Chapter 22 She Lived for Shota; Now She Has Nothing to Live For

Mirai stumbled down the hallway, her vision blurred by a relentless waterfall of tears. She finally crashed to a stop, one hand gripping the cold corner of a wall for support as her legs threatened to give way. Sobs wracked her body.

"Stupid... I'm so stupid!"

A wave of fury surged, directed at Shota.

"Sho-kun! After all this time, after all I did for him! How? How could he!" But it died instantly. He never promised her anything. He never led her on.

The anger flared again, this time towards the woman in his bed.

"It's her fault! That woman! That... that...!" But that, too, fizzled.

"No. I'm the fool. I'm to blame. It's my own fault... all of it," she gasped, sliding down the wall to sit on the cold floor, drawing her knees to her chest.

"It was all one-sided. My own little fantasy. I did all of it. He never asked me to. I have no right... no right to blame anyone but myself for being this dumb... this blind! It's my own fault. I forced myself on him. I followed him like a lost puppy. I cooked for him, fought for him... but he never asked for any of it. I have no right to be angry at anyone but myself. I'm just a dumb, crazy girl who couldn't see that she was just... a convenient nuisance."

She buried her face in her knees, a fresh wave of agony washed over her.

"A straight rejection... would have been better than... than walking in and seeing him like that... with her... wait..."

Then, like a bucket of ice water, realization doused her grief.

"Witch Queen? But... she's supposed to be dead. What is going on? That can't be the real one. Is someone pretending to be her? But what's the point? To manipulate Sho-kun? Or was it Shota? Using some kind of illusion magic? Or did I simply... hallucinate? Was my mind playing a trick on me?"

She replayed the scene: the woman's solid form, the way the mattress dipped, the clarity of her face. It was too real. The details were too perfect.

"No. It was real. She was real. I have lost Shota, she is back and there is no room for Mira-chan left. I don't know how it's possible but that doesn't matter anymore."

The cold of the floor seeped through her uniform, but it was nothing compared to the absolute zero that had frozen her heart.

The sobs that had wracked her body slowed, then stopped. The tears didn't dry; they simply seemed to have no more source. The well was empty.

Analytical thoughts about the Witch Queen's impossibility faded into static. It didn't matter. The "why" and "how" were irrelevant. The only fact that existed in the entire universe was the image burned onto the back of her eyelids: Shota, holding another woman, saying the words she had spent a lifetime desperate to hear.

A strange, hollow calm settled over her.

"Of course. What did I expect? I was a convenient fixture. A noisy pet. He never looked at me. Never liked me and never loved me. I just pretended he did. Ten years of my efforts to be noticed couldn't even get a simple 'I like you Mirai-chan' and she appeared out of nowhere to get his instant love confession. I feel so pathetic. So stupid."

Slowly, she pushed herself up from the floor. Her legs felt numb. She didn't look back down the hall toward his room. There was nothing for her there. There was nothing for her anywhere.

She smoothed down her wrinkled skirt with a hand that didn't tremble. She wiped her face with her sleeve.

She didn't run. She didn't look back. She simply walked away, leaving the hospital and ten years of her life behind her on the floor of a hospital room.

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The door to her apartment clicked shut behind her. Mirai stood in the middle of her living room, and for the first time, she truly saw it.

 Her gaze, still red-rimmed, swept across the room, and every object whispered a sweet, secret story that only she knew.

On the bookshelf, nestled between her own pristine novels, was a worn, dog-eared volume of Magic Knight Rayirth. A soft, sad smile touched her lips.

"Oh, this. You left this at school after show-and-tell in first grade. I was going to give it back the next day… but then I got sick and didn't come to school. I thought… if I kept it safe for you, it would be like holding onto a piece of the happy Sho-kun. A piece you might want back someday."

Her eyes drifted to the coffee table, where a small, hand-painted ceramic box sat, depicting a sleepy calico cat.

"I saw this at the festival and bought two. One for you, to keep your precious coins in. And one for me, so we'd have matching ones. Like best friends do. I never put anything in mine. It felt… too special to use."

She turned and saw the photo taped to the fridge. It was the class picture from their first year. There he was, a tiny, beaming sunbeam in the front row, his arm thrown around another boy, laughing with his whole body. She had carefully cut around his form, removing everyone else, including her own smaller, smiling self beside him.

"You looked so happy here, I wanted to remember you like this forever. I wanted to remember that the world could make you smile like that. I wanted to be the one to make you smile like that again."

At her desk, she touched the neat stack of handwritten recipe cards. 

"You mentioned you liked your grandma's katsu-don once, in passing, years ago. I practiced until I got it perfect..."

She trailed off, her vision blurring again. The room was a museum of hope. Every item was a love letter, a silent prayer, a carefully preserved moment of a boy she adored, built around the desperate, gentle hope that one day, he would see all these pieces she'd saved and feel loved. That he would walk into this space and feel at home.

She was a gardener who had spent ten years tending a single, precious flower in the dark, only to realize it had been dreaming of a different sun the whole time.

The weight of it all—the sweetness and the sorrow—crashed down on her at once. She slid to her knees in the center of the room, surrounded by the beautiful, useless evidence of her one-sided love, and wrapped her arms around herself.

"It was all for you. Every single, silly thing. It was all because I loved you so, so much."

And for the first time, the love didn't feel exciting or possessive. It just felt terribly, terribly lonely. 

A guttural, raw scream tore from her throat—a sound of pure, unadulterated anguish that had been building for a decade.

"IT WAS ALL FOR NOTHING!"

 Her hand shot out and swept across the bookshelf. The cherished, dog-eared manga volume of Magic Knight Rayirth was the first to go, sailing across the room.

"STUPID! STUPID! STUPID!"

She grabbed the matching ceramic cat box from the coffee table. For a second, she hesitated, her fingers trembling over the sleepy calico face she'd loved so much. Then, with another broken cry, she hurled it to the floor. It shattered into a hundred pieces.

She lunged for the refrigerator and ripped the precious, carefully trimmed class photo from its place. She clawed at it, shredding the image of his happy, beaming face into confetti, her nails digging into the paper as if she could destroy the memory itself.

"I FAILED TO MAKE HIM HAPPY! HE WAS NEVER MINE!"

The recipe cards flew into the air like a blizzard of failed hopes, scattering across the room.

She wrecked it all. Every preserved moment, every silent love letter, every tenderly kept secret. She tore down the museum of her own heart with a violence that matched the pain tearing her apart. 

For the first time in ten years, the sight of them brought no thrill, no secret joy. They were just objects. The meaning had bled out of them. She had lived for Shota. Now, she had nothing to live for.