Chapter 25: Actions Warm Enough to Melt Winter (III)

I drifted past the school hiding every sign of the earlier chaos on the rooftop.

I can't look at their faces.

I feel like everyone's looking at my way with pity, for how I acted, and fear, for what I've become.

Violations and suspensions will come through, a thorough scolding and counseling once more, I knew that too well.

So I've done what I always did best, to run away from it all, and to keep everything to myself.

Do I skip steps of the universe's functions by escaping reality? All I wanted was to be unconditionally happy, yet here I am, falling into this hole again and again.

The adrenaline was gone—I was finally conscious.

It was already raining, and each drop was an ice shard that stung my skin.

Winter rains aren't something I want to get soaked to, or there will be a fever that won't bother leaving me breathing.

So I ran to the park, hoping to easily reach the shades of my dango stall.

And the universe had to play one more cruel card against me—because as I turned onto the bricked path I walked every day, something wasn’t right.

I felt it before I saw it.

And my lungs forgot what they were supposed to do.

My bag dropped to the ground with a thud, leaving me staring at what stood between me and the place I called my sanctuary.

The dango stall.

—or what used to be.

Tarpaulins, torn.

Banners filled with kanji, ripped.

Skewers, scattered.

Soy glazes, trailing down on the pavement, joining the rainwater.

Stall, destroyed.

Left? Nothing.

I couldn’t move.

For a second, I just stood there, trying to blink it into an illusion. Maybe I was still asleep under the rooftop tank. Maybe this was some distorted dream woven from my anger and exhaustion.

But no.

I'm awake.

I remember everything.

I approached the wreckage carefully, as if it was a bomb waiting to go off again.

It would've felt better if a bomb really went off on this stall causing the wreckage.

Yet I was wrong.

I saw it—the cash box, pried open and emptied.

The gas tank, missing entirely.

The small notebook where I tracked inventory, shredded and crumpled in a pile near the gutter.

The realization hit like a punch I hadn’t braced for.

I stumbled forward, my red damp hair clouding over my vision.

My knees gave out as I crouched down beside the ruins, my hand hovering over the torn grill, the bent frame, the spilled ingredients that had been meant for today's customers.

This isn't just a robbery. They would've left the whole stall intact if it meant taking only what's valuable.

This is something meant to cripple me, to corner me and leave me with no choices.

My mind felt strangely quiet, almost numb. I wasn't screaming, or crying, or even trying to fix anything.

The tears were buried too deep now.

And deeper than that, was what this dango stall meant to me.

It was one of the few things in my life I built with my own sweat and blood. The one thing I thought inseparable from mine. I had nothing else—no family that stayed, no love returned, no promise that didn’t slip through my fingers.

My once called 'Mitarashi Dango Empire' was nothing more than remnants of a fallen kingdom.

I traced the phantom lines of the dango sign with my fingers, not seeing the damaged wood, but the smooth, unblemished surface of that day I hammered it into place.

I remembered the first clumsy strike, how the hammer had slipped and nearly smashed my thumb, making me wince, even now.

Another memory, equally vivid, pushed through the fog. The long line at the government self-supporting program office, the stifling heat, the hours I’d spent clutching my application forms, wondering if I'd ever get this chance. The relief that had washed over me when they finally called my name, the thrill of signing those papers that promised me this very stall, this tiny corner in the park that became my whole world.

I remembered the time I almost collapsed on the exhaustion brought by the endless stretch of customers at that summer festival months ago. I was moving on pure adrenaline, scooping, skewering, glazing, my arms aching, my voice hoarse from shouting orders. The sight of empty plates and happy smiles had pushed me through. Every single dango, every single customer, every bead of sweat felt like it was tied to this place.

The warmth of the sun on my back that day, was now replaced with the cold chill of raindrops that made my teeth chatter and my whole body tremble.

It feels like I plunged into an ice bath.

I don’t know how long I stayed there—kneeling in silence, heart hollowing out like a rotten log.

“This is…all that I had left…”

A voice-breaking whisper.

