maury

  Ever since about a week ago, Chara felt like she had bee the unluckiest person iire world. Everything she did—failed! And even situations that seemed initially unproblematic would inexplicably spiral into chaos, engulfing her in a whirlwind of misfortune.

  As she stared at the end of her hospital bed, at the lower half of her body, her features couldn’t help but furrow with resignation and helplessness.

  Why is this happening? What did I do to deserve this?

  She csped her hands and murmured a silent prayer. Because if things didn’t start looking up soon… she didn’t know how much more she could endure.

  ***

  It all started one fine Friday afternoon when her dad’s pany suddenly imploded, leaving her family in a dire financial state. To Chara, who had only just graduated from high school and inteo pursue higher education, this was a huge tragedy! Worse, she didn’t have any personal savings!

  In fact, it’s not like she was a moron who couldn’t grasp basiicepts such as “savings” and “budgeting.” Rather, she simply had no iive to apply any of these skills to her usual life. After all, why would she bother with any of those tedious things, when she could just ask her papa to borrow his credit card…? An attitude that finally came to bite her at the worst possible time!

  Unfortunately, things would only go downhill from here.

  Not oo take a beating lying down, Chara immediately applied for several schorship programs, hoping to score at least three or four t her uy pns ba track. As it turned out, she failed to get even a single one!

  Distressed, she reached out to her friends for help. However, aside from one, her of her other two close friends respoo her texts or answered her calls, no matter how many times she tried. Finding this straried visiting them in person. However, no one answered the door even after knog for a long time.

  Having no other choice, she reached out to her sole remaining friend, Melody. As for how this went, merely recalling their versation was enough to make Chara feel extremely flustered.

  “How I go to school if I don’t have any money? What am I supposed to do? Work?” Chara mpooned.

  “M—maybe…? Uum, do you need me to help you apply for a job?” Melody asked in a quiet voice.

  After pausing for more than ten seds, Chara answered sheepishly, “…Please.”

  Hence, Chara swiftly nded a job as a waitress at a local café. As she soon found out, waitressing turned out to be a lot less appealing than she inally imagined. In short, she reeeeeally wao quit. She had only worked for one day, and she already had enough pints to fill aire forum thread.

  In hindsight, she wasn’t really sure what she had been thinking. Work was hard; that much was on sense. heless, she wasn’t willing to give up before receiving her first paycheck, especially after having to ask for help just to secure the job. It was too humiliating. Her pride simply wouldn’t allow it.

  After putting up with it for the rest of the day, she helped close shop, clocked out, and stepped out onto the sidewalk in time to see the setting sun. Feeling a sense of poignancy, she began her journey bae, only to be struck by a truck along the way, resulting in her current hospitalization.

  ***

  Ba the hospital, Chara mourned as she stared at the end of her bed, at the lower half of her body which would never move again.

  Just a couple of days ago, Melody brought her some promising news. Using her family’s es, she might be able te Chara an appoi with a miraculous surgeon who could definitely restore feelings to the paralyzed lower half of her body.

  Chara, who was already beginning to lose hope, seized this ce immediately!

  During the four days preg the operation, she had to subsist on a strictly liquid diet and had to ehe ption of various repulsive medies in preparation, purging her body of any impurities. However, she was willing to endure all this, just for the right to walk again.

  It had already been aire night sihe surgery, and Chara still couldn’t feel the lower half of her body. Needless to say, it failed.

  “It’s just ohing after another! When will it ever end…” Chara wept, with tears rolling down her cheeks.

  “You are too pessimistic. How are you supposed to get better when you’re burdened with so muegativity?” Melody asked in a chiding tone.

  Chara wiped her tears away and shot Melody a resentful gre.

  “Easy for you to say with those fine legs of yours,” Chara snapped. Without waiting for a response, she allowed herself to fall bato her mattress and turned away from her visitor.

  “How I still believe that everything will be alright, whehing is going wrong…?” she murmured sadly before quieting down.

  The room fell silent.

  Melody quietly rose from her seat and approached the hospital bed. Using its frame as a support, she bent her waist and leaned over Chara, gazing down at her from above.

