FUTTARA DOSHABURI
Rain Longing
Apparently, if you cut your nails in the middle of the night, you won’t be there when your parents die. But that no longer had anything to do with Sei.
Other than the bed he had hurriedly arranged to have delivered, the room was almost completely empty. And suddenly, for no particular reason, the nails on his feet began bothering him.
Unable to sit still, Sei walked along streets that were still unfamiliar to him and went to a convenience store. The shiny silver nail clippers looked surprisingly good.
He spread one of the flyers that had been pushed through his letterbox across the floor and sat down in front of it. Starting with the nails on his left foot, he began cutting.
Clip. Clip.
In the silent room, each sound echoed with an almost frightening presence.
The cold absence of one person having disappeared from his life had settled over the entire flat, silencing the air itself.
As though challenging that emptiness, Sei squeezed harder and kept clipping his nails.
I wish it would rain.
He wished the sound of it would drum against the building's roof and the shrubs beside the entrance. When he reached the second toe of his right foot, he hesitated. The resin coating was still mostly intact despite having peeled in places, and he wasn’t sure whether the blades of the clippers would even cut through it.
And now there wasn’t even anyone around whom he could casually ask,
Do you think it’s okay if I cut this?
…Whatever.
He’d just do it.
Sei pressed his thumb hard against the lever.
It was tough. Something almost like stubborn competitiveness rose inside him.
Harder.
Harder.
Snap.
With an impressive crack, a little white crescent dropped onto the colourful pizza advert beneath his foot.
See?
It cut perfectly well.
It was fine.
He was fine.
The cold metal in his hand gradually warmed against his skin. As he ran a fingertip across the newly sharpened edge of the nail, he began to hear a soft pattering outside.
Just as Sei had wished, it seemed the rain had begun to fall.