When she woke, the room was pitch dark. Her mouth felt a little dry.
Yuki stared blankly at the ceiling with a foggy head, then bolted upright, certain she was late — before, a beat behind, remembering her sister’s words right before she’d fallen asleep, and realizing she was absent from school today. She had no memory of when she’d fallen asleep, and no idea what time it was now. But the rust that had chronically coated her brain seemed to have lifted somewhat, suggesting she’d slept for quite a long stretch.
Slowly sitting up, Yuki opened the curtains. The sky outside was already dim. Overcast. Judging by the road, it looked like late afternoon, heading toward evening. Checking her phone by the pillow — 4:30 p.m.
Craving water for her dry mouth, she headed toward the living room, but noticed a plastic bag sitting on her desk.
Inside: tea, a sandwich, and a stack of energy drinks. A memo pad had been placed underneath as a makeshift paperweight: “Told the school you’re out sick. Cleared it with Mom and Dad too, so actually rest! Study materials confiscated! If you want them back, ask me!”
Yuki hurriedly searched her desk and found every notebook, reference material, and writing utensil gone.
Stunned but figuring it was fine if she could get them back by asking, she took a sip of the tea.
Standing there, absently eating the sandwich and drinking an energy drink, Yuki eventually headed downstairs to the bathroom.
Finishing up, she stepped into the living room, and her mother, noticing her, turned a worried look her way.
“Yuki. Feeling better now?”
“It’s not like I’m actually sick, so I’m fine. Sorry for worrying you, though.”
At the apology, her mother let out a relieved breath.
“By the way, do you know where my study stuff is? Sister’s room, maybe?”
At the question, her mother’s face clouded with worry again, her eyes wandering before she closed them.
“…Shiho asked me to make sure you take at least one full day off from studying, to breathe a little.”
Yuki blinked a few times, empty-eyed, at her mother, and tried to protest with a “but—”
But the words wouldn’t come. Seeing this, her mother smiled gently and spoke as if to persuade her.
“It’s okay. I know how hard you’re working… just rest properly.”
Even told that, she had no memory of properly resting recently, and didn’t know what to do with herself.
It wasn’t that she wanted to study. But to meet everyone’s expectations, she still hadn’t studied enough. To become the kind of admirable doctor her relatives and teachers talked about, she’d need even more medical knowledge. So Hashimoto wouldn’t have reason to feel jealous, she needed to maintain a work ethic everyone, herself included, could recognize as stoic and disciplined.
Somehow untangling her tangled thoughts, Yuki closed her eyes and murmured.
“Then, I’ll… go for a walk.”
At that, her mother’s cheeks softened happily, and she glanced at the overcast sky visible from the living room.
“Oh, okay! Got it — it might rain, so take an umbrella.”
“Yeah. And… sorry, for worrying you.”
“No,” her mother said gently, smiling, then added firmly, “don’t be.”
Changing clothes and taking an umbrella as told, Yuki left the house, seen off by her mother, and looked up at the already dim, overcast autumn evening sky, letting out a hollow breath. In just a few more weeks, this hour would already be pitch dark. Thinking this, she started walking.
She had no destination. Her feet just, somehow, drifted toward the station.
Watching the busy trains carry salarymen and students back and forth, Yuki half-consciously pulled out her phone and opened her messaging app. Contact: Mizuki Aya. Looking at the conversation, its last message left hanging for a while now, she typed out a message letter by letter: “Can I come to the shop?” But staring at it silently, Sakura’s face crossed her mind, and she deleted the text.
Putting the phone back in her pocket, she turned away from the station as if fleeing and started walking with no destination at all.
After a little over an hour of aimless walking, she found herself somewhere quite far, the sky now fully dark. Looking up, as if it had been waiting for her, a drop of rain landed on her nose. Yuki opened her plastic umbrella under the streetlit night road and walked, sneakers pressing into the gradually darkening, wet asphalt.
After another full hour of walking, she noticed her shoes and cargo pants had gotten completely soaked.
Even so, no reason to stop came to mind, so she kept walking, and along a main street lined with streetlights, amid shuttered stores, she spotted a convenience store bleeding light into the rainy night. Checking her cold, umbrella-gripping fingers with her other hand, she folded the umbrella, stuck it in the umbrella stand, and went inside.
Grabbing a warm tea more or less at random, paying at the register, and stepping back outside — her umbrella was gone from the stand. Stunned speechless at a theft pulled off in under a minute, Yuki stood frozen in place.
Looking up, the rain clouds showed no sign of clearing. Checking the weather forecast online — rain expected to stop around 3 a.m. Rainfall at about three millimeters an hour, on the stronger side; walking without an umbrella would take some resolve.
Yuki turned back into the store, looked around, and asked the two employees chatting there:
“Excuse me, do you sell umbrellas?”
The two exchanged an openly annoyed glance, a knowing look passing between them, then said “ah… we’re out of stock.” Yuki considered pushing a little further, but it felt like too much trouble, so she just said “I see. Thanks,” and stepped back outside.
She started walking down the rainy road, more or less at random.
Ten minutes later, soaked through completely, she finally reached a somewhat large park. It wasn’t far from the main street, there were houses and lights nearby, and it didn’t seem like a dangerous area. The bench there had a small roof to block the rain, so she decided to take shelter.
