He glanced at me, pale eyes unreadable. “You do not need to,” he murmured. “I know I am a burden.”
“No… that is not it,” I replied, though my voice quivered.
I stepped closer. “Let me help you onto the bed.”
He paused, a flicker of surprise in his gaze, then nodded. I wrapped my arms around his back, attempting to lift him. But as I took a step, my foot slipped on the carpet, and we crashed onto the floor with a heavy thud. Pain shot through me as I scrambled up, but I froze when I felt a subtle movement beneath the blanket.
“…You can still feel that?” I asked, startled.
He lowered his head, a faint, fragile smile forming. “The doctor says I could walk again with physiotherapy. But after everyone left because I could not stand… whether I walk or not, it became meaningless.”
Those words hung in the air, heavier than any silence I had known. That night, I lay awake, the echo of his voice replaying endlessly.
In the following days, I began to change our rhythm of life. Each morning, I pushed him to the balcony. “You do not have to like the light,” I told him. “But the light still likes you.”
He stopped resisting.
“Why do you bother?” he asked one morning, squinting against the sunlight.