Lycoris Radiata / 彼岸花

On the next morning, having made a decision, I patiently waited for lunch break so we could talk someplace far from any prying eyes. I was tasked with a crucial mission. To ask Natsuko out on a date in the upcoming yearly Hojoya Festival.

The teacher, acknowledging his class was over, reminded us of our homework amidst the increasing background noise, as students alike rushed outside, hungry and desperate to talk with their friends.

Unable to spot her among the students still inside the classroom, I channeled my inner Kimura and sprinted outside. In spite of my best efforts, my attempts to find her were fruitless, leaving me no choice but to camp in one of the few U-shaped staircases throughout campus—specifically, the one near the cafeteria.

I guess this is an opportune time to fill you in on the details. During today’s homeroom period, I addressed Natsuko (as stealthily as one could in the presence of two dozen students), asking her to meet me at the very place I now sat on. Thankfully, she agreed. Unfortunately, an issue arose when she mysteriously vanished into thin air following the beginning of our lunch break. You see, we were supposed to walk there together, or, at least, not disappear inexplicably. Sure, the reason behind it was, at worst, trivial, nothing to fuss about. The thing is, much like my patience for Kimura, the duration of this break was fleeting, something that, before you noticed it, was gone, at best.

Speaking of, there she was, no more than ten meters away, catching up with some of her friends.

“Hey, hey, Kimura, do you have any new information you can share with us?”

“You know, regarding who Ishida's dating,” she added in a slightly lower tone so it could only be heard within them.

“Ah, not really... Sorry!”

“Aww, that's a shame,” the same girl who started the conversation continued.

“To be fair, I don't think he was dating anyone in the first place,” Kimura remarked.

“You think so? Well, either way, maybe we should let them be. Though I still think they’re dating. I’m just that certain of it,” she asserted.

“Guess there isn’t anything that could convince you otherwise,” Kimura giggled, “However, I shall not give up! From now on, I’ll make it my mission to change your mind!”

“Oh, Kimura, are you challenging the second princess Inoue?”

“Indeed,” she replied, confidently, moving her hand along her right eye, briefly covering it.

The two other girls besides the aforementioned Inoue and Kimura commented on the situation, taken aback by the surprising turn of events.

“Impossible!”

“The Power of Kings! Look away, Inoue!”

“Sakurai vi Lusitania commands you. Forget everything related to Akira Natsuko and Yuki Ishida.”

“Yes, your highness,” Inoue obeyed her.

“We were too slow, we lost her! Damn!”

“I beg your mercy, Sakurai-sama!”

“You have my mercy. On one condition—we must change the topic of discussion.”

“Okay!”

“Man, that was amazing! I didn’t know you had such role-playing skills, Kimura,” Inoue noted, breaking the act.

“Thanks. What are we going to talk about now?”

“You're right… oh, I know! I heard the student council's making some changes to this year's Cultural Festival! At least that's what I heard from secretary Sakurasawa.”

“Really? What is it, what is it?”

“A secret.”

“Not fair!”

While the others continued chatting, Kimura turned to me and smiled, implying “I did my part, now it’s your turn.”

Soon afterward, I sighted Natsuko, on her way to the staircase. As we reunited, she took the initiative.

“Shall we?”

Even though I was the one who initially asked for some time alone with her, she had decided to take the lead, presumably having found a good spot for us to talk. My assumption was later proven correct.

“So, what did you want to talk about?”, she wondered.

“I… there’s this nice Autumn festival here in Fukuoka. I was wondering if you wanted to hang out with me. At the festival,” I replied, as embarrassed as her.

“Is that… so?”

She clearly didn’t expect that kind of request from me. “Huh? Is she… asking me out?”, she thought to herself.

“Y-Yeah.”

Nevertheless, she rapidly got over it.

“I’ll go. So long as it’s just the two of us, I’ll go.”

Seeing her take a more comfortable stance, I recovered some of my own confidence too.

“Then… how about this Friday?”

“Sounds good to me.”

Suspecting this to be the end of our conversation, she sought to confirm it.

“Is this all you wanted to talk about?”

“Yes.”

“Oh, by the way, Yuki, do you have a yukata?”

“What is that question? Of course I do.”

Unless you mean…

“I mean the cute ones women use.”

“Well… there’s always my mother’s… but I don’t think that’ll do…”

“That’s what I feared most. Sadly, we’ll need to go shopping for one.”

Liar. You’re more excited about it than children on Christmas eve.

“I take it you already got yours?”

“I do.”

She remembered something.

“Now that I think of it, I may take advantage of the opportunity to buy a new obi.”

