Nakajima Reina's refusal was anticipated by Minami Yuuki.
He removed the pocky stick from his mouth and, with the girl's head lowered, he crouched in front of her and extended one end of the pocky stick toward her lips.
Nakajima Reina, surprised, opened her mouth and bit into the approaching pocky stick.
To her further astonishment, the boy suddenly leaned in, and with a soft snap, the pocky stick broke into two pieces.
Standing up, Minami Yuuki saw that Reina's eyes followed him.
In the dim light of the night, he seemed to be lost, with one piece of the pocky stick still in his mouth and the other in hers.
Realizing what had just happened, Reina's face turned red, and she turned her head away.
Her tongue touched the chocolate-covered piece of pocky in her mouth, and the sweetness spread on her tongue.
"I bit into the side without chocolate," the boy's clear voice and the sound of him chewing the pocky came from above. "It feels a bit unfair, so for fairness, Reina-san, you should eat the piece without chocolate."
Nakajima Reina's mind was entirely occupied by the broken Pocky stick, and she didn't catch the boy's words.
She took the pocky out of her mouth and held it in her hand.
She moved her legs, avoiding the boy, and hurriedly walked out of the pavilion.
"It's almost break time. I need to go back."
"Wait."
The boy's plea made her walk even faster.
"At least wait for the wheelchair!" The boy chased after her.
She stopped, turned her face away from the boy's gaze, and sat back in the wheelchair.
Her breathing was rapid; those few hurried steps had made her feel exhausted.
The boy pushed her back to the ward.
As he secured the wheelchair's wheels and was about to help her, Reina quickly got up and sat on the bed with two steps.
Watching her lie down on the bed, the boy turned off the light and left the room.
In the dim light, Nakajima Reina tilted her ear to listen to the boy's footsteps until the sound completely vanished.
She then propped herself up from the bed, extended her right hand from under the blanket, and opened the tightly clenched palm.
Half of the chocolate pocky lay in her palm, broken into three pieces, with the chocolate smeared onto her skin.
The bitterness of the chocolate lingered on her tongue.
The ward was silent, with only the dim light from the night lamp casting a shadow at the foot of the bed and the distant footsteps of the nurses making their rounds.
[After two weeks of interaction, you've grown quite close. You invited her to play a flirtatious game, but she gazed at the lights of the sanatorium and refused. She thought of the spring boy in her mind and recalled your joke about hiding in the closet. You are not the partner of her fantasies; that spring boy is.]
[Your sudden proximity made her flustered. Back in the ward, she gazed at the dim night and felt sorrow.]
As the simulated text in his mind reached this point, Minami Yuuki wanted to sigh, but he quickly suppressed the impulse.
He was still pretending to be asleep on Asano Nao's lap.
Recalling the memory scenes and the simulated text, he thought that the romance was going smoothly, but Nakajima Reina's heart remained troubled by sorrow.
She only had some over three years of life left.
How should this illness be addressed? Change hospitals? Change therapies? Change the attending physician?
He didn't know. He didn't even know the name of the illness.
Shaking off this useless worry, Minami Yuuki turned his thoughts to something else.
Now, he finally understood what "Minami Yuuki" represented in Nakajima Reina's mind.
In the recent memory scene, Nakajima Reina refused his flirtatious game because she thought of "Minami Yuuki," and he had been thinking that he was somehow a rival to himself.
It didn't seem to be that way now.
The "Minami Yuuki" in Nakajima Reina's heart was not the real him but rather the springtime boy she had imagined, a companion for her loneliness and sorrow.
"Minami Yuuki" was just a name; all fantasies require a real-world basis, and Minami Yuuki was the material for her fantasies.
Tsk, the princess really had quite the imagination.
Minami Yuuki turned onto his side, resting his face against the soft fabric of Asano Nao's sportswear, and continued the simulation in his mind.
[That night, the veil over your relationship was lifted, and you both clearly sensed each other's feelings.]
[You didn't press the advantage but instead gave the girl some time to adjust.]
[Every day, you visited the hospital in the morning to chat with Nakajima Reina, and in the evening, you came back after Nakajima Youhei left, taking his daughter out for a stroll in the garden.]
[You often looked out at the distant mountains from the pavilion.]
[You noticed the front desk nurse's attention to you. With the subtle promotion from the nurse named Kawauchi, the entire sanatorium's nursing staff became observers and supporters of your relationship with Nakajima Reina.]
[You added several on-duty nurses on LINE. Now, you could find out Nakajima Youhei's whereabouts without needing messages from Nakajima Reina.]
[Several times, you almost ran into Nakajima Youhei, but avoided thanks to advance warnings from the on-duty nurses.]
"..."
Reading the text, Minami Yuuki suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for Nakajima Youhei.
The man still believed his daughter was quietly receiving treatment at the hospital, completely unaware of her daily rendezvous with his student.
The hospital's nurses had tacitly agreed to help keep it hidden.
[You expanded your meeting locations. Each floor of the hospital has a small lounge with a TV, magazines, and sofas. Though called a lounge, it's actually a place designed for patients to socialize. During the day, some patients who cannot stand the solitude gather there to chat and make friends.]
[The sanatorium has six floors, with only the bottom five occupied. The sixth floor's rooms are empty, and the lounge there is naturally vacant. You and Nakajima Reina often went there, finding the soft sofas much more comfortable than hospital beds.]
[You always took off your shoes and lounged on the sofa. This casual act was nothing to you but felt somewhat provocative to the well-behaved Nakajima Reina. Lying on the sofa itself was already informal, and placing your feet on it made it even more so.]
[Encouraged and coaxed by your words, Nakajima Reina also started lying on the sofa. From then on, the sofa became her new bed.]
[The sofa in the center of the lounge is quite long, made from two sofas joined together. You lie at one end, and Nakajima Reina lies at the other. You often use your feet to touch her feet, and each time, she would blush slightly, draw her legs up, and try to avoid your teasing.]
[Your relationship with Nakajima Reina grew increasingly ambiguous, but you both struggled to move beyond this ambiguity.]
[The first month of summer vacation was coming to an end, and a typhoon passed through the waters around Misaki, bringing two days of heavy rain. After the rain, the temperature cooled significantly.]
[In the morning, you and Nakajima Reina walked to the lounge. The girl sat down on a single sofa by the window, gazing out at the world after the rain.]
[You sat beside her, both of you looking out together. Neither of you spoke. Nakajima Reina was absorbed in the clear sky after the rain and the unusually vivid green of the freshed washed Azuki Mountain.]