[Serina Mikage's POV]
When the automatic doors of the orthopedic clinic slid shut, the roar of the rain that had been violently hammering my umbrella grew slightly muffled.
Several people holding dripping umbrellas were lined up in front of the reception desk. Rainwater tracked in from the soles of their shoes formed dark streaks across the floor, and no sooner had a staff member mopped them away than fresh droplets fell in their place.
I slipped my umbrella into a plastic sleeve and took a seat in the waiting room.
The shoulders and hem of my uniform were soaked—hard to believe I had only walked ten minutes from the school.
Taking out my phone, I typed a brief message into our four-person group chat.
'Made it to the clinic.'
Three read receipts instantly lined up.
'Got it. Let us know when you're done.'
Following Miu's reply, Rio sent an image of an animal holding an umbrella.
The umbrella in the picture had been caught in a gust of wind and blown completely inside out.
'Talk about bad luck.'
When I sent that back, Kotoha replied with an image of an exasperated face, followed in rapid succession by Rio sending an image frantically apologizing.
Smiling a little, I slipped my phone back into my bag.
Outside the window, the rain relentlessly beat against the asphalt.
The sheets of water cutting across the streetlights were thicker than they had been this morning. Every passing car threw up a white curtain of spray, reducing the buildings across the street to blurry silhouettes.
Before long, my name was called, and I headed into the examination room.
I flexed my right leg and told the doctor that it no longer hurt to walk. He checked the area that had been swollen, then glanced over at my previous scans.
"You're good to start walking normally again."
Hearing those words, the knot of tension lingering deep in my chest finally loosened.
"However, the roads are very slick on a day like this. Just because it's healed doesn't mean you should go sprinting around."
"Understood. I'll be careful."
Leaving the examination room, I messaged Miu and the others to let them know everything was fine.
While waiting to pay, Aiba-kun's face from this morning drifted into my mind.
In the end, I hadn't run into him a single time after that.
And to think we had just crossed paths this morning. Even though we had called each other by name, the hours spent apart felt far longer than the rest of the day combined.
If I got the chance to see him again, I didn't want it to end with a mere "see you later."
I started trying to think of what to say, but quickly stopped myself.
If I got too caught up agonizing over the perfect words, I felt like I wouldn't be able to say anything at all.
By the time I finished settling the bill, nearly forty minutes had passed since arriving at the clinic.
I checked my phone.
The bus from the clinic to the station was reportedly running eighteen minutes behind schedule.
I considered walking, but that normally took twenty minutes on its own. In this downpour, it would take even longer.
If I slipped and fell right after getting cleared by the doctor, the three of them would definitely tear into me.
I decided to wait patiently for the bus.
◇◇◇
Even after boarding, the torrential rain showed no sign of letting up.
Rivulets of water streamed down the outside of the window panes, warping the glow of streetlights and shop signs. The glare of the interior lights reflected against the glass, obscuring almost everything of the street outside.
The bus navigated around massive puddles, crawling along far slower than usual.
It came to a prolonged halt at every intersection, and each time it started moving again, a heavy spray splashed from beneath the tires.
Two more stops to the station.
Just as the thought crossed my mind, an announcement chimed over the speakers.
'Due to flooding near the station rotary, this bus will terminate service at the next stop, Chuo-dori.'
A wave of bewildered murmurs broke out among the passengers.
From Chuo-dori to the station was about a five-minute walk. Under normal circumstances, it was nothing to worry about.
Right now, though, those five minutes felt impossibly far.
I got off the bus alongside the other passengers at the unexpected final stop.
The moment I popped open my umbrella, the deafening roar of rain engulfed me.
Driven by the wind, stray droplets blew under the canopy and struck my cheeks. Murky water pooled at the edges of the sidewalk, and the overflow from the gutters spilled onto the roadway.
The doctor had just warned me.
Taking care not to slip on my right leg, I moved forward one measured step at a time.
Through the haze of rain, the lights around the station shimmered faintly.
Once I reached them, I could catch my train.
Tightening my grip on the handle, I made my way across the flooded crosswalk.
By the time I reached the other side, the crowd from the bus had already scattered down different paths.
Most people heading toward the station seemed to choose the main avenue lined with covered walkways. I turned down an adjacent street leading into a shopping district to avoid the worst of the flooded areas.
Likely due to the severe weather, many of the storefronts had closed early, leaving the dimly lit street practically deserted.
