It was a night in early June. The damp night air of the rainy season's start had settled even inside the automatic doors of the entrance. Several nights had passed since the day I stopped in front of the shelf under the dimmed lights.
As I was about to pass through the entrance of my apartment building, I took my phone out of my bag. I brought up his number and pressed the call button. Five rings, six. The person who answered wasn't him.
"It's, um... about my son."
A slight tremor crept into the end of her voice.
"Yes."
I answered. Under the security light, my voice came out low.
"He collapsed outside around noon today. He was taken by ambulance, and he's at the university hospital now. They've been running tests, but they still don't know the cause."
"He hasn't... regained consciousness."
I was looking at the cold color of the stainless steel frame around the glass door.
"My son's phone kept ringing on his desk, you see, several times."
"Not at all."
I answered. Without my noticing, my fingertips were gripping the back of the phone.
"I'll come right away."
"Oh, no, at this hour of the night—"
"I'll come right away."
She started to say something, then answered, thank you.
I hung up and opened the ride app. My finger missed the input field once. I noticed the layer I had thrown on was thin, but I didn't go back.
I got into the back seat of the taxi.
"The university hospital, please."
The car stopped at the third light, and the railing of a bridge came into view outside the window. All the way across the bridge, I looked at my palms on my lap. My fingertips were cold. I couldn't tell whether it was the night air.
—I should have sent it that night.
The line I had erased on the screen at the end of May, one character at a time from the end, came back to me, still in hiragana. He might not have answered. Even so, I should have pressed send. The rivets of the bridge railing streamed backward along the lower edge of the window at a steady pace.
Past nine-thirty, the emergency entrance had only half its lights on. When the automatic doors opened, the smell of disinfectant came down over me. I gave my name at the reception desk.
"I'm Sakurai. I'm here to see Toru Seto."
"He's in the intensive care unit, so go straight down this corridor, all the way to the end."
The cold of the linoleum floor came through the soles of my shoes. It was a different cold from the one at the library's north exit.
On a long bench just before the automatic doors at the end, a small, older woman was sitting. She had her beige coat folded neatly on her lap and was clutching a handkerchief. When I came closer, she looked up a moment late. It was his mother.
"I'm Sakurai. I'm sorry to come so late at night."
"No, I should be the one saying that."
The same tremor from the phone lingered at the end of her voice.
"Thank you for coming."
I sat down beside her, leaving a little space. The cold of the bench's synthetic leather came through the lining of my skirt. I placed both hands neatly on my lap. The blue lamp above the automatic doors was lit.
Why am I here, I wondered. No answer came.