Chapter 1: System Error!
A lone young man laid on the hospital bed.
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.