The convenience store fluorescent lights buzz at a frequency that makes Shinji's teeth ache.
It's 1:47 AM on a Tuesday, and he's been on shift since six PM. His homework sits unfinished in his bag behind the counter. His split lip has scabbed over, turning dark and ugly, but at least it's stopped bleeding. A drunk business worker stumbles in, buys three onigiri and a can of coffee, and leaves without making eye contact. Shinji rings it up mechanically, his hands moving through motions they've memorized.
The store manager's voice crackles through the back office intercom: "Minakawa. Register three is short again. Forty-five yen this time." Shinji's stomach drops. He counted twice. He always counts twice.
"I'll recount—" he starts. "Don't bother. It's coming from your paycheck. Third shortage this month. One more and you're fired."
The intercom clicks off. Shinji stares at the register, at the numbers glowing green in the fluorescent hell of 2 AM Tokyo, and thinks about how forty-five yen is the exact price of the cheapest cup ramen. How his mother will skip lunch tomorrow to make sure there's enough food. How his father will drink it all away anyway.
He pulls out his sketchbook from under the counter—the one luxury he allows himself, bought with money he should have saved—and flips to a clean page. His hands shake as he draws. Always shaking lately. The pencil scratches across paper, creating something, anything, to prove he exists beyond this fluorescent cage.
He draws rain. Just rain. Falling in sheets across a page that will never get wet. The photo Hakurage gave him sits on Shinji's desk at home, pinned under a chipped mug so it won't curl.
A paper boat, white and crisp in the image, caught among blue hydrangea blooms. The photograph is old—the colors have that faded quality of early 2000s film—and there's something about it that makes Shinji's heart tight. The boat looks deliberate, placed with care among the flowers, like someone set it there as an offering or a wish.
He's been staring at it for twenty minutes, trying to see what Hakurage sees. Trying to understand why this specific image matters enough to pay for.
His father coughs in the next room. The sound is wet, full of years of cigarettes and cheap alcohol. The walls are so thin Shinji can hear everything—the creak of the floorboards as his father moves about, the click of a lighter, the exhale of smoke.
Shinji's phone shows 11:47 PM. In seven hours, it's supposed to rain.
He picks up his pencil and begins sketching the composition, working out angles and proportions. The paper boat takes shape first—simple triangular folds, the kind many people start making. Then the hydrangeas, their clustered blooms like small universes of petals. His hand steadies as he works, the shaking subsiding. This is the only time it stops. When he creates.
A text from his mother: Working late. Leftover rice in cooker. Don't wait up. It's her second job. Or third. Shinji's lost count.
He doesn't respond. Just sets the phone face-down and returns to the sketch. The paper boat is taking on depth now, shadows suggesting the fold lines, the way paper holds memory of being creased. He adds rain to the image—drops caught mid-fall, disturbing the hydrangea petals, threatening to dissolve the fragile boat.
Why would someone put a paper boat in a garden? Paper and water are enemies. The boat is designed to float but guaranteed to sink. The thought makes him sad in a way he can't articulate.
His door opens without warning. His father stands there, backlit by the hallway light, swaying slightly. He's still in his work clothes from three days ago. The shirt has a alchohol stain Shinji doesn't want to identify.
"Still awake," his father says. Not a question. An accusation. "I have homework."
"Homework." His father laughs, but there's no humor in it. "You think homework matters? You think any of this matters?" He gestures vaguely at Shinji's desk, at the sketch, at everything. "You're going to end up just like me. A failure. A waste."
Shinji says nothing. Has learned that nothing is the safest response.
His father takes a step into the room, and Shinji's body goes rigid. Every muscle preparing for impact. But his father just stands there, staring at the photo of the paper boat with an expression Shinji can't read.
"Where did you get this?" His voice has changed. Gone quiet. "A friend gave it to me." "What friend? You don't have friends." The words land like punches. True and cruel simultaneously.
"Someone from school," Shinji lies.
