that putrid, bitter feeling

Something bizarre happens when Toshi heads up the cliff for a reconnaissance mission during his day off.

It’s not that he sees Hino there.

It’s not that he sees Iroha there.

It’s not that he sees them sitting together, watching the sunset, letting silence speak for them.

It’s this putrid, bitter feeling taking over him, that which he thought had withered due to disuse.

Envy.

***

Toshi’s first workday of the week begins like it always does. Dawn approaches when Fenrir prances on top of him, making Cookie, who likes to sleep at the edge of the bed, bark.

Soon, in a zombie-like state, he takes them to the beach for a morning jog. Half an hour later, he sits on a log that’s already dented, then smokes while the dogs chase each other at the shore.

It’ll be this way for the next month, and then the one after, and then the year after, and so on and so forth. Fenrir and Cookie will long since have died by the time he’s an actual forty-year old nurse, just without a wife.

He takes a picture.

Last night, he caved and finally looked her up. He thought Fujinomiya was an idol or something, but she seems like more of an actress who happens to sing. That thing on her lockscreen isn’t a salmon, but some type of Amazonian giant fish. It has its own page. It also has more followers than ten dying villages combined. She has a link in her bio to a video where she shows how to take spiders in a cup instead of killing them.

Some time ago, Toshi noticed a bug crawling behind Fujinomiya. He pointed at it to startle her. She screamed, not because she was scared, but because she didn’t want him to kill it, threatening to sue him if he did. Needless to say, the bug was unharmed. Then again, he usually just kind of puts a piece of paper below them, then tosses them out the window. There are trees below, so.

Tree-hugging aside, her posts are just kind of deranged in general. A lot of her followers tease her, and she either doesn’t get it, or pretends not to as part of her persona. Toshi doesn’t know anymore.

Then he finds: People who can decide their future are lucky. ♡( ◡‿◡ )

As egregiously out of touch as that is, he gets it.

Gaillard once described the town as orange. She’s right, almost; everything is sepia. It exists at the edge of the precipice, between day and night, a good day and a forced shutdown.

A month from now, Fujinomiya will be gone.

Six months from now, so will half of the current patients.

A year from now, the clinic might not exist anymore. No amount of memories can keep anything alive for long. As such, what could possibly describe this place, if not the color of an aging sunset, or a mid-autumn leaf?

He takes the dogs back home despite their protests.

He gets ready for work.

He eats leftovers for breakfast.

He takes a ten-minute walk to Otohama Medical Center.

Whoever had a night shift—Eguchi this time—gives him a brief report before leaving in a zombie-like state.

Mr. Sato died three hours ago.

Eguchi called his family already. They’re on their way. She already took care of the preparations. Half-heartedly, she asks if Toshi will go to the funeral, to which he responds, half-heartedly, that he can’t leave the clinic alone.

After making the necessary calls, he starts the morning checkups. Everyone else is alive for now. Mr. Nishiyama was discharged yesterday. Mrs. Matsueda is hanging around, as usual, hiding how frail she has been forced to become. Mr. Oda is doing relatively well. Like the leaves outside, they hold on to borrowed time, as if knowing they’re the last flash of color before winter.

It’s Fujinomiya’s turn. As he climbs up the stairs, Toshi braces himself for chaos. He knocks on the door—to no response, as usual—before walking in.

The room is yellow, but cold. She’ll have to spend the last month with the window closed lest she catch a cold and start an epidemic. “Checkup time,” Toshi says.

Without turning around, she asks, “Who died this time?”

Right. Since she’s tall, she can stretch herself enough to see the entrance of the building below. Chances are that Mr. Sato’s family has shown up already. Someone has to greet them.

Toshi confirms this once he stands next to her, witnessing a swarm of outsiders bawling their eyes out around the entrance. “Mr. Sato,” he replies. “Did you ever meet him?”

Fujinomiya shakes her head.

“He’s… was…” Toshi clears his throat. “There’s no one else around right now, so we’ll have to do the checkup later. I just thought they’d take longer to show up. Is that alright with you?”

“Sure. Don’t worry.”

Toshi is the one who has to stand there while they take away Mr. Sato. He says goodbye one last time. Then someone else is gone forever.

Once he can be alone again, Toshi does the same as he has for the last few dozen deaths: he smokes a single cigarette on the bench across the street. The smoke is gray and bitter, unlike incense, but it’ll do.

Once he finishes the cancer stick, he heads back to Fujinomiya’s room. It’s been a while by this point–a while. “Something wrong?” Toshi asks, when he finds that she has cocooned herself again.

“Are you sad?”

“Ah. I mean… yes, but death is a natural process.”

“I’m asking the man, not the uniform,” she says.

“And the man is responding. If I broke down crying for every loss in this village, I’d be ashes, too. Checkup time.”

Fujinomiya no longer makes a fuss about her injured leg, though she has been insisting on painting her toenails lately. As Nagumo checks it, she says, “I have the leg of a dragon.”

He knows that she’s trying to make him laugh, but he’s not in the mood. “How much does it hurt?”

“Not much. Maybe when you bend the ankle. Maybe. Is it healing?”

“Yeah. You’re doing great, as usual.”

“When will I walk again?”

“Soon.”

“When will we go to the top of the cliff?”

“Soon.”

‘When will I leave?’

‘Soon.’

“Can I sing?” Fujinomiya asks.

When nothing else can, that makes Toshi look at her. “You what. While I’m doing this?”

“Yup. I mean mhm.”

On top of mimicking him, she has been trying to say ‘what are you doing’ the way locals do, but it sounds more offensive than anything else. “I mean… yeah, whatever. Go ahead. Try not to raise your voice too much.”

She doesn’t. It’s some English song he vaguely remembers listening to a few times. Despite herself, once or twice, she chokes when he rotates her ankle.

“Hurts?” He asks.

“N-no.”

“So I can do this triple as fast and you’d be fine?”

“Why would you do such a thing!?”

“Hatred.”

“I hate you more,” Fujinomiya says. “I’m thinking of writing a list of hatred, but you wouldn’t even be at the top. You’d be the name of the list.”

“Are those song lyrics?”

“Yes.”

And just like that, he’s smiling again.

After huffing, Fujinomiya continues to sing. She hums the melody between verses.

It sounds like a very hateful song, especially the words ‘I love you.’

“Done,” Toshi says, then makes no effort to move, nor does she tell him to.

She continues to sing–to herself, of course. About hatred, of course. He only knows basic English, so he doesn’t understand what she’s saying. ‘I love you’ probably means something like ‘you’re a mediocre, glorified hospice worker in a backwater village, get a grip’.

“I read that you didn’t want to go downstairs with Eguchi yesterday during your therapy session,” he says.

“Yeah, well. Imagine if I did.”

“I am imagining it.”

“Now imagine me stumbling and squishing Eguchi.”

“Ms. Fujinomiya, she’s a trained professional, not a bug.”

“She’s also a lot smaller than me. But you know who isn’t?”

“Hino.”

She smirks. “Who was it that said that civilians shouldn’t do medical work? Huh? Huh?”

Yeah, Toshi walked right into that one. “What if you squish me, then? Huh? Huh?”

“Then I wouldn’t feel guilty.”

“Because you hate me?”

Fujinomiya nods. She looks at him, and he looks at her, until a passing breeze reminds them that everything ends.

“Me too,” Toshi says. “I hate you.”

It’s not something any medical work should say to a patient, neither their 'hatred', nor the truth.

She’ll be gone in a month.

They’ll never meet again.

They’ll never speak of this to anyone, not even each other.

They can’t.