Nozomi stared at the rain pouring over the shrine's steps. The unseasonable last gasp of winter had finally expired.
One month ago, an incongruous bout of snow had broken the developing spring and briefly unwound time across the city. Classes had been cancelled while snow sports, thick coats and winter festivities came back into vogue, however briefly. It was almost as though everyone was desperately pretending that this was the lovely snow of Christmas, Nozomi had thought.
It hadn't been beautiful.
She had wandered the streets, wondering how the miserable scene before her could paint such smiles on the faces around her. There had been no virginal white blanket, twinkling in the light, no intriguing fingers of frost on the windows, no glimmering icicles and no coming holidays. Instead, they had also received bouts of freezing rain, birthed from clouds which choked out the sun, and left only slush and black ice.
It had actually snowed on one particular day, not that it improved things.
Had the strangers around her throwing snowballs, laughing and grinning, been faking it? So be it then. She had assumed a mask of her own when she walked among them, watching the snowflakes come to die on her skin.
Nozomi shook her head and opened up her umbrella. The good part of the cold snap ending was that people had no pretenses regarding the rain; they hid from it and left the streets empty for her to wander. It was relaxing, she found, to walk on nights like these, accompanied only by her own echoing footsteps and the gently beating of the rain against her umbrella.
To lose herself in the night was a form of mediation for her. She would search for harmony with the natural world and the spiritual one, sharing breath with the wind and pulse with the earth.
But the stars could offer no guidance tonight.
She couldn't let go; the ponderous sight of the darkened city now only reminded her of them. Would she soon be alone once more?
"You've started over countless times," she told herself, "what's one more?"
To her: everything. The Nozomi of yesteryear, who lived quickly and shallowly, was gone. That Nozomi had understood the pain, however. She had known what it would be like to futilely grasp at the expanding space between the members of their group.
That space had brought her to the shrine earlier that night. As with her personal reflection, it had failed to help. Still, it was better than lying awake in bed, she thought.
In any event, she couldn't stay here forever. She joined the rain cascading down the steps back into the street.
The delayed oncoming of spring was now back in full force and left the night warm.
A restless energy gripped her and urged her on, as though she could drive the intrusive thoughts away with the beating of her feet on the asphalt. The idol merchandise stores she passed told her otherwise. There μ's was, plastered across the windows, happy, beautiful and together.
"Rising Star School Idols"
"Close-knit Comrades"
"Inseparable Team"
Wasn't that ironic? Nozomi looked away from the reminders of the group's fragile status to see herself, walking alone, in the reflection of another storefront. She looked up to find a streetlight's halation around the edges of her umbrella. She looked forward to see Otonokizaka looming over the area, quiet and empty.
Was nowhere free of painful reminders?
It was impossible, she supposed, to leave quietly now that that had touched each other's lives so deeply. She had been hoping against hope that this time would be different. The reason she began living alone was, after all, so that she wouldn't have to leave anymore.
But surely saving Otonokizaka had been worth it.
The empty building loomed.
There had been talk, back when the school was at risk of closing, that it was going to be replaced with a hospice. Was that so wrong? It wasn't as though the other schools didn't have enough space for everyone, and the aging population did demand certain amenities.
Nozomi couldn't even convince herself that helping μ's had been entirely selfless.
She and Eli, comrades in their inability to open up, had watched μ's from afar. There were perhaps better ways to go about helping the school, but none of them would have brought companionship the same way.
Slowly, the rain began to pick up as she turned onto a familiar street. Her feet were starting to drag, and there was time to be saved by cutting through the park at the end.
Nozomi wondered what it would be like in university, her and Eli and-
Would Nico even be joining them? They had all been so keen to avoid the subject that she hadn't even asked. Come to think of it, it wasn't likely that all of their nine were even aiming for university, let alone the same one.
Then it would be back down to her and Eli. From there it would only be another handful of years until it was time to move on again and they would be thrust out into the world and away from the people they had known. Nozomi didn't know if she was prepared for it to happen again, truthfully.
Lightning split the sky open to release an overwhelming downpour - a cloudburst - as the wind howled back to life, driving it into her and pounding against the umbrella.
Surely she and Eli would be enough for each other. They would be able to keep the ravenous cold off away, wouldn't they?
Something caught her foot and she jerked to a halt. Someone had discarded their umbrella in the street.
"On a night like this?"
She held both umbrellas high and watched the twin halations as the park drew closer.
Perhaps whoever was out here wanted to feel the freedom. Perhaps, she thought, she had a comrade in this somber night.
Nozomi laughed bitterly to herself as the entered the park.
They probably just had their umbrella snatched by the wind; she didn't want to risk connecting with them.
A/N: I expect to wrap this all up next chapter.
At first this chapter was going to follow quite closely along the lines of the other two, but then I was reminded of the bizarre bouts of snow that I witnessed in mid-April earlier this year. It just interests me to see how reality informs the imagination.