The world is a massive waiting room, and I am the most impatient person waiting to be called out.
I've always hated the way the sun rises in Kanagawa. The light reflecting off the sea seems to force optimism upon every soul, but to me, it's nothing more than a reminder that I have to endure another day with lungs that feel like they're filled with glass shards. Breathing is something people do automatically, a trivial reflex. But for me, every scatter of air is an exhausting, monumental project.
I have to be fully conscious to pull the oxygen in, feeling it grate against my dry throat, hearing it crinkle inside my chest like footsteps on dead leaves—like a worn-out radio broadcast struggling to find a signal in the middle of a silent storm. Every breath is the friction of rusted metal, demanding my life as payment.
That afternoon, I sat in the stifling hospital lobby. My eyes were fixed on the television in the corner of the room, broadcasting the evening news in an irritatingly flat voice.
"Cases of lung complications in teenagers have risen sharply... The main factor remains dominated by long-term tobacco consumption started at an early age..."
I felt my jacket pocket, sensing the shape of the crumpled cigarette pack inside. I wanted to laugh, but all that came out was a sharp wheeze from my throat. Once, I felt powerful with every puff of tobacco, feeling like I was in control of my own destruction. As it turns out, I was just a fool digging my own grave with my own allowance. The news seemed to be judging me in public, announcing that I was the one who pieced together every fragment of my lung's collapse, cigarette by cigarette.
With my head throbbing, I stood up. I had to leave. I gripped my grey notebook—a journal filled only with numbers of my remaining life and curses at a God who never answered. I walked quickly through the corridors smelling of carbolic, trying to avoid the pitying stares of healthy people walking by with lungs that were still solid.
Then, at a sharp turn near the pharmacy, my world collided with another reality.
Bruk!
My weak body hit someone hard. All the air in my lungs felt squeezed out at once. I fell to the cold floor, my grey notebook slipping away and sliding across the tiles, falling wide open right under the humming neon lights.
But it wasn't just my book that fell. The girl I hit had also collapsed. In front of me, a large sketchbook of hers lay open. Markers and colored pencils were scattered like the ruins of a shattered dream.
I crawled to reach for my book, but my eyes accidentally caught what was written on the page of the girl's sketchbook. There, in the middle of sketches of disgusting black pests devouring withered flowers, a short sentence was written in striking red ink:
[ "Is this world truly fair to those who are forced to remain silent?" ]
That sentence hit me right in the gut. Fairness? I wanted to scream at her that this world doesn't know the meaning of that word. But before I could speak, I realized she was staring at my book. Her small hand held my grey journal, right at the most naked page I had ever written:
"One year and two months. That is the only time the doctor gave me before these lungs completely stop being a home for air. Turns out, killing yourself with cigarettes takes longer than I thought."
Panic and rage surged through my soul. I snatched the book from her hands violently.
"Don't you... dare... read that!" I barked. My voice broke, hoarse from the lingering breathlessness that choked me. I felt like a thief caught red-handed, admiring the portrait of my own death.
I braced myself to see a terrified face or that sickening look of pity—the look people usually give when they find out I'm an orphan and dying. But the girl just remained silent. She stared at me with eyes that were clear, yet empty. No sympathy. No tears.
Instead, she picked up a black marker that had fallen near my knee and wrote on a blank page of her book with a very calm hand, as if my death sentence was nothing more than a boring footnote.
[ "Death is just a pest that ruins the view. Why are you mourning it as if it's a tragedy, when it was your own choice? The sound of your breathing... it's so noisy. It's disturbing my peace of mind." ]
I was stunned. My head felt hot. The news on TV called me a failure statistic, and this girl called me a noise disturbance. She didn't care that I was dying from my own stupidity. She treated my demise like a nagging mosquito in the night.
"Do you... have no heart?" I asked, my breath growing shorter, trying to suppress the emotion overflowing in my chest, which began to vibrate violently like an old engine being forced to turn without oil.
She only tilted her head, giving me a look that was incredibly irritating. She wrote again in her book, pressing the marker harder this time:
[ "The world is indeed unfair. You have a voice, but you use it to destroy yourself. I have no voice, yet I want to see the world for longer. So don't expect me to cry for an 'Old Radio' like you." ]
Old Radio. That name felt like the perfect mockery for the sound of my chest, filled with harsh, rasping static that cut through the air.
She stood up, dusting off her school skirt from the hospital tiles, and packed her stationery without looking back at me even once. She walked away just like that, leaving behind a scent of fresh bath soap—a scent that felt so "healthy" amidst the stifling smell of medicine and death reports on the television.
She didn't make a sound, but her cold attitude just now left a wound deeper than any syringe. She gave me no mercy, and for some reason, it was the most honest thing I had received in the past year.
I sat alone in the corridor, clutching my grey journal which now felt incredibly heavy. There, amidst the smell of carbolic and the scatter of air that was becoming harder to reach, I realized one thing: I hated that girl. I hated the "Pest" who considered my struggle to breathe as nothing more than an insignificant technical glitch.
One year and two months. Time enough to hate her, and time too short to understand why she wrote about justice in her book.