Runaway Girl- -rj01148030- — Life -life With A

One night, a thunderstorm hit—violent, window-rattling thunder. I woke to a weight on the edge of my futon. She was standing there, trembling.

When I came home, she was still there, curled up in the corner of the spare room—a six-tatami-mat space with a closet that smelled of mothballs. She had unpacked nothing. Her backpack was a pillow.

Aoi still has nightmares. She still draws furiously in her sketchbook at 3 AM. She still flinches when I raise my voice at a video game. Life -Life With A Runaway Girl- -RJ01148030-

She was crying. Silently. Tears rolling down her cheeks and dripping onto the drawing, smudging the ink.

And in the quiet of that small apartment, with the sound of rain against the window and the scratch of her pencil on paper, two broken people held together the only world that mattered—a world they had built, one silent, terrified, hopeful day at a time. When I came home, she was still there,

I looked at the drawing, then at her—her hair clean and brushed, her cheeks no longer hollow, her eyes holding a light that wasn’t there before.

I thought about it. “Because no one should be that wet and that alone at two in the morning.” Aoi still has nightmares

“That’s the name of this,” she said softly, tapping the paper. “Our life.”