Too Far to Reach (Kakashi Love Story)

[38] A Speech

Lying down in the hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling, I sighed. Slowly, my head turned towards the window, where the only source of light was coming from the moon's illuminating glow. It was a clear night, and yet, my head was anything but clear.

Another grunt of pain left my lips when what felt like a stabbing pain went through my body once again. Everything hurt so bad that I wasn't able to sleep. As the seconds ticked by, the feelings just got worse and worse.

The visiting hours at the hospital ended at 8, so I was forced to sit alone for the rest of the night writhing around in my torture.

My eyelids slowly closed, trying to will me to sleep. I'm leaving this world with no mark. If I would survive, Hiroshi and I could repopulate out clan. But that would mean that I would have to love him, and...

I moaned, putting my hands over my face. No matter what, I wouldn't have repopulated my clan. Once Hiroshi's time is up, we will be gone forever, just one clan out of many that doesn't mean anything to anyone. An extinct breed. Bugs in the ground.

As my mind attempted to drift off to sleep, ideas formulated into my head. My body quickly shot up like a rocket, only to have to collapse back down again from the new wave of pain that smacked me. My eyes trailed over to the tabletop next to me, where a stack of napkins lay next to a crumb-ridden plate and a pen on a clipboard. Snatching up the napkins and taking the clipboard with the pen attached to it, I started writing on the napkins using the clipboard as a hard surface. My left hand smeared the wet ink across the napkins, making it difficult to write legibly.

I wrote thoughts, opinions, truths, morals, everything. I just wrote whatever came to mind, and I contemplated each line carefully as to choose the right words.

My words would leave a mark for me and for the respect the Kobayashi clan truly deserves.

~~

I eventually had drifted off to sleep, and the next morning the sunlight shone through the window, which was basically a snooze buttonless alarm clock.

"Wakey wakey!" a female's voice announced proudly by my bedside, and my neck cranked slowly over to her. It was a nurse, wearing the signature head-to-toe white attire that the whole hospital staff wore. She quickly scribbled some notes onto her clipboard and started adjusting the pillows behind my head, helping me support my head up in the air as she did so.

"Energetic this morning, are we?" I laughed. "You're nothing like me."

She did so as well, lowing my head back onto the newly positioned pillows (which was much more relaxing). "If you start your day off with a smile, everything goes better."

I let her statement sink in. If that was true, then I must've had a crappy life because I can't remember a morning I've started off smiling. It's always just pouting since I couldn't sleep any longer. Still, it was a nice moral, one that I'll be sure to remember for the rest of my numbered days.

I sat up some and looked over at the nurse, giving her a big grin. She blinked, but gave me one back. The nurse was young, perky, blonde, kind, and beautiful. She had so much to live for.

My thoughts registered, and I immediately realized that she must've been thinking something similar about me.

I decided to ask, "What's your name?"

"Eiko," the woman replied, giving me a head-cocked, closed-eye smile that strongly resembled another person's I know. "Eiko Saga."

"The 'Splendid Child,' huh? Pretty name."

"Thank you, I really love yours as well; 'Fortune Child.' You come from a wealthy family, don't you?"

My nose twitched a little. "Yeah, I guess you could say so."