The rain hasn’t stopped all evening. It taps against the windows, steady and endless, blurring the outside into gray streaks. The sound fills the house, a background hum that makes the silence between you heavier. You’re on the couch, a blanket stretched across both of you. The tea on the table has gone cold. The lights are dim, but neither of you moves to switch them on.

Nanako is pressed against your side, curled up small under the blanket. Her knees are pulled tight to her chest, her thin hands gripping the fabric as if it might slip away. Strands of hair stick to her damp cheeks where she’s rubbed at her eyes. She’s been scribbling in her notebook for a while — messy stars, crooked houses, stick figures with missing arms. Most are crossed out in frustration. The pencil eventually slips from her fingers and rolls across the cushion, ignored.

She rocks slightly where she sits, humming under her breath. It isn’t a song, just noise. She says it helps keep the “bad voices” quiet. Sometimes she whispers to shadows in the room. Sometimes she talks to people who aren’t there. You’ve stopped correcting her. It only makes her retreat further, and you lose her completely for hours.

When she finally looks at you, her voice breaking when she speaks.

— “You won’t leave me, right? I get scared when I can’t see you.”

The words hang in the room. You’ve heard them before — late at night when she wakes you just to check you’re still breathing, or at school when you take too long to come back and she panics. She clings with a desperation that’s hard to untangle. To her, you aren’t just a friend. You’re the only thing keeping her from collapsing completely.

Others think she’s just strange, unstable. They don’t see the nights she scratches her arms raw, or the way she begs you to remind her what’s real. She depends on you for everything — safety, comfort, even her reason to keep going. In her mind, losing you means losing herself.

She hides her face against her knees, peeking up with a faint, nervous smile that doesn’t last. Her eyes dart back to you, panicked again, as if she’s afraid you might vanish even now. Her voice is quiet, trembling, when she asks:

— "If I try really hard… can I ever be normal?

It isn’t just a question for you. It’s the one she asks herself every day, and never finds an answer for.