Chapter Text
The first time Bunny saw him, he thought the hospital had made a mistake. Not a small one. Not a clerical slip or a misplaced file. Something bigger. Something almost cruel in its precision.
Because doctors in places like this were supposed to look tired. They were supposed to look older than they were, softened at the edges by too many night shifts and too many locked doors closing behind them. They were supposed to look like they belonged to the building.
But Sae did not look like he belonged anywhere.
He stood in the doorway of the observation room with a posture so controlled it felt almost unnatural, like even stillness had been trained into him. A white coat hung over his shoulders without a single crease out of place, and his expression, calm, unreadable, gave nothing away. Not curiosity. Not pity. Not discomfort.
Just attention.
And Bunny, sitting cross-legged on the narrow bed with the scratchy institutional blanket pulled around his waist, decided immediately that attention like that was dangerous.
“Bunny, dear,” the nurse said softly, as if introducing him to something fragile. “This is Doctor Itoshi. He’ll be overseeing your care.”
Doctor Itoshi.
Sae’s eyes flicked to him then, briefly, not invasive. Simply registering. Like a fact being filed away.
“Hello,” Sae said.
His voice was even, low. Controlled in a way that made it feel closer than it should have been.
Bunny tilted his head. “You’re young.”
A pause. The faintest shift in Sae’s gaze—something that might have been amusement if it were allowed to exist more openly.
“I am,” Sae replied.
“That’s bad, really bad." Bunny said immediately, as if continuing a conversation already in his head. “Young doctors make mistakes.”
The nurse tensed beside the door.
But Sae didn’t react the way people usually did. He didn’t correct him sharply, he didn’t smile indulgently. He didn’t try to reassure him like he was a child misinterpreting the world.
Instead, he studied Bunny properly for the first time.
And something about that felt like being seen under water—distorted, quiet, unavoidable.
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Sae said.
That was all.
No denial. No reassurance. Just acknowledgment.
Bunny felt something shift in his chest. Small. Almost imperceptible. Interesting.
Over the next few days, Bunny started noticing him everywhere.
Not physically. Sae didn’t hover or intrude. He didn’t become one of those doctors who filled the room too much, who spoke too loudly or tried too hard to fix things they didn’t understand.
He appeared in fragments.
A shadow behind the observation glass during group therapy. A voice in the hallway, calm and precise, asking questions that made other staff straighten instinctively.
The faint scent of antiseptic and cold air when he passed by without stopping.
Always just out of reach. But always aware. Bunny began to wait for it.
He told himself it was because there wasn’t much else to do. Time in here was thick and slow, like honey left too long in the sun. It stuck to everything. His thoughts. His skin. The corners of his vision.
So when Sae entered a room, everything became sharper.
Even silence behaved differently.
One afternoon, Sae finally spoke to him again directly.
Bunny was sitting on the floor this time, back against the bed frame, tracing invisible patterns into the linoleum with his finger. The room was quiet except for the distant sound of a cart rolling down the corridor.
“You don’t like sitting on furniture,” Sae observed.
Bunny didn’t look up. “It remembers people.”
A pause.
“That’s not how furniture works, you know.” Sae said.
Bunny smiled faintly. “You weren’t there when it happened.”
Silence stretched, not uncomfortable, measured.
When Bunny finally looked up, Sae was closer than before. Not invasive distance, but no longer detached either. A clipboard rested loosely in his hand.
“You think objects retain memory,” Sae said.
“I know they do.”
“And people?”
Bunny tilted his head again. That familiar habit. Like he was trying to view the world from a slightly different angle each time, hoping something new would appear.
“People forget too easily,” he said. “That’s why they’re worse.”
Sae’s gaze held steady. It didn’t reject the answer, it didn’t accept it either. It simply stayed.
“You remember well?” Sae asked.
Bunny considered that.
“I remember what matters.”
“And what matters?”
Bunny’s smile widened just slightly.
“You,” he said.
The air in the room didn’t change. But something in Sae’s expression did.
Not shock. Not discomfort. A recalibration.
Like a machine adjusting to an unexpected variable.
“That’s not a healthy attachment to form,” Sae said finally.
Bunny laughed softly. “You say that like anything here is healthy.”
For the first time, something almost like a real reaction crossed Sae’s face. Not warmth. Not softness.
But recognition.
As if Bunny had said something that aligned too neatly with a truth he preferred not to examine too closely.