  “Would you like to talk about it? Sometimes letting everything out make you feel better,” Melody suggested, gently brushing aside Chara’s hair to meet her gaze.

  Gng at Melody’s face, Chara snorted before looking away.

  After a short pause, she began speaking, “Why are you still trying to hang out with me? My dad’s pany is on the brink of bankruptcy, and I don’t have any money. I haven’t been able to secure a single schorship and I ’t even afford uy…

  “To be ho, I don’t feel like I’ve been a good enough friend for you to trouble yourself with these tinued visits,” she murmured, her lips curling into a sad smile.

  Chara blinked, as if recalling something, then turned her gaze toward Melody, “Also, wasn’t it you who reehat ‘miraculous’ doctor? Tsk, it’s all PR and marketing! Since when are you such a dummy? You should know better than to believe in such exaggerated cims!”

  Melody furrowed her brows before moving her hand over Chara’s cheek and giving it a well-deserved pinch.

  Chara instinctively tried to swat the evil hand away, but Melody withdrew it quickly. Feeling aggrieved, she turned her head to gre at her assaint.

  However, Melody simply fshed her a cheeky smile and said, “If you keep saying such mean things to me, I might bee sad and decide not to visit you again iure.”

  “Who wants to be visited by such a sassy visitor?” Chara rolled her eyes, sinking her head bato her pillow and ign her.

  “How docile. Where is that willful, spoiled girl that I knew before? You would never have tolerated being treated like this in the past. Perhaps if I bully you a bit, it’ll rekindle some of your rebellious spirit,” Melody ented while creeping her hands closer, poised to it unspeakable acts to the unsuspeg girl.

  Without any warning, Chara swiftly sat up and seized Melody’s right hand, stopping her in pce.

  “So you were after my body? Hmph, I knew you wouldn’t visit me so many times without an ulterior motive! Take—this!” Chara shouted as she gripped her pillow usiher arm and swung it against the oning pervert.

  “Aaah!” Melody raised her left arm to shield her face.

  Smack~!

  Unfazed, Chara readied her pillow and swung again, and again, and again.

  Smack~! Smack~! Smack~!

  “Stop! Stop! I was joking! I wasn’t really going to do anything! Stoooooooooop!” Melody tried to defend herself, but Chara simply smacked her even more fiercely.

  “I take back everything I said before, all of it! I obviously treated you too kindly! Just you wait till my legs get better and I kick you across a football field!” Chara shouted angrily.

  “Eek…! I’m—I’m sorry…!” Melody early pleaded for mercy through the relentless barrage of pillows until Chara finally let her go. Falling bato her chair, Melody rubbed her forehead and stared at Chara with a wronged expression.

  “Hmph, I give you an ind you take a mile. This is how you should have behaved from the start,” Chara decred in aremely domineering manner. Despite her heavy breathing and flushed cheeks, her fao longer showed a resigned, downcast expression.

  Notig the visible improvement in Chara’s mood, Melody’s lips curled into a slight smile. Unsciously, she reached out her hand to pat Chara’s head.

  Feeling Melody’s alm stroke the top of her head, Chara’s mind momentarily became bnk. Although she was the one demanding fiveness, why did it feel as if Melody was the one accepting her apology? Uo withstand the current situation, she retreated under her bs while feeling flustered.

  “Aww… there she goes,” Melody giggled. Uurbed, she straightened up her bad turned around to search through her belongings.

  A few seds ter, the cealed Chara heard the rustling of pstic bags. Spurred on by her curiosity, she rolled onto her other side and peeked through an opening in her bo see what the irl to.

  When Melody was ready, she sat back down on her seat, holding a wicker piic basket full of delicious fruit. Without thinking, Chara reached out a hand to grab a delicious-looking red apple, only for Melody to pull the basket away at the st sed.

  It was an unpreted act of betrayal.

  Seeing Chara’s pitiful and aggrieved stare, Melody chuckled. “When I learhat you had been on a liquid diet for days, I thought I’d bring you something tasty to cheer you up. But now that we’ve talked for a bit, I realize that even if I feed you this delicious fruit, any joy it brings to you would be short-lived. You’d ght baoping the moment you finished eating.”

