The sky cracked like glass under pressure .... thunder gnawing at the clouds until they split and bled rain.
It poured in sheets, relentless, swallowing the park in a silver haze.
Most students had long scattered, sprinting for shelter under canteens and roofs.
But Akihiro stayed.
He sat alone on the bench, coat soaked through, rain running down his collar in cold rivulets.
He couldn't feel it.
The nerves in his body had long begun their slow rebellion... dying piece by piece, leaving him numb to both pain and comfort.
Touch, taste, warmth, cold... all gone.
Even sight had turned traitor, one eye already blind, the other dimming by the month.
The doctors had called it neural dissolution, a polite name for a slow disassembly of self.
A disease without pattern ....any day, any hour, an organ could decide to stop.
He could have stayed in the hospital, tethered to machines that would warn him when death came close.
But he'd walked out.
If he was going to die, he wanted the sky to be the last thing he saw, not fluorescent ceilings and pitying faces.
Not like he'd seen any faces in his death, he had no family left ... no one to call, no one to miss him.
The only one who'd notice his absence would be the stray cat he fed near the vending machine every morning, or the homeless man he shared soup with on the days the world's kindness failed him.
That was the sum of his life.
No grand purpose, no legacy.... just a man passing through days that didn't need him.
Simply put, Akihiro wasn't living.
He was just waiting for his body to make up its mind.
That, more than the pain or the loss of his senses, was what left him quietly bitter.
He could accept death.
He just couldn't accept that his life had never truly started before it ended.
Akihiro raised his hand pointing it towards the sky.
He pressed his fingers together, watching the skin bend.
No sensation followed.
That was the cruelest part of dying this way.
Not pain... but absence.
The world had texture once: rain, laughter, warmth, the faint hum of touch.
Now it was all distant, like watching life through fogged glass.
He'd stopped smoking when he lost the taste for nicotine.
Stopped eating for pleasure when food became just fuel.
Stopped talking because words felt wasted when no one waited to hear them.
He didn't hate life.
He just couldn't convince himself it was still his.
A gust of wind pushed the rain sideways, causing Akihiro to cover his lone functioning eye.
But soon the storm settled into a rhythm becoming less violent.
Akihiro tilted his head back, watching how the droplets fractured the streetlights into soft halos.
"Beautiful, isn't it?"
The voice was soft... feminine, close.
He turned slightly.
A woman stood a few feet away, umbrella in hand, though she didn't seem to mind that half her shoulder was soaked.
Her hair clung to her cheek, pale against the dark fabric of her dress.
There was something off about her presence...he just couldn't think what.
"Beautiful?" he echoed.
"The rain," she said, stepping closer. "It cleanses things. Wipes away scent, sound, memory… even the evidence of what was there before the downpour."
He huffed a dry laugh, almost soundless. "I think that's called erosion."
She smiled faintly. "Maybe. But erosion is just another form of remembering, don't you think?"
He blinked once, too tired to keep up with metaphors. "I don't remember much of anything these days. My nerves retired early."
"Retired?"
"Quit. Went on strike. Stopped sending signals. I can't feel touch. Can't taste food. Half blind." He gestured vaguely toward the blind side of his face. "A few organs decided to join the union, too. They're unpredictable. One could stop tomorrow. Or right now."
Her smile didn't fade, but it changed ... a quiet adjustment from amusement to something else.
Not pity....Recognition, maybe.
"And yet you sit in the rain instead of a hospital bed."
"If I'm going to die," he said, eyes following the fall of the rain, "I'd rather the sky do the mourning."
"You're not afraid?"
"Of dying?"
He tilted his head slightly. "Afraid implies I have something left to protect."
"Everyone has something," she said.
He looked at her then, really looked. The way she stood.... posture precise, composed, as though the storm couldn't touch her.
"Not me," he said. "No family. No friends who'd notice if I disappeared. The only ones who might care are a stray cat I feed near the vending machine and an old man I give soup to when I can afford groceries."
He smiled thinly. "And I doubt either of them would file a missing person report."
The woman was silent for a long time. Then...
"That sounds terribly lonely."
He exhaled, a sound closer to a sigh than laughter. "It's efficient. Loneliness saves you from disappointment."
"Is that what you tell yourself to sleep?"
He glanced at her, surprised. "You talk like you've been taking therapy notes."
"I've just… met many people who stop living before they die."