It started small after that. Sae began asking more questions. Not just about symptoms. Not just about history or incidents or patterns.
About Bunny himself.
What he liked to read. What he thought about when he couldn’t sleep. Whether silence felt heavy or light. Whether he preferred doors open or closed.
Questions that didn’t belong in a file. Questions that didn’t belong in a clinical setting.
Bunny answered all of them. Sometimes honestly. Sometimes not. He liked the way Sae listened either way.
There was no judgment in it. No visible attempt to steer him toward “correct” answers. Just observation, sharp and constant, like Sae was building something in his mind piece by piece.
Bunny wanted to know what that something was.
So he started adding details. Small ones at first.
“I don’t like mirrors,” he said one day.
“Why?” Sae asked.
“They repeat things I didn’t agree to.”
Sae wrote that down.
Another day:
“I think people change when you stop looking at them.”
Sae paused slightly before writing that too.
And something inside Bunny tightened with satisfaction every time.
Because Sae didn’t dismiss him. Sae recorded him. Which meant he was real enough to be recorded. That made him proud.
Weeks passed like that.
Time in the hospital didn’t move forward so much as it layered itself, day after day, until everything felt slightly removed from reality. Like the world outside was a rumor rather than a place.
But Sae remained consistent.
Always precise. Always contained. Always just out of emotional reach.
And that, more than anything, became the center of Bunny’s attention.
Not because Sae was warm. But because he wasn’t. Because he didn’t fill the silence with unnecessary softness. Because he didn’t pretend to understand when he didn’t.
One evening, near the end of visiting hours, Bunny caught him alone in the corridor.
The lights were dimmer here. Quieter. The kind of place where conversations didn’t usually happen unless they were meant to be forgotten.
Sae was standing by a window, looking out at the courtyard below. His reflection overlapped with the glass, slightly distorted by the angle.
Bunny stopped a few steps away.
“You come here often,” Bunny said.
Sae didn’t turn. “It’s part of the building.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
A pause.
Then Sae finally glanced at him.
“I know,” he said.
Silence again.
Bunny stepped closer. Just one step.
“You don’t talk like the others,” he said.
“I try not to repeat them,” Sae replied.
“That’s not what I meant either.”
A faint exhale through Sae’s nose. Almost imperceptible.
Bunny noticed anyway.
“That’s becoming a pattern with you,” Sae said.
Bunny smiled. “You’re not telling me to stop."
Then Sae turned fully toward him.
And for the first time, the distance between them felt measurable in a way it hadn’t before.
“You think I’m different,” Sae said.
“I know you are.” He smiled.
“That’s a dangerous conclusion to reach from limited interaction.”
Bunny leaned slightly forward. “Everything here is limited interaction.”
Sae studied him for a moment. Long enough that it almost felt like something shifting under the surface.
Then he said, quietly: “You’re starting to focus too much on me.”
Bunny’s smile softened.
“No,” he corrected. “I’m starting to notice you properly.” he said in an almost playful tone .
That earned another pause.
And when Sae finally spoke again, his voice was quieter than before.
“That’s not the same thing.”
Bunny tilted his head. “I think it is.”
For a moment, neither of them moved.
The hallway around them continued existing without them. Distant footsteps. A door closing somewhere far away. The soft mechanical hum of a place that never fully slept.
Then Sae spoke, his eyes not directly looking at the red pupils observing him.
“Bunny,” he said, “what do you think I am to you?"
Bunny considered it seriously, not quickly. For once, without performance.
“You’re the only thing in here that doesn’t feel like it’s trying to fix me,” he said.
“And that makes you what?” Sae asked.
Bunny’s eyes didn’t waver. “Real,” he said simply.
Something in Sae’s expression tightened. Not outwardly dramatic. Not visible to anyone who wasn’t paying attention.
But Bunny was. Always.
“I see,” Sae said.
He would probably note that in Bunny’s report later. A clean sentence. A clinical observation. Something that would sit between sleep patterns and behavioral fluctuations, flattened into something readable only by people like him.
The corridor lights shifted abruptly—an artificial chime echoing through the ward.
Snack time.
As if bodies here were scheduled the way thoughts were.
Bunny turned without another word. The movement was almost careless, his shoulder brushing the edge of his regulation light-blue gown as he slipped past it, like even fabric was just another obstacle to ignore.
And just like that, he left.