On the morning before school, Glenn goes to the old lady's house to check on her surroundings. As he entered through the gate, he never imagined that Ryou would arrive before he did. At this moment, the young man was watering the lawn and the flowers, and he combed his hair into a ponytail with a rubber band.
"Have you changed your mind?" asked Glenn jokingly, actually admiring the young man.
"As you can see," Ryou replied nonchalantly, avoiding his joke. When he finished pouring flowers, he didn't take his eyes off the lawn. "I thought about what you said yesterday and decided to help. The old lady deserves proper attention."
"She's kind," Glenn said, smiling. "We should wait until her niece arrives. According to Grandma, the niece will take her back to her town where there's no urban unrest after she arrives."
"Good decision," Ryou said, and squatted down, following with his chin tucked into his lap with boredom. "So quiet."
Glenn looked back thoughtfully at the house and walked silently in its direction. As he entered through the curtain netting, he looked out into the room and saw an old lady sitting at the kitchen table. She was sitting without any purpose, just sitting and not interrupting the silence.
"How are you resting?" asked Glenn peacefully, taking off his school shoes. "Don't ruin the silence reigning around the house?"
Turning around, Grandma smiled lawlessly. "Alas, in my house the silence hasn't stopped for decades."
Glenn walked over to the kitchen table, but dared not sit down at the table, listening to the old lady with interest. Placing her frail and sullen hands on the table, Grandma reminisced about the happy past that had overtaken her in her youth. Ryou entered the room gently, and tiptoed toward the nearest corner for him, where he sat down on a wooden chair.
"My husband died about twenty years ago. Fortunately, of old age, and not of any of the diseases that overtook me. He was older than I was, much older than I was... A handsome man for his years."
"I'm sorry you had to go through such a terrible event," Glenn said sincerely, to which Grandma responded with a waving of her hands.
"Come on, there's nothing wrong with that," she said, and looked back at the window beside her. "It happens to everybody. Death is a common occurrence. I just have to believe until today that my hubby didn't go to hell."
"He didn't," Glenn replied decently and sat down at the table across from her. "I'm sure a good man doesn't go to hell."
Grandma was surprised at his conclusion, and it touched her soul. Then Ryou's yearning lips quirked in an effort not to upset the old lady.
"Would you, Mei-san, like to go back to your youth again?"
"I would, of course. Back to the eighties, where youth movements were just beginning to advance from foreign cultures. Hehe, in your day, after all, you would call things from forty years ago old old-fashioned."
"That's true," Ryou replied, putting his cheek to his palm. "The world has evolved without a backward glance."
"How fast time flies," Granny said, glancing at the round clock posted on the wall. "It's half past eleven, you have to leave for school soon."
"We'll make food for you and make your bed, Mei-san," added Glenn, whose conclusion the worried old lady dared not interfere. Glenn got up from his chair and blinked his right eye at Ryou, who also got up to help the young man with the cleaning.
After receiving the old lady's thanks, the boys walked away to the bus stop and got on the bus. Ryou, who was sitting in his headphones, ended up removing his ponytail, thinking that this hairstyle was not suitable for him, since his hair wasn't long enough to have a ponytail yet.
***
After his last class was over, Ryou was leaving the school office, and he got an unexpected call from Glenn. As he answered the phone, he heard Glenn's anxious and elevated tone.
"Hurry up inside, Grandma's in critical condition!"
The young man's voice boomed out of his soul and involuntarily commanded Ryou, who, upon hearing his words, immediately ran outside.
"Has the ambulance arrived?" asked Ryou loudly. "When did you have time to arrive to her?"
"On its way…" said Glenn, as if lifting a heavy weight in his arms. Following, the young man exhaled. "I barely got to her when I saw her lying unconscious on the floor."
"How come…" replied Ryou, eyes wide. "Hang in there, Glenn-kun! I'm on my way to you now."
After reaching her house in the shortest possible time, a breathless Ryou entered the house. Seeing Glenn, sitting intentionally on his knees and propping his recumbent grandmother's head on them, Ryou noticed the bed slanted to the floor, whose leg had broken along the line. The entire bed was strewn down, and Glenn didn't dare move for fear of hurting his grandmother more.
