Three days in a hospital room is enough to make anyone lose their mind, but for Rika, it was the quietest she had felt in years. No lockers slamming, no snide whispers in the hallway, no hiding in the library.
Just the scratch of her pen and the steady, rhythmic breathing of Marin in the next bed.
"You’re doing it again," Marin said, her voice cutting through the silence. She was propped up on her elbows, watching Rika with an intensity that made Rika’s ears turn pink.
"Doing what?" Rika muttered, not looking up from her navy notebook.
"Hiding," Marin said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. Her hospital gown looked three sizes too big for her. "You’ve been writing for two hours. Your knuckles are white. Are you writing a manifesto or a tragedy?"
Rika paused, her pen hovering over a half-finished sentence about a bird with a broken wing. "Neither. Just... thoughts."
"Show me."
Rika pulled the notebook closer to her chest. "No. It’s private."
Marin didn't pout. Instead, she reached for her own bedside table and picked up her leather-bound diary. It was thick, stuffed with pressed flowers, polaroid photos, and loose scraps of paper.
"I’ll trade you," Marin offered, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "A page for a page. The secrets of a dying girl for the secrets of a girl who’s afraid to live."
The word dying hit the room like a physical weight. Rika finally looked up, her eyes wide. Marin was smiling, but it was a tired smile—one that had seen too many doctors and too many "tune-ups."
"Don't look at me like that, Rika-chan," Marin laughed, though she coughed slightly afterward. "It’s just a fact. My heart is a bad engine. But because it’s a bad engine, I don't have time for boring stories. And you? You have the eyes of someone who sees everything but says nothing."
Marin hopped off her bed—ignoring the IV pole that rattled beside her—and hobbled over to sit on the edge of Rika’s mattress. The scent of lilies followed her.
"I have a deal for you," Marin said, her face inches from Rika’s. "I’m bored of being a patient. I’m bored of being 'The Sick Girl.' I want to be a character. I want to be your character."
Rika’s heart gave a strange, unfamiliar tug. "What do you mean?"
"Write a story," Marin commanded, her eyes shining with a sudden, fierce light. "A story about us. Not this 'us'—not the one in the hospital with the ugly gowns and the smell of bleach. Write us into the world. Take me to the places I can't go right now. Make me run, make me dance, make me... fall in love. Do that for me, and I’ll tell you everything I’ve hidden in this diary."
Rika looked at the blank page in front of her. For years, she had written to escape her bullies. She had written to build a wall. But Marin was asking her to use her words to build a bridge.
"I've never written a romance," Rika admitted, her voice trembling. "I don't know how."
Marin reached out, her fingers cold but her grip surprisingly strong, and covered Rika’s hand.
"Then we’ll research it together," Marin whispered. "Consider it a script. We’ll act out the scenes, and you’ll write them down. We’ll start the moment we both get out of here. Deal?"
Rika looked down at their joined hands—one hand scarred by ink, the other pale from illness.
"Deal," Rika whispered.
In the corner of the room, Marin’s heart monitor gave a steady, hopeful beep. Rika turned to a fresh page in her notebook and, for the first time in her life, she didn't write about a bird with a broken wing.
She wrote: The Girl in Bed 302.
ns216.73.216.141da2
and then Add to home screen.