him. I really thought he'd snap out of it when the paramedics arrived, but he didn't.
Kanata had been hospitalized for over a month by this point and he wasn't getting better. The doctors could not figure out what exactly he had as every test came back inconclusive. The only consistent finding they had was there was something happening to his lungs but they didn't know what it was. He kept coughing up particulate matter that wasn't organ tissue and the lab had no idea what tests they could even run at this point.
He tried to be his usual annoying self but his energy drained so quickly. I couldn't even look at him without getting upset. He could barely breathe on his own. I couldn't find it in myself to even visit him because the last thing I wanted to do was genuinely cry in front of him. Normally, I would just sit at his bedside and bite my lower lip to stop myself from showing much emotion and he would silently stare out the window of his room, deep in thought. But today was different because Kanata was looking directly at me.
Every word sounded painful as he tried to speak. "Rei... I need... to know..."
"Kanata, stop," I pleaded.
"Do you... love me...?" Why was he asking such a stupid question now, of all times?
"Of course, I do," I choked. "You're my best friend, Kanata."
"Only... a friend...?"
"Yes, you moron!" I snapped, "I love you as a friend! Stop asking such stupid things!"
Kanata looked like he had just resigned himself. "I... see..."
He tried to get up from bed, but he was unable to support his body weight with his muscle-atrophied legs. I moved to support him as he collapsed into my arms. He had another violent coughing fit. There was blood everywhere—my clothes, my hands, his everything... He dug his fingers deep into the flesh on my arms as he glared at me desperately with those teary baby-doll eyes of his.
"K-Kanata!"
"If I can't have you... No one else can...!" he struggled to say.
Without warning, he lunged for my face and bit my lower lip, sinking his teeth deep into my skin to the point where I felt it puncture and split open. I couldn't move at all. I knew I should be shoving him off of me but the last thing I wanted to do was hurt him when he was already so weak. Thankfully, I didn't have to do that as the ward nurses were making their rounds when this happened. When they managed to pry Kanata off of me, he didn't have much strength left to keep the heart in his chest beating.
Kanata's teeth marks were permanently a part of my lower lip even though he was no longer here. I still wasn't sure what I was supposed to think or feel about what had happened. There was a strange numbness as I tried to come to terms with the fact that my best friend was gone, but my mind was still racing with confusion over what his last act of consciousness meant. It wasn't like I could even ask at this point—he was dead. He died in my arms. I was the one to hold onto his cooling body after he took his last painful breath.
It was months after everything had happened when his older sister wanted to talk to me. The least I could do was offer an ear—Kanata was her annoying younger brother, after all. I honestly didn't really know what it was she wanted to even discuss, but a part of me was hoping to get any insight into what could have possibly been going through that guy's head at the time he scarred me so deeply.
"I know how much Kanata meant to you," she tried to empathize. "You meant a lot to him, too."
"He was my best friend," I nodded. "It's just... It's surreal."
She nodded in agreement as she picked up her mug of coffee and took a small sip from it. "I assume you've never been told what it was that he had?"
"Like... His illness?" I scratched my head. "No one told me."
"I see." There was a conflicted look on her face as she continued to drink from the cup.
"...Is there something I should know?" I asked her, hesitantly.
"Well, it's not like you knowing now would change the outcome," she sighed slightly. "It was a few days before he passed, but the doctors said that it was likely a case of this new disease that had only been identified recently."
"A new disease? So, even if they knew what it was, it couldn't be treated?"
She nodded. "The doctors said it was called 'hanahaki' because every patient who came down with the condition all had the same symptom of coughing up strange particulate matter that looked like flower petals."
This sounded unbelievable and something straight out of deranged boys' love fiction. "What?"
"They haven't identified what the cause of it is yet," she continued, "but the last lead they had was that it was likely a type of parasitic infection."
"But, I thought they tried anti-parasite medications when he was admitted," I brought up. "That didn't work?"
"When the disease progressed to the point Kanata was at, it wouldn't have done anything, I don't believe," she answered.
"You're joking..."
The conversation died there. I wasn't sure what else to say. His sister looked like she was trying to stop herself from bursting into tears again as she kept focusing on the now-cold coffee she was nursing. I wondered if I should've gotten up to leave, but she set her cup down and shifted the conversation.
"Miyahara, I have to ask you something: did you like Kanata?"
I blinked a few times as the directness of that question caught me off guard. "As a friend."
"Really?" She looked like she didn't buy my answer entirely—even if it was the truth.
"I'm sorry, but if you thought there was anything romantic between Kanata and I, that's far from the truth," I tried to set the record straight. "I don't know how he felt about me, but I didn't like him like that."
"Is that so...?" It felt like I was watching the last spark of hope in her eyes disappear. Why did she look that dejected?
"Look—I don't know why he did what he did before he died," I admitted. "Frankly, I'm still trying to figure that out myself... If he did like me as more than a friend, I don't know why he didn't try to say so before... Well..."
I could feel my lower lip pulsating again near the scar he left. Did he do this because he actually liked me, or was it because he hated me? Why was Kanata always so evasive about everything? Was he ever honest with me about what was on his mind?
"I guess he never found the courage to be himself in front of you, Miyahara," his sister concluded as she stood up. "I shouldn't take up more of your time today. Thanks for the conversation."
"Huh?" What did she mean by that? "Wait—"
"It's not my place to say," she stopped me. "I don't want to speak on his behalf since I'm not sure if what I know is the truth either."
I couldn't ask her to clarify since she practically ran from me. I saw my reflection in my phone screen and started fixating on the damn teeth marks again. If there was one thing that was certain, it was that people would always ask about this scar no matter what. Why did Kanata waste his dying breath on cursing me like this? Would I ever find out?