It rained again today.
Not the kind that drowns the streets or makes the teachers close the windows too early — just the slow, steady kind that softens everything. The kind that hangs in the air like a sigh.
I watched it through the bus window that morning. The glass was fogged in patches, and I traced a line through the mist with my finger. The world outside looked pale and distant — umbrellas, puddles, flashes of color passing by. Rain used to mean something. Now it's just weather.
When I reached the classroom, the warmth hit me first — that faint, familiar scent of wet shoes and chalk dust. My friends were already inside, their voices spilling over one another. Someone waved me over, showing me something on their phone. A meme, maybe. I smiled. Small, polite. Enough.
I took my seat by the window. The teacher's voice rose and fell, words turning into background noise. My pen moved across the page, neat and steady. Notes without meaning, but they filled the space.
When I dropped my eraser, it rolled toward the next desk. A hand caught it before it hit the floor.
Min-jae.
He handed it back without a word, just a small nod.
"Thanks," I murmured, the word almost lost to the sound of rain.
He smiled faintly — that quiet kind of smile that doesn't need to be returned.
By lunch, the rain had turned to drizzle. We stayed in the classroom, eating from convenience store boxes, talking about nothing that mattered — the kind of talk that feels like static, but warm. Someone imitated the teacher's accent; everyone burst out laughing. I did, too. Just barely.
No one noticed, and I was glad.
After class, we packed up together. The hall smelled faintly of wet paper and perfume.
"Still raining," someone groaned, shaking their umbrella.
"It's been raining all week," another replied.
"It's the sky crying for us," Min-jae joked, and a few of them threw paper scraps at him.
Outside, the air was cool and damp. We walked side by side under half-broken umbrellas, the puddles reflecting gray light. Someone started humming a song — one I used to know. I didn't sing along, but I listened until it faded.
Halfway down the street, Min-jae's umbrella gave up completely. The frame snapped with a metallic click. He laughed — a surprised, helpless sound.
Without thinking, I shifted mine, covering him.
"You'll get wet," I said.
He shrugged. "You'll get tired."
"I'm used to it."
It came out softer than I meant it to.
The rain thinned as we reached the corner near the park. A break in the clouds — a thin ribbon of light cutting through. Someone looked up. "Hey, it's clearing!"
We stopped walking. The air changed, warm and clean.
The sun came out, sudden and bright. Someone joked that even the sky got tired of crying.
And I laughed. Really laughed — short and startled, but real.
It felt strange in my throat, light and clumsy.
Min-jae turned to me, eyes crinkling like it was nothing unusual.
And maybe it wasn't.
We kept walking, the group thinning out as we reached different corners of the road. The puddles glittered, catching bits of sunlight. The smell of rain lingered, mixed with something sweet from the bakery ahead.
For once, I didn't mind the noise — the footsteps, the laughter, the small, ordinary things that filled the spaces between.
The rain had stopped halfway home.
I didn't notice when it began to feel easy again.
Just that it did.