The sketchbook, I thought.

Would Kousaka-san draw this?

Would she find beauty in the wreckage the way I couldn’t?

It was easier not to feel.

But I guess what made this hurt wasn’t just the destruction.

The stall never hurt anyone.

It never brought disgrace but a smile on their faces.

…So why?

Can somebody…tell me why…?

There was a cruel symmetry to it, wasn’t there?

Karma.

The universe, ever so fond of irony, reminding me that everything I touched still breaks. That no matter how carefully I lay down the bricks, something always comes along to crack the foundation.

Maybe it’s my sin—for dreaming that I could have something of my own. A sustainable life, a happy ending, and Kousaka-san.

This is one of the dwindling reasons to wake up every day and do something that doesn't involve being abandoned, fighting, or waiting for people to leave.

Maybe this was payment. Maybe I wasn't meant to crawl out of the pit I'd been tossed to.

Now, I pay the toll every single time I attempt to.

I looked at my hands—bloodied, dirtied, trembling—and I thought:

“This is what I get, isn’t it?”

I realized that karma doesn’t come as a lightning bolt or a car crash or a hospital bed.

It comes slowly.

It rips the world apart at the seams, one modest thing at a time.

It destroys the dango stall you poured yourself into.

It snatches the umbrella you held over someone else’s head.

It breaks the hand you didn’t have the courage to hold.

It empties the heart you thought you already split in two.

And it leaves you like this—kneeling on the ground, next to the wreckage of your last safe place, too numb to cry, too tired to scream.

Yet with that silent scream, it looks like someone finally heard.

The sound of the rain changed—from harsh torrents to gentle patters against polyester.

And a presence shadowed over the pathetic picture of a boy soaked in the rain.

And then, a shade. That shade that I was looking for the moment I stepped out of the school.

I looked up slowly, not daring to believe it at first.

A golden beam illuminating the darkness of the skies, more like an angel that descended upon me to bring salvation, and the longer I stared on that angelic face, the more captivated I became.

Kousaka-san.

She was still in her school uniform, blouse and blazer soaked from the downpour, and her breath heaving slightly like she'd run all the way from school to here.

And the black umbrella in her hand wasn't covering her.

It was over me.

"...You'll get colds. Get out of here." I murmured, returning my gaze at the wreckage.

I heard no reply.

Instead, I heard soft movements from behind me, and I realized that she already knelt beside me with that calculated care and grace.

And the skirt that she wore inches shorter than regulation, was finally in line with the rules.

"I'm healthy. This weather doesn't bother me."

"Then why are you here?"

I gave her a sidelong glare. She carried an expression that she only showed to me—eyes gentle, mouth flat—but not cold either. It was a kind of understanding and warmth I hadn’t known I missed until I saw it again.

I should've felt angry feeling small and exposed like this. But somehow, knowing her, she always barged to the person inside of me and not on the mask outside.

“I was heading home,” she said softly, voice nearly drowned by the rain. “Then I realized I passed by here and didn’t see the light.”

My voice stuck in my throat. “You didn’t have to—”

“Enough of the masquerade, Shimizu,” she interrupted.

“But I—”

“I'm not glorifying this action, or trying to mock you. I know the value of what you lost. You clearly need someone to stand next to you now, and that's what I'm going to do.”

She didn't let me reply.

"I wanted to finally talk to you, to visit you, to walk with you again. To say everything that bothered me since that night you said those things. I wanted some clearance, yet we both pulled ourselves into quiet distance, didn't we?"

She was correct, and that embarrassed me the most. How easily she said the warm things that sounded too strange for somebody like her, and how she was the first to approach and open up when I couldn't.

I really thought that our connection was over on the night that I confessed to her, but maybe I'd misunderstood after all.

Communication fixes misunderstandings, not distance, that's what my mother said. I was entirely on the wrong side of things all of this time.

I looked back down at the mud-slick pavement. “Sorry. I hope that you're not going to yell at me for getting in another fight."

Kousaka-san didn’t respond to my half-hearted apology right away.

