Love Comes After Simulation

[The summer sun is scorching; even though the sun has only just risen above the horizon, the temperature is already high. After walking in the sunlight for a while, you start to sweat.]

[Nakaima Reina hasn’t experienced this kind of heat in a long time; she finds it refreshing. The garden scenery, which she had become very familiar with in her hospital room, suddenly looks unfamiliar from this new perspective.]

[You push her towards the flowers, encouraging her to smell the pollen. She smiles.]

[At the end of the garden, you circle around from the other side and stop in the pavilion in the center of the garden. The pavilion’s roof casts a cool shadow. You and Nakaima Reina sit in the shade; she looks out, while you watch her.]

[Nakaima Reina’s gaze gradually shifts away from the garden, and she looks towards a distant point. In the southeast of the garden, she sees a small mountain standing against the blue sky. The mountain’s slope is lush and green, with the sun hanging above its peak.]

[She is first surprised to find a mountain nearby, and then even more surprised that she had never noticed it before, despite it being directly in view from her window.]

[You tell her that it’s called Azuki Mountain.]

[As the sun rises higher, the sunlight becomes even more intense, and you push Nakaima Reina back to the hospital room.]

[Back in her bed, the familiar garden comes into view again, but what occupies her mind is that unfamiliar perspective.]

“How do you feel?” Minami Yuuki asks, resting her elbows on her legs and supporting her chin with her hands, looking at the girl in the hospital bed.

“It’s very hot. I haven’t sweated like this in a long time,” Nakaima Reina responds realistically, resonating with a common experience.

“Shall we go again tomorrow?” Minami Yuuki asks.

The girl hesitates, unsure if she should go out again.

“Then it’s settled,” Minami Yuuki says, standing up.

The girl doesn’t object, indicating her willingness to agree.

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[It was getting late. You said goodbye to Nakaima Reina, returned the wheelchair to the nurse, and left the hospital.]

[The nurse at the front desk recognized all the patients in the clinic. When you and Nakaima Reina left, she immediately recognized you both. She looked through your visit records and saw that you were not listed as visiting Nakaima Reina.]

[She wondered how you two had come together. She didn’t tell Nakaima Yohei about this. The thirty-something unmarried nurse still harbors fantasies from her youth, and she secretly observed you and Nakaima Reina, turning your every move into a romantic story in her mind.]

[The summer vacation was halfway through, and the temperature had reached its peak for the year. You and Nakaima Reina continued to visit the garden every morning.]

[One day, after pushing the girl back from the garden, your back was wet, and her forehead was sweaty.]

[You told her that the mornings were getting hotter and suggested that it might be better to go out in the evening to enjoy the scenery. However, since Nakaima Yohei was there in the evenings, you only had a short window of time after he left and before visiting hours ended.]

[To accurately track when Nakaima Yohei would leave, you exchanged LINE contacts with Nakaima Reina.]

[Nakaima Yohei usually left half an hour early, which was your window for evening outings.]

[On your first night outing, Nakaima Reina tensed up and was a bit anxious when she saw the pitch-black darkness outside the door in the lobby. However, as you pushed her into the darkness, her anxiety quickly dissipated.]

[She looked at the shadows of the buildings in the night and at the moon and stars in the sky. She could also see such scenes from her hospital room, but the feeling was completely different. The sensation of being enveloped by shadows and shrouded in night was something she could never have imagined, no matter how she tried to envision it from her brightly lit hospital room.]

[While resting in the pavilion, Nakaima Reina stood up from the wheelchair.]

A memory scene appears.

The sky is dim, with the moon obscured by thin clouds.

The garden lights are faint, and the streetlamp next to the pavilion attracts summer night insects.

One by one, they bump into the translucent lampshade, making a soft ticking sound.

“It’s a bit scary at night,” Nakaima Reina says.

“Then hold my hand,” Minami Yuuki says, placing his right hand on her shoulder with his palm up.

He stands behind the girl, unable to see her face.

He doesn’t know what she’s thinking, only that after about five or six seconds, her hand rests in his palm.

Her hand is slender and delicate, and Minami Yuuki grips it firmly.

“Could you support me?” Nakaima Reina looks up, gazing at the boy’s chin from behind.

Minami Yuuki continues to hold her hand with one hand while placing his other hand on her shoulder to prevent her from losing balance.

Nakaima Reina’s body is still capable of standing.

She smoothly rises from the wheelchair, takes two steps forward, and stands beside Minami Yuuki.

She’s never been this close to him before.

Their shoulders are almost touching, and the warmth of his body seems to seep through the air to her.

She smells a fresh fragrance, a mix of men’s shampoo and body wash, and her heart beats a little faster.

“Have you ever been to that mountain over there?” she asks, looking at the outline of Azuki Mountain in the darkness.

“No, I haven’t been, just heard about it. It’s not very difficult to climb; you can reach the top in a little over half an hour.”

“I see.”

Nakaima Reina gazes at the distant hill, lost in thought.

“I have something for you,” Minami Yuuki says, leading her to a corner of the pavilion.

He pulls out a plastic bag from underneath the pavilion bench.

Nakaima Reina opens the bag, revealing a variety of snacks inside.

“The doctor didn’t say you couldn’t eat these, did he?” Minami Yuuki pulls out potato chips, a Swiss roll, some Pocky, and a bottle of soda.

“Just said to stick to the hospital’s nutritional meals,” Nakaima Reina says, finding an excuse for herself without needing Minami Yuuki’s persuasion.

“Just to be safe, have a little, and I’ll keep the rest.”

Nakaima Reina picks up a chip, and the taste and texture of childhood that she had forgotten return to her tongue.

She wonders when she had started eating only hospital meals and fruit.

She looks at the boy in front of her and realizes that if not for him, she would have forgotten the world outside the hospital room.

“Want to try this?” Minami Yuuki asks, holding a Pocky stick in his mouth and looking at Nakaima Reina.

The long stick of cookie oscillates between his lips, seemingly urging her.

Sharing a Pocky is a classic romantic gesture, something Nakaima Reina has seen many times on television.

She never thought this scene would play out in her own life.

After hesitating for a moment, she tilts her long neck.

At that moment, her gaze drifts past the boy’s shoulder, catching the bright lights of the rehabilitation building.

She thinks of the boy named Minami Yuuki, who, though she doesn’t know what he looks like, has been with her every night in her memories.

Her neck drops again, and she doesn’t bite the Pocky stick from the boy’s mouth.

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