Rain   von Cleo
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                                  Kapitel 1: 
                                  -----------


remember, you always feel your best the moment after you’ve cried
Craig Owens


When they first met, it was raining.

And not the light kind of summer rain that sets in after several days of
agonizing heat. Not that kind of light rain, the refreshment everyone longed
for.
The first time they met, it was pouring down waterfalls from the skies,
accompanied by large black clouds and tree-bending wind, making an odd number of
people hurry trough empty streets, sometimes passing an umbrella-ed pedestrian
who tries to keep away from the street where cars would produce cloth-staining
splashes of water each time they drove through a particular deep puddle.

It was pouring down cats and dogs, somebody would say, when Shibutani Subaru sat
on a park bench, little rivers of water dripping down the hems of his shirt,
clothes heavy and sticky, and his shoes filled with liquid, leaving him with
humid socks and uncomfortable tickles with each movement of his feet.
His hair was coming down in thick hanks, sometimes blurring his view, pulling
down his head, making it heavy.

There was a puddle in front of him, a smooth surface but for an occasional
vibrancy of clattering raindrops or leaves falling down. 
Although he looked down, he could see the sky's reflection, an accumulation of
greys and blacks, of nears and fars, of motion.
He wasn’t crying. He was too proud to cry. 
The tears had stopped when the pain set in, and really, there was no need to cry
when it was already raining like that.
In a corner of his eye, he could see the sky lighten up, a flash turning blacks
into bright whites.
Maybe that was what the past days, weeks had been: Darkness, deceived by bursts
of temporary joy.
Maybe, it was the best to give in to the darkness.
A fearsome rumble made the earth shake a bit, blending into his body and making
him feel shivers, the need to pull up his limbs, protecting them, becoming small
and invisible.


Sighing, his focus returned to the puddle.


It took him three blinks to realize the blue reflection, rigid against the
moving of the surrounding clatter of rain.
By the fifth blink, there was movement, and a transparent pinkness and blonde
bangs obscuring a smile, and suddenly, it stopped to rain on him.



There was silence, the soaked guy hadn’t spoken and the other had not moved,
but silence turned into sounds, into rain, into water bursting on the ground or
blending into bigger drops, into puddles, lakes.

“When I was young, my mother used to tell me that it rains when somebody cries
for you because you’re too proud for crying.” One was startled when the
other one’s voice broke through their hush, soft and comforting, but still
trivial, as if it was his ordinary day routine, walking through the park and
talking to crying strangers.


“When I was crying, she told me to stop, because there was no need for two
people to cry.” A nostalgic feeling crept into his thoughts, projecting
pictures of mothers and stories and days years ago. 
“But I started to cry, just because there was someone crying for me. And;
maybe, if I cried, that person would stop.”

Well, that was definitely not something he would do, caring so much for another
person he didn’t even know, but it was nice to know that such people existed,
people that talked to strangers on stormy days without asking for anything in
return, people who truly understood the meaning of charity.

“It didn’t help at all”, the blond sighed. “And so I decided to stop
crying. I wanted to be strong so there wouldn’t be other persons who had to
cry for me.”
Silence.


“You know what?” “What?” It was hilarious, nothing a grown-up man should
wish for.

But a grown-up man would not sit in the park, drenched to the toes, talking to a
stranger about childhood days.

“I’ve always wanted to dance in the rain. And sing.” Subaru laughed about
his own idea, shaking his head, teeth showing in an amused grin.

And suddenly, there was a rustle of clothes and the blond jumped up, an umbrella
falling to the ground and landing with a splashing sound, some drops flying
through the air.

“You’re insane.” 
A statement.
“Maybe.” 
A blink.
“What’s your name?” 
A smile.
“Yasuda Shota” 

And Subaru reached for the offered hand.





The second time they met, days were clouded by a never-ending outburst of summer
rain.
Nobody remembered when exactly the rain had set in, but everybody would complain
how it had been raining for days.
There had been a particular session of hotness before, one that made people
gather at outdoor pools and parks, one that would make ice parlour owners rich
and salary men long for summer holidays.
There wasn't any thunder or remarkable squalls, just a continuous dropping of
water, cooling down the earth and people, making it impossible to leave the
house without an umbrella.