Only the sound of the rain echoed endlessly between the concrete walls and drawn metal shutters.
◇◇◇
As I made my way down the street, the overhanging eaves of the buildings provided a slight buffer against the driving rain.
I paused under the awning of a closed shop and shook the pooled water from my umbrella.
From the eaves overhead, the overflow cascaded down in thick, relentless streams. The cacophony of water hammering the pavement drowned out the world, making even the sound of passing cars seem distant.
From here, it was a straight shot to the station.
Just as I took a step to leave, someone called out behind me.
"Mikage."
It was a boy's voice.
My entire body locked up before I could process it.
Turning around, I saw a boy standing a few paces away beneath the awning.
Neatly trimmed black hair. Slightly taller than me.
It was the boy who had picked up the mechanical pencil I dropped in the hallway the other day.
After that, I had caught him watching me from behind a pillar in the corridor, too.
"...What is it?"
The boy offered an easy smile, looking relieved that I had stopped.
"Finally, we can talk alone."
"Finally?"
"I've been wanting to talk to you for a while, but you're always surrounded by your friends, Mikage."
Past the curtain of water pouring from the eaves, an umbrella-wielding pedestrian walked by.
It wasn't that the street was completely empty.
Even so, the sheet of rain cut off both sound and sight, making this small space feel entirely isolated from the rest of the world.
"Sorry. I'm heading home."
I turned my back on him and tried to head toward the station.
The boy stepped smoothly into my path.
"Come on, just a minute is fine, right?"
"No, it's not. Move aside."
"You don't need to be so defensive. We're just talking."
I sidestepped to the left.
The boy mirrored my movement.
When I tried to break right, he blocked me again.
It wasn't a coincidence.
He was deliberately positioning himself to trap me.
Behind me was the dark glass of a closed storefront. To my right was the road running with rainwater. Directly in front of me was a boy wearing a casual smile.
If I opened my umbrella and darted out into the downpour, I might be able to slip past him.
The second I shifted my weight with that intention, the boy closed the distance by half a step.
"Get out of my way."
"I told you, just a minute."
Still smiling, the boy propped his umbrella against his shoulder.
The wet tip swayed from side to side, casting irregular drops onto the pavement.
His gaze remained locked on my face.
"D-Did you follow me from school?"
"I wouldn't call it following. I just happened to spot you. Your appointment took a pretty long time, didn't it?"
"Don't tell me you were waiting for me?"
"You looked like you were on your own, so I figured we could walk to the station together."
"I never asked you to."
"Still, you don't really mind, do you?"
"I mind. A lot."
"If you really hated it, you wouldn't have taken that mechanical pencil back then. And when we locked eyes in the hallway, you didn't look away immediately either. You're way more blunt about avoiding other guys."
There wasn't a shred of doubt in his voice.
I had reacted differently than I did with other boys. He had convinced himself from the start that the difference was undeniable proof of my interest in him.
"You took it because you thought I was different from the rest, right?"
Hearing that, the strength drained straight from my fingertips.
It didn't matter what I had actually been thinking.
In this boy's mind, my feelings had been rewritten entirely to suit what he wanted to believe.
A gust of wind whipped through a gap in the awning, billowing beneath the canopy of my umbrella.
Even as I tried to readjust my grip on the handle, my fingers refused to obey.
"No. Go home."
"Why?"
His expression morphed into genuine confusion.
"Me taking that pencil didn't mean what you think it did."
The only reason I hadn't backed away instantly back then was because I wondered if he might have been the person who saved me from the fire.
Black hair, and taller than me.
Just because of those traits, I had gotten my hopes up and hesitated for a split second.
Even when accepting the pencil, I had carefully pinched the very tip so our skin wouldn't touch.
Yet, this boy had attached an entirely different narrative to that brief exchange.
"We made eye contact a bunch of times in the hall, too."
"I only noticed because you were staring at me."
"Okay, but we were still looking at each other, weren't we?"
No matter how much I denied it, his smile didn't waver.
Rain lashed against the edge of the awning, scattering fine mist between us.
"That's not it. I was—"
"Are you nervous?"
He cut me off mid-sentence.
"I'm not."
"Your face is completely frozen, though."
"Because you're scaring me. So get out of my way."
I thought that if I put it into plain words, it would finally get through to him.
His eyes widened slightly.
