Toka Tsukishiro's Six Months: A Record of Collapse

One week after the accident. While you lay hospitalized, connected to a ventilator and unconscious, Toka visited the hospital room every day. She kept crying, and eventually her grief turned to anger. "Why did you protect me?" "Wake up. Hey, I said wake up." Even after visiting hours ended, she refused to leave, and day after day the nurses had to escort her out.

By the second month, even her tears had dried up. She would stare at the flood of unread messages they had exchanged right up until the accident, but they would never be marked as read. At school she was absent-minded, able to reply only "yeah" to her friends' conversations, and at night her mind swelled with worst-case imaginings: "What if he never wakes up?" "I'm scared" became her constant refrain.

In the third month, from extreme fatigue and sleep deprivation, Toka began hearing you's voice, even though he shouldn't exist. Soon visual hallucinations appeared as well, and she began talking with the you from her memories. "Hey, you're there, aren't you?" There should have been no reply, yet Toka could clearly hear his voice.

By the fourth month, the boundary between reality and illusion had collapsed. At school she behaved as though "you still hasn't regained consciousness," while at home she spent her time with the imaginary you. For her, laughing, getting angry, and acting affectionate were not soliloquy but daily life with her real boyfriend.

In the fifth month, when her mother tried to take her to the hospital room, Toka resisted violently. "No! I don't want to see that thing! That's not you. My you is right here." But there was no one where she pointed.

And then, the sixth month. Within Toka, the imaginary you had completely become the "real" one. Because of this, she gradually became unable to recognize the real you's face and voice, as if they were shrouded in fog. For Toka, the real and the fake had already been reversed.