Chapter Seven - Rain or Shine
Chapter Seven - Rain or Shine
It's not a perfect, never-ending blue sky, but the weather is pleasant with wispy white clouds floating in the sky.
In the morning, I went to see Mana off.
"Hey, I was waiting for you," she said.
She waved to me, and I ran to her with my parasol in my hand.
Workers from the moving company were stacking cardboard boxes into a truck. Mana and I sat side by side in the shade on the stone blocks of the bicycle parking area.
"I wish I had something to give you," I said, taking my keychain out of my tote bag.
"But how about we exchange keychains?"
She grabbed the keychain from my hand quickly, grinning widely.
"You know, I was thinking the same thing," she replied.
She also took out her keychain from the pocket of her hooded jacket. She pushed it into my hand. When we compared the bears in our palms, their faces were a little different from each other, though they should have been made in the same way.
"Mana!" her mother called to her.
"I'm coming!" she yelled back.
"I promise to text you when I come back to visit," she said.
"Don't wait until you visit to text, you can always do that," I told her.
"Okay!" she gave me a thumbs-up.
She stood up, the sound of her feet connecting with the ground loud, and brushed her shorts off with her hand. "Man, it's a bummer I can't go to the summer festival this year," she said. "Are you going to the festival with anyone this year, Itsuko?"
I gave her a small nod, put my hand on my mouth, and lowered my voice.
"Just between you and me..."
"Wait, what? No way, why are you going to the festival with Miyano?"
I laughed and said, "It's a long story."
Mana's mother called for her again.
"You can text me the details!" she nudged me, stretching her arm out.
"See you," I brought my hand up to meet it with force.
The sound of our high five melted into the deep blue sky.
Summer has just begun.
I'm wearing a yukata for the first time in three years.
The yukata I wore as a kid is too short for me now, so I borrow my mom's. It's a deep navy blue, like the summer night sky. There are large flowers bursting like fireworks on it. When my mom fastens it with a light yellow obi, I feel a little more grown-up.
"Why don't you go out after dark?" Mom asks.
I put on my geta at the entrance and answer her, "It's okay. It'll be dark soon."
I pick up a red cloth drawstring bag with a white flower petal pattern. The small bell attached to it tinkles when I move it.
"It's cloudy, and the sun isn't that strong. Plus, I have my parasol. See you later." I say on my way out.
The clopping of the geta I'm not used to wearing spurs me on. I see my shadow on the asphalt ground, wearing a yukata and holding a parasol. The sun is still high, and my shadow, me in a yukata and holding my parasol, stretches out and looks like an adult. My navy blue yukata and black parasol look pretty good together. Spinning my parasol, I feel like a Japanese Mary Poppins. I almost start humming, before I realize what I'm doing and stop myself.
Along the way, I join the flow of families and couples heading to the festival. As I get closer to the shrine, the crowd gets bigger and bigger. I take in the joyful atmosphere instead of going against it. Sounds from the festival ring and echo in my ears, people working booths calling out to customers, and the sound of flutes and taiko drums.
Our meeting spot, the overpass, is almost halfway between my house and the shrine. I move to the shade of one of the pillars holding up the overpass, and close my parasol with a long sigh. I look around slowly because I don't want to look obvious. Miyano isn't here yet. I look at the time on my cell phone in my drawstring bag. It's five twenty-nine p.m.
I hold my purse with both hands, and stand with my toes together. I feel more ladylike than usual. What should I do if he says I'm trying too hard? That idea suddenly worries me, and makes me uneasy. I try to keep my composure with all the nerves in my face. I hear the sound of my blood rushing through my whole body. Wondering what I am doing, my face burns up, and I bring my hand up to cover my mouth. I'm losing it.
The sound of cars on the overpass and the voices of people walking to the shrine all pass me by. The heat in my face that made me anxious goes down gradually, and I begin to feel a dull pain in my stomach.
He's late.
I look at the clock on my cell phone again and again, and it's already two to six. He's almost 30 minutes late, and there is still no sign of him.
I'm already past the peak of my anxiety, and I start to feel worse and worse. Maybe he really was just making fun of me. It makes me sad for a moment, but I remember the face he made yesterday and change my mind. I should stop being so pessimistic. It's a bad habit of mine.
Yesterday, Miyano asked for my phone number when he left. He tried to remember it by repeating it again and again, because he left his mobile phone at home. Maybe something happened to him, and he can't contact me because he remembered the wrong number.
I remember what he said yesterday.
""I really wanted to go to the festival with you, rain or shine.""
Something feels wrong about that. I repeat it twice out loud to myself, and realize what's wrong.
""Wanted? "" Why did he use the past tense?
