I Became the Drug-Addicted Childhood Friend

Time passed.
A day, two days, three, four.
And then even more.
Waiting alone at home became a routine.

Enough time had passed that it wouldn’t have been strange for Shihu to have finished what he was working on.

"...It wasn’t there."

Shihu returned in the early morning after another sleepless night.
This time, he didn’t look well.
His expression seemed unusually gloomy.

"Hmm?"

"It wasn’t there. The cure."

There was no cure.
Did that mean he’d have to keep taking the drugs?

"...Then?"

"It’s a failure."

A failure.
Shihu rarely used that word.
What exactly had failed for him to say something like this?
Should I try to comfort him, tell him he’d done well?

"Failure..."

"The cure didn’t work. Sorry."

Hearing Shihu speak so lifelessly was heartbreaking.
I had told him it was okay to give up, but now that it seemed like he really might, it hurt even more.

"So, no more going out?"

"Yeah. Not for a while. I’ve tried almost everything I wanted to do."

"Does that mean you’ll be staying with me?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

"Wow..."

Was that something to celebrate?
At least he wouldn’t be sneaking out to do something behind my back anymore.
Meeting other people would stop, too.
The wait had been worth it.

I hadn’t realized it, but there were moments when I found myself holding a kitchen knife.
Still, I managed to hold myself together somehow.

And there wouldn’t be any more meetings with that woman they called the Saintess.
Thank goodness.
Shihu had overcome it.
He’d escaped from that terrible person.

"But, we have plenty of medicine, don’t we? I don’t understand what you mean by not finding the cure."

If the medicine wasn’t the cure, then what was it?

"Yeah, we’ve got plenty of drugs. I have access to a production facility, after all..."

He was saying things that didn’t make sense.

"Isn’t that a good thing?"