Sakayanagi Arisu's father visited the hospital room today. He had recently assumed the position of chairman of Tokyo Metropolitan Advanced Nurturing High School. Due to his increasingly busy schedule, his visits had become less frequent, which paradoxically made each visit all the more meaningful and anticipated.
After all, Arisu had hardly ever seen her mother. Since she could remember, it had always been her father at her side. She pieced together an image of her mother from his scattered words. And every time he praised her with "You're just like her, Arisu. Same personality," it felt as though she was being loved threefold.
There usually wasn't much fresh conversation in the hospital room—it was like a dry well you could see the bottom of at a glance. But Kitagawa Ryo's arrival had sparked something new. With bright eyes, Arisu eagerly told her father about her new... roommate?
"It's rare to see you this interested."
"Maybe it's because Ryo is an interesting person?"
"...You still don't sound like a child when you speak."
Her father chuckled as he sat by her bed, a bit puzzled.
"Still, having someone your age to talk to isn't a bad thing for you, Arisu."
Gently rubbing her head, Chairman Sakayanagi said:
"Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I suddenly realize I'm alone in the house, and it makes me think of you being alone here in the hospital."
"But there's really nothing we can do about that. Still, once your health improves, I want you to go to school like any normal child."
Arisu nodded. Though she wasn't particularly interested in things like school.
Her father seemed to read her thoughts. He reached out and wrapped her small hands in his large ones, then pressed their joined hands gently against his forehead.
"Humans learn what warmth is through touch. That's very important."
Arisu felt the warmth of her father's palms, as if heated blood were flowing directly from him into her.
"The warmth of skin is not a bad thing. That's something your mother taught me."
-------------------------------------
"Mother?"
Kitagawa Ryo moved a piece with his left hand, muttering "God's hand" as he blocked Arisu's four-piece chain with a perfectly placed black stone.
"Never met her. I was raised by my grandfather. If you mean the woman I share blood with, I've probably spoken more words to you than I ever have to her."
Arisu was momentarily stunned by his answer. She felt she should apologize—then again, she figured it wasn't necessary. She furrowed her brows for a moment but relaxed upon seeing Kitagawa still staring intently at the board, not even lifting his head.
"But I have met other moms."
That unexpected line from Kitagawa made Arisu nearly imagine an entire melodramatic family saga. But he continued slowly:
"When I was hospitalized at other places before, I saw lots of moms visiting other kids."
"Some were thirty, some forty, sixty, even eighty."
He spoke in a storyteller's tone:
"There weren't enough beds for guardians, so some mothers laid blankets in the corners to sleep. But when the rooms got crowded, there wasn't space even for that. They started pushing two chairs together to sleep. And later, just one chair."
He leaned back cross-legged on the couch.
"Sleeping against the wall."
Arisu nodded thoughtfully. She didn't think her own mother would have to sleep like that—but she still felt impressed.
"That's amazing."
But then a wave of gloom washed over her. No matter how touching the stories were, they were always about someone else's mother.
Kitagawa noticed the shift in her expression and dramatically opened his mouth:
"Don't tell me you think it's your fault..."
"What's wrong with tracing backward from the result?"
Arisu bit her pale lip. Kitagawa linked five pieces together again, and she threw her white stone back into the box in frustration.
Maybe she really was feeling some complicated, negative emotions over how busy her father had been lately. Even though he was clearly the person who loved her most in the world—he had exhausted every ounce of strength to soothe the pain of losing his wife, even carrying her share of love as well.
But perhaps it was precisely because she knew that that it hurt even more.
"Alice really doesn't act like a child."
Kitagawa shook his head:
"Even if a rabbit holding a pocket watch appeared now, I bet Alice wouldn't follow it down the rabbit hole."
"She'd probably think it was a prank or a movie shoot."
"And she definitely wouldn't jump into some pitch-black hole."
Last night, Arisu had taken two hours to finish the not-so-long fairy tale. She responded to Kitagawa's words with evident disdain:
"If someone really believed in that story, she wouldn't fall into a wonderland. She'd end up smashing into some abandoned sewage pipe or something."
"I think Ryo should care more about the metaphors in the book—like how it reflects Victorian-era gender roles and education, societal norms, the Queen of Hearts' prototype. I might actually want to discuss it with you then."
"Alice really isn't a child at all. And yet she's named Alice."
Kitagawa sniffled, as if his core beliefs had been challenged.
"It's just the same pronunciation."
"And honestly, I think the Alice in the book is no match for me. She was just messing around."
Arisu proudly raised her chin:
"Genius is determined by genetics from birth. My parents were both exceptional, so I'm completely different from that bumbling little girl."
"Meee~"
Kitagawa stuck his tongue out at her.
"You mean a genius who can't win even a single game of Gomoku?"
"Gomoku... Gomoku is a child's game. It doesn't count."
Embarrassed, Arisu flushed red and stood up, pulling the international chess set down from the shelf.
"This is the kind of game a genius should be playing."
And then, in even less time than it had taken her to lose at Gomoku, Sakayanagi Arisu lost their first game of chess.
