Beep… Beep… Beep…
The beeping of the heart monitor was the only thing that still connected him to the living world.
Rhythmic. Mechanical. Indifferent.
It was past midnight. The palliative care wing of Halcyon City Hospital had gone still, the kind of silence that crept under the skin. The overhead lights had been dimmed long ago, replaced by a sickly blue glow that seeped from the hallway night bulbs. A nurse's shoes clicked in the corridor but stopped short of his room. Most had already forgotten he was there.
The air smelled faintly of disinfectant and the ghost of yesterday's meals. Beneath that, something else lingered. Something quieter. Like sorrow that had settled into the walls over years of soft deaths.
18-year-old Yuki Igarashi lay beneath a thin white hospital blanket that barely covered his feet. It was supposed to provide warmth, but the cold had seeped in too deep. Not just in his skin, but into his bones, into the spaces between his thoughts. His lips were dry and cracked. His hair, once thick and unruly, now clung to his scalp in pale wisps.
Breathing felt like drawing smoke through a straw. Blinking took thought. Thought took energy.
He had stopped fighting weeks ago.
The doctors never gave it a name. Only one word lingered on every chart and whispered handoff.
Terminal.
The progression had been super fast. Absolutely unnatural. Within just 1 month, he had been reduced to a living corpse.
His organs were shutting down in sequence, like old lights flickering off in a house too long abandoned. No cure. No miracle treatment. No distant relative swooping in with hope.
And no visitors.
His father had stopped showing up the moment the medical bills became more than a name on paper. His mother was only a photo, torn at the edge, left behind like an old receipt in a drawer. His classmates had long stopped pretending to care. Even their messages had dried up after his second stay in intensive care.
So here he was.
Just Yuki.
A boy, a brittle shell of a body, an IV drip buzzing faintly by his side, and a secondhand tablet balanced on his lap like a lifeline.
He was re-reading Eternity Online: Dragon God Edition, a web novel he had discovered during one of those long, aching nights when sleep refused to come and the walls felt like they were breathing. The story wasn't great. The pacing wobbled, the grammar was a battlefield, but it had dragons. Reincarnation. Power systems. Broken protagonists who clawed their way back to something greater.
And, of course, the Overpowered tag. Because even in dying, he still wanted to dream ro become the unbeatable.
His thumb flicked to the next chapter. The screen glowed faintly in the dark, painting his gaunt face in shades of blue and white.
"You really want to die while reading one of those?"
The voice came from the doorway, half a tease, half concern.
Yuki blinked slowly and turned his head with effort. There stood Nurse Maya, silhouetted by the hallway light. She had short, sleep-tousled hair and a half-eaten energy bar in one hand. Her uniform was creased. Her eyes carried the weight of a thousand sleepless shifts.
She leaned casually against the doorframe and gave him a look caught somewhere between affection and exasperation.
Yuki's cracked lips tugged into a faint smile.
"You're here late, Sister Maya," he rasped. The sound came out like paper brushing against stone.
Maya stepped into the room, walking with the careful, quiet steps of someone who had spent too much time near the dying.
"I always do rounds past midnight," she said. "And I always check on you first."
She peered over his shoulder at the screen.
"Harem tag? Really?" Her eyebrows lifted, her voice rising with mock scandal. "So you want to feel romance before the end, huh?"
Yuki's face flushed faintly and tried to shield the screen with shaking fingers.
"Don't… don't embarrass me, Sister Maya," he mumbled. "Just… let me finish the fantasy. I don't have much time left anyway."
Her smile disappeared as she walked over and pulled up a chair beside him. She sat with a sigh, crossing her legs and leaning an elbow on the edge of the bed.
"You know," she said, tearing a small piece from the energy bar, "when I was your age, I was into detective novels. Gritty, violent, brooding types who solved mysteries and drank too much coffee."
Yuki managed a weak chuckle. "That… sounds sad."
"It was," she replied, grinning. "But I liked pretending I was tough."
He turned his head toward her, eyes half-lidded. "I'm not pretending."
His words appeared to have a second meaning.
"I know," she said quietly. "That's why I'm still here."
Silence settled again, but it felt less cold this time. She reached out and adjusted the blanket around his chest, fingers gentle. There was nothing left to fix, but the gesture was something human. Something warm.
Outside, the hospital moved in a slow, unbothered rhythm. Somewhere, a door creaked open. A machine beeped to life. Time passed like smoke curling into the ceiling.
Maya looked at her watch. Nearly 3 a.m.
She leaned back in the chair, her voice quieter now.
"I had a brother, once," she said. "He was sixteen when he died. Cancer. It came out of nowhere and took him faster than we could understand. On his last night, he asked me to read him manga. Something stupid. Shonen fighting stuff. I read to him until he fell asleep with his hand in mine."
Yuki said nothing, but she could tell he was still listening.
"You remind me of him," she added. "Same kind of stubborn. Same quiet bravery."
His breathing had slowed. Each inhale took more effort than the last. His eyelids drooped. The beeping of the heart monitor faltered for the first time in hours, a hesitation between notes.
Still, his last words came out like dying carp:
"I... Love... You!"
Maya heard him clearly, but she stayed silent.
She did not respond. Not because she was heartless, but she feared to be broken if uttered her answer.
She simply placed her hand gently over his, her thumb brushing the back of it.
"Goodnight, Yuki," she whispered.
He did not respond anymore.
At 3:28 a.m., the monitor let out one final, long tone. The line across the screen turned flat. The sound was steady, emotionless, like everything else that came before it.
Maya reached over and silenced it. The room fell into silence once more.
No alarms. No chaos. No cries.
Only silence.
She sat a while longer. Her coffee had gone cold in the hallway. The hallway itself was just as quiet, as if the very world was silent.
When she finally stood, she took one last look at the boy in the bed.
"I love you too, Yuki. I hope you get your second life." she said, her voice barely a whisper.
Then she left the room, and the door clicked gently shut behind her.
——
Ding!
[ System Error! ]