On Saturday morning in the first week of June, I left home fifteen minutes earlier than usual.
The automatic doors of the university hospital opened. The smell of disinfectant came down over me, the same as five nights before, only fainter. At the reception desk I wrote my name on the visitor form. The tip of my pen paused slightly at the thread radical of the last character in Shiori.
"Fourth floor, East Ward, Room 408."
Light from a break in the rainy season came in white and slanting from the end of the East Ward corridor. On the half-frosted door of Room 408 was a name card reading "Toru Seto." I reached for the handle. At the very end of pulling the door open, the wheels in their track made a low sound.
The air in the room was warmer than in the corridor. There was a faint smell that was neither disinfectant nor linen. It was the smell of body heat that had stayed in the same place for a long time. Morning light slanted in through the east window as far as the foot of the bed. At the lowest edge of that light, he was lying there.
Seto, I thought. My feet stopped beside the round stool.
His face was a little thinner, but his color wasn't bad. His eyelashes didn't move. The shape of his closed eyelids was there, the same as always. If someone had told me he was asleep, I might have believed it. A monitor sounded low. Briefly, then once more at the same pitch.
"Ms. Sakurai," came a voice from behind me. His mother stood there with a pale blue cardigan settled evenly on her shoulders. Compared to the creases of that night, her shoulders had regained a little of their height.
"Good morning."
The doctor in charge knocked and came in. The three of us stood beside the nurses' station to hear the explanation.
"As far as the test results go, there's nothing abnormal in either his brain or his heart. And yet he isn't waking up. As a case, it's extremely rare."
"Have there been similar cases before?" his mother asked in a low voice.
"There are a few similar reports in the literature. But none of them got as far as identifying a cause."
"Will he wake up?"
"I would like to say that he should. But since we don't know the cause, it's difficult for me to say when."
I didn't ask any more questions. I was looking at the lowest button on the collar of the doctor's white coat.
In the corridor, his mother and I were left alone.
"I have to go home for a while this afternoon to take care of something for my husband. If it isn't too much trouble, could you keep an eye on him for just a little while?"
"Yes. Of course."
I went back into the room and drew the chair up to the left side of the bed. His left hand lay on the blanket, the fingers loosely open and still. His nails were neatly trimmed. The color of the blood in the back of his hand had drained just slightly more than in the back of mine. I placed both hands neatly on my lap. Between his left hand and my two hands lay a fistful's width of white sheet.
I began to lift my right hand a little and stopped at the edge of that white. A white gap remained between my fingertips and his little finger. I didn't close it.
The light from the break in the rain had advanced as far as the corner of the folded-back sheet.
I sat for about an hour. A nurse changed the IV bag. There were no seams in the way her hands moved. I stood up too.
"I'll come again," I said aloud. It came out smaller than I'd expected. When I went out through the automatic doors, the light of eleven o'clock on a June morning fell on the collar of my jacket. My feet stopped just before the ticket gates.
The line I had typed and erased on the sofa that night at the end of May rose to the corner of my mind. The coldness of the fingers that had turned the screen face down came back faintly, just this side of the light on my collar. Whether anything would have been different if I had sent it, I didn't know.
—I'll come again tomorrow.
There was no reason to come. There was no reason not to. I'll come again tomorrow—that was all I decided.