メロウレイン / Futtara Doshaburi Mellow Rain
Rain Longing
For a moment, Sei thought it was thunder.
A low, heavy boom seemed to crawl along the ground.
He woke in the oppressive midday heat after the air conditioner timer had switched itself off.
The sound came again.
Boom.
Boom.
Sunlight still shone brightly through the frosted window.
Sei sat up, opened it and looked outside.
“…Oh.”
He had thought the thunder sounded too close.
Apparently it was part of a summer festival.
Not thunder rolling over the ground, but something happening right there on it.
The time when he had once mistaken fireworks for thunder had been before the rainy season.
Now summer itself was approaching its height.
Boom.
Boom.
Drums.
A much higher metallic rhythm answered them, mixed with festival calls of “Wasshoi!” and “One more!”
Nothing was visible yet, but the procession was getting closer.
Sei waited at the window.
Behind him, Hagiwara stirred awake.
“…What is it?”
“Looks like the summer festival procession is coming through.”
Hagiwara leaned out beside him.
A block away, several men in yukata and straw hats turned the corner near the pond.
Behind them came something about the size of a small car, like a wheeled festival cart being pulled slowly by ropes.
“That’s not a mikoshi,” Hagiwara said. “It’s a float.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Uh… you carry a mikoshi, and you pull a float?”
“Does that mean there isn’t a god riding on a float?”
“No idea… Ah, there are loads of kids too.”
Children around primary-school age, wearing happi coats, were beating drums energetically on top of the float.
“They look absolutely boiling.”
“I did something like that once through the children’s association. It was brutally hot, but they gave us a bag of sweets and cider afterwards, so I was thrilled.”
“Kids are cheap to please.”
“Adults are probably thinking about the beer just as much.”
“God, that beer would taste incredible.”
The event was not large enough to require formal road closures.
A police officer stood directing traffic, and adults who were probably the children’s parents walked a little way behind in ordinary clothes.
The small procession passed directly beneath the flat.
As soon as it was gone, Hagiwara pulled Sei back towards the bed.
The room was still hot.
They were hot.
They had sex anyway.
Beads of sweat rose along the blue veins of Sei’s legs.
Hagiwara licked them away one after another.
As the temperature in the room climbed even higher, Sei found himself wishing it would rain.
Right now.
He wanted grey clouds to gather suddenly and rain to pour down through the open window.
He wanted the bed and both of them soaked through, drenched and ruined.
He wanted to know what it would feel like to have sex with Hagiwara while rain struck their bare skin.
The festival music faded farther and farther away through the open window.
In its place, Sei’s muffled gasps and his selfish prayer for rain escaped into the summer sky.