She remained beside me, one hand gripping the umbrella, and my bag resting on her knee, exposed slightly to the rain. It dripped down her wrist, slid to her elbow, and disappeared behind the wool of her sleeve.

I should’ve scolded her for getting into my level.

But what could I do? I can't stop her when she decides to act it out.

“…Do I look like I’m in the mood to yell?” she asked quietly. "You're already freezing here, and that's the first thing in your head? You're acting like an ass again."

I lifted my head just enough to meet her gaze.

She wasn’t smiling. She wasn’t scowling either.

She held that look for a moment, as if inspecting every inch of my battered expression.

And then she said something unexpected.

“I didn’t hate it.”

I blinked. “…What?”

“The fight,” she clarified. “The way you stood up for me. Honestly, I did need saving that time,"

She brushed a wet strand of hair behind her ear. “I'm just surprised that it came from you.”

Her words burrowed into me before I could throw up any of my usual walls.

She just understood.

I let out a tired exhale that might have been a laugh. “I hate that we had to reconcile that way. I wanted it to be more harmless.”

The look on her face told me she was about to make some remark in disagreement. I cut her off before she could begin.

“And I thought you’d never talk to me again,” I admitted.

She tilted her head, puzzled.

“After what I said,” I added, forcing the words through a sore throat. “After I confessed.”

The rain answered in her silence.

But still, she didn’t look away. And that, more than anything, felt like a small kind of mercy.

“Do you want me to pretend I didn’t hear it?” she asked. “Would it be easier if I acted like it never happened?”

I shook my head.

“No. That’d be worse.”

She nodded. And for a long time, we sat like that—under the umbrella, surrounded by broken wood, the faint smell of soy and smoke still lingering like a ghost of something I lost.

Then she stood.

I didn’t.

I didn’t trust my legs to stand yet. I didn’t trust myself to follow wherever this was going.

She looked down at me, droplets clinging to the tips of her golden lashes.

“…You don’t want to go back to your apartment, do you?”

I hesitated.

She already knew the answer. I saw it in her eyes.

Frankly speaking...yes. The apartment was still echoing with memories—some mine, some not—and right now, the idea of walking into that silence again was unbearable.

“…It’s not that I don’t want to,” I said finally. “It’s just…I don’t think I can breathe there right now. Let me stick around here for a little while.”

Kousaka’s fingers tightened slightly around the umbrella’s handle.

She looked away, as if weighing something.

Then, without another word, she dropped the bombshell that I already feared would come.

“No. Come to my place.”

Her voice was softer than I’d ever heard it.

“You’re cold. You’re bruised and bleeding somewhere—I can’t tell where, because you’re pretending it doesn’t hurt. And I know you’d rather sleep in a gutter than ask for help, so I’m offering it first.”

I tried to form a clever excuse, but nothing came out. And if it did, she'll get through it right away.

“Guess you’ve got me all figured out, huh…”

“You don’t have to talk,” she followed, quieter. “I’m not dragging you in for a conversation or to make you explain anything. I just…I don't want you sitting in a cold apartment alone tonight.”

I don't know what kind of generosity conquered her soul that led her to offer her place with me, but whatever it was, I already stopped questioning her intentions long ago.

She didn't wait for another response. She grabbed my arm and forced me up, and the force of her pull was enough to make me stagger towards her face.

My heart thumped not from fear...but this time, desire.

Maybe it was the rain.

Maybe it was the look in her eyes that said 'you don’t have to pretend with me' right now.

Maybe it was the way her voice held none of the sharp wit she usually wielded like a weapon—but instead, something gentler.

She was just supposed to grab my arm and let me go afterwards, but she interlaced her fingers with mine, holding on tight.

I felt myself warming up against her touch. It was the same hands that once clung to the stall, now melted to hers.

And though I knew she probably didn’t mean it as a romantic gesture, it still sent a promising feeling everywhere in my body.

I glanced at the ruins behind me for one last time, and muttered a wordless promise to fix it, to fix me, and everything between the two of us below the shade of umbrella that fell apart.