"She probably slipped getting ready to lay on the bed," said Glenn, whose gaze seemed lifeless and somber. "The leg of the old bed failed, and the bed staggered and fell with sudden force."
"Don't say anything…" replied a depressed Ryou. "You'll make it worse for yourself by thinking. Just… don't say anything."
The bed was indeed old, but it did not look so old that it could no longer support the weight of a human. Casting his thoughts aside, Ryou clenched his fists.
"I told her not to get out of bed without our help," Glenn said grimly, continuing to thicken the oppressive atmosphere. In a flash, the house fell silent. The only two things the boys had to do were give themselves first aid or wait for an ambulance to arrive. "I don't know how long she's been unconscious. Maybe an hour, maybe since we left–" muttered Glenn, who was soon interrupted by Ryou.
"Keep silent."
The soft sounds of quick footsteps could already be heard outside, which grew louder and louder with each rumble, and a few seconds later the medical evacuees entered the house in a blink of an eye. That moment, as they walked swiftly toward the victim, crossing Ryou, and Glenn looking desperately at his grandmother, Ryou saw so clearly that it felt as if time had slowed down around him and his heart was beating slower. Soon, the young man began to hear his own heartbeat. The young man could not move, and only watched the scene of the transportation of grandmother to the minibus. After a minute, when all the people were on the evening street, the transporter approached Ryou and politely asked if he would ride with them, to which Ryou nodded silently.
Sitting in the ambulance transport, Ryou thought again about the words Glenn had said the previous evening. Ryou blamed himself for his irresponsibility, and thought that nothing would have ended up like this if Ryou had not left her house for school at all, but had only helped her.
"Why is it now…" muttered Ryou to himself, depressed. "How could this happen…"
Unintentionally, the young man noticed how he began to change. In his mind he wondered where his shift in point of view might lead, and if in a positive direction, he would be happy, but if in a negative direction, he would rather leave things as they were.
***
The young men were in the central hospital and sitting on benches in the waiting room. Masumi entered excitedly through the glass doors, and noticed Ryou and Glenn deep in thought about some things that were beyond the young teacher's knowledge. Noticing their weary glances, she walked over to them and asked how long they had been sitting in the hospital.
"It's been more than an hour since Mei-san was transported to the hospital."
"Save your strength," Masumi replied, sighing excitedly. "It's late in the evening."
But the boys silently continued to wait for the doctor to arrive. Master Masumi, realizing that it was pointless to persuade them, sat down next to them in the vacant seat.
"You did a great job," she said, comfortingly. "If you hadn't stepped up, death would have played a part. You did a perfect job."
But how could Masumi know about the young men's work if Glenn didn't mention the job when calling with her, Ryou didn't care. He went on and on and on, pushing himself into a dark space with thoughts of guilt.
"You're not guilty of anything," Masumi added.
Ryou realized that once again there was nothing he could do to help the man who had asked for support. It was as if each time no one had given him a word of choice, and his every action was decided for him, and he never had time to keep up. These realizations were not new to him. It was exactly the same feeling he had felt when he had lived earlier in Kyoto with a grumpy father and a defenseless mother.
With his help, the boy wanted to make sure he wasn't useless and had the right to choose. He wanted to make sure he really existed.
A woman enters the waiting room from the corridor, elegantly removing her mask and making her way deliberately toward the waiting benches. She noticed Ryou sitting on one of the front benches. The woman was dressed in a long, white medical gown. As she approached the young man, they slowly met their gazes. Ryou had a devastated look, literally seeing tragedy before his eyes. After a brief pause, the boy's dry lips moved unhurriedly.
Glancing around, a dazzlingly beautiful woman appeared before Masumi and Glenn's gazes, looking at her younger brother. The perfect combination of her fair skin tone, the mole on her left cheek, and graceful lips, accompanied by mesmerizing dark blue eyes, could easily make any man fall in love with her.
"Sister."