koi no yokan - robby keene.

He looked almost like a corpse. His eyes were rimmed with a tinge of red and he looked hollowed out from within, his face bruised and covered in dried up cuts. His hair flowed back and spread against the hospital pillow while he took careful, slow breaths through a system of tubes. Suddenly, his eyelids flew open. Miguel Diaz, back from the dead. 

"Miguel!" Mariko exclaimed, beaming, throwing her arms around him on his hospital bed. She pulled away and studied his expression. He cracked a slow, sleepy smile. 

"Mariko," he murmured. "You're here." He took her hand and leaned back against the bed, looking back at her through his eyelashes. 

Robby had been missing for two weeks, school had not yet resumed, and Mariko had spent her time in and out of the hospital with Miguel. With Tory expelled, Aisha having transferred schools, Robby on the lam, and Miguel in a coma, Mariko came to the sad realization that her friendship circle consisted of Hawk. And that was it. 

She quickly hurried out of the room to get Carmen, who was buying soup from the hospital cafeteria. Johnny had come too, and the dysfunctional group hurried back to Miguel's room to greet him. The doctors ran a quick welfare check then began to unhook him from their setup of contraptions. 

"Mijo!" Carmen cried, leaning down to kiss Miguel on the forehead. She immediately began dialing Miguel's grandmother, urging her to come to the hospital right away while stroking Miguel's hair. Johnny forced him upright in bed and clapped him on the back rather aggressively, already engaging him in karate talk. 

Mariko cut in: "I'm going to head out, give you guys some time alone. I'll be back to visit again soon."

Miguel grasped at her arm to stop her as she began to walk away. "Hey, wait. Can you guys give us a second?" 

Carmen and Johnny gave the two of them a knowing look before stepping out into the hallway, muttering something to each other. Miguel motioned her over and Mariko sat on the side of his bed, her body brushing the side of his torso.

"Thanks for coming to visit me. Johnny said you came almost every day."

"I'm sorry for not doing more to help you, when Robby was... you know." 

Miguel flushed a deep shade of crimson. "There wasn't much else you could have done," he sighed. "I'm just really happy you came." The two of them stared at each other in silence before Miguel tried to reach out and pull her closer, faltering to wince and clutch his head. She was about to ask if he was okay when he leaned in and cut off her sentence with a kiss, swallowing her words. 

Mariko pulled away awkwardly, stuttering as she did so. "I have to go." She quickly got up and exited the room, stopping at the doorway to turn back at look at Miguel. He was staring back, smiling like an idiot, and she turned around and didn't stop until she was completely outside of the building. She was still angry with him in some way for what he had done, but in some sick, convoluted way, she had missed him. 

Just then, her phone began to buzz in her pocket. 

INCOMING CALL: Daniel LaRusso

She answered hastily. "Hello?" 

"Mariko? We need your help. Try to get home as fast as you can, okay? It's about Robby." 

"What's going on?" 

"No time for questions. I'll explain everything when you get here." 

And with that, the line went silent, and Mariko pulled back from her phone to see that Daniel had hung up. They must have found a lead on Robby. 

She had called him about a million times after the fight, when he had fled the scene as the cops had arrived. When she got home later that day, she found that most of Robby's stuff was gone, and he had left a letter on her nightstand: