Chapter 13: When the Rain Finally Stops

Haruto woke to silence.

The kind of silence that pressed against the ears, heavy and absolute. His eyes opened slowly, the dim morning light filtering weakly through the curtains. For the first time since he had found the diary, there was no soft humming by the window, no gentle figure waiting at the edge of his vision.

The corner of the room where Yui often stood was empty.

His chest tightened. A strange stillness lingered, as if the air itself had forgotten how to breathe. Haruto sat up, the blanket slipping down his shoulders, and for a fleeting second he prayed she might appear if he called out her name. But his lips wouldn’t move. He already knew.

She was gone.

The desk beside his bed caught his eye. The diary lay open, though he was sure he had closed it before falling asleep. Heart pounding, he reached for it. On the final page, just beneath the pressed cosmos, was a line written in faint, unfamiliar handwriting.

“I was happy… because you were with me.”

Haruto’s breath shattered into a sob. He clutched the book to his chest, burying his face in its worn cover. His shoulders shook violently as the weight of her absence finally broke through the dam he had built inside himself.

“Yui…” His voice cracked into the stillness. “I wasn’t ready… I’m still not ready…”

But the words on the page glowed faintly under his tears, a reminder that she had left him not with emptiness, but with gratitude.

---

The days that followed blurred together.

Classes, conversations, laughter in the corridors—all felt muted, as though the world had been drained of color. Aya continued to glance at him with suspicion, but Haruto couldn’t bring himself to explain. How could he tell anyone that he had fallen in love with a ghost? That he had carried her unspoken wish into reality, only to lose her again?

Still, life moved on. It always did.

Weeks later, during the soft warmth of spring, Haruto boarded a train out of town. His destination was the countryside where Yui’s family had once lived, where her grave was said to be. The ride was long, the scenery shifting from gray rooftops to endless fields of green, dotted with blossoms that swayed in the breeze.

When he finally arrived, the cemetery was quiet and unassuming. He wandered until he found her name carved into a simple stone, weathered but still clear: Yui Aoyama.

His knees felt weak. Slowly, he placed a small bouquet of fresh cosmos flowers at the base of the stone. The petals quivered in the wind, their pale pinks and whites mirroring the pressed flower in the diary.

Kneeling there, Haruto whispered, “Your story isn’t unfinished anymore. Someone knows. Someone remembers. And I’ll keep remembering too, as long as I live.”

The words left his lips like a vow.

For a long time he remained still, eyes tracing her name, hand resting against the stone as though it were the last thread binding them.

---

When he finally rose, the sky had shifted.

The clouds that had clung stubbornly for weeks were breaking apart, patches of blue stretching wide and unburdened. For the first time since he had moved into town, the air carried no trace of rain. The sun, timid at first, poured gently over the countryside, warm and forgiving.

As Haruto walked down the narrow path away from the graveyard, he felt it—a warmth brushing against his shoulder, soft as a hand resting there. His steps slowed, and he turned his head slightly.

No one was there. Yet he knew.

Tears blurred his vision, but this time he didn’t crumble. Instead, he smiled. A trembling, fragile smile that grew steadier with each breath.

“…Goodbye, Yui,” he whispered into the breeze. “And thank you.”

---

The dirt road stretched before him, lined with wildflowers swaying in the sunlight. The diary rested safely in his bag, the pressed cosmos preserved between its pages.

As he walked, a faint sound carried through the wind—gentle, fleeting, like laughter. Her laughter. It echoed once, then again, before fading into the distance, leaving only the brightness of the day behind.

Haruto tilted his face toward the sky. The warmth of the sun touched him fully now, wrapping around his weary heart. He exhaled slowly, as if releasing the last of his grief into the open air.

The rain had finally stopped.

And though she was gone, Yui’s presence lingered in every petal, every breeze, every corner of his heart.

Haruto walked on, each step carrying him toward a future no longer weighed by silence, but lifted by memory.

The road stretched endlessly, the sky vast and clear.

And somewhere within that vastness, he carried Yui’s wish—not as a ghost haunting him, but as a light guiding him forward.