Sitting down on the bench, Yuki was finally able to twist open her water bottle’s cap. Sipping the now-lukewarm drink, she spent an idle stretch of time watching the rain clouds.
After a few minutes of blankly staring, she considered pulling out her phone and asking her family to come pick her up. But having wandered off to a place like this on her own, and even had her umbrella stolen, she couldn’t burden them with that too.
Maybe once the weather improved a little, she’d walk to the station and take the train home.
She noticed she’d let out a sigh without meaning to.
“What am I even doing.”
Muttering this, a thick, wretched feeling of self-loathing began welling up, and Yuki set her hands on her wet knees and hung her head.
Drops fell from her hair like tears, forming a puddle under the roof.
—What now? Yuki thought, her still-somewhat-rusted head working through it. Getting home somehow was fine. After that — back to studying, maybe? Thinking it, her hand reached for her left arm. Rolling up her sleeve, it was bright red; she pulled the sleeve back down, fell silent, and, finding even thinking too painful now, fled from thought entirely.
She watched the rain-soaked city. The traffic lights, wet, bled their glow into the rainy night.
Road signs flickered sharply in and out of view in time with the passing cars.
The people inside passing cars, families and friends walking together under shared umbrellas — she couldn’t help envying them, unbearably.
Yuki watched from inside the park, which no one seemed inclined to enter, and just kept holding onto that feeling.
Maybe a few minutes passed. Someone holding a large black umbrella walked past the front of the park. Then, as if searching for something, they peeked into the park, and a face, indistinct in the dim light, turned this way.
Yuki looked away quickly, not wanting to get caught up in anything troublesome, but the figure with the black umbrella, having noticed her, stood still for a moment, then walked straight into the park, toward the bench.
She tensed her legs, about to give up the bench, but before she could get up and leave, the figure, already standing beside her, said, sounding a little amused:
*
“Didn’t actually think I’d find you.”
*
The voice was familiar; Yuki’s eyes went wide, staring at the person under the umbrella.
Even in the dim darkness, at this distance, the face was clearly visible. Slightly damp, wavy long bob; a calm expression. An appearance that practically conjured up the image of an apron.
Mizuki Aya.
Yuki, having lost the ability to speak, could only stare with round eyes, finally managing a hoarse, cracked “why.”
That single word held a bundle of questions — why she was here, how she’d known to look here, why she’d even been searching for her.
Aya, still holding her umbrella, smiled faintly and spoke like a detective in the reveal scene of a mystery.
“You’ve been acting off lately. Used your absence as an excuse to get your family’s contact info through the teacher. Talked to your mom, found out you’d gone for a walk — so, I looked.”
Even so, in a world this wide, how had she found somewhere Yuki hadn’t even mentioned.
“You wouldn’t want to be near home or school, and it seemed like you’d been avoiding the area near my shop too. But I figured you wouldn’t go too far… narrowed it down that way, and then it was just legs. I used to be in track, remember. Walking’s not hard for me, even with a surgically repaired knee.”
Aya looked at the speechless Yuki for a moment, then glanced at the bottle in her hand.
Then, seeing she was soaked through with no umbrella at all, laughed wryly, as if it all made sense.
“Umbrella stolen?”
“…Yeah.”
Aya held out her black umbrella to the nodding Yuki, urging her under it.
“Get in, I’ll walk you home. You’ll catch a cold otherwise.”
She probably should have refused out of guilt, felt she had no right to face her right now. But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to shake her head, and Yuki, saying nothing, stood from the bench and moved beside Aya.
Confirming Yuki was under the umbrella, Aya started walking quietly, at an easy pace, toward the station.
“Thanks. Really saved me.”
Yuki, reconsidering that she should say thanks first, spoke without even knowing what expression she was wearing.
“Yep. Well, lucky I actually found you, though.”
Aya laughed lightly as she said it, and Yuki, cheeks softening faintly, nodded in agreement.
They walked on a little further and left the park, and Aya asked her nothing.
A little while ago, that silence might have made her anxious, wondering if Aya was simply uninterested in her. But now, having come to understand her through the time they’d spent together and how she’d handled Sakura’s situation, Yuki understood this silence was meant to protect her, and felt, instantly, something that had been wound tight inside her for so long melt loose.
Her skin was cold, but the backs of her eyes grew hot. She lowered her face to hide it, narrowing her eyes.
Her insides trembled. She told herself it might just be the cold, but air pushed itself out of her throat in a jerking gasp, soon shaking like a sob. She bit her lip, desperately trying to hold it back, but her heated eyes welled with tears, and soon drops distinctly different from rain fell from them. Crying in fat, rolling drops, Yuki tried to wipe her eyes with her wet hand to cover it, but the tears showed no sign of stopping.
Noticing, Aya looked a little surprised, her gaze wavering as if unsure what to do.
But soon, with steadied eyes, she looked at Yuki, reached a hand out, and rubbed her back. Feeling this, Yuki, unable to hold back any longer, clung to Aya as if desperate, hugging her, shoulders shaking with repeated sobs. Aya stopped walking, held her, and kept searching for words.
“Thank you… for coming. Really. Honestly, I wanted to see you.”
The muffled, sob-choked voice conveyed its gratitude, and Aya laughed. “Me too,” she said, and continued.
“…My place is closer from here than yours. Come to mine for now. I’ll listen to whatever you want to say.”