FUTTARA DOSHABURI
part 13.
The sky was beginning to look ominous. The forecast had only given a thirty per cent chance of rain today.
Standing by the station exit with a sign reading “Shareholders’ Meeting — This Way”, Sei looked up at the sky. There were still another two hours before the afternoon shift came to relieve him. Would the weather hold out until then?
He stood there absently watching the stream of people pouring out through the ticket gates, occasionally being stopped by someone asking for directions to some completely unrelated building, when a voice suddenly called out to him.
“Oh.”
“Good work. Erm… right, Nakarai-kun.”
“Adachi…?”
Sei searched through his memory until the name finally surfaced.
“Correct.”
Adachi gave him a thumbs-up with his usual easy-going air.
“Oh, right. The shareholders’ meeting was today, wasn’t it? Sounds rough.”
“You just getting to work?”
“Our company uses discretionary working hours.”
“Huh.”
In the past, Sei probably would have given him a curt response that all but said, Hurry up and go away. Instead, he found himself asking the question first.
“So, what happened after that?”
“Hm? With what?”
“Your girlfriend and the affair.”
“Oh. It got a little messy.”
Adachi didn’t look remotely guilty as he answered.
“Right now, my girlfriend and I are in… I don’t know, our fifth or sixth lovey-dovey phase.”
“You didn’t break up?”
“Nope. It surprises me too. I bet she feels the same way.”
“Well, relationships come in all sorts of forms.”
“Exactly… Oh, speaking of relationships, did you hear about Hagiwara?”
“…No.”
“Apparently he broke up with his girlfriend. Those two always seemed rock-solid to me, so I figured they’d end up getting married. I was pretty shocked.”
“Oh.”
Something restless and uneasy began stirring inside Sei’s chest, as threatening as the clouds gathering overhead.
He had known Hagiwara had moved. Only a few days earlier, Sei himself had processed the change-of-address form.
The word break-up had crossed his mind then, but there had been another possibility too, that Hagiwara had moved because he was getting married.
Sei had only just found a proper place of his own after living in a weekly rental apartment, so he had done his best to concentrate on getting his own life in order.
He was afraid that if he gave his mind even the slightest opening, he would end up searching online for the floor plan of Hagiwara’s new apartment.
So they broke up. It was because of me, wasn’t it? Maybe even thinking that was unbearably self-important.
As much as he wanted to bombard Adachi with questions about exactly what had happened, there was no chance Adachi knew what Sei truly wanted to know.
“Well, good luck with this.”
“Yeah.”
What am I supposed to do? Nothing. There was nothing he could do. Sei was the one who had cut things off in the first place. At the time, he had felt that if he didn’t, he would only keep clinging desperately to Hagiwara.
You were the one who pushed him away and told him it had nothing to do with you. What kind of nerve would it take to show up now and ask, ‘How have you been?’
He focused instead on the ache in the arm holding the sign and the heaviness in his legs from standing for so long, desperately trying to force Hagiwara’s face out of his mind.
The shareholders’ meeting ended without incident. Afterwards, catering was brought into the conference room, and staff from the relevant departments held a brief wrap-up meeting before Sei returned to General Affairs.
There was a small white rectangle of paper sitting on his desk. Thinking someone had left him a message, Sei turned it over.
It was a business card.
Hiraiwa’s.
In the blank space, someone had written in tiny handwriting:
I happened to run into one of your colleagues, so I asked him to pass this on, just in case. Contact me whenever you want.
There was no need to wonder who one of your colleagues meant.
Still holding the card, Sei went to the refresh area. His ID card was, of course, securely hanging around his neck.
Leaning against the window, he thought for as long as it took him to finish an entire can of coffee slowly.
The rain that had begun falling that evening left countless clear, winding trails across the glass. His breath fogged the window white, but it could never reach the droplets on the other side.
Just like Hagiwara wouldn’t suddenly appear, no matter how badly Sei wanted to see him.
“It’s not like we’ve got anything in particular to talk about just because we meet.”
Mindful of how long it had been since they had seen one another, Hiraiwa deliberately spoke in a careless, offhand way.
“Come on. That’s not true.”
Sei gave a crooked smile and clinked his beer mug against Hiraiwa’s, doing his best not to make things too sentimental.
He had contacted Hiraiwa and arranged to meet partly because he genuinely wanted to, of course, but also because he thought Fujisawa would have wanted him to if Fujisawa had known.
They talked aimlessly about their jobs, the places they spent most of their time these days, which document-writing apps were easiest to use, and whatever else came to mind.
About an hour had passed when Hiraiwa suddenly spoke.
“Did I look dissatisfied the other day?”
“What? No, not really.”
“Good.”
“Why?”
“Well… that Hagiwara guy?”
The name came so unexpectedly that Sei nearly dropped the edamame between his fingers.
“Hagiwara? Or Ogiwara?”
“Hagiwara.”
“Right. Well, I ran into Hagiwara-san again. At that restaurant.”