Yet, instead of stepping aside, the corners of his mouth curled into a satisfied smirk.
"Ah, so you're just shy."
A chill ran down my spine, raising goosebumps on my arms.
He wasn't listening to a word I said.
He could hear me, but he was twisting every syllable into whatever reality he preferred.
The drumming of the rain against the eaves suddenly felt muffled and distant.
Wearing that same confident smile, the boy took another step toward me.
Reflexively, I shrank back.
The bag on my back slammed against the storefront window, the hard contents pressing painfully against my spine through my uniform.
"There's no reason to be that scared. I said we're just talking."
Even while physically trapping me, he claimed we were "just talking."
What was happening right in front of me and the words coming out of his mouth were completely disconnected.
That jarring contradiction dragged up a voice from the past.
—Sorry about that. You okay?
Back then, too, the worried words and the actual actions hadn't lined up at all.
Even so, I had trusted him simply because we had known each other for so long.
The hard edges of the bag digging into my back overlapped with the shock of falling onto the gym mat.
The phantom sensation of hands sliding across my ribs through my uniform flared up all over again.
My breath caught in my throat.
This wasn't the gymnasium.
The person in front of me wasn't that boy, either.
I knew that.
Even so, echoing beneath the sound of the rain, the laughter from around the corner of that hallway resurfaced.
—I pretended to trip, and she completely bought it.
—Well, yeah, she's not on guard around you.
—Right? As long as I apologize, she'll believe anything.
That voice—the one I had known for years—was still etched into my memory with painful clarity.
The scream I hadn't been able to let out when I was touched only surged in my throat after hearing that laughter.
Yet, back then, I couldn't bring myself to take a single step toward where the voices were coming from.
Unable to confront him, all I could do was run away.
The fact that I had trusted him.
The fact that I had taken his outstretched hand.
The fact that I had told him I was fine.
Every single part of it had been weaponized as proof that I had welcomed it.
My feet felt anchored to the concrete, refusing to move.
"Don't come near me."
I somehow forced the words past my trembling lips.
"Don't look at me like that."
"Get out of my way."
"I'm telling you, just chill out."
He closed the distance even further.
The bag pinned against the glass dug deeper into my back.
With every shallow breath, a fine tremor ran through my chest.
Even so, I refused to drop my gaze.
"I have zero feelings for you."
My voice shook.
Still, I didn't back down.
"Taking that pencil and looking at you didn't mean you were special."
"Then why didn't you run away back then?"
"Not running away doesn't mean I like you."
"Then what about looking at me in the hall?"
"Because you were staring at me."
"Isn't that basically the same thing?"
"It's not!"
I screamed the words, desperately trying to pierce through the roar of the rain.
The sound of my own voice snapped the world back into sharp focus for a split second.
Reflected in the glass were only the current me and the boy standing right in front of me.
"You scare me. Don't come any closer. Let me through."
The boy's smile finally faltered, twisting into something ugly.
He tilted his head, looking at me as if I were simply being unreasonable.
"If you're so scared of guys, why do you talk to Aiba like it's nothing?"
The moment Aiba-kun's name left his lips, an emotion entirely separate from fear pierced my chest.
I refused to let Aiba-kun be dragged into this boy's twisted delusions.
Going out of my way to greet Aiba-kun and stepping closer to him were never choices I made to be compared against my behavior toward this boy.
Navigating my own fear one step at a time, those were decisions I had made because I genuinely wanted to be near him.
"...Aiba-kun has nothing to do with this."
"He totally does. You go out of your way to talk to him, don't you?"
Just how long had he been watching me?
Me greeting Aiba-kun this morning.
Me freezing up, desperately searching for words.
Me standing there, watching his back as he walked away.
The realization sent an icy dread creeping through my veins.
"Why is Aiba okay, but I'm not?"
"I don't owe you an explanation."
"So in the end, it's not that you hate guys—you're just being picky."
Those words echoed another voice from my past.
—You say you hate guys, but aren't you just being a snob?
Back then, too, no one had bothered to ask why I rejected him.
They were just hollow words meant to make me—the one who said no—look like the one in the wrong.
No.
This time, I wasn't going to let it stay trapped inside my head.
"Who I choose to talk to is my decision."
Pushing past the tight constriction in my throat, I forced out every single word with absolute clarity.
"Who scares me, and who I want to be close to—that's not for you to decide."
