Shouto had always liked the rain. He liked the sound it made when it fell, pitter-pattering against the roof and walls. He had always slept the best on rainy nights.
He liked how everything seemed so new and clean after a rainstorm, and how raindrops felt on his skin, not quite hot and not quite cold. He liked taking walks after a summer rainstorm, the steam from the evaporating puddles clinging to his ankles and arms and making his clothes stick to his skin. He liked how mud felt beneath his bare toes, squishy and clinging to his skin.
But most of all, Shouto loved the cloyingly sweet and earthy aroma the rain left behind. Petrichor, he recalled, was the name for it. It was the exact opposite of how his father's house smelled. That house smelt crisp and thin, the traditional Japanese woodwork stained with the musky, eye watering scent of smoke and fire.
Shouto had always thought it was funny, how he preferred a combination of his parents' elements to either of theirs. He'd told his mother this once, when he was still small and his face hadn't yet been scarred. His mother had just smiled in that gentle way of hers, and held him close while they watched the rain fall outside.