Something about her tone made him still.
It wasn't judgmental.
It wasn't even sympathetic.
It sounded like someone speaking from memory.
He leaned forward slightly, elbows on his knees. "And what do you do when you meet them?"
"I offer them a game."
That made him blink. "A game?"
"Yes." She closed her umbrella, letting the rain strike her fully. Her soaked hair clung to her shoulders, but she didn't seem to mind. "A coin toss."
Akihiro blinked. "You're serious."
Her lips curved. "Deadly so."
"Should I guess heads or tails and win my life back?"
"Not your life," she said softly. "Something else."
The way she said it made the hairs on his neck stand.
Her hand slipped into her coat and came out holding a weird coin .
Even in the dim light, it shined too sharply.
He could see symbols etched into its surface eyes on one side, swords on the other, the metal pulsing faintly like it was breathing.
Akihiro frowned. "Pretty coin. Where'd you get it? A cursed auction?"
"Something like that," she murmured. "Would you like to play?"
He tilted his head, studying her.
There was no malice in her gaze, just… certainty.
The kind of confidence that came from knowing the answer to a question she hadn't asked yet.
"What's the wager?" he asked finally.
"If you lose," she said, "your heart explodes."
He let out a short, dry laugh. "And if I win?"
Her eyes shone brighter just for a heartbeat l, like twin shards of sunset bleeding through her pupil.
"If you win, you'll see a different sky."
"…And if I don't play?"
"Then you'll die here," she said simply. "Sooner than you think."
The rain seemed to quiet for that single moment... as if the world was holding its breath.
Akihiro chuckled under it. "You really know how to make a sales pitch."
"I only offer chances," she said. "It's up to you whether you call them miracles or curses."
He stared at her, then at the coin glinting faintly between her fingers.
"…Fine," he said finally. "Let's play your stupid game."
"Good," she said. "Then make your choice. Eyes or swords."
Akihiro leaned back against the bench, rain still pattering against his hair.
He gave her a smile that was all exhaustion and irony.
"Story of my life," he said quietly. "Let's go with swords."
The next second the coin spun.
Rain caught its edges, scattering light in tiny halos as it turned.
Akihiro's one good eye followed it, the motion hypnotic, pulling sound and thought into silence.
Then .... clink.
It struck the bench.
Bounced once.
Rolled.
Stopped between his shoes ...swords .
He blinked once, unsure whether to laugh or breathe. "So… that's it?"
The woman tilted her head, gaze lowering to the coin.
She smiled then, faintly, beautifully ... a curve of the lips that seemed to belong to someone remembering a distant melody.
"You won," she whispered.
Before he could respond, a sound came from her body.
Her body jerked once, like a string had been cut.
Then something bloomed from her chest light, a rush of crimson radiance.
Akihiro froze.
The glow painted her in red ....rain hissing as it met the warmth of it.
She didn't scream. Didn't fall.
She only looked at him, eyes soft, even as cracks of light spread up her throat and across her face like veins of molten glass.
"Congratulations," she murmured, voice thinner than mist. "You've… grasped it."
"Grasped what?" he demanded, taking a half-step forward ... but the sound of his own voice seemed to fade, devoured by the rain.
Her lips moved again ... something like "the chance."
Then she smiled wider, serene, unearthly ... and the cracks consumed her.
She broke apart, dissolving into hundreds of crimson motes that swirled upward, merging with the rain like sparks swallowed by the sky.
It was beautiful.
Terrifyingly beautiful.
Akihiro stood still, breath caught. The light danced across his face, warm where nothing had been warm for years.
Then, it vanished.
The rain turned ordinary again, cold and gray.
He looked down.
The coin lay between his shoes, half-buried in water. Its glow had dimmed to a dull, lifeless sheen.
He bent to pick it up and felt it.
A slow, heavy pain that made the world tilt.
The air thickened. The rain blurred.
His vision faltered...colors bleeding, edges dissolving.
A creeping shadow curled from the edges of his sight, spreading inward like ink spilled on paper.
He staggered, gripping the bench for balance. "Wh… what.."
Pain surged up from his chest, swallowing his breath before he could finish.
His fingers went cold... then nothing.
The last thing he saw was the sky.
But it wasn't the same sky anymore.
Through the blur and rain and dying light, the clouds above seemed to part into a crimson horizon, vast and unreal, like the night itself was bleeding open.
Then everything went dark.