Over a week had passed since the night the three of them stood silently in the hallway, facing the tightly closed door of room 203.
To Ichinose Chizuru, that week felt as long and suffocating as a century. His silence was not like a normal temper tantrum. It carried the vibe of a cruel, absolute severance. Kibe and Kuribayashi had tried everything, from texting and calling to waiting in the apartment lobby, but the only response was dead silence. He was like a ghost, completely evaporating from the world he had just stirred up with his own hands.
And then, the first summer rains hit Tokyo. Not hasty showers, but a lingering tropical depression that brought a gray, cold, and damp atmosphere lasting for days.
Holding an umbrella, Chizuru walked along the deserted path of the central park near her apartment complex. She had just returned from the supermarket, the plastic bags in her hands heavy with groceries. The clock struck eleven at night. The patter of rain on the umbrella was the only sound breaking the silent night.
It was in a moment of absentmindedly glancing at the dried up fountain in the middle of the park that Chizuru's footsteps suddenly halted. Her heart skipped a beat, her chest tightening until she could barely breathe.
Under the white curtain of rain, on an unroofed, freezing stone bench, a figure sat motionless.
He wore a thin jacket that was completely soaked, clinging to his gaunt body. The black hair that was usually slicked back arrogantly now hung limply, plastered to his forehead, hiding his eyes. His left arm, still wrapped in a splint, hung loosely at his side, allowing the rainwater to soak through the plaster. At his feet, an empty bottle of hard vodka rolled around in a puddle.
He sat there with his head bowed, still as an abandoned sculpture, leaving the freezing raindrops to destroy his last bit of vitality.
"Kazuya!"
Chizuru cried out in panic, dropping the plastic bags of food onto the ground. She frantically rushed over, holding the umbrella over his head.
"What are you doing out here in the rain?! Are you crazy?!" Her voice trembled, mixed with anger and extreme terror.
He did not answer. He did not even look up. His exhales reeked of cheap alcohol, mingled with the musty smell of rainwater. His entire body radiated a deathly, exhausted, and tragically rotting energy.
Chizuru gritted her teeth, reaching out to grab his uninjured right arm, pulling hard. "Get up! Go back to your room right now! Do you plan on freezing to death out here?!"
But he was as heavy as a lead boulder. A girl's strength could not budge a grown man who had completely given up. He let her pull, his body tilting before soullessly crashing back onto the stone bench.
Chizuru panted, sensing the spreading abnormality. The moment her hand touched his skin, a burning sensation immediately transferred to her. Terrified, she pressed the back of her hand against his forehead.
Burning hot. A horrifyingly high fever was blazing inside, in stark contrast to the freezing, soaked clothes on the outside. His lips were pale and bruised, his whole body violently shivering with every gust of wind. The combination of an acute fever, alcohol poisoning from downing a bottle of vodka, and being out in the rain for a prolonged period had pushed his biological limits to the brink of death.
"Oh my god." Chizuru frantically pulled her phone from her pocket with trembling hands.
Hurriedly dialing 119, she practically screamed into the phone as she described his condition.
"Ten minutes." Chizuru hung up, muttering. "The ambulance will be here in ten minutes."
She looked at the man sitting with his head slumped beside her. He remained silent. A terrifying silence. He did not cry out in pain or groan, as if life was slowly draining from a body the soul no longer cared to keep.
Chizuru understood that the problem lay not just in the fever or the bottle of liquor. The worst disease killing him was in his mind. If she did not pull him out of this quagmire right now, that ambulance would only be carrying away a soulless corpse.
She decided to stop pulling him. Chizuru closed the umbrella, tossed it aside, and let the heavy, pouring rain drench her body. She slumped onto the soaking stone bench, right next to him, ignoring how her thin cardigan quickly became saturated and clung to her skin.
"Are you done hiding?" Chizuru spoke up. Her voice lacked panic, replaced instead by a cold, decisive tone. It was the exact same way he had forced her to face reality when making the movie.
He shifted slightly. His broad shoulders trembled faintly. Under the sallow streetlights piercing through the rain, he slowly raised his head.
The deep black eyes that had terrified so many with their sharpness and ruthlessness were now shattered, empty, and heavily bloodshot. He looked at her with the gaze of a severely wounded wild beast waiting for the finishing strike.
"Why." His voice rasped, hoarse, broken, and grating against the eardrums like glass scraping on concrete. "Why are you here? Why not just leave me be?"
