Episode 3: The Ghost in the White Gown (2018)

She was opening her heavy eyelids to the blinding, sterile glare of a hospital room, waking up in 2018 to find her aunt sitting silently by her side.

She was listening to her aunt’s voice tremble with a mix of fear and regret as she asked, "Aiko, why didn't you say that you were sick lately?"

But she met the question with her familiar wall of silence, her numb gaze fixed entirely on the empty hospital ceiling. When her aunt gently revealed that she had already called her father and that they were moving forward with surgery, her heart sank into a dark, bottomless pit.

She didn't protest, she didn't cry out—she simply didn't care enough about her own life to argue. As her aunt left her side to arrange the medical appointments, she found herself wandering aimlessly down the cold hospital hallways, a frail, solitary figure lost inside an oversized white patient gown.

She was standing invisible in the corridor, watching the cruel contrast of the world around her.

She was witnessing other patients surrounded by the burning warmth of their families—holding hands tightly, wiping away each other's tears, and whispering soft, protective words of encouragement. Looking at the love she was starving for, she retreated to her room, locked the door against the world, and finally shattered.

Her voice broke into a violent tremble as she whispered to the empty room, "Why do I always end up being alone? Do I not deserve to be loved by anyone?"

A choked, desperate sound escaped her throat as she wept, "Mom... I don't want to get surgery... I'm scared."

Hearing her loud, agonizing cries, her aunt rushed in, pulling her shaking, trembling body into a tight embrace, whispering, "Don't worry, babe, I'm here."

But her hands were shaking violently, her tears uncontrollable as she screamed into her aunt's shoulder, "Now I don't wanna live... just let me dieeeee. Just let me!"

Her aunt desperately silenced her, repeating, "Don't say that, you will be fine."

She was wheeled into the operating room days later, enduring a massive surgery that left her body broken and stitched together, yet there was still not a single trace of her family.

As the anesthesia faded, she asked her aunt with a cracking voice, "Where are my parents? Why are they not here? Why are they not calling me?"

She was forced to swallow her aunt's gentle, protective lie: "Don't worry nah, I'm here, Aiko, sleep. They will come after your recovery."

Days passed into weeks, and she spent them entirely alone, watching other people be happy, just keeping a desperate wait for her family to come.

At the end of the day, her heart felt completely dead, even though she was still breathing. With a hand shaking violently from weakness and despair,

she picked up a pen and wrote in her diary:

"Watching other people happy is so painful for me when I can't be in their situation. Am I jealous, or do I just want to be a part of them?

I have been living day after day,

yet death comes only once. But Today, for some reason,

life does not seem very different from death......."

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