Meteor Shower

"Is this... a broadcast? What a modern little thing."

By Christian's hospital bed, Tom Riddle Sr. held a copy of the currently popular The Bridge on the Drina. Ever since Tom had left, the atmosphere in the ward had turned strange. Christian was always in a half-dreaming, half-waking state, and Tom Riddle Sr. understood with a single glance that the foolish girl was pretending to sleep.

The book had been lying open for a long time, but the Slavs' word order truly made his head ache, so much so that from dinner until now, as dusk gradually deepened, this story said to span more than four hundred years had advanced by only two pages.

As a father, perhaps leaving was the most polite choice at this moment, but Christian needed someone by her side to watch over her, and Tom Riddle Sr. also had no choice but to face an extremely awkward fact—he already had nowhere to go.

Christian's eyes secretly opened from time to time. Though Tom Riddle Sr. noticed every time, he merely pretended not to see. His wrinkled eyelids drooped, and the words on the page never managed to come into focus in his pupils. He shook his head, wanting to find an excuse to go out for a walk, so he put on his coat, paced to the window, and touched the potted plant Tom had left behind. Just as he was about to leave, Nelson's voice drifted over from the distant street, drowning out the faint sounds of arguing downstairs that slipped into the room through the window.

Tom Riddle Sr. grew interested. Standing by the window, he stared blankly down at the church hospital below, where people were still pushing and pulling at each other. A patient placed at the entrance had long since