"Because I am not heartless like you." Chizuru snapped, tears mixing with rainwater streaming down her cheeks. "What have you done to yourself, Kazuya? You scold everyone for being stupid and fake, you solved all my problems perfectly! So why, when facing your own problems, do you choose the most pathetic path of self destruction?!"
He smirked. A desolate, self deprecating smile appeared on his haggard face. The alcohol from the vodka had completely shattered his last wall of neural inhibition. His defenses crumbled, exposing the festering wound hidden deep within his soul.
"Perfect? Do you think I am perfect, Ichinose?" He laughed out loud, a dry, bitter laugh amidst the rain. "No. I am just a coward trying to wear a shell of rationality."
He closed his eyes, tilting his head back to let the rain hit his face.
"You always ask why I am cruel, why I push everyone away, right?" He muttered, his voice sounding as if he was disgorging boulders weighing down his chest. "Because I am scared. Damn it, I am truly terrified. You don't know that feeling. The feeling when you give all your trust, all your sincerity, even your very life to someone. And then, that very person smiles and pushes you into the abyss. They use fake weakness to trample you, strip you of everything you have, and make the whole world turn its back and spit in your face."
He was talking about his past, about his social death in his previous life. Although he did not mention reincarnation, the pain in every raw, brutal word made Chizuru shudder.
"Flesh wounds can heal. But the hole that betrayal carved into my brain. It can never be filled." He bowed his head, his hands gripping his head tightly, his trembling voice revealing the most primal vulnerability. "Every time I try to trust someone, that shit comes back, choking me, screaming in my ear 'do not trust anyone' or something like that..."
Chizuru bit her lip hard, feeling the gut wrenching agony tormenting this man. She shifted closer, intending to reach out and touch his back.
But he suddenly recoiled, avoiding her touch like avoiding an open flame.
"That is why I have to build a wall." He continued, his breathing heavy, his bloodshot eyes staring piercingly at Chizuru. "I have to be cruel. I have to be toxic. I have to curse this world so no one can step into my safe zone. As long as I am a bastard, no one will ever have the chance to hurt me again."
He stopped, his chest heaving violently. His chest ached, the fever baking his brain cells, but the words that needed to be said had risen to his throat and could no longer be contained. The alcohol had given him the courage to do something he would rather die than do while sober.
"And then. You showed up."
His voice suddenly dropped, breaking into tiny fragments.
"You are annoying, you are stubborn, you work that trashy emotional brokerage job I hate the most. I told myself thousands of times that you were just like those...lying women. But no. You dared to cry in front of the lens, you dared to argue with me, you hugged me when I had a fever, you saw right through my bastardly shell without running away."
He brought a hand to his left chest, where his heart was beating in a chaotic, painful rhythm.
"You made my defensive perimeter collapse completely, Ichinose." He looked at her, his eyes overflowing with immense sorrow. "I...love you. Damn it all, I truly love you."
For the first time. The confession was uttered. Not under romantic candlelight, not with a bouquet of red roses, but in a flooded park, reeking of vodka, from the mouth of a man broken to his very core.
Chizuru froze. Her heart seemed to stop for a split second, tears pouring out even more fiercely than the rain outside.
"I love you to the point of madness." He roared, his voice hoarse and full of hatred for himself. "But exactly because of that, I have to push you away even more. Every time I think about handing this heart over to you, my brain paints a scenario where one day you will also leave me, will stab a knife into my back like the ones before."
He panted, letting his hands drop to his thighs, completely exhausted after the bloody confession.
"I am not like normal person." He whispered, his voice reduced to dry sobs. "I I can solve any logical problem in this world, I can help you make a movie, I can calculate media strategies, I can fight thugs. But I have no ability to process my own emotions. Being near me, you will only get hurt."
Chizuru sat in silence, her tears blurring her vision. His confession did not bring her hurt, only a boundless pity. A strong, rational person who always calculated every move turned out to be a heavily scarred child, curled up in a dark corner, trembling in fear of the outside world.
He pushed himself up from the stone bench, standing up shakily. His legs staggered, losing balance due to the alcohol and high fever, but he gritted his teeth and held on.
"I'm...sorry." He mumbled, his voice weak, not daring to look directly at her. "I'm sorry for using terrible words to insult you the first day we met at the aquarium. I am sorry for mocking your dream. I am sorry for the times I was rude, toxic, and hurt you."
