The Crimson Lotus

“I wish you wouldn’t get your hopes up, Maddie.”

“And why not? They don’t let people die before they get their wish, do they?” The young girl shifted in the bed, turning her head and staring out the window. “I’ll get my wish. I may have cancer, but it hasn’t killed me yet, y’know? If I can have faith in that, I can have faith in anything.”

“Even a rock star from a different country?” questioned her mother, biting her lip and wringing her hands together, watching the girl with a hopeless sigh. “Of all the things you could have wished for, you wanted this? Why not a trip to Japan to see him?” Her voice was strained, as though she knew already that she was fighting a battle she wouldn’t win. Her voice became quiet. “Seventeen years old, the age when you could want anything, and you wish for this?”

“I want to mean something, Mom. I want to be important to someone who can make a difference. I don’t want love…no I could never ask for something like that…I just want friendship. I want to meet him, and if he stays, then so be it.” She looked away from her mother, staring out the window at the traffic dragging along down below. “I want him to be the last friend I make.”

Her mother bit her lip, clutching her hands together now, surprised by the finality and maturity of the wish. This girl before her was not her seventeen-year-old daughter. No. It couldn’t be her. Her seventeen-year-old daughter, just months ago, had been like the rest of her friends. She’d been laughing and teasing and going to parties and staying up late like all the rest of them.

But now, she was this being caught between adolescence and adulthood, and she was dying for it.

She closed her eyes, stifling a few light sobs, and fought back the tears that brimmed at her eyes. And then, she heard footsteps- the low sound of expensive shoes on the tile floor. Quickly, she wiped her eyes and turned to face the visitor, offering a weak smile, and stepped back so that the man entering the room could see the bed.

“Madison Keller?” he questioned, his Japanese accent heavy on the English name. “This is her room, ne?”

Maddie was watching him now, her eyes widened, and there was a broad smile on her face, her eyes lighting up, despite the dimness that had overtaken them in the last few months. Ruki smiled, not noticing how pale her skin was, though it was obvious to him that she was sick. “I’m Madison,” she said quietly, and he nodded, stepping past her mother with a curt tilt of his head, stopping beside the bed. “Are you him?” she asked, her voice breaking on the last word.

He nodded once more, his smile growing, and pulled his sunglasses from his face, letting the hand that held them hang at his side. “Hai,” he said gently. “I am Ruki.” He flashed another stunning smile. “You have a very beautiful name.”

“Thank you,” she said quietly, blushing ever so slightly. She gestured to the chair behind him. “You don’t have to stand, you know.” He laughed softly, pulling the chair closer, and then sat down, merely laughing softly once more. “Mom kept saying that you wouldn’t come. She said that people like you have no time for the whims of dying teenage girls.”

He resisted the urge to glance back at her mother, who had left the room by now. “They told me that it didn’t have to be me, that it didn’t matter which member of the band visited you. They said that you were, however, very specific on which band it was to be.” He set his sunglasses aside. “But I was your first choice, ne?”

She nodded.

“Why?”

A wry smile curved her lips, and she watched him, even as the urge to look down at her hands tugged at her thoughts. “I don’t know, she answered quietly. “I guess you’re my favorite.”

He laughed softly, brushing his hair from his face with one smooth motion. “Arigatou. It flatters me to hear it.”

She shook her head. “Please don’t be so formal with me.” He raised an eyebrow. “They think I have three months left, did you know that? I lost all my hair three months ago, it can never grow back to how it was, and I stopped responding to treatments consistently about three weeks ago. Did they tell you that? That you were coming to Chicago to spend time with a girl that has no time left?”

No. They did not. But he didn’t say it.

He bit his lip for a moment, holding out his hand. She stared at it, surprised, for a moment, and then looked back up at him.

“It is only a hand, Maddie-chan. What does it matter if it belongs to a rock star?" He gave a warm smile as she placed her hand in his, and his gaze shifted past her as his fingers closed around hers. "They told me that you love music. They said that the only song you have listened to for two weeks is Guren. They said that before you knew how sick you were, you had tickets to come to Japan to see my band live." He paused here, his expression becoming soft, his eyes shifting back over to her. "But no. They did not tell me how much time you had left."

She let go of his hand, and he placed it in his lap, folding the other hand into it. "And you would spend so much time with a dying teenager?"

"Hai," he said quietly. "The fact that you requested to meet me as your final wish means something to me." He bit his lip for a moment. "And the face that you wish for nothing more than friendship means something, too." He shifted slightly in the chair, his dark eyes watching her surprised stare. "The rest of the band is coming in two weeks, after you have gotten your time with me." She opened her mouth to question him, but gracefully, he raised a hand to quiet her. "Don't worry, Maddie-chan. I will stay. Until I am sent away, I am here."

"Thank you, Ruki," she said in a whisper, and she couldn't hold back the tears that dripped from her eyes. "You will never know how important it is that you are here for me." Hastily, she swiped at her eyes, and it was then that Ruki realized that there was a tube in her arm regulating her fluid intake, keeping her alive. "Could I-"

"Of course." He rose from the chair, and she leaned forward slightly, wrapping her arms around him after he'd wrapped his around her.

Sniffling, she pressed her face into his shirt, taking the opportunity to absorb his scent and the warmth of his body. He held her for as long as she remained there, unbothered by giving what she had asked of him, shutting his eyes and rubbing her back, like a father holding on to his sick child.

He was barely fazed by the tube in her arm pressing into his back.

“I’m glad you came, Ruki,” she whispered, holding on tighter. “I thought…I never knew how…”

He touched his lips to the top of her head, the most affectionate gesture he could manage, and smiled. Maddie was caught off guard, being treated so warmly by a man that she had introduced herself to mere minutes before, but he simply smiled and kissed her head again. “Shh, Maddie-chan,” he said, his voice soft. “I came, did I not?” She nodded against his shirt, and he sighed lightly. “Then be happier, ne? I did not come for you to spend your last days in doubt.”

“Okay.” She pulled back from him, and his arms slid from her shoulders as he gazed down at her, a warm smile on his lips. “So…how to pass the first day?”

He laughed again, wryly. “That is for you to decide. This time is not mine, it is yours.”

I knew I’d chosen the right one. “So if I said that I wanted to spend the first day just…talking, you’d be fine with that?”

Ruki nodded, settling into the chair beside her bed once more, pulling it just a bit closer. He pushed his sunglasses further out of the way, folding his hands in his lap and smiling again. “I would love to.” Another friendly smile.

Stay forever. Stay with me.