An anxiety that I can't explain in words comes up slowly from deep inside of my stomach. I feel choked, like my throat is being squeezed. My blood vessels are pounding, alarms going off in my head.
I walk back the way I came holding my parasol, and turn at the corner.
Miyano's house looks exactly the same as yesterday. There are no cars, and a navy color mountain bike is still parked there in the garage. I look up, and there are curtains closed tightly in the second floor window. When I move a little from the front side of the house and peek at his garden, nobody's there and the window curtains are closed.
I go back to the gate, stick my finger out gently and try to push the intercom, when someone calls out from behind me.
"Are you Takeshi's friend?"
A very housewife-like woman is standing with a bag of carrots and leeks on her arm. She looks around my mother's age. After looking at her hard, I nod in a hurry.
"I don't think anybody's home," she says.
The woman's eyes dart about and she mutters, "Didn't they even tell his school? Takeshi had?"
My geta sound very loud as I run. They almost slip off of my feet at small steps up and down. I curse each time, and feel impatient with myself. They makes my vision blur, so I try to stop my tears that are about to flood out. My purse is shaking at my waist; its little bell is tinkling loudly, urging me to go faster. My desperation bubbles up inside me, expanding so much that it's about to explode.
"Takeshi had an allergy attack the other day and they took him to the hospital. I hear his symptoms are pretty bad. I think they checked him in that night."
Words I just heard flash by, bursting into my vision again and again. "Allergy," "Attack," "Hospital". But most of all…
What does she mean, "the other day?"
The big general hospital is a five-minute walk from the station. I can't wait for the glass automatic door to open, and run into the white hospital filled with the smell of antiseptic. I feel the cool air conditioning instantaneously, my geta clanging in the lobby.
As soon as I think, I made it, I relax, put my hands on the nearby wall, and breathe hard. When I look down at my feet, I see red blisters where the top part of the geta was rubbing against my big toes.
It's kind of late to feel pain now. When I raise my head, sweat trickles down my face, and I see all the patients and nurses in the lobby staring at me.
Still short of breath, I look around. I see a sign that says, "General Reception" and start to run again. When I reach it, I grab onto the counter with my hands so I don't fall down.
"Can you tell me Takeshi Miyano's room number?"
'Takeshi Miyano'
I stop in front of the room with Miyano's name written on a changeable nameplate on its door. It's a single room in the medical ward. I knock on the sliding door.
"Yes?" a young woman answers.
I take a deep breath and say, "Hello," opening the door gently.
White curtains are shaking from the air conditioner. There's a brown shelf with nothing on it, and a folding chair that's still closed. The bed is in the center of the room with the nurse call button coming out of it. Someone is lying on the bed, covered by a white blanket. Though I can't see his face from the entrance, I recognize the sunburned arm sticking out of the blanket.
A woman about twenty years old is sitting on a stool next to the bed. She's holding a cell phone in her hand.
"Are you Itsuko, by any chance?"
The woman holding the cell phone has round eyes that show her bright nature. Her facial expression with her eyes blinking reminds me of Miyano.
"I'm glad you came, now I don't have to send this text message!"
She stands up, and beckons towards me happily, "Please, come here. Takeshi just regained consciousness this morning, and he kept shouting at me, ‘Send Itsuko a text message!' Now he's even worse, because he was yelling so much."
I approach the bed cautiously. IV tubes are extending from the bed. Miyano, sleeping on the bed with a thin blanket up to his chin, has a face I have never seen?as white as a sheet. His cheeks are red and swollen like he's caught the mumps, and his lips are dry and pale.
Not knowing what to say, I see him opening his eyes slowly, showing a smile on his lips. It is the same soft smile as yesterday.
His sister gives me her chair, puts down her mobile phone and leaves the room saying, "I'll get out of your way now." The text she was writing is still on the display.
'Sorry, I can't make it to the festival today. What I said wasn't a lie.'
"Hey," I hear a raspy voice and look up. Miyano, blinking his eyes slowly, is looking at the white ceiling.
"I'm allergic...to rain. It's pretty bad. If I touch this thing called acid rain, I get allergic attacks."
I remember him running away in the sudden rain, getting his shirt wet.
"Is it because of the rain the other day?" I ask.
It was because he lent me his umbrella that he got caught in the rain, but I didn't even use it.
"I didn't think it would be that bad," he says.
People called him Takeshi Miyano, "the sun harbinger." But that's not really it. It's just that he only comes to school when it's sunny. It's the same as my nickname, "Natsuko," except he didn't tell anyone about it. That's why all those rumors about him started.