-------------------------------------
Sakayanagi Arisu had scheduled rehabilitation every three days in addition to her daily morning checkups. She was always carefully escorted downstairs to the central courtyard by a professional caregiver handpicked by her father, as if she were a fragile porcelain doll.
She followed instructions to perform gentle, stretching movements. But in reality, it was anything but graceful—mentally, she felt like a puppet dancing on strings; physically, she moved like an old wind-up toy without enough oil.
The only thing Arisu found novel about these sessions was how clearly she could feel her own heartbeat. Whenever the intensity of the movements slightly increased, her heart would throb like an old-fashioned engine rumbling loudly within her chest.
If the heartbeat truly was the sound of life, then this must have been when she felt most alive.
Disregarding the pallor of her face, the cold sweat beading on her forehead, the spots of darkness that occasionally blurred her vision, and the choking tightness in her throat... Okay, maybe too many things needed to be disregarded.
This process repeated several times, as if testing her limits or pressing for hidden potential. It always ended with the caregiver's encouraging words. Arisu was familiar with this entire routine.
It felt like walking toward a distant goal—one she knew she'd never reach. Still, she kept going step by step, like playing someone else's drawn-out, boring game.
And then, Kitagawa Ryo suddenly appeared in the courtyard. Or rather, Sakayanagi Arisu finally noticed him.
He was crouching in the flowerbeds, seemingly watching a trail of ants moving house. Arisu didn't recognize the flowers.
"Ryo," she called. She had just been about to return to her room.
"Arisu." He waved at her. She wasn't sure whether he meant "Alice" or "Arisu," given they sounded the same.
"Wanna take a look?"
So she squatted down next to him. She was still sweating, and the caregiver had instructed her to shower and change clothes immediately. Before she could even see what Kitagawa had been observing, she was called back.
By the time she returned to the courtyard, freshly showered and dressed, he was gone. She walked over to the flowerbeds, but the ants had finished their move. Only bare earth remained.
She waited for a bit—and to her surprise, Kitagawa showed up again. He had also showered, and for once, neither of them wore hospital gowns. He wore a hooded jacket, and she a long dress that reached her ankles.
"Wanna see Hotaru?" Kitagawa asked, taking out his phone and waving it lightly.
"Okay." Arisu blinked her deep violet eyes, round and cat-like.
And so the two of them crouched together to watch videos sent from Kitagawa's home. They could've easily done this indoors—only when their legs went numb did they realize that.
"You'll have a sweet dream tonight," Kitagawa declared confidently as he turned off the phone.
"What's so good about sweet dreams?" Arisu muttered.
"You prefer nightmares?"
"Nightmares wake you up," she replied.
"Better than dreaming a beautiful dream, only to wake up and realize it was a beautiful lie."
"That's the first time I've heard that logic," Kitagawa shook his head. "Then all those fairies bringing sweet dreams to good children must be villains."
Arisu looked down. "My father used to say that to comfort me when I had nightmares. Don't take it seriously."
"After all, nobody really wishes nightmares on others."
Kitagawa Ryo said softly. "If you dream of someone who's passed away, is that a nightmare or a good dream?"
"It depends on whether it someone you want to see"
"The people you want to see the most... never appear in dreams."
"That's because you don't dare think of them too hard."
"Why not?"
"Because when the dream is sweet, waking up becomes the real nightmare."
Arisu seemed pleased with that answer. She turned back and smiled:
"Then I hope you have a nightmare tonight, Ryo."
"I'm such a good kid, the fairies will only let me dream sweetly."
Arisu laughed again. Her eyebrows curved like a crescent moon hiding behind clouds.
"Anyone who says that definitely isn't a good kid."
-------------------------------------
"That child next door?" Her father blinked, then smiled.
"Looks like you really did make a friend, Arisu. He's actually the son of an old friend of mine. His life's been a bit unusual, like something out of a novel. For various reasons, he was abandoned at birth. Only recently was he finally found and brought home."
"But it's unfortunate..."
Arisu understood what her father meant. Kitagawa was suffering from an illness with no known cure. Compared to that terminal disease often referred to as ALS, her congenital heart condition almost seemed mild.
Kitagawa looked fine now thanks to excellent medical care and because the symptoms were still in the early stages—only his right hand was affected for the time being.
Just like its name, as the illness progressed, Kitagawa would slowly become "frozen" from limb to core, until eventually...
Arisu had looked up the condition. One of the photos showed a man with his head tilted, drooling, having lost all control over his body. He couldn't even swallow or smile normally.
"For you," her father said, pulling out a beautiful cane and a white sun hat from his bag.
"I heard you've been spending more time outside. These might come in handy."
The cane could support her body, and the hat would shield her from sunlight—both practical and elegant gifts.
But the next day, when she brought the cane to show Kitagawa, he didn't seem impressed.
"Walking on three legs," he commented after glancing at it.
"Like an old granny."
So Sakayanagi Arisu ended up chasing him around with the cane for a full twenty minutes.
Maybe that counted as rehabilitation, too.
Maybe.
Xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To Read Advanced Chapters, and support this novel, please join me on [email protected]/geats2000