Originally appeared in Amie, March 1997.
Translated by Kurozuki (manga@kurozuki.com).
"Oh, great," she says. "It was clear until just a while ago, but now it's raining. Maybe I should go back. But now I don't have any choice except to go to school. Or maybe my coming was because of the foreboding I felt..."
She looks into the sky through the rain.
"A rainbow."
February.
"A rainbow!" the girl says. "Amazing. It was just thundering and raining."
A boy in a school uniform, wearing a long jacket, sees her staring up at it.
"It's a rainbow," he says. "Shigure."
['shigure' means 'drizzle'.]
She turns and looks at him.
He smiles faintly, and walks into the nearby building.
"Who's that?" thinks the girl. "How did he know my name? Drizzle rainbow? Oh, maybe, is that what that rainbow is called? That guy is like a dictionary. Speaking of which, I need to borrow a dictionary. I don't have one."
She goes to the building the boy went into.
"The library..." she thinks. "It's almost high school graduation, and this will be the first time I've come here. But if I want to graduate..."
She goes inside.
Two girls are talking to each other.
"Hey, look over there," says one. "It's Minazuki Shigure. Pretty, as always. That hair of hers is so impressive. It's vivid, with that tea color."
"What is she doing here? Did she come to get us all wet? Hmph."
Shigure walks through the library. "I'm a lot like what they call a yankee," she thinks. "Of course I like this hair, and I wear it like this. But I don't like school, so I didn't go for a while. Then I heard from everyone that a mountain of startling rumors were going around. They were saying that I was living on the dark side. That I was selling myself. That I was acting immorally... School is scary. I really just don't like school, and studying. I'm just an ordinary high school girl."
['Yankee' is a slang term in Japanese for a juvenile delinquent.]
She looks around the library. "Where on earth are the dictionaries...?"
She sees the boy studying alone at a table.
"The rainbow boy from before..." she thinks.
She goes over to him.
"Say..." she says. "Where are the dictionaries?"
He gets up and leads her to a shelf.
Her eyes bulge. "There are so many books, I'm dizzy!" she thinks. "You're supposed to find one out of all these!? No way... My mind can't handle it."
The boy stops and looks at her.
"No," she thinks, "I have to go to the trouble of using a dictionary..."
She turns around and walks right into the boy.
She blushes.
"What dictionary?" he asks.
"A normal... English dictionary..."
He looks at the shelf. The English dictionary is missing.
He goes back to the table.
"Here, use this."
He hands her one of his books: the Progressive English-Japanese Dictionary.
She takes it, and he sits back down, listening to a walkman.
She opens the dictionary.
"Wow..." she thinks. "It's full of red lines."
She turns to the back, where a name is written.
"Ujou Rei..." she thinks. "I know this guy. Ujou Rei is the first in his grade, in science class 3. On the mock exam, he scored a two figure nationwide ranking. He's going straight to Tokyo U. He must be the most diehard at studying in this school. We're from opposite ends of the earth, I'm nothing like him at all. So why am I in this studying diehard's territory? I thought I was finished with high school life. Since I was in the biggest pinch of my life last month..."
January.
"I can't graduate?"
"It's not so surprising," says the teacher. "Since your senior year started, particularly after summer vacation, you haven't come to school. Your tests have been mostly left blank. On the rare occasions you do come, you have that hair and dress. Anyway, you haven't attended enough days. With things going like this, it won't be necessary to wait for the conference to decide if you advance. You'll have to be held back a year. But there are lots of others besides you without enough days or credits. It's January now, the senior year is nearly over. You'll have two weeks of extra class after that. Then you'll need to score a 60 in each subject on a supplementary exam at the end of February. If you do that, you'll graduate."
She storms out of the room.
"Where are you going?" he asks.
"I've decided," she says. "I'm going home."
"Don't," he says. "Shigure... I can't leave you behind."
He moves close to her.
"I'm going to Nishi High in April."
"I see..." she thinks. "Even if I'm held back, Matsunaga won't be here anymore..."
"After I've told you to come to school," he says, "if you still run away, there's nothing I can do about it."
"I don't want you to say it, Matsunaga."
She turns away from him.
"Even though we were together," she thinks, "in reality I was running away. If I could have, I would have kept doing it. It would have been nice if I could graduate without seeing Matsunaga."
"Even though they're called extra classes," he says, "we have sophomore and junior classes too. The truth is, you teach yourself. Be sure to come to school for two weeks."
