Arashi turned and made his way to the corner of the room where the wheelchair sat folded against the wall. He reached out and gripped the handles, and just as his fingers closed around the cold metal frame — he heard it.

  A sound.

  A heavy, sudden thud from behind him.

  He spun around.

  Mizuki was on the floor.

  She had tried to get up on her own. He could see it in the way her arms were still trembling, still braced against the ground as if her body hadn't yet accepted what had happened. Her legs — the legs that had once carried her so effortlessly — y still beneath her, unresponsive, as though they belonged to someone else entirely.

  Arashi didn't think. He moved.

  His footsteps were quick and sharp against the floor as he closed the distance between them in an instant, dropping to his knees beside her and wrapping his arms around her carefully, trying to lift her with as much gentleness as urgency would allow.

  "Mizuki —" his voice came out sharper than he intended, ced with worry he couldn't hide. "What are you doing?"

  She didn't look at him.

  Her eyes stayed fixed on the floor, her hair falling slightly forward, shielding her expression. But her voice, when it finally came, was small — fragile in a way Arashi had never heard from her before.

  "I… I don't understand." She swallowed hard. "I don't understand why my legs… why they won't…"

  She couldn't finish the sentence.

  And then — silently, without warning — her eyes filled.

  Tears slipped down her face, quiet and unstoppable, and a few drops fell from her chin onto the backs of her hands resting in her p. She stared at them as if she didn't recognize them. As if the tears belonged to someone else too.

  Then something shifted in her.

  The grief turned into something rawer — something desperate and angry and helpless all at once. She raised her hand and hit her leg. Then again. Her palm striking against her own skin as if she could punish her body into working, as if pain could reach whatever had gone silent inside her.

  "Why won't you work?" she whispered through clenched teeth, her voice cracking beneath the weight of it. "Why — why won't you just work —"

  "Mizuki."

  Arashi's hand closed gently around hers, stopping her mid-strike.

  He didn't scold her. He didn't pull away. He simply held her hand still — and then, without a word, he pulled her into his arms.

  She went still against his chest.

  "Please," he said quietly, his voice low and steady, close to her ear. "Please don't do that to yourself."

  She didn't respond, but her breathing was uneven, shallow — the kind that comes just before someone loses the st of their composure.

  "You're going to get better, Mizuki." His arms tightened slightly around her. "You're going to walk again. I know it doesn't feel that way right now — but you will. And until then…" He paused, exhaling slowly. "I'm here. I'm right here. So please — don't hurt yourself. Don't do that."

  A beat of silence passed between them, heavy and soft at the same time.

  "Come on," he murmured. "Let's get you up."

  Slowly, carefully, Arashi shifted his weight and rose, guiding Mizuki upward with him, one arm firm around her back and the other steadying her side. He moved slowly — deliberately — making sure she felt banced and secure at every step, adjusting his pace to match what her body could handle in that moment.

  Step by careful step, he guided her across the room.

  When they finally reached the wheelchair, he lowered her into it gently, making sure she was settled before he let go — and even then, his hands lingered for just a moment longer than necessary.

  As if letting go entirely wasn't something he was quite ready to do.

  Arashi stepped behind the wheelchair without a word and began pushing it forward. The hallway was quiet around them — no conversation, no expnation needed. He simply moved, and she let him.

  They reached the elevator and he pressed the button for the highest floor, watching the doors slide shut with a soft mechanical hum. The ride up was silent, but not uncomfortably so. It was the kind of silence that exists between two people who no longer need words to fill the space.

  When the doors opened, Arashi guided the wheelchair forward, navigating the st stretch of corridor with calm, unhurried steps until finally — they reached the rooftop door.

  He pushed it open slowly.

  The moment the door gave way, a wave of cool air rushed in to meet them — gentle and unhurried, carrying with it the faint smell of open sky and something distant, something clean. Mizuki closed her eyes for just a brief second as the breeze touched her face.

  Arashi wheeled her outside.

  And then he stopped.

  The sky ahead of them was something neither of them had pnned for. The sun was sinking low on the horizon, bleeding soft shades of amber and rose across the clouds, painting the edges of the sky in colors that felt almost too beautiful to be real. Wisps of cloud drifted in slowly from the side, catching the st of the light and holding it — glowing faintly, like embers that didn't want to die out just yet.

  "Let's go closer," Mizuki said, her voice lighter than it had been all day. She tilted her chin forward toward the low wall at the edge of the rooftop. "The view will be better from there."

  Arashi said nothing. He simply pushed the wheelchair forward, steady and careful across the rooftop floor, until they reached the wall and the full stretch of the horizon opened up before them — vast and unhurried and glowing.

  He stopped there and stepped to the side, standing close but not crowding her, letting her have the view.

  For a while, neither of them spoke.

  They simply existed there together — the cool wind threading through their hair, the sky slowly shifting its colors as the sun continued its quiet descent. It was the kind of moment that asks nothing of you. The kind that simply offers itself, and waits to see if you'll accept it.

  Then Mizuki spoke, her voice soft, almost to herself.

  "The sunset is so beautiful, isn't it."

  It wasn't really a question.

  "Yeah," Arashi replied simply. "It is."

  And then — without any announcement, without so much as a warning drop — the rain began.

  Arashi shifted slightly, his hands moving back to the wheelchair handles, ready to guide her inside before the rain picked up.

  But then he felt it.

  A hand — pced gently over his.

  He stilled.

  "No," Mizuki said quietly. "Let's stay a little longer."

  Arashi looked down at her. Her eyes were still fixed on the horizon, watching the rain begin to soften the colors of the sunset — blurring the edges of the amber and rose into something even more delicate, like watercolor bleeding across wet paper. There was something on her face that he hadn't seen in a long time. Not happiness exactly — but something close to it. Something peaceful.

  He looked back up at the sky.

  The rain was light. Barely more than a mist, really — the kind that settles on your skin without demanding anything, cool and quiet and gentle. It wasn't the kind of rain that asked you to run inside. It was the kind that asked you to stay.

  So, he did.

  He didn't say anything. He didn't move the wheelchair. He simply rexed his hands, let them rest, and stood there beside her — the two of them caught between a fading sunset and the beginning of rain, neither willing to let the moment end just yet.