Chapter 38
Kaze
A week later.
The world is slow at first.
Not quiet. Not dark. Just… slow. Like everything is underwater. Like I’m not inside my body but floating somewhere above it, trying to remember how it feels to exist.
Something’s beeping. Steady. Close.
There’s pressure in my chest—a dull ache behind my eyes. My mouth feels dry, like I’ve swallowed dust. My limbs are heavy, foreign, too long without purpose.
Breathing hurts.
Not sharply, but with a rawness I can’t place. Like my lungs forgot how to move on their own and are relearning, one painful inhale at a time. Something smells sterile. Clean, sharp, almost metallic.
Hospital.
That word lands somewhere in my mind and sits there, still and cold.
I try to move, but nothing obeys. My body feels like a stranger I’ve just woken up inside. My muscles ache in a distant way, like they’ve been asleep too long. Like, they aren’t ready for me to come back.
Eventually, I manage to open my eyes. The light is soft but piercing.
It blurs everything, turning the world into smudges of cream and pale blue.
I blink slowly. The ceiling above me is unfamiliar.
I turn my head, or try to. The motion is slow, forced, but eventually, I catch sight of something, or someone.
She is curled up on a couch in the corner of the room, knees tucked to her chest, wrapped in a thin blanket that’s slipped off one shoulder. Her dark and purple hair falls around her face like she hasn’t touched it in days. Her breathing is steady. Peaceful. Like she finally let herself rest.
My beautiful girl. My angel. My light.
I try to speak, to call her, because I need to touch her. I need to make sure she’s real, but the sound gets caught in my throat. My mouth opens, but only air comes out. No words. No voice. Just a broken rasp.
But it’s enough because she stirs and her head lifts slowly, like she’s waking from a dream she wasn’t ready to leave.
Our eyes meet like gravity pulling us immediately together, and our souls finding each other after a lifetime. For a moment, neither of us moves.
Then she stands. Fast. The blanket drops. Her steps cross the room in seconds, and before long, she’s at my side, eyes wide, filled with something between hope and disbelief.
Her hands hover near my face. One reaches my cheek. Her fingers tremble, and I feel her warmth.
“You’re awake, ” she whispers, barely breathing. “You came back, baby.”
I did love. I made it. I want to tell her, but I can’t, so I let my eyes speak for me.
I blink once. It’s all I can do.
Tears slip from her eyes, soundless. Her body shakes as she jumps on the bed beside me, one hand finding mine on the bed sheet.
“Don’t try to talk, ” she says. Her voice is raw with emotion. “It’s okay. You don’t have to say anything. Just… don’t leave me, Kaze, please. Never again, baby. Please.” She implores.
Never again, I reply internally and focus on making my fingers twitch against hers. To assure her. To make sure she can hear me, even though all I can be is silent.
The effort costs me everything, but I curl them slightly, enough to hold her hand.
She gasps first. Then she laughs. Not because anything is funny, but because her body doesn’t know what else to do with the flood of emotion crashing through her.
Her tears don’t stop. They slip down her cheeks like they’ve been waiting for this moment as long as she has. She leans forward, bringing my hand to her face, pressing it to her skin like it’s something holy, something she lost and thought she’d never feel again.
And I let myself get lost in her.
In the warmth of her cheek beneath my palm.
In the way her breath hitches when she closes her eyes.
In the scent of her hair, wild and familiar, like safety and storms and home.
I want to speak. I want to tell her everything.
That I saw her.
That I never stopped loving her.
That I found her even in the dark, and I fought that same darkness to come back for her because she is, and always was, my light.
But I can’t speak yet. So instead, I breathe her in.
I listen to the rhythm of my own heart, stunned that it still beats.
I’m here.
I’m alive.
And this time, I’m not letting her go. Because now I’m no longer just surviving. I’m going to live. Live for her, for us. For what we were, from the very beginning, destined to be: happy.