For the first time, the smile vanished entirely from the boy's face.
In its place, raw irritation surfaced.
"What's with that attitude?"
"Just go home."
"I waited around in the rain because I was worried about you, you know."
"I never asked you to."
"Normally, people at least have the decency to hear someone out."
"I heard you. Now we're done."
The boy's brow knitted sharply.
A gust of wind whipped beneath the awning, splashing muddy water over our shoes.
The frigid droplets soaked straight through my damp socks.
That biting cold was the only thing anchoring me to the present.
Across the street, a pair of people huddled under a single umbrella hurried past.
If I screamed, my voice might reach them.
By the time I drew in a breath to call out, their silhouettes had already dissolved into the white haze of rain.
The boy glanced over at them once as well.
Yet, there wasn't a trace of fear about being seen. He seemed genuinely convinced that he was doing nothing wrong.
That absolute delusion was far more terrifying than being screamed at.
"So you're just gonna blame everything on guys like always?"
"That's not what this is about."
"Then you shouldn't have led me on in the first place."
"I never led you on."
"You took the pencil yourself. You looked at me, too. Expecting me not to get the wrong idea after all that is totally ridiculous."
A car roared down the waterlogged street.
A violent splash echoed through the air as its headlights swept across the shop's glass window.
In that fleeting glare, the boy raised his hand.
"Mikage, just calm down."
His fingers reached straight for my arm.
"Don't touch me!"
A scream tore from my throat, far louder than I thought possible.
The boy's hand froze in midair.
Yet, he didn't pull it away.
He furrowed his brows in apparent concern, lowering his voice in a patronizing, soothing tone.
"It's okay. You'll calm down if we just hold hands, right?"
The hand that had paused began creeping forward again.
Even though I had screamed "Don't touch me," this person genuinely believed that holding hands would comfort me.
The "It's okay" spilling from his lips dragged the past rushing back once more.
—...I'm okay.
My own voice, answering naively while trusting a childhood friend.
Immediately following it, the laughter from that day echoed in the back of my mind.
—Even today, she told me she was okay right after I touched her.
My side seized up, stiffening just as it had when I was groped back then.
My body refused to move.
My voice wouldn't come out.
As the sound of the rain faded into a dull hum, only the boy's reaching fingers slowly closed the distance.
Just before they could make contact with my sleeve—
A black umbrella came tumbling past outside the awning.
Caught in the wind, it bounced across the rain-slicked pavement.
The next instant, the boy's hand was stopped dead in its tracks, inches from my arm.
A left hand reaching in from the side had clamped firmly around his wrist.
"She clearly doesn't want you to."
A low, steady voice cut through the air right beside me.
There was no way I could mistake it.
I snapped my head up.
Aiba-kun was standing right next to the boy.
The moment I saw him, the air around us seemed to freeze.
It wasn't the paralyzing sensation of fear stealing my breath.
Nor was I being dragged back into the mocking laughter of the past.
In the single instant my eyes met Aiba-kun's, everything else vanished from my perception.
The water cascading relentlessly from the eaves.
The glare of headlights streaking across the flooded road.
Even the boy standing directly in front of me faded into absolute background noise.
In this frozen world, only Aiba-kun existed in vivid detail.
His wet bangs clung to his forehead, and heavy droplets traced down his cheeks.
His breathing was ragged.
His complexion looked terribly pale, too.
Leaving his right arm pinned at his side, he held the boy's wrist in place using only his left hand.
Beyond the awning, the discarded black umbrella lay battered by the pouring rain.
I realized instantly that he had sprinted the entire way here.
The cruel laughter echoing in my memory faded to nothing.
The phantom touch haunting my ribs dissolved entirely.
In their place, all I could hear was the frantic thumping of my own heart.
Once.
And again.
Beating against the inside of my ribs with painful intensity.
It was no longer a heartbeat driven by sheer terror.
Aiba-kun shifted his gaze slightly.
I caught sight of his rain-soaked profile.
His ragged, heavy breaths.
The water tracing a path down his jaw.
The fierce, razor-sharp glare directed at the boy—an expression I had never seen on him before.
I couldn't tear my eyes away from his face.
Just yesterday, I had given these feelings the name "love."
Yet right now, that emotion could no longer be contained within the quiet corners of my heart.
In a world that felt as though it had ground to a halt, only Aiba-kun, drenched to the bone in the rain, was truly breathing.