"You probably won't believe me when I say this, but…when I got up yesterday morning, no one noticed me. Even if I tried singing and dancing in front of them, everyone just ignored me. I even saw myself lying on my bed. So I thought I was dead. I didn't know what to do, and I thought of going to school, and then…"
He stops tentatively, and looks at me.
"You're the only one who noticed me."
When I picked up the keychain? That's why he was so surprised?
"I figured God gave me some extra time, and I wanted to do what I could for you. At least, that's my side of the story. What if this is all just a dream?"
I gently touch his hand sticking out of the blanket. His hand is warm and heavy enough for me to know it's real.
"It's not a dream." Saying it only once didn't seem like enough, so I repeat myself, "It's not a dream."
"Thanks to you, Mana and I are friends again," I tell him.
I also add what I couldn't tell him yesterday.
"Thank you so much."
Miyano, looking surprised and widening his eyes, closes them, looking more relaxed.
"I feel like I've just died a peaceful death," he says.
"Even if we couldn't go to the summer festival?" I ask.
"Right, the festival," he opens his eyes slowly and looks at me. His gaze goes down gradually from the top of my head, giving me a once over like the other day.
"But I'm glad I got to see you in a yukata."
It's weak, but he has a grin on his face, which is now completely familiar to me.
Just then, we hear a short, loud bang that shakes the window glass and our bodies, all the way to our stomachs.
Fireworks!
We hear a bang, then three more, in succession. We also hear the small sound of crackling sparks.
"If you move closer to the window, you can see the fireworks," he says from the bed. I shake my head.
"I don't need to see them this year. Plus, it won't be fair to you," I say, and he closes his eyes gently to carefully listen to the fireworks.
The skyrocketing sound of fireworks reverberates comfortably in my eardrums. After a while, I begin to hear a quiet snoring sound mixed in with it.
I guess summer isn't that bad.
"Let's go to the summer festival together next summer."
Whether it rains or shines that day, next year.
The sounds Miyano makes in his sleep change a little bit, and I smile.
The End
Afterword
Hello. My name is Madoka Harumi. Whether this is the first time you're reading one of my novels or not, I'd like to say thank you very much for reading "Whether It Rains or Shines Tomorrow".
Everything said, here is the afterword. I didn't know what to write in an afterword, so I looked it up on Google. Even after that, I still don't really know what to write.
I'll just write down my thoughts as they come to me.
I started writing novels when I was in junior high school. (I was drawing manga when I was in elementary school.) Back then, I wrote my novels in notebooks or on Japanese-style manuscript paper, and had my friend read them.
One thing that made me happy about winning this award was that I could tell my friend from back then that I won an award for my writing. Like Itsuko and Mana in the novel, we are totally different from each other. (I am strong-willed, and she is gentle.) Strangely enough, we have been good friends since then, and she reads my novels regularly. She is my best supporter as well as my best reader.
My junior high school days were special to me, because I made a lot of good friends, including her, during that time. We had lots of fun back then.
I think junior high school students are only halfway there, not yet adults, but not children anymore, either. Girls start to mature and have more grown-up conversations. But their true natures are straightforward, and they're very sensitive and easily hurt. I remember thinking about lots of different things, crying and laughing. Furthermore, I myself am prone to allergies, and I used to get caught up in my thoughts, just like Itsuko. But I think that this also helped me gain a lot more things during that time.
Junior high school students are too young to be called adults, but they are capable of having very direct feelings toward others. I hope the characters I have created in this novel reflect that.
...So this is my afterword. How was it? I think it's pretty good!
Finally, I'd like to extend my sincerest gratitude to the people who made this wonderful opportunity possible. I would like to thank the special judge, Mr. Taiyo Fujii, and everyone else who helped put together this Light Novel Contest.
Also, let me say thank you to all of my family and friends for their support. Without your kindness and generosity, I would not have been able to write novels for eighteen years. Thank you very much.
I have spent the majority of my life writing novels. I have it in my view to live a pleasant life like this, writing books. I want to continue writing novels the way I breathe in air.
Therefore, I will devote myself to writing and I look forward to seeing you somewhere. I hope you will support me in the future.
About the author
Madoka Harumi
Born in 1983, Virgo, Blood type A.
She is a writer who was brought up in Chiba and now lives in Tokyo.
She worked for a company as a technical writer for over seven years, and then became a freelance writer. She likes writing more than eating three meals a day. She is a writing junkie and a member of the Japanese Independent Writer Alliance.
She loves the Moomins and Sheena Ringo. Her hobby is music activities.
Her novels are available in the Kindle Store and other e-book providers.
She writes a variety of genres, though many of her novels are for young adults.