Maybe he should consider buying his own umbrella, was the first thought that
crossed his mind when he fished for the pink fabric of Shota's umbrella. It was
only after they had parted that Subaru had realized that he still held the
umbrella while his blond acquaintance was doomed to walk home in a layer of damp
clothes.
With only names exchanged and no knowledge about phone numbers or addresses, the
chance of meeting the other guy again was disappointingly low and so Subaru went
and made it a habit to use the pink umbrella as a reminiscence of stormy days,
where blond bangs and pure smiles had made him forget a crooked life and taught
him a meaning in crying.

For Subaru, the light shower was perfect.
After the black clouds had gone, shoved away by a pink umbrella, there was no
happy sunshine and cloudless blue skies in his life, but a greyish mess of
standing between starting anew and leaving something old behind.
There was no road, defined and even, in front of his eyes, no instruction how
when and where to be. There was hope, a bunch of possibilities, but still a
tingling feeling of having lost, of regret.
Since the talk with the blond, everything seemed clearer, with the blacks gone,
but as long as he could not make out a bright white in his life, the weather
suited him.


On the fifth day of the unstopping downfall of realizations, Subaru decided to
visit a new music store, which was where their second meeting took place.
He had passed the store a couple of times, looking through the stands in front
of the store so often he could name the CDs by heart, but circumstances had made
it impossible for him to enter.
But music was something that made his grey days a little more meaningful, giving
his thoughts a bit more room to wander, providing new crossroads and decisions
he wouldn't have made before, so it was just a question of time when he would
enter the store for the first time.

The clerk looked suspicious, a grin on his lips, when Subaru entered the store,
and then bent over to another shop assistant, shaking him not so lightly and
yelling "Hey, Tadayoshi, you can sleep at home." There was a mumble and shifting
and maybe it wasn't the right decision to enter in the first place, Subaru
thought, while skipping through the shelves, looking for something, anything
new, not for anything in particular, just anything interesting, something that
would make his eyes stop for a moment, music that would make him forget, would
get him one step closer to white, something permanent.


This was where he bumped in to someone. In clichéd movies, he would bump into
the love of his life, maybe a girl that drops all her thing in shock and he
would help her collect everything. It would end in excuses and coffee and maybe
some dates, sex and maybe marriage or a fight.
But when he saw a baffled Shota on the floor in front of him, unsettled by the
collision and blinking, a stack of CDs in his hands, Subaru thought that he
could wait a little longer for the girl that would lose her CDs in shock.

"Hey, Yasu, be a bit more careful, that's the fifth customer you bumped into
today!", was shouted by the guy that had scouted the sleeping guy before. There
was a blush forming on his cheeks but no words coming from his lips, because
there was a voice from somewhere in the store, "Ey, Yoko, are you nagging Yasu
again?". Subaru had to stand on his toes to look over the shelves and find the
back hair of a short shop assistant three aisles away, busy sweeping the store.

Shota was still looking everywhere but at Subaru when the clerk hmpfed and
disappeared somewhere between aisle six and twelve.

"Don't tell me you've come only to bring me my umbrella?" Said ‘looking
everywhere’ must have included Subaru’s left hand, where a pink umbrella was
dripping from the summer shower.

“No, I.. just came here by chance. Didn’t know you were working here.” 
Shota smiled when Subaru offered his hand to help him up.

“Thank you.” That bright smile was nearly enough to let the older guy
imagine the faint feeling of a single butterfly being lost in his stomach.
Nearly. 

“You know, my shift ends in ten minutes. Would you… by any chance… like to
get something to drink afterwards?” Maybe there was a blush, but Subaru
couldn’t see it well, when it was hidden behind bangs and a stack of CDs held
way too high. 

“Didn’t I tell you not to hit on other customers?” For a third time that
afternoon the annoying clerk was...well annoying, clearly neglecting his duty to
check the shelves or sweeping the floor.

“Yoko, I’m not…” But Shota could not end his sentence when the clerk’s
head suddenly was hit by the hand of another guy, probably also one of the
assistants, speaking some “stop bothering Yasu and go back to work”, before
both guys shared a laugh and went off, each to their own aisle.

“Yoko and Hina.” Shota sighed when Subaru was about to wonder about the
clerks of the music store.

“Yoko can be evil sometimes, but he’s quite a nice fellow”, the blonde
explained while re-stocking the stands.


“They call you Yasu?”

“Ah, yes.” The blonde’s answer came a bit hesitant and the black haired
guy thought he could hear a nuance of shyness.

“It has a nice ring to it. I think I’m going to use it, too.” 

Shota didn’t answer and Subaru continued to look through the CDs, an
occasional glance over to where the blonde was re-stocking some particularly low
shelf, bending down a bit too casually.