He hands her five workbooks.
"In the library, do these collections of problems for the five subjects, and turn them in. Everything on the supplementary exam comes from inside these. It's easy. Especially the English one. I made it. Make sure you come to school. If you do that, good things will surely happen."
"What good things... He only told me lies."
She sits down at the table across from Ujou and opens her English workbook.
"Oh, I'm so ashamed," she thinks. "I don't know any of these words. What's easy about this? That Matsunaga. Are all of these taken from the dictionary?"
She closes the book.
"I'll do math, then."
She looks in her math workbook.
"I don't understand any of this!"
She looks up at Ujou.
"He has such concentration... I can't even do one problem. Even though stupid me is right in from of him... He might as well not be here."
A voice announces through the library: "It is now 15 minutes until closing time."
Ujou gets up.
"Oh... Hey..." says Shigure. She holds up her workbook. "Could you... show me how to do these problems?"
He looks at the book.
"Which problem can't you solve?"
"All of them."
He sits across the table from her at a fast food restaurant.
"Understand?"
"Um, yeah..." she says. "Kind of."
"So, how many of these do you want me to do?"
"Umm... All of them."
He grimaces.
"What is this for?" he asks.
"Well, they're sort of problems for supplementary classes, and I have to fill them out and turn them in for all five subjects. If I don't get a 60 on the supplementary exam, I won't be able to graduate."
"You must not be too bright..."
Shigure groans. "He didn't need to say that..." she thinks.
"I can do these," he says, "since they're easy, but surely you don't mean for me to do them all by myself?"
"I'll watch, and remember!" she says. "I want to graduate too!"
"Lucky!" she thinks. "He'll do them! I have to get it done somehow."
She watches as he writes out an answer.
"This guy really likes to study," she thinks. "It's kind of sarcastic, but his hand is moving mechanically."
She spots his walkman lying on the table, and places an earphone in her ear.
Ujou looks up at her as she stares at the pouring rain outside.
"This is Boz Scaggs, isn't it?" she asks. "Do you like him?"
"Yeah."
"Wow. You can study while listening to this music?"
He gets up.
"I have to get going," he says. "I have prep school for the exams."
"Oh," she says. "Thank you."
She watches as he walks away.
"Um... Hey..." she calls. "I'll pay you. Like a school fee. So can we go to the library again tomorrow? I don't have anyone else to learn from."
"I'm not a librarian," he says. "I don't have the power to decide who can use the library." He smiles faintly as he leaves the restaurant.
"Th- That guy!" Shigure thinks. "I meant, 'Could you teach me again at the library tomorrow?' But... He was smiling, and gave me this cute look..."
Shigure sits down at the table in the library across from Ujou.
"Ehehe, today I thought you could teach me ancient literature."
He groans. "Look in the guide. Those collections of problems are listed in the textbooks for every subject."
"Okay, lend me a guide."
He grimaces.
The two girls are watching them and talking.
"No way, look! Ujou-kun is studying together with that Minazuki-san!"
"What!? What's going on? Has she caught his eye?"
"But isn't Ujou-kun going to be taking the Tokyo U exam?"
"I can't believe she's speaking to Ujou-kun at this time."
"Hey," Ujou says.
Shigure is interrupted from listening to the conversation of the two girls.
"That translation book is on the very bottom of the farthest shelf to the left."
"Oh... Okay..."
She looks at him. "So that's it," she thinks. "He's going to be taking the exam for Tokyo U. He could have a promising future there. I've been... bothering him."
She gets up and quietly leaves the library.
Ujou notices one of her workbooks left on the table.
"Closing time!" says the librarian.
Ujou takes the workbook and leaves.
He sees Shigure sitting on the ground around a corner.
She's crying.
"You forgot this," he says.
She turns around.
"Ujou!?"
He hands her two books.
"The ancient literature problem book, and... the translation book."
She takes them.
"Thank you," she says. "You're so nice. Taking a little interest in a dumb girl like me..."
His eyes widen.
"When I was inside," she says, "I thought I was bothering you."
"It's all right," he says. "You weren't really. Since I'm able to graduate. Well, good luck."
He turns around to leave.
She grimaces and grabs him.
"U- Ujou! Don't abandon me! Come on, it'll just take a little while. I want you to teach me the other subjects too."
"Right now, I'm going to the prefectural library. I want to finish my norm for today."
