Short Stories
vol.4Malei in the Rain（1/6）
The girl was endearing rather than beautiful. Her short, thin, ash-brown hair made her look like a boy from behind, while her narrow shoulders and waist brought to mind a single stalk of asparagus rising upward from a patch of soft earth.
Closer inspection revealed piercing eyes and well-defined eyebrows that commanded attention, even without make-up. Only her lips were painted with a subtle gloss. These are some of the things I remember from my encounter with Malei.
Just as she was crossing the street, rain began to fall. She ran to the sidewalk and sheltered under the roof of the entrance to a nearby department store, brushing against the shoulder of another woman as she came to a halt. The rain poured down from the low, purple sky, becoming heavier by the minute.
“I just knew I was going to be caught in the rain in the middle of the street. Even yesterday I knew it. It's fate,” she muttered.
Only after the voice had faded did I realize it had been directed at me.
“In that case you should probably have brought an umbrella out with you,” I muttered back, eyeing her from the corner of my vision.
“Yeah, but as soon as I'd put up my umbrella, I'd have been struck by lightning and killed right there and then. So actually I escaped a really horrible fate. You've got to think about these things if you want to go on living.”
A drop of rain fell from her sharp cheekbone. It was so heavy now that the raindrops bounced up from the road surface, creating white foam on the black asphalt. A horrible fate and a not so horrible fate. Getting struck by lightning would certainly be classed as horrible, whereas getting soaked in the rain was nothing to be scared of. What on earth went through the minds of young women these days? Maybe they were just lonely. A faint smell of citrus arose.
“It doesn't look to me like there's going to be any lightning,” I said.
“Why did you have to go and say something like that? That's tempting fate!” she cried.
Her cheeks began to burn and her eyes bored into me with such provocation that I was forced to admit that my words might indeed turn out to be fateful, although the ridiculousness of the conversation did not escape me. It crossed my mind that she might be angling for her bus fare home, or even enough for a taxi. If not, maybe she was hoping I'd buy her an ice cream float, or if she hadn't eaten lunch yet, a plate of curry and rice. Maybe one thousand yen was the price I'd have to pay to escape my own fate.