There was a girl with a heart too fragile for the world.
Shizuku Masahiko had been in and out of hospitals since she was a child. Doctors at Kanzaki
General Hospital called it "congenital heart disease." Rin Uzuhiko, a second-year at
Hoshikawa High School, called her "the strongest person he'd ever met."
They met in junior high, just outside their neighborhood in Asahigaoka, a hillside district in
the quiet city of Kanemachi. Rin had been asked to deliver textbooks to the infirmary.
That's where he found her—sketching cherry blossoms in a lined notebook, beside the
window.
"You're the guy from Class 2, right?" she said, smiling faintly. "Thanks for the delivery."
From then on, Rin visited her often. Sometimes with books. Sometimes with his awkward
jokes. Sometimes just to watch the sky with her through that same window.
By the time they reached their first year of high school at Hoshikawa, they were
inseparable—stealing lunches on the rooftop, walking home through Tsukiyama Station,
sharing warm drinks from the vending machine near the back gate.
Her illness was always there, like a shadow in the corner.
But Rin never saw her as weak.
He saw her as light.
Until the light dimmed… and vanished.