FicWad

He looked up, and the sun that shone through the cherry trees was bright outside of Meguro station. He felt tears stinging at his eyes and told himself that he must have developed allergies to some sort of pollen or smog...something. He certainly wasn't crying at the thought that Nao had died in a cold hospital bed on a day much like this. He wasn't thinking that, when the older man exhaled his last breath, the last petal from the last cherry blossom on the branch Satoshi had brought him fell to the linoleum floor. He wasn't thinking about how the hollow, drawn-out beep of the electrocardiograph had ehoed off the walls of the small, pristine room.

He wasn't thinking about how, a year ago, he had wheeled Nao around Ueno park as fast as he could, and how people had looked at them like they were insane.

He wasn't thinking about how Nao had told him later that night that the afternoon he had spent with Satoshi had been the first time he'd felt alive in a long time.

He wasn't thinking about how feeling alive was the best thing you must be able to feel when you know you're dying.

He wasn't thinking about Nao's smile through his oxygen mask.

He wasn't thinking about how they could have been happy.

They could have been together.

They could have been here, looking up at the sun through the cherry trees together.

'But in a way,' Yamaoka Satoshi thought to himself, a light breeze dancing around him, knocking the cherry blossoms free of their branches and into his eyes, 'we are.'

And he smiled, blinking away his tears.