“Hey, Yuzuru. It’s gonna rain soon, isn’t it?”
After school one day in junior high, Ai was walking beside me when, all of a sudden, she spoke. I blinked a few times and looked at her, puzzled.
“The weather forecast said it’s only going to be cloudy all day.” I unconsciously reached for my book bag, where I had a folding umbrella. My mom had given it to me, telling me to “hold on to it just in case!”
“Weather forecast? Is that what it said? I didn’t check it.” Ai stared blankly at me for a few moments and then looked up at the sky. She sniffed. “I’ve been smelling rain for a while now,” she said with her eyes closed.
I was captivated by her profile.
Without opening her eyes, she drew in a deep breath, then released it.
Finally, she raised her eyelids and looked at me. Seeing her big round eyes trained on me all of a sudden caught me off guard, and I quickly looked away.
“You try to smell it, too, Yuzuru. The rain.”
“B-but what does rain smell like?”
“You’ll see when you smell it. Go on. Close your eyes and inhale really slowly through your nose.”
I did as Ai suggested and closed my eyes. My vision went dark, obscuring my view of the heavy, thick clouds overhead.
“Breathe in…,” Ai said next to me, sounding like a yoga instructor. I slowly inhaled through my nose. The air was moist.
What surprised me the most was how sharp my sense of smell was once I closed my eyes; I could now pick up something I hadn’t before.
It was a bit of a sharp fragrance, like the earth or plants…but at the same time, it was mellow. It reminded me of when it would suddenly rain during the monsoon season.
It was a very unique smell that I wouldn’t usually notice unless I was focusing on it.
“…Is this what rain smells like?” I asked after opening my eyes. She nodded happily.
“Isn’t it interesting? There’s so many mechanisms and rhythms in this world we can’t understand. Only the very tip of them reaches us, as a scent or something else.”
“Mechanisms…rhythms…,” I repeated the words back to her, not having a clue what she meant.
She looked up at the sky with sparkling eyes.
“It’s so fun how there are so many smells out there. Each season has its own scent… There’s the scent of rain, the scent of sunlight…” She closed her eyes again, then drew in another deep breath through her nose.
Drip.
And then a drop of water struck her face.
“Oh!” Her eyes flew open in surprise, and she turned toward me with a gasp.
Drip, drip. Raindrops were falling from the sky.
“Ah-ha-ha!”
She smiled gleefully and started skipping around on the spot. “See?! It’s raining!” She burst into laughter and stretched out both arms.
The rain grew stronger in the blink of an eye, and all of a sudden it was a complete downpour.
I hastily opened my book bag. I’m so glad I brought this, I thought as I opened up the umbrella.
“Hey, Ai! You’re gonna get wet!” I called out to her.
She was still skipping around with her arms outstretched. She shook her head with a smile. “I don’t have an umbrella!”
“Yeah, but I do! Get under here with me.”
When she saw me tilting my umbrella toward her, she smiled again. “If both of us get underneath that tiny thing, we’ll both get wet.”
“I don’t care. It’s better than you winding up completely soaked.”
“Hey, let’s wait out the rain somewhere. It’d be a waste to head home so soon.” I could tell by her smile that she was enjoying this.
She ignored my warnings and walked off ahead as I quickly jogged after her.
“Hurry up, Yuzuru!” She turned around and flashed me a carefree smile, her hand outstretched.
I nodded. It suddenly felt silly for me to be the only one using an umbrella, so I folded it back up and put it away in my bag before chasing after her.
It always felt like Ai lived in a totally different world from me. She wasn’t tied down by anything. She was free. And because of that, people whispered about her at school and called her a weirdo. But to me, those qualities were what made her so beautiful.
She accepted everything about the world head-on, and the way she described it seemed to give each element fresh life. It felt like I was internalizing bits and pieces of that mindset until my world started to sparkle, too.
Even though we were standing on the same ground, everything looked different when I was with her. She seemed blindingly bright…so much so that I unconsciously narrowed my eyes whenever I looked at her.
Ai was unbelievably beautiful, and she saw the world in so much more detail than I did. I wished I could experience the world as she felt it…with her by my side. I wanted to see the same things and smile the same way.
But every time I tried to get closer, her sparkle seemed to grow distant, and I found myself constantly trying to catch up to her.
And at some point…I stopped chasing.
“Hm, so she was the same person? It’s destiny, then,” Odajima said. She was tapping on her phone in the classroom before school.
She’d muttered the word “destiny” as if she could care less, but I still found myself frowning.
“It’s not that romantic,” I said with a sigh.
Odajima stared at me for a few seconds and then snickered. “I can’t believe you’ve been reunited with a beautiful girl, and you look like the world is ending.”
“Stop exaggerating; that’s not how I look. And by the way, we’re not allowed to use cell phones at school.”
“Everyone does it anyway.”
“Nobody’s as bold about it as you.”
“They still use them!” she huffed in annoyance as she shoved the phone into her bag. Then she looked up at me. “So? What’re you gonna do, Yuzu?”
“About what?”
“About the pretty transfer student, of course! Are you two gonna get back together or what?”
“Wh-what do you mean, get back together?” I couldn’t hide how obviously flustered I was by her statement.
She smirked and pointed at me. “I was just trying to trick you into answering. So you did go out with her.”
“……”
I pursed my lips and made a face. Odajima blinked. “Come on…,” she said. “I’m sorry. Don’t be mad.”
“I’m not mad.”
“I wasn’t trying to make fun of you,” she prefaced, before leaning across her desk and whispering, “But if you’re serious…I can help you out.”
“No, I don’t want your help…” I frowned deeply and shook my head. “It’s not like that.”
“The look on your face says it is,” Odajima muttered, frowning.
I suppressed the urge to click my tongue in frustration. “Why are you so on my case about this any…way…” I stopped in the middle of my complaint, my mouth hanging open like I’d forgotten to close it.
Odajima raised an eyebrow and followed my gaze. “Ah!”
Speak of the devil. Ai Mizuno stood behind her with a huge smile on her face. Odajima’s shoulders jerked in surprise.
“Morning, Yuzuru. And…?” After Ai smiled at me, she turned toward Odajima in the seat behind mine.
“Kaoru Odajima. Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, Odajima! I’m Ai Mizuno!”
Odajima had sounded a bit nervous as she introduced herself, but Ai shot her an easy smile, then looked back and forth between the two of us. “Are you guys friends?” she asked.
“Uh, yeah… I guess we are. We’re in the same club,” I answered, stealing a glance at Odajima.
I wondered if she was mad that I’d declared us friends without asking, but she didn’t seem to mind. She was playing with the ends of her hair.
Ai leaned forward, her eyes sparkling. “Club?! I didn’t know you were in a club, Yuzuru. Which one?”
“…The literature club.”