“Want to eat lunch together?”

“Yeah,” she responded warmly.

After weeks of avoiding each other, now on the same page again, we caught back up with each other’s adventures and misadventures. It was really fun. I was glad we managed to go back to how things were before, but now as lovers instead of friends.

No less than an hour later, we found ourselves back inside the classroom, trying our best to pay attention to what the teacher was explaining.

“Naturally, just like equations, inequations can also make use of logarithms, exponentials, trigonometry, among others. As an example,” she wrote three inequations on the chalkboard, each of them with one of the aforementioned intricacies.

“And, as it is with normal equations, they can also contain two or more at once.” 

She wrote a fourth one to exemplify.

“Like this one over here,” she pointed at it.

“Now, I’m sure this all seems hard at first glance.”

After explaining it, she stared at the students, scanning for any generous souls who wanted to take a stab at either of the mathematic problems on the chalkboard.

“With that said, does anyone want to come here and try to solve any of these?”

Utter silence. Add a bit of nature background sounds and I wouldn’t blame you for thinking you were inhabiting the wilderness of Yakushima, with no idea of how or when you wound up there.

To no one’s surprise, the teacher was forced to resort to plan B—pick out students randomly and make them do the work no one else wanted to do (not that they wanted to in the first place).

“Alright, I see how it is. Kimura, Aoki, Nakagawa, Ishida. Get up. You've won a ticket to the chalkboard.”

The four of us got up, but I found difficulties, struggling to do so when I was halfway through the action, involuntarily falling back to a sitting position.

“Ishida, did you lose your motivation all of sudden?”, the teacher wondered.

I moved my lips to answer, but those too failed me. My sight started to fade, quickly growing darker. “Huh?”, I wondered to myself, as I began losing consciousness.

“Teacher!”, Natsuko called the adult woman out, readily getting up from her desk.

I passed out and my head and arms fell on the table. The last thing I remember was hearing, Natsuko, our teacher, and a few other students rush to my aid.

When I recovered my senses, I found myself in a hospital bed, covered by a large arctic blue blanket and with two tubes, a catheter, and an IV line connected to my body. As I looked to my right, I noticed my girlfriend, who instantly grabbed my hand, aware I was conscious.

“I'm so glad to see you awake!”, she uttered, crying.

I was later given a rundown of what happened while I remained unconscious. Natsuko told me that, shortly after I lost consciousness, she—alongside the teacher—took me to the Infirmary. Since it was taking longer than normal for me to recover my senses, my parents were notified and I was brought to the hospital’s urgent care service. There, they were put up to speed and my urologist was called to the spot. The situation was swiftly evaluated by the nurses and the specialist doctor, ultimately taking the decision to perform surgery right then and there. This all happened on the same day. After they finished the procedure, I was left in the room where I was resting at the time. I was also told Natsuko stayed by my side the entire time until my mother begged her to go home for the night. She skipped classes today so she could be there when I woke up.

Within the span of a couple of days (during which most of my classmates visited me), I was discharged and had an appointment with my psychologist and urologist regarding my future.

Natsuko and my parents accompanied me throughout the whole process, from the moment I was hospitalized and, later, left the hospital room until I entered the consulting room.

When we arrived, the two health workers were already inside, waiting for us. We sat down by the table.

“Hello, Yuki,” the urologist began, “and Natsuko.”

He also nodded to my parents, choosing to greet them in that manner.

“Sorry for requesting your presence in these… less-than-ideal times. Unfortunately, this is something that cannot wait. I’m sure you understand that much,” he continued.

“Yes,” I confirmed.

“I'm not sure if Natsuko knows.”

“I do.”

“Oh… then we are all on the same page, good,” he remarked.

“Monday evening, we were forced to do a surgery. The exams we did confirmed the worst. You have developed prostate cancer, Yuki. We attempted to do the best we could, but when we got a better look at your body, during the surgery, we discovered… something else. It had spread to other parts of the body. I contacted the nurses who supervised the exams you did this year, and we came to the conclusion the last cancer screening you did must have been wrong. It’s a rare occurrence, but these screenings have a tiny chance to return false positive results.”

“I… see,” I acknowledged, still not fully aware of my new reality.

“If you want to, we can take a break.”

“It’s fine.”

It wasn’t.

“Understood. In the meantime, I contacted some of my colleagues to get other opinions on the matter. We all reached similar conclusions.”

His face was that of someone pressured to hold a critical yet fragile shard of information hostage until the time was right. Until all the pieces were set.

I…

“Yuki, you've got one year left to live.”