The moment Arashi heard it — that unsteady, labored breathing crackling through the phone — something inside him shifted. It wasn't panic, not yet. It was something quieter and far more dangerous: the cold, sinking certainty that something was wrong.
"Please, just stay calm," he said, his voice steady even as his chest tightened. "I'm on my way. I'll be there."
He didn't wait for a response. He was already moving.
He grabbed nothing. He thought of nothing. His body acted before his mind could catch up, carrying him out of the room and straight toward the front door with the kind of urgency that doesn't stop to explain itself.
He was halfway through the gate when he saw her.
Ayane stood just outside, hair slightly disheveled from the early morning, a water bottle tucked under her arm. She blinked at him — at the look on his face, at the way he was moving — and her expression shifted instantly.
"Arashi?" she called out. "What's going on? It's barely even morning — what are you doing?"
He slowed just enough to answer her. "It's Mizuki. Something's happened. I'm going to her."
Ayane's face changed. The sleepiness dissolved, replaced by something sharp and alert. "What happened to her?"
"I don't know yet." He was already past the gate. "What were you doing out here?"
"I just came to refill water," she said quickly, falling into step beside him for a moment. "Arashi—"
"I might not make it to school today," he said, glancing back at her over his shoulder. "You go ahead. Don't wait for me."
Ayane held his gaze for a beat. She nodded — no argument, no hesitation. "Okay. I'll come to the hospital after school. With the others." She paused, then added quietly, "Take care of her."
"K," Arashi said — just that, one syllable, already breaking into a run.
And then he was gone, his footsteps fading fast as he pushed himself into a full sprint, cutting through the quiet morning streets with nothing in his mind but one destination.
He didn't stop.
The city was still half-asleep around him — shuttered shops, empty intersections, the pale grey light of early morning stretched thin across the road. None of it registered. His lungs burned and his legs moved and the hospital grew closer with every breath.
When he finally arrived, he was still scanning the area when he spotted a familiar figure sitting outside — shoulders hunched, eyes low, the posture of a man who had been waiting for a while and was bracing himself to keep waiting.
Mizuki's father.
Arashi crossed the distance between them quickly, catching his breath as he stopped in front of him. The man looked up, and something in his expression — the exhaustion, the carefully controlled fear — made Arashi's stomach drop.
"What happened?" Arashi asked. "Tell me everything."
Mizuki's father exhaled slowly, like the words cost him something. "She couldn't breathe. It just... came on. I called the doctor immediately." He paused, rubbing the back of his hand across his jaw. "They haven't told me anything. Not a single word." His voice was quiet, but the weight in it was immense. "Her condition is serious, Arashi. They're not letting anyone in."
Arashi said nothing for a moment.
He stood there beside Mizuki's father in the stillness of the hospital corridor, both of them facing the same closed door, the same silence, the same unbearable wait.
The door opened.
Both of them were on their feet before the doctor had even fully stepped out — Arashi and Mizuki's father moving at the same moment, drawn forward by the same desperate need for an answer.
"Doctor." Mizuki's father's voice came out tight, barely holding together. "What happened? Is she alright? Please tell me she's alright."
The doctor held up a calm hand — not dismissive, but measured. The kind of composure that came from delivering difficult news often enough to have learned how to carry it gently.
"For now, she is stable," he said.
Both of them exhaled. But the relief lasted only a second, because the doctor's expression didn't soften the way it should have after good news.
"However," he continued, "there is a serious concern that needs to be addressed." He looked between the two of them before settling into the explanation. "Due to her Aplastic Anemia, her blood cell count has dropped to a critically low level. Her body has become extremely weak — far more than before." He paused, letting that land. "Whatever limited movement she was managing previously... even that is no longer possible for her. Her body simply does not have the strength for it anymore."
Mizuki's father stood very still. "How bad is it?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
"Her current blood cell count is enough to keep her conscious," the doctor said plainly. "Enough for her to speak. Enough for her to look around. But beyond that — there is no strength left in her body. None."
The silence that followed was heavy.
The doctor glanced at his clipboard, then back at them, his tone shifting into something more practical. "My advice is this — one of you should be here with her at all times. Not rotating in and out. One person, present, throughout the day. She requires consistent, proper treatment and careful monitoring. Every small thing matters now. Every detail."
Mizuki's father nodded slowly, absorbing it all. "I understand," he said quietly. "We'll arrange it."
"Good," the doctor said. "If you'll come with me, I'll go over the billing and treatment plan."
As the two of them began to step away, Arashi spoke up.
"Doctor." His voice was quiet but firm. "Can we see her?"
The doctor paused and turned back. He studied Arashi for a brief moment, then nodded. "Of course. But I need you to be careful." His eyes were serious. "Do not stress her. No emotional conversations, no heavy topics. Keep everything calm — your voice, your expressions, even the energy you bring into that room. She is far more sensitive to her surroundings now than she appears."
Arashi held his gaze and gave a single, steady nod.
"She should regain consciousness within a short while," the doctor added. "You may go in."
Arashi pushed the door open slowly.
He stepped inside.
And then he saw her.
Mizuki lay still against the white hospital sheets, an oxygen mask fitted over her face, her chest rising and falling in slow, measured breaths that no longer belonged entirely to her. Drips ran from both arms — clear lines carrying whatever her body could no longer produce on its own. Monitors surrounded her on either side, their screens glowing softly, tracking every heartbeat, every breath, every fragile sign of life with cold, mechanical precision.
She looked small.
That was the first thought that hit him — not a word, not a full sentence, just that. She looked so small underneath all of it. All the tubes and machines and careful medical arrangement that was keeping her together.
Something tightened in Arashi's chest — sharp and sudden, like a fist closing around something it refused to let go of.
He stood in the doorway for a moment longer than he meant to. His eyes moved across the oxygen mask, the drips, the slow green line tracing her heartbeat across the monitor screen. Every detail registered and every detail hurt in a way he wasn't prepared for.
But then the doctor's words came back to him, quiet and steady beneath the noise in his head.
Keep everything calm. Your voice, your expressions, even the energy you bring into that room.
Arashi exhaled.
Slowly, deliberately, he let his shoulders settle. He let his face find stillness. Not the forced, hollow kind — but the kind that comes from deciding, consciously, to be what someone needs you to be.
He walked further into the room, reached for the small stool near the wall, and placed it beside her bed without a sound.
Then he sat down.
No words. No dramatics. Just him, and her, and the quiet beeping of a machine that was working hard to do what her body couldn't.
He wasn't going anywhere.