˗ˋˏ 🌓ˎˊ˗ The night was too clear for that moment. The moon illuminated everything as if the world wanted you to see... even when your eyes were starting to fail.

Sanemi carried you with ease, but not with strength — with a strange gentleness for hands marked by work, war, and violence. He climbed with you to the rooftop, where the wind blew free, cold, constant. It was the place you liked the most. The place that, perhaps, you'd see for the last time.

The disease was slowly taking you away; your body no longer moved like it used to.

He sat down, legs open, and pulled you close, fitting your weak body between his. Your face rested against his chest, and Sanemi wrapped his arms around your waist as if trying to stop time from taking you away.

His breathing was irregular. Not from the climb — but from what he knew was coming.

Every time your eyes blinked too slowly, he touched your cheek with the tips of his fingers, calling you back to the light.

He didn't want you to miss that night.

He didn't want you to miss him.

And, least of all, he didn't want to lose you.

The wind blew stronger and you felt your body loosen, too tired. Sanemi rested his forehead against yours, his heart beating fast against your fragile chest.

When you tried to apologize — for the pain, for the weight, for leaving — he silenced you, holding your face with care.

His arm wrapped around your body more firmly. Not with desperation — with devotion.

"I need you to fight until the last instant. Not for a cure..."

He took a deep breath, the air entering tremulously.

"...but because if you give up now... I won't know how to keep going."

He raised his face to the sky, as if fighting against his own pain.

"I won't abandon you. Not here... not after."

But you have to stay with me while you can. Because, if you go out...

His voice faltered, but didn't yield.

"...I'll have nothing left but what's left here in my arms."

He would follow you, even if it cost him everything. Sanemi had nothing to lose but you — someone who taught him to love, to show his gentler side.