"Well, I don't have anyone to depend on but the sweet Ujou...!"
She sits next to him at the prefectural library.
"Thanks, Ujou."
"Don't you have notes from class?"
"Nope."
"Get them from your friends. You'll be able to do this a lot easier if you have notes."
"None of my friends are the kind that take notes," she says.
"Who's your teacher? If you go ask your teacher, won't he give some to you?"
"Matsunaga..." she says. "I feel so bad, I can't learn from him."
"Matsunaga, you say? He does English, right? English is so easy. All it is is translation into Japanese."
He looks through her English workbook.
"Hey! What is this?" he says. "Now this problem is to my taste."
"Which one?"
He shows her the problem: translating the English verses of a Boz Scaggs song into Japanese.
She hears people talking in the library.
"Look! Look! That tea-colored hair! It's so long!"
"Oh, not again," she says. "They're staring. Is my hair that striking?"
"It's pretty," says Ujou. "It's eye-catching. But there are probably lots of other reasons."
"Do you mean to say it's because I'm a yankee? Hey now. You might have heard, but there are lots of rumors going around about me. They're all lies. That I'm a seamy lady, that I'm a prostitute, that I'm immoral. But that last one... Maybe there was a time that was true. In a way... Immoral... That meddler, Matsunaga..."
"The school hater, Minazuki Shigure!" Matsunaga says. "You finally came! This is a special after-school class, just for you. For someone as dull as you, the only thing you can do in life is become a bride. But I'll show you. You can't be dumb."
"It's fine with me!" Shigure says. "I'll find someone who likes dumb people. And I'm popular as it is."
"That may be. Because of your pretty hair... It's eye-catching."
She stares into his eyes.
She reaches up and kisses him.
He pulls away.
"Minazuki...!"
"Shh..." she says. "It'll be our secret."
"Hmph. Then, nobody must find out."
They kiss deeply.
"He didn't act like a teacher at all. Our special classes during summer vacation were fun. But... On the last day of vacation, for the first time... I noticed he was wearing a ring. I was such a fool. Ujou... That music you were listening to the other day, Boz Scaggs. Matsunaga often played it in his car. Summer vacation ended, and I didn't want to see him... All I did was stay in my room and listen to that music. That slow ballad... Speaking of which, the title of that song... What does it mean? 'We're all alone.'"
"When you said you couldn't graduate," says Ujou, "I thought you were going to cry. Am I... replacing Matsunaga?"
"What?"
He gets up.
"I have prep school."
He walks out of the library.
"Ujou!?" Shigure calls. "It's not like that!"
She sees his English-Japanese dictionary left on the table.
"Oh!"
She grabs it and runs outside after him.
"Ujou! Your dictionary..."
She stops and watches him walk away through the pouring rain, carrying his jacket over his arm.
She holds his dictionary.
A car pulls up in front of her.
"Hey, Shigure!" the man says. "What're you doing in this place!?"
"I wanted... to study more..."
"You what?"
Her eyes water as she stands in the rain.
"It's not like that," she thinks. "I wanted to talk with him more. I wanted him to know me."
"Shigure, what, are you crying? Come on! Get inside, I'll take you home in my car."
"That was all I wanted..." she thinks. "Did I offend you, Ujou? I fell for him. When I was next to Ujou, it reminded me... I felt him. I didn't even touch his hand, but still..."
"Oh, Ujou Rei?" says the man. "Was he helping you study? Pretty cool. That guy is famous for not letting people get close to him. He always goes to exam prep school alone. He's strange. Yep. But you should be careful, Shigure. He may look nice, but I hear he's got a devoted fan club."
Shigure carries an umbrella over her head as she walks to the library in the rain.
"First I'll return his book," she thinks. "Then I'll apologize. Say sorry for making him mad. Then... Say that I didn't once think of him as a replacement. Not once..."
The gossiping girls approach her.
"Minazuki-san," one says. "We want to talk to you about something."
"Even his teacher agrees," says another. "We want you to leave Ujou-kun alone. The secondary exam for Tokyo U is in ten days, so this is the most important time for him. This is the time he wants to study most."
"So we'd appreciate it if you would refrain from going to the library for a while..."
"If you're there, you'll be distracting everyone."
Shigure looks down.
"I see."
One of the girls sees the book she's carrying.
"That dictionary is Ujou-kun's, isn't it. We'll return it for you."