“What?”
“He acted like it was completely by chance, but… I don’t know. I got the feeling he might have been waiting for me.”
“What?”
“No, no, it’s just a feeling. Don’t take me seriously, okay? But I started wondering whether he’d been going there hoping he might find me. Lucky for him it’s somewhere I go fairly often.”
Sei stared at him.
“Anyway, he told me, ‘I think Nakarai-san actually wants to contact you.’ So I gave him my card.”
Hiraiwa shrugged.
“I wasn’t completely convinced, but here we are, meeting again, so I’m grateful to him for that. Leaving that aside, though, it made me wonder whether I’d really been giving off such a weird atmosphere that day that a stranger noticed. I felt a bit bad about it.”
“No…”
Sei tried to shake his head.
He couldn’t.
If he moved even slightly, he felt as though the tears threatening his eyes would spill over.
He remembered Hagiwara that day, pretending not to notice how shaken Sei was and simply telling him, “It’s not a bad thing, is it?”
I never imagined things between us would end up like this. But maybe somewhere inside me, I already liked you. Maybe the rain had already begun falling long before Sei himself had noticed.
He desperately fought to control the trembling at the corners of his mouth.
“He’s kind.”
“I see. Tell him thanks for me.”
“Yeah.”
When Sei suddenly lowered his head, his voice caught in his throat, his old friend asked him nothing.
Instead, Hiraiwa casually remarked, almost ridiculously cheerfully, “Summer’s nearly here.”
He had always been like that. Whenever someone was upset or struggling, Hiraiwa deliberately avoided prying and behaved as though he didn’t have a care in the world.
“Remember when we went on that test of courage years ago? That place that looked like an air-raid shelter?”
“You mean when we didn’t find any ghosts, but that bloody enormous camel cricket appeared?”
“Yeah, yeah. That thing was terrifying. I still dream about it sometimes.”
“Seriously?”
Thanks to Hiraiwa, Sei managed to laugh. And while he laughed, he thought:
I want to see him.
He wanted to see Hagiwara.
He wanted to call him.
He wanted to email him.
He wanted to drink with him again.
He wanted to kiss him.
He wanted to have sex with him.
He wanted to lie in Hagiwara’s arms and listen to the sound of the rain.
He wanted to tell him he loved him.
He wanted Hagiwara to tell him he loved him too.
━━━━ ✦ ━━━━
According to the weather forecast, once tonight’s rain ended, the rainy season would officially be over and summer would begin in earnest.
Hagiwara almost felt sorry to see it go. That didn’t mean he particularly wanted to get soaked, though.
Standing just inside the main entrance of the company building, he considered his options.
The convenience store in the basement had sold out of umbrellas, and because he was wearing a brand-new suit, he really didn’t want to venture fifty metres through the rain to another shop.
He could take the underground route to the subway, which would keep him dry for the time being, but then he would have to change lines and take the long way round.
And there was still the walk from the station to his flat afterwards.
No.
He could buy an umbrella at the station.
The problem was that there were already three clear plastic umbrellas at home, each one bought in some previous emergency, and adding yet another made him feel vaguely guilty, though he couldn’t have said that.
It had been a long time since he had lived alone.
It wasn’t that he had completely neglected the housework, but cracks seemed to appear somewhere no matter what he did. Lately, he had repeatedly left umbrellas behind when he was out or forgotten them on trains.
There was no point standing around when the rain showed no sign of stopping. For now, he would take the subway.
He could decide what to do after that when the time came.
Just as he turned towards the underground passageway— an umbrella suddenly extended over his head from behind.
“Use mine.”
The words came before Hagiwara could even turn around, and at the sound of that voice, he froze for a moment.
Because… What if it was someone else?
There was no way he could have misheard that voice, and yet instead of excitement, fear made his heart pound.
If he looked at his face, he would start hoping.
If Sei called his name, he wouldn’t be able to hold himself back any longer.
He wouldn’t be able to keep these feelings contained entirely within himself.
As long as it was nothing more than a misunderstanding he carried alone, he could keep going round and round the same place, like running laps around a track.
But if those feelings escaped outside him, even if they had nowhere to go, even if they could never reach their destination, he would still end up seeking that one person.
“I’ve got a folding umbrella.”
His mouth was so dry he felt as though he could drink all the rain, but somehow he managed to ask,
“…I thought you didn’t carry an umbrella?”
“I do now. I moved.”
“Why?”
His voice cracked embarrassingly with nerves.
“—Can I ask why?”
“You can, but it’s a long story.”
“I moved too.”
“Is that a long story as well?”
“Fairly.”
“Then maybe we shouldn’t bother.”
“What?!”
Hagiwara turned around. Sei was standing right beside him, laughing.
His expression was almost a tearful smile, brimming with a range of emotions.
The moment Hagiwara saw his face, for some reason, one thought struck him with overwhelming certainty.
Ah. Summer is coming.
“Then,” Hagiwara said.
“For starters, give me your email address.”