Chapter 1
The day I found out I was dying was the day I confessed to
Saga-senpai. Strabovirus, my doctor told me. I still
remember the day of my world ending and crashing down on me miserably.
I watched blossoms fall off the sakura tree that grew outside my window. I heard the sobs of my mother, but they didn’t affect me. I lifelessly looked out the window from my hospital bed, my bright green eyes unusually dull and blank. The doctor delivered his news bluntly, as he should.
“He has Strabovirus. I’m aware that this disease has appeared in your family before, and it is most likely he contracted it from that. There is no cure for Strabovirus, and your son will most likely not live past the age of thirty. There is treatment, but I doubt will do any good due to his level of the disease.”
My mother was in hysteria and almost collapsed herself and my father didn’t move nor speak. The doctor left, leaving the Onodera family to cope on their own.
‘Ironic, isn’t it?’ I thought bitterly.
That day at school, I felt fine. A rarity since the end of primary school, I wasn’t racked with pain or fever. My confidence must have been better as well, for I had confessed to my first love; Saga-senpai. But I soon fell back into the grip of pain and sickness that day and I was sent to the hospital after I collapsed after school. That was then I received the news of my signed death warrant.
My uncle had Strabovirus, but before we found out it was too late. He passed away when I was only seven. I spent time with him often when he wasn’t traveling the world as a missionary. He was born with the rare and deadly virus, and through cruel genetics, it spread to me eventually. As I reached the end of elementary school, I started to feel the woe of death but didn’t realize it. Often out of school due to high fevers and pains, my doctors always scratched their heads and shrugged, telling me I just had a weak immune system and contracted the flu easily.
As I reached high school, it got worse. Almost every day, I was in some way sick. Of course, I fell in love. Bitterly and hopelessly in love, I knew I was stupid. I would never be able to fulfill my love as death approached closer. I wasn’t expected to live past thirty, and yet I continued my relationship with him; Saga-senpai. Of course I never told him, so I selfishly held onto him with my whole-hearted and ineffable love.
But the shock of breaking up and thinking it was all a game for him pulled me out of school for the rest of the year. I had run home, tears leaving a trail behind me and with an acrimonious heartbreak. I reached home and collapsed in front of my parents, landing me in the hospital again.
My parents couldn’t stand to see me suffer, so they sent me to England for the limited treatment I could receive after the school year was over. As I went to school abroad, I was treated, but fruitlessly. I returned to Japan to strike a deal with my parents. A deal I knew would hurt my parents more than me in the long run. I wanted to work, but they had prohibited me from having a job. I used tears as my ally and they acceded. Of course they put me in their own company to keep an eye on me and gave me good authors for my benefit and enjoyment.
Soon though, I hated working there. Jealous editors tormented me and I felt worthless along with dying. Again, I asked my parents and they reluctantly, and sadly, agreed. But they had their own conditions too. When the time came when I was mostly bed ridden, I was to quit and return to them if I did not have someone to take care of me. I suppose they meant if I was married or in a relationship, my significant other could care for me, but I had vowed to never fall in love again so I knew I would return to my parents. They originally had wanted me to come home only after a year, but as the main victim, I pleaded with the excuse of a dying wish. I told them I wanted to leave my own legacy behind after my death without the help of my family.
I went to Marukawa, unbeknownst to me at first it was mostly through my father’s connection to Marukawa. Ironically, I ended up in shoujo manga. Only to have, yet again, the shock of my life.
My boss was a brutal and workaholic man named Takano Masamune, previously named Saga Masamune. Saga-senpai. The universe must hate me I had concluded.
He has chased me for the time I have been working here, vowing that he’d make me fall in love with him again. This of course clashed with my own vow of tenaciously not falling in love again, especially not with the same man.
But I know I am slowly weakening, in heart and body.
I come closer to death every day, Strabovirus eating away at me. The medication I have covers up my symptoms on the outside and helps keep fevers and pains at bay, but it grows weaker and my disease grows stronger. My heart is also giving in, but to another virus I call Takano. This man is determined and unknowingly chasing a hopeless cause, for I have still not told him yet that the end is near for me. How could I? It is not his business I defiantly think, but I know deep inside the real reason I haven’t told him is because I don’t want to hurt him. He deserves better than a dying man who pushes him away and rejects him every time, for the sake of both of them. I know I take a piece of him every time I do this, but he doesn’t know why I do this. He doesn’t know the real reason of why I act like this, so he continues and it cracks my resolve more and more.
But I know I am slowly weakening, in heart and body.
