“Aaaghhh!”
A sudden downpour. Mercilessly, the rain pounded him as if he was taking a shower.
With their soccer match abruptly interrupted by rain, Kota and the others immediately split up and headed homeward.
“And we were winning, too!” Kota muttered. “I thought the weather girl said it wouldn’t rain!”
Hurrying along, he cursed the morning weather girl’s irresponsible and erroneous forecast. Running at top speed, past the back street where they had first found Blue, he finally arrived home. By then he was soaked from head to toe. Even the inside of his bag was drenched.
“Aaagh, this sucks!”
Even his notebook, which had the class notes he had copied from Saiki—the trigger to rekindling their friendship—was damaged by the rain. The writing was now illegible.
“Oh no… I can’t read this…” Kota exclaimed in dismay. “I can’t even open the pages..
“Hey!” his mother shouted. “What are you doing there soaked like that?!”
Upon hearing Kota’s voice, his mother had gone to meet him at the door, but now stood dumbfounded at the sight of him. He looked like he had just climbed out of a swimming pool.
“What do you mean?” Kota answered, annoyed. “It just started raining all of a sudden…”
“I know that. Hurry up and get out of those clothes. You’ll catch a cold!”
With that said, his mother brought a towel from the dressing room. While brutishly wiping Kota’s head, she briskly removed his wet clothes.
“That hurts,” Kota protested. “You don’t have to do it so hard! It hurts!”
“Look at you with your hair all sloppy like this,” his mother argued. “Hold still, why don’t you?”
“What’s that got to do with it?!” Kota retorted. “Besides, it was Nee-chan who did this anyway!”
“Ohhh my goodness! You’re always blaming others! That’s such a bad habit.”
She was just doing what mothers usually do, pointing out her son’s faults. But Kota pouted at her efforts.
“What’s with that face?!” His mother slapped Kota on the head with her palm and switched her attention to the kitchen instead. Soon after, the sound of the stove being clicked on could be heard. She was probably making some delicious hot cocoa, planning to warm him up from the inside.
“Way to go, Mom,” Kota said to himself. He promptly went upstairs to change into his house clothes.
Suddenly, the telephone rang. The familiar ring reverberated through the house. The piercing sound seemed to resonate especially loudly today. It reached deep into Kota’s ears.
The sound of the rain pounding the windows, the wind shaking everything outside, a pulsing rhythm, the telephone ringing—all formed a dissonant symphony. Hearing these, Kota, for some reason, felt uneasy.
Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, his heart beat wildly. His unease rose in synch with the pounding of the rain.
The ringing stopped and Kota assumed his mother had answered the phone. But his heart continued to pound. Kota rushed towards the living room. He did not see his mother on the telephone, but there on the table, was a steaming coffee cup. The cocoa was already prepared.
Okay, he thought. He could drink away his unease with the warm cocoa. Or so he thought.
Like the steam rising from the cup, the uneasy feeling within him grew ever larger. Outside, the rain showed no signs of letting up. Through the steam, he could see the brown liquid in the cup.
He lifted his head—a ringing tone was blaring again. This time, it was the sound of the answering machine clicking on with “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The usually light, fun melody sounded like a requiem this time. The sound seemed to be coming closer.
“Say, Kota…?”
With the cordless phone in hand, his mother entered the living room. Kota turned towards her, expectantly.
“Hey, it’s Mai-chan’s mother,” she stated. “She’s asking if we know where Mai-chan might have gone.”
At first, he couldn’t comprehend what his mother was saying.
“She’s saying that she hasn’t come home yet,” his mother added.
“…!”
Kota jumped out of his seat without even letting his mother finish.
“H-hey, Kota! What is it?!” she asked, surprised.
But he didn’t answer. He was certain she was there. Their secret place. The one they could tell no one about.
Grabbing two umbrellas, Kota ran out into the pouring rain. He knew he had to hurry.
“Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap!”
He ran at top speed. He ran at full power. He ran and ran, realizing why he felt so uneasy.
He wanted to shout her name at the top of his lungs. “MAI!!!”
He paused to shut the umbrella; the way it slowed him down was annoying him. He was going to get soaked again, but he couldn’t care less about that. Bounding over the steps to the shrine, he scrambled up on all fours like some kind of beast. He cleared the steps in an instant and finally reached the spot.
“Meow.”
Blue looked curiously at Kota. He was probably marveling at the raindrops, which were dripping off of his “father.”
Kota took a frantic look around, but Mai was not at the shrine. Blue was there alone, inside his cardboard box. He quietly stayed in the box, which was probably because of the rain, rather than out of obedience.
Kota felt relief wash over him. She must have gone home.
It definitely seemed like she had come by, though. There was a cute handkerchief placed on top of the box to shield Blue from the rain. It was Mai’s.
“Whew,” Kota exhaled in relief. “Hey, Blue!”
He relaxed as he picked up Blue, who continued to look at him with a blank expression. Maybe he worried too much. Maybe… He had passed her on the way…?
Boy was he tired. And uh-oh, he was soaked to the bone again. His mom was really going to be mad this time. Oh well, he couldn’t do anything about that now.
In spite of these thoughts, Kota still felt a certain uneasiness. Just to make sure Mai had returned home safely, he decided to go by her house.
He was fully prepared to face his mother’s fists, but when he got home later, he never received any punishment or wrath. The truth was far more cruel and painful.
The front of Mai’s house was illuminated in a ghostly red light. The rain bounced off of the spinning, scattering light. As if they had assembled to watch the light, a sea of umbrellas sprouted like blooming flowers everywhere.
Kota could only stand there in a daze, watching as it drove away in the distance.
A white car. A red lamp.
It raced away, unmistakably an ambulance.
—It was carrying Mai inside.
It all ended too soon.
In the blink of an eye, an instant passed, and then… Mai was gone.
Makihara Mai’s lifetime of 10 years and a few months felt like a mere moment in time.