He turned his face away, taking heavy, swaying steps into the blinding rain.
"From now on, I will disappear from your sight. I will not bother you, or bring trouble to you or anyone else ever again. I promise. Live your brilliant life, Ichinose. "
But he overestimated the endurance limits of a biological body.
Having only taken three steps, his legs completely lost feeling. The nearly 40 degree fever combined with the toxicity of a massive amount of alcohol instantly shut down his central nervous system. His vision went black. The world around him spun.
Gravity won. His tall body collapsed onto the cold asphalt, exactly like a felled ancient tree.
"Kazuya!"
Chizuru screamed, a gut wrenching cry. She rushed forward, sliding on the muddy water, and dropped to her knees beside him. She rolled him onto his back. His eyes were shut tight, his breathing faint and sporadic, his entire face as pale as a corpse.
Right at that moment, the piercing siren of an ambulance tore through the rain from the end of the street. Flashing red and blue lights swept across the tree branches, illuminating Chizuru's tear stained face.
The vehicle screeched to a halt on the main road, a distance from the park due to traffic barriers. Two paramedics carrying a stretcher hurriedly popped open their umbrellas and ran toward the fountain.
"Hurry! He is over here! He has a very high fever and drank a lot of alcohol!" Chizuru yelled, calling out to them.
But the distance from the stone bench to the ambulance was over fifty meters, and the slippery mud made it impossible to push the stretcher all the way in.
"Miss, give us a hand! The patient is in heat shock and acute alcohol poisoning, his pulse is dropping very fast!" A paramedic shouted over the rain.
Without a second of hesitation, Chizuru cast aside all weakness. She grabbed his uninjured arm and draped it over her neck. With the help of the two paramedics, Chizuru gritted her teeth, channeling all the strength of a petite girl to hoist him onto her shoulders. The dead weight of an unconscious adult man pressed heavily on her back, making her knees buckle. But she did not give up. She ground her teeth, crying while dragging her heavy feet, carrying him through the puddles toward the ambulance with its flashing lights.
"Do not die. I forbid you to die. You bastard." Chizuru muttered between sobs. Rainwater and tears blended together, streaming down her chin and falling onto his matted hair.
Inside the brightly lit ambulance cabin, the heater was blasting at full capacity. The pungent smell of antiseptic hit the nose sharply. The medical staff frantically set up an IV line, attached a heart monitor, and placed an oxygen mask over his face.
Chizuru sat huddled in a corner, hands clasped tightly together, trembling as she stared at the undulating waves on the ECG monitor. Her clothes were soaked, clinging to her body, but she didn't feel cold at all. Panic and sorrow had overpowered all physical sensations.
The dictator of rationality, the man who had never shed a single tear even when getting his tooth knocked out or his arm broken, was now sobbing on an emergency stretcher.
Hearing his sobs, Chizuru's heart felt like it was pierced by tens of thousands of needles. The final line of defense within her collapsed. She could no longer hold back, burying her head against the edge of the bed and crying out loud.
The manipulator of words, the one who always scolded her for being a liar, turned out to be the most genuine and pitiful person. He used cruelty to punish the world, but in reality, he was punishing himself for accidentally giving his heart away.
"Idiot. You are such a stupid bastard." Chizuru cried and scolded at the same time, her voice breaking amidst the steady beeping of the heart monitor. She gripped his hand tightly, intertwining her five fingers with his five cold ones, holding on so tightly as if trying to use her entire life force to anchor this man's floundering soul back to reality.
"I will never betray you. I will never let you suffer through that again." Chizuru sniffled, resting her face on the back of his hand, whispering promises she knew he couldn't hear right now. "So please. Do not push me away anymore."
As if sensing the warmth and the promise from her grip, the struggle on his face gradually eased. His breathing through the oxygen mask became steadier and deeper. The tears stopped falling. He sank deep into a pitch black sleep, completely losing consciousness under the effects of the sedatives and biological exhaustion.
The ambulance wailed piercingly, cutting through Tokyo's blinding rain, speeding toward the central hospital. Inside the narrow cabin, the girl who was once a fake rental girlfriend was gripping the hand of the man who claimed to be an emotionless machine. All the trashy masks of life had been stripped away clean. Now, there were only two fractured souls trying to warm each other amidst the cruel, stormy night of life.