When I was 17, it had already been 5 years since I was diagnosed, and it wasn't getting any better.
I was diagnosed with a rare cancer that attacked my eardrums at 12, I remember the doctors telling my parents that they weren't sure I would even make it past 15., Now here I am, at 17, didn't beat the cancer, I am still dying, just pushed it back a little, you know. A side effect of the chemo was that my hearing was taken from me, which might as well have been my life.
As of 4 months, I've been in a hospital bed, stuck within a coma, my hearing somehow comes now but rarely, and it's in and out, I think it might be since I'm off chemo, because I'm basically at my finish line. I thought for just a moment I heard the doctor speaking to parents about my status the other day, or maybe it was longer than that, I've lost my sense of time, but I could have sworn I heard something about 4 weeks.
What a drag.
My life before I became deaf was great really, not much to complain about; I had friends, a great social life, and was an all-around joyful person who was always excited to try something new and exciting, I wasn't top of my class in any way imaginable but I was a pretty good student if I do say so my self. However, slowly after I lost my hearing, all of those started to fade, I felt detached from the world in a sense like I had something important robbed or taken from me without a warning.
It hurt.
Sound is something that you never honestly notice until you have lost it. Water, wind, earth, and fire, all of these elements in their own right, can have sound. Now I wasn't aware of this during my stint with hearing but now it's all I can think of listing to music the ocean it really really sucks not being able to hear.
I remember the sound of hearing my mother calling my name home after a long day of school, or I guess I should just say school, back then school felt long every day. After the bell would ring, I would rush home and make sure to make it back home before 3 because that's when my childhood favorite cartoon would air. Back then I didn't have many friends but the ones I had were more than enough we were a close group of 7 or 8 I think and it was just the best, one of my favorite past times as a kid and still now is reading whether it be novels, web novels, light novels, comics, and manga I always felt the most complete during those moments.
Those days of playing and listening to the music of the world were so good to me I only wish I could re live those moments, how foolish I was back then.
I was admitted to the hospital 4 months before my 17th birthday. That day I was brought to the ER was the day I think I lost hope in pulling through. Although I wasn't too far off from showing up in the ER just off of natural causes, I mean I had lost my hair, my ability to speak, and worst of all, I think I started to get into those weird online conspiracy chat rooms, but that's besides the point.
The reason I was brought into the ER was because of pure un-luck, you're good pal Aoto Yamamoto here was struck by a car.
That day was something straight out of your favorite isekai I mean come on. I was walking down the streets of New York and due to my lack of hearing I wasn't able to hear the car coming straight towards me but that's not to say I wasn't cautious I made sure to look both ways and cross when the light told me I could.
It was a clean and cut drunk driving accident that had landed me on my early deathbed.
If I'm being honest, I don't harbor all that much anger towards the driver. From my perspective, it's not like I wasn't too far off from coming to the hospital within a couple of months just from cancer. It was just an early trip to my end, almost poetic though.
At the moment, things as they stand don't look too well, since I'm in a coma, all I can really do is talk to myself, there's really nothing else besides thinking, which is the same thing as talking to myself.
I feel like I'm not in control anymore, not to say that I ever was, since I am deaf and all. I'm forced to just think but in reality not much has really changed in my life I honestly don't mind it's not like I was able to talk before hand now I'm doing the exact same sh*t that I was before being in a coma. You know, out of all of the ways I had imagined dying this was probably one of the lower ones on my list, I had guessed my heart would just give out in my sleep but I'm not mad with this route either honestly I'm pretty happy that this is the way I go out.
I like to think of it as somewhat f*ck you towards the cancer that has ruined my life, having it be just an unfortunate accident that takes me out and not the disease that's plagued me for the last 5 years it gives me comfort knowing that anything can happen to people no matter what circumstances they're under.
A part of me hoped I would get to go out on my own terms, having this big drawn-out speech with my family and friends in the room to listen to, which is ironic because I stopped trying to speak years ago, because what's the point of talking if you can't even listen.
You know, I thought I was prepared for all of this for the last couple of months. I won't lie, I've been acting pretty emo or sad, I don't know if you get what I'm trying to say. It's just that I wanted to kind of embrace the fact that I wasn't gonna be able to experience more of life like going to college, losing my virginity, finding my wife, getting married, starting a family those things so I chose to isolate myself and try to live out these few months or so I thought with a new perspective. But it's kind of really all hitting me now, God, it's hitting me.
I'm feeling all of these unknown and unfamiliar emotions that I don't think I've genuinely felt since before I lost my hearing.
It's uncomfortable.
I don't think I have many regrets, if any. I believe that it would just be to hear clearly again. I think with that I would be happy yah I would be.
At this point, so much time has passed that Aoto didn't realize that his hour of reckoning was imminent, his heart was failing, and at a rapid pace.
"Do you wish to live?"
Hello…. Hello, " cried Aoto.
The strange voiced carried an echo along side it and seemed to be that of a woman. The voice asked yet again "do you wish to live".
Aoto, shocked by the realization he could hear this voice, cried out WHO ARE YOU.
The voice didn't answer and replied yet again with the same question, "Do you wish to live?".
Aoto before he could mutter out his response, the voice continued saying "do you wish to hear".
In this already ambient void that was Aotos mind, an even greater silence was piled on.
Aoto, in a cautious yet uncertain state, didn't think twice and simply said "yes".
There was a long moment where neither the voice nor Aoto exchanged any form of sound, then suddenly the voice started to laugh uncontrollably
"he…..he….HE..HEHEHEH".
The sound of the voices laughter filled the abyss that Aoto was in causing what felt like an earthquake in Aoto's mind to begin having him spiral in a state of fear until it went quiet.
The voice returned to normal and said only one thing before appearing to leave
"As you wish".
Within a split second after saying this, the voice left the abyss went silent and Aoto had been taken somewhere completely new.