My Ex-Girlfriend’s Sister Ran Away to My Room, and We Can’t Stop Making Mistakes. - Chapter 30: I'm Fine.

I’m Fine.

Mii was taken to a hospital Vanilla knew well. After being put on an IV drip and given a sedative, she drifted off to sleep.

The middle-aged doctor had a prickly air about him, his brow permanently furrowed in a deep scowl.

“Her anemia is severe. Does she actually eat?”

When I told him I didn’t know, he shrugged.

“I’ll prescribe some medicine for now, but if she doesn’t change her lifestyle, it’s not going to end well for her.”

“I’ll see to it,” I nodded.

“And her parents?”

When I shook my head, the doctor let out a heavy sigh.

“Just try not to let her push herself.”

I thanked him and stepped out of the examination room. Vanilla, sitting on a sofa in the waiting room, raised a hand to signal me.

“How was it?”

“Anemia, apparently.”

“I see. So it’s nothing life-threatening. That’s a relief for now.”

“I’m sorry. For leaning on you like this.”

“It’s fine.”

She had a coat thrown over her maid uniform. She was soaked to the bone, water dripping steadily from the hem of her skirt.

“I’m really sorry.”

“Hey, now.”

Vanilla gave a troubled smile.

“Don’t apologize with a face like that. You’re going to make me feel guilty.”

“If you hadn’t been there, I might have killed Mii.”

“Hardly. She’s not the type to just drop dead, right?”

“No, that’s not what I meant.”

I thought back to my hands—the hands that wouldn’t move. In that moment, I hadn’t been looking at Mii at all.

“Just the other day, Mii and I were talking about zombies.”

“Zombies? Like the ones in movies?”

“Yeah. It was a hypothetical. What would I do if she turned into a zombie? What would I do if I were put in a situation where I had to kill her?”

“And how did you answer?”

“I said I wouldn’t kill her. But the reality is different.”

I had seen her collapse and I couldn’t do a thing. I hadn’t even tried to do anything. I had just stood there, unable to even empathize with her suffering.

“I’m running away. I left her to die—neither killing her nor saving her. I just ran.”

I had tried not to think about her. I couldn’t bear to keep looking at something that was beyond my control.

I was too scared to move.

And yet, I couldn’t bring myself to hate her, either. I didn’t push her away. I just stayed with her, indulging in the affection she pressed upon me.

“This is the result.”

A miserable, pathetic conclusion.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t be dumping this on you.”

“You think too deeply about things, Saki-kun.”

“Maybe. Anyway, I’m fine now. I’ll handle the rest myself. It’s my own mess.”

“’Fine,’ huh?”

Vanilla poked my shoulder, looking dissatisfied. Her hair was still damp.

“Follow me for a second.”

She stood up and walked out of the hospital grounds toward the smoking area without a word. No one else was under the prefabricated roof.

She lit a cigarette.

“Want one?”

“No, I don’t—”

“Right. I hate cigarettes too, actually.”

She shoved the pack of Marlboros back into her coat pocket.

“They make you smell, they cost money…”

“You hate them? Then why?”

“A friend of mine from middle school. They were in her room.”

The afternoon consultation hours had ended, and the front of the hospital was deserted. Aside from the occasional car passing by with its headlights on, there wasn’t a soul in sight.

“She was a girl who laughed a lot. Good at being considerate—too good, really. Gentle, maybe a bit of a space cadet. She told me so happily that she’d gotten a job offer in her senior year of college.”

Vanilla stopped there and exhaled a cloud of smoke. Large raindrops drummed against the prefab roof.

“Her catchphrase was ‘I’m fine.’ I heard she was missing work, so I’d call her to check in, and she’d always say, ‘I’m fine.’”

Vanilla closed her eyes and looked down quietly.

“She wasn’t fine at all.”

The sound of the rain echoed in my ears.

“In the end, she hanged herself from a coat rack. Her family told me to take something of hers while they were clearing out the place. When I went, for some reason, there was this pack of cigarettes by her bed.”

Apparently, the pack had been sitting there, pristine. Only one had the trace of being lit. And even that one had barely been smoked.

“I wonder what it was. Maybe she thought she’d try smoking because she was stressed. She wasn’t that kind of person. It’s not like doing that would have changed anything.”

She was someone who didn’t drink, let alone smoke. Vanilla’s eyes wavered, suggesting the cigarette probably hadn’t even tasted good.

“I thought, What are you doing, you idiot? That’s so pathetic. Wasn’t there anything else? I was so pissed I just took them. I was angry at her, and at myself.”

A tiny red ember glowed at the tip of the cigarette.

“That’s why I don’t trust the words ‘I’m fine.’ People say it to convince themselves. Even when they can’t take it anymore, they say ‘I’m fine’ to gloss over everything.”

“I’m not—”

“You’re not fine. No matter how you look at it.”

“But I have to pull myself together.”

“Then all the more reason.”

Vanilla was looking toward the hospital.

“You aren’t fine, Saki-kun. Until you admit that, you probably won’t be able to go anywhere. You won’t be able to love anyone, and you won’t be able to hate anyone either.”

I thought of the shadow. The shadow that had chased me from my hometown was now clinging heavily to my feet, illuminated by the streetlights.

“If you can’t handle it yourself, you have to lean on someone.”

The threads inside my head were tangled. I couldn’t find the end. I had no idea where the beginning was.

“Not just for your sake, but for Mii-chan’s too.”

It was a summer evening. The heat of my hands on the bicycle handlebars.

“I told her we should run away.”

I started to remember, one piece at a time, like untangling a knot. I slowly dragged out the things I had spent five years trying to forget.

“I told her to throw everything away, abandon her family, and just run.”

“And?”

“That’s it. In the end, we couldn’t run far enough.”

I sat on a cheap, hard bench. The surface was wet, covered in countless droplets. My back became soaked.

But even that didn’t matter anymore.