The clear sky reflected off the puddles from last night’s rain.
The fire department maintained a daily training regimen. Today’s schedule: on-site water hose drills. These particular drills were critical to ensuring swift and precise firefighting.
“Deploy hoseline two!”
“Yes, sir!”
At the squad captain’s command, Wasabi ran back to the fire truck. He was decked out in full firefighting gear, including steel-toed boots and a helmet lined with flame-retardant gossamer fabric. Add on an air tank, and it was easily forty pounds’ worth of equipment.
Wasabi grabbed the hose from the rack with both hands and ran back. The hose itself was sixty feet long and weighed about twenty pounds. Combined with his loadout, he was now carrying the equivalent of a nine-year-old child.
Wasabi extended the hose in a straight line, ensured the metal fixtures were connected, and then took hold of the nozzle and got into position.
“Deploy the water!”
On Wasabi’s signal, the valve was opened, and water rushed down the hose in a powerful torrent that nearly swept him off his feet.
Hanging from the rails of the training building were several flags with flames drawn on them. Wasabi did his best to aim at the flags, but the weight and recoil of the water made it difficult to keep the hose steady.
“Put your back into it, Kawamura!”
“Yes, sir!”
Essentially, it was target practice—no real fire involved.
“Mist! Stream! Max pressure! Mist! Stream!” The squad captain continued to bark orders one after another, carefully dictating the spread and flow of the water, and there was no time to relax.
“Whoa!” As Wasabi fiddled with the nozzle controls, the hose slipped out of his hand and slammed into his face. He fell backwards onto the ground.
“C’mon, Kawamura! What are you doing?! Grab it!”
Wasabi could understand his boss’s frustration, of course, but there was no grabbing this thing, not when it was flailing around in midair like a water-spouting dragon. He sat there on the ground, staring blankly up at it as water sprayed everywhere.
“Shut it off!”
Moments later, the hose fell lifelessly to the ground, the last few drops trickling from the nozzle.
“Kawamura!”
Wasabi could hear the squawking of his squad captain, soaked and furious…but he wasn’t the only one. A passing bicyclist had been caught in the dragon’s rain shower, and she was dripping from head to toe. Wasabi dashed over to her.
“Hey, are you okay?!”
The young woman wore her hair in a bun, with a few stray strands on either side of her head. She shook the water from her face. Her long-sleeved shirt and denim shorts were now completely soaked through.
Ack! She looks like a bedraggled cat! And it’s all my fault! Wasabi bowed his head, fully prepared for the woman to scream at him about her ruined makeup or something to that effect. “I’m so sorry, miss!”
“Oh, it’s no problem. I’ve got a swimsuit on under this!” Contrary to his expectations, the woman shrugged and smiled.
That was when Wasabi noticed the orange surfboard attached to her bike rack, and upon further inspection, he realized her tanned features were free of any makeup. She was by no means model-gorgeous, but she had a sweet and charming smile.
Behind him, Wasabi heard the others packing up the training gear.
Suddenly, he realized: this was the same surfer girl Minato had watched from the roof the other day. The decal on her board tipped him off. At the time, he had thought it was a dolphin, but now he could see it was a porpoise.
The woman pulled a towel from her bag and offered it to him. “Here, take this. It’s clean, I promise.”
“Oh, no, that’s not necessary!”
But despite Wasabi’s attempt to decline politely, she cheerfully insisted.
“Thank you…” How could I possibly say no to a smile like that?
“Consider it yours. My family hands them out every year at New Year’s, so I’ve got a bunch.”
Printed on the towel were the words: CONNECTING PEOPLE AND PLANTS — MUKAIMIZU LANDSCAPING, INC.
“Actually, while I have you…” she said, “I’m kinda lost.”
“Where are you trying to go?”
“Oh, I’m just trying to get home.”
“Okay…?” Wasabi wasn’t sure what to say to that. Surely she was old enough to know how to get to her own house.
“See, I just moved here the other day.”
Ohhhh, okay. “Do you know the address?”
“Uhhh…I could give you the name of the complex! It’s Sunrise Katamiya.”
“Oh, the one right next to the construction site?”
“Bingo!” she exclaimed, pointing back at him. “Oh my God, how did you know? That’s crazy!”
Bashfully, Wasabi scratched his head. After all, it wasn’t every day he got attention from a pretty girl. He could hear the hoses being disconnected from the fire truck; the other firefighters folded them in half, then rolled them up tightly, starting from the crease. This was a surprisingly tricky task.
“Kawamura! Go show her the way!”
Wasabi glanced over his shoulder to find his squad captain smirking at him. Rrgh! Don’t tease me, man!
“Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to, but…I’m still on the clock,” he replied, like a total uptight loser. But he was still a rookie, so he was in no position to ditch work early.
“Oh, that’s okay! If you could just give me directions, that’d be great.”
“No problem. First, take this road all the way to the bright white apartment building, then make a right. From there, take the second left and keep going until you pass by the school. Then make a right, and you should see it.”
“Right, left, school, right,” she repeated, pointing with her index finger.
“Kawamura! Bring in your damn hose!”
“Yes, sir!” Crap, I gotta get back to work!
“All right, see ya!” With a short wave, the surfer girl rode off into the distance.
“Safe travels!” Wasabi called after her. “Try not to get lost again, Miss Hero!”
If only you’d been scheduled to work today, Senpai. Chuckling to himself, Wasabi went back to work.
Hinako raced through the puddles on her bicycle, humming to herself. For some reason, she always felt her best on the day after a good, hard rain. The sky was clear and blue, and the air smelled clean, with no trace of dust. When she was little, she had jumped into rain puddles on purpose, and her mother had always scolded her for it. But now she was grown, and there were no little yellow rain boots to be seen—just a couple of bike tires, leaving ripples in blue and white reflections.
“Right! Left!” Hinako shouted, pointing each way she declared as she followed the directions given to her by that cute firefighter from earlier. “School!”
I did it! I’m here! …Now that I think about it, didn’t he call me “Miss Hero” just now? What was that all about?
“Wait, what?” After pedaling for a long while, Hinako came to a slow stop. She looked to the left, looked to the right, looked straight ahead…and frowned. “Where am I, exactly…?”
She was in a residential district she didn’t recognize—because she’d forgotten the final instruction to make a right after passing the school.
Just then, Hinako noticed a big truck headed her way, spraying water from the puddles on the road.
“Huh?”
The pedestrians ahead of her were able to quickly turn the corner onto a side street to avoid it, but Hinako was sandwiched between the road and a concrete block fence. There was nowhere for her to run.
“Wait, what? Hold on a minute!” As Hinako floundered helplessly, the truck shot past, spraying her with a giant torrent of gutter water. “Uggghhhh! Why?!”
Now she was soaked all over again. If it had been ocean water or spring water, she wouldn’t have minded, but gutter water? No thank you! Worse, she’d given her only towel to that firefighter. Desperately, she prayed for the rain to come back and rinse her off. Ideally her face at the very least.
And so, ignoring the weird looks she received from the passersby, Hinako finally arrived back at her apartment. With a big sigh, she closed the door behind her and slumped her shoulders.
First she was crushed under a pile of boxes, then she got lost, then she got sprayed with a fire hose, and then she got splashed with dirty rainwater. What a disaster of a day.
But unbeknownst to her, the biggest disaster was yet to come.