She holds out her hand.
"I can't believe this," says one of the other girls. "She even took his dictionary."
"Um... I..." says Shigure. "It's my responsibility to return it. I'll go now. Bye."
The girl scowls as Shigure turns to leave.
"Hold it!"
"Wha--"
Shigure trips and crashes to the ground, landing in a puddle of water.
She looks at all the books she was carrying, now soaked.
"His dictionary... The workbooks he filled out..."
The girls snicker.
"Oh, poor Minazuki-san."
"Yes, but I suppose it's fitting for her type of girl..."
"Well now, you will be buying Ujou-kun a new dictionary to make up for that one, won't you?"
Shigure gets up off the ground and strikes the girl in the face.
"You meant to trip me!"
She shoves the girl away.
"You meant to get me wet!"
The girl shrinks away from her.
"There is something I can't make up for, so superficially," Shigure says. "That is Ujou's valuable time."
Ujou looks up from his desk as two students walk into the library.
"What? A fight? No way, no way!"
"It's true! I saw, she was crying in the backyard."
"So, Minazuki-san finally went up against Ujou-kun's fan club?"
"I heard they got her wet!"
"Be quiet! Ujou-kun is here."
Ujou walks behind the library. He sees Shigure sitting on the ground around the corner, crying.
"Do you like being by yourself there?"
She turns around.
She stands up.
"I'm such an idiot..." she says. "I dropped your precious dictionary in the rain. I have the money, it's not a problem. I'll buy a new one and give it to you tomorrow. I'm sorry. You have all these important things right now, and I've been ruining it. Those workbooks that you did for me, even though it was such a big request... I dropped those and got them wet too."
She holds up five new notebooks.
"But I've decided to copy down all the new notes in these. All that time you spent with me, it won't be a waste."
He looks at her.
"I... I have to go to prep school."
He turns to walk away.
"Ujou!" Shigure says. "I didn't once think of you as a replacement for Matsunaga!"
He stops.
He hands her a disk.
"An MD of that song. There's a lyrics translation inside. Maybe it'll help you with English."
He looks into her eyes.
"I think I was jealous of Matsunaga."
He leans close to her.
"Maybe I've fallen for you..."
He kisses her softly as the rain falls down on them.
He walks away.
She watches him leave, clutching the books to her chest.
"That was a gentle kiss, just like the rain..."
She takes out the lyrics translation as she listens to the song play.
"We're all alone..."
Outside the rain begins and it may never end
So cry no more on the shore a dream
Will take us out to sea
Forever more, forever moreClose your eyes Amie and you can be with me
Neath the waves through the caves of ours
Long forgotten now
We're all alone, we're all aloneClose the window, calm the light
And it will be all right
No need to bother now
Let it out, let it all begin
Learn how to pretend
"So that's what the song means... Back then, whenever I listened to it, it was sad... My heart is still mourning a little. Now, when I close my eyes, I feel the rain of Ujou's gentle kiss. My heart is pounding so fast. It was a happy song, Ujou. In the end, he did most all of the pages in my workbooks. I've copied down all these notes in one night. I guess it's thanks to the power of concentration. The power of love."
"I got all 60s on my exam. My English problem was translating that song. Men... They're all romantics."
-
March.
"You did it," says Matsunaga. "Now you can graduate. Congratulations."
"There's someone I want to tell," says Shigure. "I'll go do that now."
"Who?" he asks.
She smiles at him.
"My sweetheart."
She goes to the door.
"Just like you said. I came to school, and good things happened."
"I see," he says. "That's great. Say hi to him for me."
-
"Your sweetheart?" asks Ujou. "Who's that?"
She puts her arms around him.
"Me?"
"Well, you said you'd fallen for me, and you kissed me."
She kisses him.
"Yes..." he thinks. "Actually... I may have been been this rain girl's captive from the beginning..."
"Congratulations on your success."
"It's only natural," he says.
She thinks for a moment.
"If I'm going to be your girlfriend," she says, "you'll need to introduce me to a good exam prep school, and I'll have to study hard and go to college next year, right?"
She puts her arm around him.
"But before that," she thinks, "first I'll be sure to have Ujou call me by my name. We have to start from a lesson."
The end.
Liner notes for "Rain Kiss".
"We're All Alone" copyright © 1976 Boz Scaggs Music.
Assigned for Japan to BMG Music Publishing Japan, Inc.
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