“He’s got quite a nice bum, huh?” Subaru nodded before he could actually
realize that it was the grinning clerk from before who was now standing next to
him, arms crossed in front of his chest and leaning casually against some
stand.

He was astonished about how fast the other clerk was in arriving on time to hit
Yoko after he made some snarky remark, but had to laugh, just because the whole
situation was amusing and somewhere he found that he could not remember the last
time he had laughed.



Said low shelf seemed to have been the last one to re-stock, so the two guys
found themselves at the verge of leaving, waving the other assistants goodbye,
although Subaru barely knew their names, not able to tell who was Ryo and who
was Ohkura, and only keeping Yoko’s name in mind because he was the one to
crack perverted jokes while he was waiting for Shota to change clothes.


"Hey Yasu, don't let your boyfriend see that you've already found someone new."
One guy hit Yoko from behind and this time, an elbow found its way, painfully
landing in his rips, words being whispered that could be "don't mention him" and
Yoko made a grimace, joining the other guys in waving.


They had to share an umbrella and their sleeves got wet at the edges, but they
didn't care and laughed it off, because really, if you spent an afternoon
singing in the rain with your clothes glued to your body, you did not care about
single drops. 





The third time they met, the sky fell down in heavy downpours, thunder and
lightning forming a concert that stopped pedestrians from crossing streets. It
was still summer, but Subaru wondered whether there was hail falling down when
something hit him.
There was still no umbrella in his possession, and the storm had come quickly,
taking him in surprise on his quick visit to the grocery store.

He was wet, his shoes already squeaking from all the water, so he didn't see a
point in hurrying.

Circumnavigating one particular big puddle, realization hit him that he was not
the only one being so stupid to leave the house without an umbrella.

He approached the mess of blue clothes and blond strands, legs pulled up in a
protecting matter, with arms slung around soppy knees and he realized that it
was Shota, sitting on the bench where they met, crying.


So Subaru did the most rational thing. He passed by.



A couple of minutes later, he sighed and sat down next to the blonde, ignoring
the numb wetness of his clothes pressing against skin.

“You don’t have an umbrella.” A whisper escaped soft lips, slipped through
crossed arms and reached Subaru’s ears.

“Neither do you.” He handed over one of the two cans he had just bought and
opened his own.

Shota did the same, rather pretending to take a sip, with both his hands wrapped
around the metal.

“But I deserve to get wet and sick.” There was a shattering sound when
Subaru’s can didn’t hit the bin like it was supposed to.

“Nobody deserves to get sick.” A rather dull noise broke the monotonous
pit-pat of rain purring down, when the second can hit the bottom of the trash
bin. 

“I do. I do deserve to be punished, because I tried too long to hold on to
it.” 
There was a sniff somewhere along these lines. 
“But smiles and cotton candy and pleas cannot mend fading relationships.”

Subaru sighed. He could remember a tissue somewhere in his pocket, but regarding
the fact that he had his pants sticking to his body like a second, uncomfortable
skin, he thought that maybe a tissue would not help to dry the tears on the
blonde’s face.

Damn, he thought, he was never really good with tears.

But he remembered that he used to be quite good with words, in a time before
dark clouds were dominating his thoughts.

“You know what my mum used to say?” A snuffle and the blonde shifted a bit.


“The rain is necessary, she said. Because after the rain, there would be a
beautiful rainbow that would lead me to a hidden place with sparkles and ponies
and gold.
At first, I didn’t want to go there, so I saw no need to stop crying.”

“Subaru-“, Shota started to protest, but was cut off by the other guy’s
complain. 
“Oh please, I’m trying to cheer you up here, be grateful and stop
interrupting me.”

Maybe there was a snicker, maybe two, maybe none at all, but he could feel the
blonde unclenching.


“But when I grew up, I found the hidden metaphor.”
Subaru looked up, soft drops grazing the outlines of his face. He could feel
Yasuda’s glance on him, could feel the expectancy, feel how he longed for
something, anything to give him security, to make this guilt and uneasiness go
away.

“Maybe you don’t need sparkles and ponies, but you need sunshine and happy
moments in your life so it will be worth spending time in the rain and
crying.”

And for his bright smile, Subaru got one in return, halfway crooked and tainted
with tears, but pure, filled with hope of better moments to make these days
worth the tears.



It would be a couple of minutes later that both would notice that the rain had
stopped, big grey rain clouds giving way for the sun to shine.

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