  Chara wordlessly withdrew her hand and sealed the opening in her bs. However, she soon remembered the fruit, stirring up an irresistible craving for sweetness mixed with a sense of unwillingness. Relutly, she opened a small fp in the bs and asked, “What do you want?”

  Melody, notig that she had captured the hiding girl’s attentioly tapped her as she thought over her words. After a moment of ption, her face brightened with a smile, and she said, “What I want from you is fairly simple. Yes… Essentially, I want you to believe in me.”

  “…What?” Chara’s expression grew bnk, uo decipher the girl’s iions.

  Melody burst into a fit of giggles. “You may not be aware, but there is a fasating e between a human’s spirit and their physical well-being. It’s difficult to put into words, but if you truly believe you get better, it lead to genuine improvements in your physical dition.

  “That is to say, healthy mind: healthy body.

  “Now, hereihe problem. That surgent should’ve healed ys. However, I think you are so depressed and gloomy that it’s actually making your dition worse.”

  Upon hearing this, Chara’s initial rea was skepticism. Though she vaguely recalled hearing something simir before, Melody’s cims still struck her as somewhat superstitious. Yet, if she were to be believed, then that would mean that the one responsible for her operation’s failure would be her than herself.

  Beh her bed sheets, Chara’s mind swirled with flig thoughts, her features involuntarily furrowing into an expression nation and helplessness.

  “Thus, I have thought of a solution,” Melody announced, snapping Chara out of her thoughts.

  “Since you are too pessimistic to believe in yourself, how about you believe in me instead? Iurn, I’ll believe in you, endowing you with my utmost, unwavering, and wholehearted, moral support.

  “Hehe, once your spirits are lifted, your body will quickly recover, and you’ll be walking in no time!” Melody expined while patting her chest with a smile.

  Captivated by Melody’s unwavering optimism, Chara momentarily found herself at a loss for words. After a brief silence, she emerged from beh her bed sheets. Though Melody’s ideas seemed overly optimistid somewhat silly to Chara, she strongly appreciated her siy in trying to help. Which is why, in spite of her doubts, Chara chose to set them aside and pce her trust in Melody.

  “I believe in you…” Chara responded after a brief silence.

  Melody’s smile turned into a beaming smile.

  “I believe in you too!”

  Chara was momentarily stunned before bursting into a fit of giggles.

  “See, it’s already taking effect,” Melody kindly pointed out.

  “No, it’s not, this doesn’t t,” Chara denied, clearihroat.

  Having achieved her goal, Melody happily leaned forward, presenting the wicker piic basket full of delicious fruit. “Here.”

  Chara didn’t bother to be polite. She reached into the piic basket, her fingers grazing the smooth surface of a vibrant red apple. With a soft smile, she plucked it from the basket, feeling the ess of its skin against her palm.

  Following this, Melody also picked up an apple, only to look up and find Chara giving her an unusual stare.

  “What? Did you think that they were all for yourself? You are already a cripple, do you want to be fat as well?” Melody scoffed, waving her index finger from side to side.

  The er of Chara’s lips twitched.

  You are really asking for it!

  If it wasn’t for her arms being tired and the delicious treat, she would have grabbed her pillow to give Melody another beating. Disregarding her visitor, she focused on her own fruit.

  “Bon appétit.”

  Bringing the apple to her lips, she took a hearty bite, sav the burst of sweethat flooded her senses. But within moments, a faint tingliio over her lips, followed by a subtle itess spreading across her face.

  When was the st time I had some proper food? Err, actually, it’s only been four days, but it feels a lot lohan that… Chara reflected while chewing silently, and then swallowing.

  Suddenly, her throat stricted, making it extremely difficult to breathe. Droplets of sweat formed on her brow as her heartbeat quied. With a gasp, she dropped the half-eaten apple.

  Frantically, she struggled to draw in air, but it felt as though invisible hands were squeezing the life out of her. Her vision blurred as the once brightly lit hospital room faded into murky shadows. Before she could prehend what was happening, a wave of dizziness washed over her, and she lost sciousness.

  maury