Years passed, quietly, the way seasons slip through the world when no one is watching.
Ren was twenty-five now.Not quite the boy who once sat in a broken house with trembling hands, not yet the man who had seen enough to grow bitter. He lived somewhere in between — in that soft, uncertain space where youth begins to understand itself.
He had become an illustrator.Small projects at first — book covers, short stories, the occasional poster. But his work carried something that set it apart: a fragile sincerity, a kind of stillness in the way he drew faces and skies.People said his art felt "nostalgic," though they couldn't name what for.
He never explained.
On a gray afternoon in late spring, Ren attended a small art exhibit — his first solo show.It was modest: white walls, the hum of soft piano music, the smell of paper and varnish.Among the pieces was one that drew quiet attention — a watercolor titled The Last Rain.
It showed an old, half-ruined house, a single umbrella resting by the door, and light falling through broken glass.No one in the painting, but the air seemed full of presence.
Ren stood by it, speaking to a visitor, when he noticed her.
Miyako.
She was older — her hair touched with gray, her expression calmer, her steps slower. But when their eyes met, time folded neatly between them, like the years had never scattered apart.
She smiled, that same soft, knowing smile."Your work," she said, "it's beautiful."
He nodded, almost shyly. "You came."
"I saw your name in a magazine," she said. "I wanted to see what became of that boy."
"And?"
She looked at the painting again."He became someone real."
They stood in silence. The air between them was light — not tense, not heavy, just full of the unspoken.
"I never forgot that day," she said. "You made me remember that being careful isn't the same as being alive."
He smiled. "And you made me realize dreaming isn't the same as being lost."
They both laughed, quietly.
The gallery lights shimmered faintly against the glass of the painting.Outside, it began to rain.
Ren looked toward the window, then back at her. "It always rains when we meet."
Miyako nodded, eyes soft. "Maybe it's the world's way of remembering for us."
Neither said goodbye.They didn't need to. Some stories end not with parting, but with quiet understanding.
When she left, Ren watched her disappear into the soft gray afternoon, umbrella in hand.
He turned back to his painting — The Last Rain — and for the first time, he realized it no longer felt tragic.
It simply felt true.
He took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and whispered to himself — not as a boy who once believed in impossible love, but as a man who finally understood what it had taught him:
"Some people pass through your life only once,but they leave you changed for all the rest of it."
And outside, under the gentle rain, the city kept moving —each drop falling like memory,each heart learning, again and again,how to let go without forgetting.
— End —