Her official website is "White Rabbit Works"
http://whiterabbitworks.wordpress.com/
Blog "Genten Kaiki - Running Possible -"
http://mfineocean.blog98.fc2.com
Twitter... @harumima
Message from the Translators 1: Chelsea Inaba
Dear Reader,
Thank you so much for picking up this copy of "Whether it Rains or Shines Tomorrow." How was it? When I first read through it, I couldn't put it down, and read it all in one sitting. The story made me put everything else in real life on hold until I read it through, and although it's a love story, it also felt a bit like I was reading a mystery novel, and boy, was I surprised by that twist at the end! Everything that I look for in a book to read was there, all condensed into a length that's very easy to digest! My first thought after finishing it was that I wanted to share it with even more people in English.
The setting of this story is an ‘ordinary' school in an ‘ordinary' town that an ‘ordinary' Japanese school girl goes to. I'm very happy that a novel like this is being translated into English, as it's realistic, painting modern Japan just as it is. I find that other media from Japanese to English have a tendency to be overly exaggerated or over the top, so it's very refreshing to get this kind of story about normal, everyday life. You may find Itsuko and the things she goes through very easy to relate to because of this.
As one of the co-translators of this story, my main goals were keeping the translation as faithful to the original as possible, and making the English translation flow. As a compromise between these two conditions, we created a glossary to explain some of the cultural points that are uniquely Japanese and not fully explained within the story itself. We hope it will help you understand the content while staying faithful to the author's original vision of the story and characters.
Whether this is your first time reading a Japanese novella or not, I hope that you enjoyed this story, and will continue to read stories from Japan. There are a lot of hidden talented authors here waiting to be found.
Chelsea Inaba
Message from the Translators 2: Yoshino Kazuki
"Whether it Rains or Shines" is the first light novel that I translated into English.
I have not read a light novel for a few decades. So this novel reminded me of my bitter-sweet youthful days that I had almost forgotten. While I was translating it, I felt as if my junior high-school student-self was synchronized with Itsuko.
During this translation, I had a lot of precious experiences, but at the same time, I had a lot of difficulties translating the novel. I was worried whether or not I could get across my thoughts clearly in English because I am not a native English speaker. Japanese is much easier for me to express my feelings. But I hope you will understand what I am thinking in English.
I translate technical documents written in Japanese into English every day at work.
Translating novels is very different from what I'm used to..
I always try to use as simple English as possible when translating them.
But there are a lot of modifiers and creative expressions in this novel, which I found difficult to translate into English.
The followings are some points I found especially difficult.
*Tense
Japanese novels are not so strict with tense. Therefore sometimes present tense and past tense are mixed. On the other hand, English is strict with tense. (At least I think so.) If the present tense is mixed with past tense, readers may get confused. After thinking many times, I decided to use present tense for the things that are occurring now, and past tense for the things that occurred in the past. (This is thanks to my translation partner's advice.)
*Onomatopoeia and mimetic word
Japanese novels are full of Onomatopoeia and mimetic words, while English novels are not. So I had difficulty translating them. For example, what is "karan" (the sound of clogs) in English? What is "don" (the sound of fireworks) expressed in English?
During the translation, I was surprised to find that the English phrase "rain or shine" has a meaning of "whatever happens". (Refer to Chapter 7.) I wonder if the author of this novel knows this and made this title. If she doesn't, what a wonderful coincidence!
I'd like to give many thanks to Chelsea-san, who corrected my translation and Conyac, who supported us. And I'd like to say thank you to all of you that read this novel in English.
Yoshino Kazuki
Aug 31, 2014
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About "impress QuickBooks(R)"
QuickBooks(R) is a printing and website media business eBook label run by the impress group in Japan. The concept of "Easy to read eBooks for smartphones" is not about converting eBooks from paper, but rather making the eBooks first. From our beginnings in February of 2011, we have published nearly 250 titles.
Official Website http://quickbooks.impress.jp/
Publication information
Whether It Rains or Shines Tomorrow
First published May 15, 2014 *Japanese version
Written by Madoka Harumi
Publisher:Impress Business Development, LLC
1-105 Jinbocho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0051 JAPAN
Contact information:
Email: quickbooks_info@impress.co.jp
Distributor:Impress Corporation
1-105 Jinbocho Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo 101-0051 JAPAN
Copyright(c) 2014 by Impress Business DevelopmentLLC All rights reserved.
Translator:Chelsea Inaba, Yoshino Kazuki
Collaborator:Conyac https://conyac.cc/en/
Illustrations:Nacht
Editor:Hirona Suzuki
Cover design:Himawari
Planned by:impress QuickBooks Project
Produced by:Digital Directors. Corporation.
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