The office was a white square that suffocated sound, a space that was too still. The doctor sat in front of me, his lab coat pristine, sliding a pill bottle across the desk as if it were routine. "Keep taking these," he said, his voice flat. "They’ll help with the symptoms—fatigue, pain." I didn’t look him in the eyes. My hands rested on my knees, my school uniform wrinkled and damp with cold sweat. The bottle was small, brown, with a label I didn’t want to read. Months, maybe a year—they had told me weeks ago, with my parents beside me, their faces tense and their voices low. I guess that pill was harder for them to swallow than the ones in the bottle. Today they let me come alone, without discussion. I stuffed it into my backpack, the weight barely noticeable among the books I hadn’t touched since then.

I don't know how long I stared at the desk, the worn wood under the fluorescent lights. The doctor kept talking—appointments, dosage adjustments—but my mind blocked him out, reducing him to a hum that blended with the pulse in my ears. "Do you understand what I'm telling you, Kaito?" he asked, breaking the silence.

"Yeah..." I lied, my throat tight. I didn’t understand—or didn’t want to. It was already enough that my parents knew, even though we didn’t talk about it. Not since that night at home, when the silence settled in and my mom left a plate of rice that I didn’t eat.

I stood up while the doctor kept talking, my backpack slung over my shoulder, the bottle clinking against something inside—a pencil, maybe. I walked out without looking back, the door closing with a dry click that echoed in the hallway, and I kept walking because staying there wasn’t an option. After all, who could blame me for not wanting to hear the little details?

The hallway echoed with footsteps and hushed voices. The lights buzzed above, and the floor gleamed, as if trying to erase what happened in those rooms. I didn’t know where I was going—the exit, I guess, anywhere that didn’t smell like disinfectant and emptiness. My head was full of noise, echoes of that first time: "Terminal." "Months." It wasn’t real, right? I was seventeen. I was supposed to graduate, to half-copy notes, to waste time in class. But now there was a bottle in my backpack, a reminder I didn’t ask for, and with every step, it felt like the ground was trembling a bit, like everything was changing without telling me.

I turned the corner, my footsteps echoing in the white hallway, when someone bumped into me. A notebook fell to the floor, loose pages fluttering open, and she—Rina, the typical girl who has her hand raised before the teacher can even finish the question, the one who gives answers so long her friends have to cover her mouth—awkwardly crouched down to pick it up. "Ah, sorry," she said, her face red as she stood up, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear with a trembling hand. She looked at me, squinting slightly, and smiled, a small but bright smile that didn’t match the emptiness eating away at my mind. "You're... Kaito, right?"

"Yeah, I'm surprised you know my name. I don’t think I’ve talked to you before," I said, my voice sharp. I wasn’t in the mood for small talk, but she didn’t move, holding a notebook against her chest. Her eyes were big, lively, and it irritated me that she seemed so intact when I felt like something was falling apart inside me.

"What are you doing here? Did you catch a cold too?" she asked, glancing at my backpack as if it didn’t belong in that sterile hallway. Her tone was light, curious, and it made me want to leave quickly, to leave her behind with her uncracked world.

"Uh, same as you," I lied dismissively, taking a step to move on. She raised her wrist, showing a pink bandage peeling at the edges, and smiled wider, like it was a trophy. "Routine check-up," she said with a short laugh that bounced off the walls. "My mom insists. She always says it’s better to prevent than cure."

If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Yeah, except when the second is impossible," I muttered almost inaudibly, walking away. She nodded and said something else, a phrase that pierced through the noise in my head. "See you tomorrow, then!" she said with that typical energy, like it was natural, like tomorrow was a sure thing. I didn’t respond. I didn’t look at her, just gave a small wave with my hand. I kept walking to the exit, the fresh air hitting my face, and I stopped at the door. The bottle weighed in my backpack, and her voice—"tomorrow"—echoed like something I couldn’t grasp.

"It's normal, don't think about it. If you start seeing the world only through your own lens, you'll end up throwing yourself into a river," I told myself, shaking my head.

The sky was gray when I left, a heavy gray that weighed down on the town. I stood at the hospital entrance, my backpack hanging from one shoulder, and let my mind empty a little. Not completely—“terminal,” “one pill a day,” “maybe up to a year” were still there, persistent echoes—but the noise faded, grew quieter. I took the bottle out of my backpack, held it for a second, and shook it a little, the pills inside making a dry sound. My parents had told me to take them, that they were important, and I did it just because, not because I believed it would change anything. I put it away, the plastic feeling warm against my fingers, and took a deep breath, the air cutting through my throat.

I didn’t go home. I walked without thinking, the streets filled with cars and voices I didn’t care about, the sun low behind the clouds. I passed by the school, already closed, the windows dark as if they were ignoring me. I thought about going in—the photography club was probably finishing up their activities, and Haruto too, most likely, adjusting a camera or showing off some new technique from one of those French photographers he liked so much. I could see him, talk to him like before, but I didn’t. My feet kept moving, and I ended up in a park near the river, the water flowing slowly under a bridge that didn’t mean anything yet. I sat on a bench, the cold metal pressing through my uniform, and watched the river, the gray ripples moving without direction.

"See you tomorrow," Rina had said, as if it were simple. Tomorrow. Classes, desks, her scribbling in her notebook. And me? I didn’t know if I’d be there. I’d always gone to school just because—getting up, getting dressed, sitting down to listen to useless stuff. But now, for what? To pretend everything was still the same? To carry around a bottle that said otherwise?

Something changed then, small, almost invisible. It wasn’t a clear decision. I left my schoolbooks on the side of the bench—after all, I wouldn’t need them for much longer. There was no point in carrying them anymore, though leaving them there didn’t make much sense either. I really didn’t want to go to school tomorrow, didn’t want to make the long walk, bump into students talking to each other, teachers with as little interest in talking as we had in listening. But I couldn’t just disappear like that. I’d bet Haruto would show up at my house and kick down my bedroom door to drag me to the club if I missed more than three days.

"Kaito, what we do is art and it transcends the barriers between life and death!" I repeated out loud, mimicking Haruto's overly optimistic tone with sarcasm, as if he wore it like a badge or something. I couldn’t help but glance around—if anyone was nearby, they’d probably think I was crazy. But honestly, I didn’t care much anymore.

I took the bottle out of my backpack and set it down on the bench, right next to the books. The cameras we used belonged to the club, but I had spent months begging my parents for a Polaroid. I guess I'm more analog than digital, and there’s something about those photos that always appealed to me.

I aimed the camera, trying to find a decent frame between the bottle and the books, using the last bit of orange sunlight as it faded behind the horizon. A meaningless photo, sure, but somehow it eased the clash of thoughts in my head, just a little.

"I can't just disappear like that... What's the point?"—I thought as I took the photograph. That click gave me a bit more clarity, like a piece falling exactly where it should.

I was going to keep going to school; not going would just give me more headaches. I'd have to explain it to my parents, tell Haruto about all this, and it was just too much to deal with at the moment. So I had no other option but to pretend, at least for a little while longer, that I was also living that 'normal life' alongside everyone else.

Slowly, the image appeared on the photo paper. The framing wasn't bad, but it came out a bit blurry, and I couldn't help but laugh. What an absurd composition, it made no sense—though I wasn’t sure if I was thinking about the photo or my life.