Scene 1: The Sketchbook

The next day, I returned to the hospital with a bag full of snacks and notebooks.

When I walked into her room, Hikari looked up, grinning as though she’d been waiting all morning.

“Haruki! Did you bring contraband?”

I held up the bag. “Only the most dangerous kind. Chips, candy, and one very questionable melon soda.”

She laughed, her eyes bright, and patted the chair beside her bed. “Smuggler extraordinaire. Sit.”

Scene 2: The Dream Pages

As she munched happily, I noticed the sketchbook on her lap. Half the pages were filled with messy pencil drawings — a carousel, a train station, a rooftop garden.

“What’s this?” I asked, flipping through.

“My substitute adventures,” she said, her voice airy but tinged with something heavier. “Since I can’t always go outside now, I make up trips in here. See? This page is us climbing Mount Fuji and getting lost on the wrong trail.”

She turned another page. A clumsy sketch of fireworks filled the paper, colors imagined in rough shading.

My chest tightened. “You drew the fireworks you missed.”

Her smile softened. “Yeah. Because I want to remember them, even if I never really saw them.”

Scene 3: A Game of Imagination

That gave me an idea.

“Okay,” I said, pulling out a fresh notebook. “Then let’s make a new rule. Every day, we add one adventure. Real or not. Doesn’t matter.”

Her eyes lit up. “A shared list?”

“Yeah. We’ll write it and draw it together. That way even if we don’t go… it’ll still exist.”

She giggled, immediately leaning closer. “Deal. First one, eat an ice cream so big it falls over before we finish it.”

I snorted. “That’s not an adventure, that’s a disaster.”

“Disasters are fun too,” she shot back, already doodling a giant ice cream cone.

And just like that, the sterile hospital room began to feel less like a prison and more like a secret clubhouse.

Scene 4: The Night Visit

Later, when the nurses dimmed the hallway lights and the city outside glowed in fragments, I stayed a little longer.

Hikari’s voice was soft in the quiet. “Hey, Haruki… do you ever think dreams are more real than reality?”

I glanced at her. “Why?”

“Because when I draw them… when I imagine us there… it feels like I’ve actually lived them.” She paused, clutching the sketchbook close. “Sometimes I wonder if that’s enough.”

My chest ached at her words. I wanted to tell her no, that imagining wasn’t enough, that she deserved the real thing. But looking at her, her tired smile, the way her breath caught when she laughed, I swallowed those words.

Instead, I reached over and tapped the cover of her sketchbook. “Then let’s keep filling it. If dreams are real to you, then they’re real to me too.”

Her eyes shimmered in the dim light. She whispered, almost to herself, “I’m glad you’re here, Haruki.”

Scene 5: Scribbles

When I finally left, I glanced back through the small window in her door.

Hikari was still sketching, hunched over her notebook, pencil moving quickly across the page.

Her hand was trembling, but her smile never faded.

And I realized… those pencil scribbles were her way of fighting against time itself.

[To Be Continued in Chapter 19]