His father picks up the photo, holds it close to his face. His hand trembles—from alcohol or something else, Shinji can't tell. For a long moment, he just stares at it. Then he sets it down carefully, too carefully, like it's made of something more fragile than paper.
"Hydrangeas," his father says softly. "Blue hydrangeas." Then he turns and leaves, closing the door behind him with unexpected gentleness. Shinji sits frozen, trying to parse what just happened. His father recognized something in that photo. Something that made him careful instead of cruel.
But what? The rain starts at 6:23 AM, and Shinji is already dressed and waiting.
He got two hours of sleep. His shift at the convenience store ended at four, and he walked home through empty streets, past closed shops and sleeping homeless people curled in doorways. Tokyo in the pre-dawn hours is a different city—quieter, sadder, more honest about its loneliness.
His mother finds him at the kitchen table, the painting of the paper boat already half-finished, watercolors drying in the gray morning light. "Shinji." She sounds tired. She always sounds tired. "Did you sleep at all?"
"A little."
She pours herself coffee from the pot he made, holds the cup with both hands like it's the only warm thing left in the world. Her fingers are red and raw from cleaning chemicals. Band-aids wrap two fingers where she's cut herself. She doesn't mention them.
"That's beautiful," she says, looking at the painting. "The boat. It's very sad though." "Yeah." "Why paint sad things?"
Shinji doesn't know how to explain that sad things are the only things that feel true anymore. That beauty without sadness is just decoration. That he paints what he feels, and he feels like a paper boat in rain—designed for something better but slowly dissolving.
"Someone's paying me for it," he says instead. His mother's face does something complicated. Pride and concern fighting for space. "How much?" "Ten thousand yen."
She nearly drops her coffee. "Shinji, that's—who's paying you that much?" "A collector. Through a friend." The lie comes easier this time. "It's legitimate, Mom. I promise."
She studies him, and he can see her trying to decide whether to push, whether to question, whether to protect him from something she can't name. Finally, she just nods.
"Be careful," she says. "And be home for dinner. Please. It's been weeks since we ate together." "I will." Another lie. He'll be in the garden until the rain stops. They both know it.
She leaves at 6:50 AM. His father still hasn't emerged from the living room. The apartment smells like old alcohol and older disappointments. Shinji wraps the half-finished painting carefully, packs his supplies, and escapes into the rain.
The garden is drowning.
Last night's rain has flooded the lower paths, turning them into shallow streams. Water pools in the broken fountain, spills over, creates new rivers through the garden's geography. The hydrangeas are heavy with it, their blooms bowed under the weight.
Shinji finds Hakurage in the east corner, near where the photo was taken, standing knee-deep in water and mud. He's trying to clear a drainage pipe, his bare hands pulling out debris—leaves, branches, something that might have been a bird's nest once.
"The system's old," Hakurage says without turning around, somehow knowing Shinji is there. "Everything's failing. I patch one thing and three others break."
Shinji sets his bag under the pavilion's shelter, then walks into the flooded area. The water is cold, seeping immediately through his school shoes. He kneels beside Hakurage and starts pulling debris from the drain.
They work in silence, the rain steady around them. Hakurage's hands are cut and bleeding from sharp branches. Shinji's uniform is already ruined. Neither mentions it.
"There," Hakurage says finally as water starts flowing freely through the pipe. "That should help."
They stand, mud-covered and soaked, and Hakurage finally looks at Shinji's face. His eyes go to the scabbed lip, and something crosses his expression too quickly to read.
"It's healing," Shinji says before Hakurage can ask. "Healing isn't the same as healed."
They walk back to the pavilion, dripping. Hakurage has towels stored there—old, threadbare things, but dry. He hands one to Shinji, and they sit on the pavilion floor, attempting to dry off despite still being in the rain.
He used to hate getting wet, Hakurage thinks, watching Shinji dry himself. Would complain the whole time, dramatic as anything. "Haku, I'm drowning!" he'd yell, even when it was just a sprinkle. When did he learn to endure discomfort without complaint? When did he learn to make himself smaller?
