The rain didn't come for a week.
Each morning, Ren woke to the dry hum of summer air, checked the sky, and found it stubbornly clear. The umbrella leaned against his desk now — black, worn, a quiet promise. He told himself he would return it when she came again, but a part of him feared she never would.
He had exams soon, but his thoughts kept drifting. During classes, when the teacher's voice blurred into background noise, he found himself replaying her words: "Here, no one asks anything of me."
It echoed somewhere deep inside him.
When the rain finally returned, it was sudden and impatient — hammering against rooftops and glass. Ren left home without an umbrella. His mother shouted after him, but he pretended not to hear. His feet carried him by instinct to the same decaying house at the edge of town.
The door opened to that same sighing creak. The place hadn't changed. Dust still clung to everything, and a single beam of weak daylight spilled through a broken panel in the roof.
She was already there.
Miyako sat by the window again, her umbrella propped neatly beside her, coat folded on her lap. She was staring out into the gray blur beyond the glass, not surprised to see him — maybe expecting him.
"You came," he said.
"So did you," she replied. Her tone was mild, but the corner of her mouth tugged upward.
Ren smiled awkwardly and sat across from her, cross-legged as before. He didn't know what to do with his hands. "I, uh, thought I should return your umbrella."
"You kept it safe."
"I tried."
He handed it to her, but she didn't take it immediately. Her gaze drifted over his face, as if weighing something unseen. Then, with a faint sigh, she said, "You're persistent, aren't you?"
"Persistent?"
"Most people don't come back to the same place twice," she said. "Especially not for someone they've just met."
Ren hesitated. "Most people aren't that interesting."
Her eyes flickered — a small laugh escaped before she caught it. "Careful. You're not very good at flirting."
"I'm not trying to flirt," he lied.
"Good," she said, leaning back slightly. "You'd be terrible at it."
They both smiled then, and for a while, the only sound was the rain.
Miyako opened a small thermos and poured tea into the cap, the steam curling up into the chill air. "You want some?"
Ren nodded, and she handed it over. The tea was faintly sweet — jasmine, maybe. It tasted older than anything he'd ever had.
He glanced at her hands, steady and elegant. No rings. No jewelry. Only the faint white line around one finger where a ring used to be.
"Do you come here every time it rains?" he asked.
"When I can," she said. "Sometimes after work. Sometimes when I want to remember who I used to be."
He tilted his head. "Who's that?"
She smiled without humor. "Someone who used to believe in things."
Ren frowned. "Like what?"
"Love," she said simply. Then, seeing his face, she added, "Don't look so serious. You'll understand someday."
He looked down into his tea. "Maybe I already do."
"Eighteen is too young to understand anything."
"Then why do people expect us to decide our whole lives at this age?"
That made her pause. Her gaze softened, as though she was remembering something distant. "Because adults like to think someone still has a chance to get it right."
Ren wanted to ask her what she meant by that — what went wrong for her — but he didn't. He was too afraid she'd stop coming if he pushed.
So instead, he said, "Then I'll try to get it right."
Her expression flickered — pity, maybe, or tenderness. "That's what I thought too," she murmured. "Back then."
They sat together in silence, sipping tea while the rain stitched silver threads against the roof.
When it stopped, Miyako stood, gathering her things.
"You should go home," she said. "The streets flood when it rains this hard."
Ren nodded, but his chest felt heavy, the words caught in his throat. As she turned to leave, he blurted out, "Will you come again?"
She didn't look back. "If it rains."
The door closed behind her.
Ren stayed long after she left, watching the puddles outside ripple in the fading light. He didn't know why, but something about her silence made his heart ache in a way that felt too large for his chest.
He picked up his notebook, flipped to a blank page, and wrote the first line of something he didn't yet know was a poem:
"The woman who stands in the rain doesn't look up,but I think she hears the sky whisper her name."