The rain poured down. It beat against the roof of the temple, running in flowing streams past his eyes. 'Rather like time,' he mused, gazing down at his thumbs. 'Time runs away so fast…so fast.' He became lost in meditation once more.
She saw the rain as well, looking out the window of the Aoiya. 'He has no way to come back without being soaked!' she realized. She threw herself off of the floor and tore toward the door, snatching up an umbrella. "Hey, where are you going?" Omasu yelled at her retreating back. It took her about two seconds to figure it out. "Don't forget one for yourself!" she added. Misao grabbed up another umbrella and sprinted out the door, barely getting it open in time to deflect the steady unburdening of the heavens. 'I only hope he didn't need it before now,' Misao thought distractedly as she hurtled along Kyoto's not-so-bustling streets.
She got to the temple, heart throbbing somewhere in mid-throat. 'It always does that when I'm near him,' she ruminated reflectively, taking up a position near the entryway.
The sun was nearing the horizon. Kyoto lay under an orange heaven, cut by purple streaks of cloud. The temple lay open to the fresh air, he breathed in all the scents of the rainstorm that had passed. There was an occasional drip from the roof, a stray drop gone to join its fellows in the earth.
His eyes opened, almost of their own accord, to see a radiant, dazzling rainbow arching across the sunset sky. "Such beauty," he murmured. "I had forgotten there could be such beauty." He heard a sound from the street below, and looked down at Misao's retreating back. She skipped joyfully along, basking in the rainbow's brilliance. 'She carries two umbrellas,' he noticed almost irrelevantly. 'She…I…she…' He brought his stuttering thoughts to a halt abruptly. 'For me? She would run all this way just to make sure I had an umbrella?' He closed his eyes to her vanishing form and, burning the sight into his memory, smiled. A slow, brief smile. He hadn't smiled in a long time. 'Too long…too long since I have smiled,' he thought.
Misao's thoughts were of one person only. She ran blithely along Kyoto's streets, beginning to crowd with after-storm activity.
'Aoshi….'