"I brought the painting," Shinji says, pulling out the wrapped watercolor. "It's not finished yet, but I wanted to show you the progress."
Hakurage takes it with careful hands, unwraps it slowly. The paper boat sits among blue hydrangeas, rain falling around it, and the execution is extraordinary. Shinji has captured not just the image but the feeling—the fragility, the inevitable dissolution, the beauty in temporary things.
He always could see beauty, Hakurage thinks. Even in breaking. Even in ending.
"It's perfect," Hakurage says, his voice rough. "But you're right, it's not done yet. Something's missing." "What?" Hakurage points to a spot near the boat. "There. In the original photo, there's something else. I didn't include it in the photo I gave you, but... there's a second boat. A red one. Smaller. Like someone made two boats and set them floating together."
Like we did, Hakurage doesn't say. Two boats for two kids. Yours was white because you said it was pure. Mine was red because you said I needed more color in my life. We floated them in the fountain before it broke, before everything broke, and you made me promise we'd make boats together every summer.
Do you remember? Do you remember any of it?
Shinji studies the painting, considering the composition. "A red boat would balance the blues. Give the eye somewhere to travel." He pauses. "Were they... were the boats important? To whoever made them?"
"Yes." Hakurage's voice is barely audible over the rain. "Very important." "To you?" Yes. Jeez, yes. "To someone I knew," Hakurage says instead. "Someone who isn't here anymore."
Shinji is quiet, adding pencil marks to the painting where the second boat should go. "Everyone here seems to be someone who isn't here anymore. The garden feels full of ghosts."
You're one of them, Hakurage thinks. A ghost of who you were. Haunting the same spaces you once lived in, not knowing you're returning home. "Gardens remember," Hakurage says. "Even when people forget."
Something flickers across Shinji's face—confusion, or recognition, or both. He opens his mouth to speak, then closes it. The unasked question hangs between them.
The rain intensifies, becoming a downpour. Thunder rumbles distant, getting closer. Hakurage tenses at the sound, his entire body going rigid. Storm. My parents. The call. The accident. Storm storm storm—
"Hakurage?" Shinji's voice cuts through the spiral. "You okay?" "I'm fine." The lie is automatic. "Just... I need to check the greenhouse. Make sure nothing's flooding there too."
He stands abruptly, nearly knocking over his bag. Shinji stands too, concerned. "I'll come with you—" "No. Stay here. Keep dry." Hakurage is already moving, putting distance between them before Shinji can see him fall apart. "I'll be back."
He runs into the rain, away from questions and concern and the kid who looks at him with eyes that used to know all his fears. The thunder crashes again, and Hakurage stumbles, catches himself against a tree, presses his forehead to the wet bark.
Six years. It's been six years. The storm can't hurt you anymore.
But his body doesn't believe logic. His body remembers the phone call, the crying, the desperate pleading for his parents to come home. Remembers the call two hours later from police, the words that unmade the world.
He slides down the tree trunk, sits in mud and rain, and lets himself break where Shinji can't see him. Back at the pavilion, Shinji stares after Hakurage's retreating form, worried and confused.
He looks down at the painting, at the space where the red boat should go. His hand moves without thinking, picking up his pencil, sketching the shape from memory.
Except he doesn't have a memory of what the boat should look like. Does he?
But his hand knows. Draws the precise folds, the exact angle, the way a person's fingers would crease paper with more enthusiasm than skill. The red boat takes shape under his pencil, and looking at it makes something in his heart ache.
Two boats. White and red. Floating together. Why does this feel like I've drawn it before?
Thunder cracks directly overhead, and Shinji flinches. The rain comes down harder, wind driving it sideways into the pavilion. He wraps the painting carefully, protecting it from the water, then sits with his arms around his knees, waiting for Hakurage to return.
Waiting for the storm to pass.
Waiting for something he can't name but recognizes anyway—that feeling of standing on the edge of remembering, of answers that hide just behind the rain.
The paper boats wait too, frozen in watercolor, two small vessels against the drowning world, together even in their sinking.
TO BE CONTINUED...