In the hospital room, Tsukiko laid motionless on the bed, the beeping of machines around her. The morning light could be seen penetrating the newly installed curtains. Last night's thrilling fight had of course caused the hospital room to become a mess of broken glass, torn linen and broken machines, but now it seemed like all of that had been fixed. The glass had been swept, the curtains replaced, and the machines now stood properly in place, almost as if nothing had happened in the first place.
Later on, Tsukiko that was laying down on the bed, somewhat peacefully, began to knit her eyebrows and breakout in a cold sweat. At some point, she had even started to move around whilst murmuring incoherent words.
This continued for a while until suddenly, her eyes snapped open. For a moment, she couldn't do anything but continue to lay motionless, her chest heaving heavily up and down until she made an attempt to sit up, though she did so with much strain as she had a massive, mind-boggling headache and her entire body felt like it had been hit by a truck.
Managing to sit up, Tsukiko looked around the hospital in awe. She had witnessed firsthand, the damaged caused and she found surprised at how neat and tidy the hospital room looked like despite that.
"It's like it never even happened...", she said, murmuring to herself in a quiet voice. She continued to look around the hospital room to see if truly, it had been completely eradicated of the mess that was caused last night and this had proven to be true.
Suddenly, Tsukiko heard the creaking of the door and whipped her head in its direction to see who was trying to open the door. She was still very weak at the moment, so she'd be in an extremely vulnerable state if an intruder was trying to sneak into her room. Fortunately, it was in fact not an intruder but her brother who had just opened the door. Tsukiko heaved a sigh of relief and laid back down on her bed. All that excitement had nearly caused her soul to fly straight out of her mouth. Hirano, who had just entered the room, caught sight of this and thought something had happened to his sister.
"Tsukiko! are you alright?!", he said, rushing over to her side. Tsukiko didn't know whether to laugh or cry and hurriedly explained her very dramatic (but soft) landing.
"I'm fine Hirano, I was just relieved to see that it was you who opened the door and not some intruder". Having now understood her intentions, Hirano stopped fretting and smiled, feeling relieved.
"Oh, that's good.", he said. "I thought you had fainted again". Tsukiko who was about to laugh suddenly caught notice of the word 'again' that had made its way to Hirano's sentence.
"Hirano, what do you mean by 'again'.", she asked. Hirano stared at her, a bit wide-eyed, almost as though he was implying that she should know the answer to that question. This caused Tsukiko to feel a little antsy. Tsukiko was a pretty healthy girl and almost never fainted, excluding the time she had recently fainted in school, so she couldn't understand just what Hirano was talking about so she tried asking him once more.
"I really can't recall if I had fainted recently, so could you tell me if I have?". Hirano sighed and rubbed his temples before answering her.
"Yesterday, you cried quite a lot, and after that, you were out cold.", he said. Tsukiko was quite surprised to hear this. She'd remembered the crying part, yes, but the part where she fainted was nowhere to be found in her memories. This was especially surprising since Tsukiko was very good at remembering things and hardly forgot anything, so why would she now?
Hirano seemed to sense her worries and came closer to her to hold her hand.
"Tsukiko, if you can't remember, then don't force yourself to, ok?", he said. "You still need to recover properly so you can get better."
Tsukiko slowly turned her head to face her brother with tears in her eyes as she launched herself at her brother to hug him in a tight embrace. On the outside, some might assume that she's just being dramatic or an attention seeker, but both those reasonings fall short of the actual intent of Tsukiko. When her brother reminded her of that little manic episode she had, initially, she felt embarrassed, thinking to herself "Why did I do that?!", but immediately afterwards, she also recalled the reason why she had cried in the first place, like I said, she has a talent for remembering things so of course she wouldn't forget this. Because of that, she had begun to feel all those negative feelings she'd felt before and fell into a semi-depressed state.
Despite this, she told herself that she wouldn't cry, that she would be strong, but when her brother came over and held her hand, still trying to comfort her, she just couldn't hold it in any longer. Hirano wasn't all that surprised to see his sister act like this, after all, he knew his sister as well as he knew his self. Because of this, he had a rough idea of what had caused her to cry. So, he simply hugged her back and patted her in the way you'd pat a child.
"Tsukiko, I hope you know I don't mind living like a normal person. Though it's hard sometimes, I'm okay with it. Besides, doing this for someone you love makes all those hard spent hours, worth it". Tsukiko simply looked up at him with a sad look worn on her face.
"Now give me a smile", he said with a smile. Tsukiko managed to lift the corners of her lips and smiled, though she couldn't so for much longer, she was starting to feel dizzy again. Seeing this, Hirano placed her into her bed once more.
"You should sleep some more; you worked hard last night. Big brother is proud of you". Tsukiko smiled at him again before falling into a dreamless sleep, which is what she thought.
Tsukiko snapped open her eyes to see that she was still in the hospital room, though something seemed amiss. Unlike the previous warmth she felt, the room she was in felt, cold and empty with s type of feeling that made you want to abandon all hope.
All this felt so foreign to her, and she simply couldn't understand that this room, was her hospital room. It felt like she had accidentally stumbled into a strange place, and that itself caused her to feel a little panicked so she tried to get out of bed, but to her surprise, she couldn't. It was like someone had used some kind of super sticky glue to hold her down onto the bed, what's more, she felt a very heavy force weighing on her body. It was so oppressing that the only thing she could do was move her head, and even that was done with much difficulty.
This of course meant that she wouldn't be able to use her magic at all.
So here she was trying to move her head and survey her surroundings in hopes of finding something or someone that would be able to help her. Strangely enough, she smelled something in the air. It was thick and very nauseating, and it also smelled like death.
At the same time that she had noticed the scent, she saw a pool of blood that had now stained the white bedsheets, and it was growing larger and larger and right where the blood pool seemed to have come from, was a body. It was cold and pale, showing that this person was no more. Tsukiko wasn't scared of the appearance of a dead body, but instead, the person who owned the body. It was her very own brother who now lay lifeless with half his body on the hospital bed that she was tied down to.
The moment she realized it was her brother, fat tears rolled down her eyes and she opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. She kept trying to shout and scream her brother's name, still no sound came out.
She was terrified, scared, sad, angry, depressed, and any other word that could describe Tsukiko's despair at that moment. She kept trying to pull herself out of the bed in a mad frenzy but to no avail. She did this for what felt like hours if not days until finally, she was about to throw in the towel, she was about give up and a dangerous thought popped into her head.
"Perhaps I should simply die with my brother."
Suddenly, she heard something. It was very muffled, but she had heard something. She kept hearing it over and over again and it got clearer each time. It was calling her name and the last time, it said something else, and it resounded ever so clearly in her ears.
"TSUKIKO! WAKE UP!!"