He moved through town with no direction, like he had often done on mornings such as this. Rain fell at an angle, ignoring him and his umbrella, as puddles were stepping-stones at all his feet. Streets in Yukihara were deserted; the town always was too quiet, too small but now in rain it felt empty, like all the people who had ever lived there had come together and decided to sneak away, and they hadn't told him where they were going.
He ended up unintentionally at the station. The small roofed platform. The one rail line disappearing into the grey. He stood under the roof watching the rain fall on the rail track and how the light from its reflection changed the platform floor into a soft, shimmering texture.
The morning train sat idle at the platform. Inside the cab, the driver sat with a cup of tea, steam curling from it and dissolving into the damp air. The station was otherwise empty.
Or so Hiroto thought.
Then he saw her.
She was standing on the far end of the platform, half-obscured by the sheets of rain between them. She wore a simple yellow dress the kind of yellow that doesn't belong in November, or in Yukihara, or in any weather like this. It was summer-yellow, the yellow of something that should not have been there.
And she was completely dry.
Hiroto stared. The rain fell in curtains all around her. It struck the platform at her feet, soaked the railing behind her, made everything within three meters of her shimmer and blur but not a single drop landed on her. Not on her dress. Not on her hair. Not on the pale skin of her arms, which hung loose at her sides.
That isn't possible.
He turned toward the train driver.
"Excuse me. That girl — why isn't she getting wet?"
The driver looked up, mildly irritated at being interrupted. His gaze swept the platform, lingered, came back to Hiroto with a frown.
"What girl? There's no one there."
"She's right there," Hiroto said. "Yellow dress. End of the platform."
The driver squinted. Looked again. Shook his head.
"Kid, there's nobody there. You sure you got enough sleep?"
Hiroto looked back.
She was still there.
She had not moved. She was not looking at him. She seemed to be looking at something far away, something beyond the tracks, beyond the grey curtain of rain and rooftops and sky. Her expression was not sad, exactly. It was something quieter than sad. Something patient.
She looks like someone who has been waiting a long time, he thought. And has stopped being surprised by it.
He walked toward her. His shoes splashed through shallow puddles. The rain did not let up. But something in him some dormant, long-unused thing made him move anyway.
He stopped a few steps away.
"Hello," he said. His voice came out quieter than he intended. "What are you doing here? And why aren't you "
She turned.
Their eyes met.
He felt it before he understood it — the way you sometimes feel a door open in a room you had forgotten existed.
Her eyes were very still. Dark, and deep in a way that had nothing to do with color. And for one impossible second, looking into them, Hiroto felt as if he were standing somewhere enormous not a train station but some vast and unhurried place, a place where time moved differently or perhaps didn't move at all.
He opened his mouth to speak again.
She vanished.
There was no noise and no movement; one second she was standing on the platform, and the next second rain had fallen on the empty platform but with a single drop of rain clearly audible in the air above the platform it landed on the dark concrete of the platform with a distinct sound, as if it were the period at the end of a sentence.
Hiroto stood frozen.
"Who are you?" he whispered.
No answer. Only the rain.