メロウレイン / Futtara Doshaburi Mellow Rain
Stay Here
“By the way, I found out,” Hagiwara said.
“Found out what?”
“The hot-air balloon.”
“What were we talking about again?”
Sei asked so casually that Hagiwara frowned and sighed.
“This…”
“I’m joking. I remember. The balloon from the eye test, right?”
“Nakarai-san, you have exactly the right kind of detached expression to make jokes like that sound serious.”
Was that an insult?
Or a twisted compliment?
Either way, Sei did remember.
Of course he did.
He had been the one to ramble about it in the first place.
It had been nonsense spoken on an emotionally unstable night, so remembering it was embarrassing.
The fact Hagiwara remembered was embarrassing too.
But there was something deeply comforting about knowing that, back when neither of them had any idea what would happen between them, Hagiwara had still remembered words that were practically sleep-talk.
“Apparently it measures the refractive power of the eye.”
“Huh. Don’t really get it.”
“And the road and the balloon are both photographs, but they’re composited together. The road is somewhere in Arizona.”
“Arizona…”
Sei rolled the unfamiliar place name around in his mouth.
He might never have said it aloud before in his life.
“…That does fit.”
He had never been there.
He barely knew where it was on a map.
But once he knew that road was in Arizona, it somehow felt completely right.
“It has that wilderness feel,” Hagiwara agreed.
“What’s actually in Arizona?”
“Er… the Grand Canyon? Las Vegas is next door, I think.”
“Right. Let’s go.”
“What?”
“I can fly.”
Even if that were true, getting around Arizona would almost certainly require a car.
Sei was mostly talking nonsense.
Yet Hagiwara answered in a surprisingly serious, troubled voice.
“I don’t really like flying.”
“You don’t?”
“I’ll get on one if I have to. I just hate the trapped feeling.”
He looked mildly embarrassed by the confession.
“Once the plane takes off, I keep thinking there is absolutely no way to get off until we reach the destination. It makes me feel suffocated.”
“With a train or car, you could stop somewhere if you really had to.”
“Exactly. I don’t need to actually do it. Just knowing I could makes me feel better.”
“That’s very you.”
“Is it?”
Hagiwara immediately became defensive.
“I really can fly. It’s not a phobia. I just don’t like it. If you genuinely want to go to Arizona, I’ll go.”
“Why are you suddenly getting worked up?”
Sei laughed.
“I’m not.”
“And anyway, ‘Find the hot-air-balloon landscape!’ sounds like some ridiculous variety-show challenge.”
“There are probably hundreds of roads that look exactly like it.”
Sei rolled over beneath the sheets and turned to face Hagiwara.
“Just think, I can stay here.”
“Hm?”
“If what scares you is thinking you can’t go anywhere, change the thought.”
Sei looked at him.
“Instead of ‘I can’t leave’, think, ‘I can stay here and wait.’ That sounds easier, doesn’t it?”
“…Ah.”
Sei had not meant it as anything profound.
Still, Hagiwara murmured, “Right,” and pulled him closer.
“Like sheltering from the rain.”
“Yeah.”
Like now.
The rain outside had not stopped, so they were here.
They were allowed to stay here.
Stay here.
Stay here with me.
I don’t want you to leave.
The Sunny Boulevard
The café was on the top floor of a five-storey commercial building.
From the counter seats facing the windows, Sei could look down over the courtyard below.
Places that advertised their views usually meant panoramic skylines from high-rise buildings or night scenery.
But this height felt fresher somehow.
Closer to ordinary life.
The people walking below were not tiny dots.
He could clearly see the fountain spray, and the pigeons and sparrows hopping around it in search of crumbs from bread and sweets.
“Hagiwara, look.”
They were drinking coffee side by side.
Sei pointed through the glass.
A ginkgo tree had begun to turn yellow.
In the sunlight, the highest branches glowed gold, almost like a crown.
“Hm?”
“The colour starts changing from the top.”
“You’re right. It’s completely different from the bottom.”
The leaves shifted gradually from gold near the top to yellow-green and then a colour like muscat grapes closer to the ground.
Come to think of it, Sei rarely saw an entire ginkgo tree all at once like this.
From the pavement you could not see the top.
And because ginkgoes were such ordinary street trees, he had never thought to stop and study one properly.
“Maybe change normally starts in the head,” Sei said.
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.”
Colour changing from the top.
A change of heart beginning in the head.
Maybe that was the proper order.
Hagiwara answered immediately.
“It’s probably just the sunlight.”
“…That too.”
“We had rain, anyway. Can’t really complain if ours didn’t start from the head.”
“What does that even mean?”
Sei laughed.
“You blame everything on rain.”
“No, no.”
“Then what?”
“We owe it to the rain.”
Sei had lived a life where rain never touched him.
And suddenly he realised that meant sunlight had barely touched him either.
Home to office.
Office to home.
Closing himself away.
Maybe that was precisely why he had been drawn to Hagiwara.
“Shall we go?”
“Yeah.”
The days had grown much shorter, but there was still plenty of time before dark.
Today, Sei wanted to spend as much time as possible somewhere bright.
They did not need a destination.
He simply wanted to walk beside Hagiwara, talking about nothing, following wherever their feet took them.
Lightly.
Without noticing tiredness.
A ginkgo leaf fluttered down and caught on Hagiwara’s shoulder.
Sei did not tell him.
It might be fun if, after spending the whole day in sunlight, Hagiwara had changed colour a little by nightfall too.
The same way Sei would probably love him a little more by then.