I woke up before my alarm the next morning.
The reason was simple—my knee was still there.
More precisely, it was making sure I knew it was there.
As I slowly tried to sit up, my left knee seemed to whisper, “Hold on a second.”
The human body is strange like that—the parts that break are always the loudest.
“Alright, alright… just calm down,” I muttered to no one, sitting on the edge of the bed.
I stood up.
Paused.
Shifted my weight.
…Safe.
“Okay, I can manage today.”
That phrase—I can manage—would soon prove to be one of the least trustworthy sentences in my vocabulary.
At breakfast, my wife Misaki asked casually,
“You’re not going running today, right?”
“No, today’s a rest day.”
After what happened yesterday, the kind of person who says “I’ll run anyway” is either a movie hero… or someone without insurance.
I work from home. Once I sit at my desk, my knee behaves—for the most part.
The real problem is everything before sitting… and everything after standing up.
Every trip to the bathroom, every step to the kitchen, came with a quiet protest from my knee.
The pain wasn’t as sharp as yesterday’s electric shock,
but it carried a clear message: something is definitely wrong.
An online meeting started.
On screen, my client Sato smiled and said,
“You’ve been exercising lately? You look great.”
“Well… sort of.”
There was no way to explain that exercise was exactly what got me into this situation.
Below the camera frame, I maintained an awkward, carefully balanced posture to avoid stressing my knee.
Ironically, that posture took more energy than sitting normally.
“Exercise for health… then sit unnaturally for work.”
Welcome to life in your 50s.
During lunch, my son Ren asked,
“How’s your knee?”
“Honestly? Not great.”
“You should see a doctor.”
“I think it might get better…”
“That’s exactly what you said when I got injured.”
No comeback.
Young people can be brutally correct.
By the afternoon, the discomfort had grown.
Each time I stood up, it felt like a warning sign flashing: Don’t push it.
But work doesn’t pause for knee pain.
Design revisions. Emails. Checks.
Trying to focus while worrying about your body is surprisingly exhausting.
Then a message popped up from my assistant, Kitagawa.
“Hey, you seem quieter today.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your typing sounds… gentler than usual.”
What kind of observation is that?
I laughed, but it hit me—
even when you try to hide it, people notice.
That evening, going down the stairs, I felt something new.
Not just pain—fear.
It wasn’t unbearable, but it wasn’t safe either.
“What if this gets worse?”
“What about work? What about my family?”
The questions started stacking up.
That night, I did what I shouldn’t have done again—I searched.
I knew better, but my fingers moved anyway.
“knee pain outside,”
“can’t walk after running,”
“treatment without surgery,”
“PRP therapy.”
This time, something different appeared.
Instead of worst-case scenarios, I started seeing possibilities.
“Using your own blood to promote healing.”
“Helping your body repair itself.”
The terms were complicated, but they carried something I hadn’t felt since yesterday morning—
hope.
Then I noticed a clinic.
Good reviews.
“Clear explanations.”
“No pressure.”
I hovered my cursor over the page… and clicked.
And without realizing it, I thought:
“…Maybe I should at least hear them out.”
That small decision—
that tiny shift from fear to curiosity—
was the beginning of something much bigger.
Next: Episode 3
“The More I Searched, the More Anxious I Became”
—And then, I finally found the clinic that would change everything.