The mist had cleared by the time he left the library. The sky was still grey, but now it was a lighter grey, the kind that sometimes precedes actual light, though you could never be sure. the kind that sometimes precedes actual light, though you can never be sure.
He stood on the steps and looked at the street below, at the puddles still sitting in the low spots of the road, at the way the surface of each one trembled faintly with some distant vibration.
The remnants of the morning rain glistened like shattered glass, reflecting the muted hues of the world around him. Each soft ripple seemed to carry a whisper, a hint of movement just out of sight.
He took a deep breath, inhaling the damp air, feeling as if the city was still waking up, stretching beneath the thick blanket of clouds. In that moment, he found a strange comfort in the stillness, as if everything was exactly as it should be, waiting for something to change.
His phone buzzed. Takumi.
"Where are you? I came to your house, and your dad said you went out."
"Library," Hiroto replied.
A long pause.
"Library," Takumi repeated, as if checking the word still meant what he thought it meant. "You haven't been there in like two years."
"I know."
Hiroto could hear the rain starting again in the background of Takumi's call—wherever he was, it was raining harder there.
"You're doing that thing again, aren't you?" Takumi said. Not a question.
"What thing?"
"The thing where you decide something quietly inside your head and then don't tell anyone and then end up standing in the rain at a train station at 7 in the morning."
Hiroto almost smiled. It was the closest he'd come to it in days.
"I'll tell you when I know more," he said.
"That's not reassuring."
"I know."
He hung up and put the phone in his pocket.
He stood on the library steps for another moment, looking at the sky.
Then he looked down at the street, at the nearest puddle, at the way it sat perfectly still despite the breeze.
Not trembling.
Still
Rain doesn't sit still like that.
He watched it. The puddle held its shape like glass, like something frozen mid-pour, not rippling the way water should.
It seemed to defy the world around it, a quiet anomaly amidst the dampness of the street. For a moment, he felt as if he was looking into a different realm, one where time and movement held no sway.
The rain began again. Soft, first. Then heavier.
He did not open his umbrella.
He stood in it and let it fall on him and felt, for the first time in two years, something that was not quite hope but was shaped like it. Was the outline of it. Was the place where hope goes when it isn't ready to be named yet.