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Rice Shower is like the rain, Urara thinks. Many times it comes suddenly, without warning, just like how Rice came into her life. Yet, Rice hated the rain. Urara never understood why. The rain lets the plants grow, brings forth fun and play, what is there not love about it? Rice would always tell her how it broke or ruined things or brought misfortune, yet… just as Rice was clumsy at times and prone to such mishaps, it was just as endearing.
Perhaps it was because she loved Rice. And she loved the rain by extension, the rain always meant Rice Shower to her, a fleeting reminder of the person who would make her heart would skip several dozen beats.
And yet, something horrid crept in.
And yet, like the conditions that bring forth typhoons, warnings and oddities became more and more apparent, and only given clarity by wickedness of hindsight.
She couldn’t figure out what it was. Rice grew more and more distant, more restless. Bandages began to show up, scars would make their way where there wasn’t any. More and more vapid words about herself were said, more and more those eyes would look lost. It wasn’t as if Rice hadn’t done such things. The bandages weren’t a new thing either, the scattered web of thin scars always would catch her eye, looking like thorns were errantly scratched upon her thighs and forearms.
She never judged. It barely made any sense. King seemed scared when it was mentioned, yet she couldn’t figure out why. Rice may have been more sad than usual and would always get uncomfortable when they were mentioned, but they were just scars. To Urara, scars just meant somebody got better, that they weren’t bleeding or needing bandages anymore—that’s how it was always for her, why would it be any different for anyone else?
Was it her rose-tinted glasses that blinded her? She knew she had fallen for Rice long ago, drawn in to the charm hidden behind the gloom, and yet she didn’t notice that dark thing in the day until it overwhelmed the horizon; building thunderheads billowing over the bay and blotting out the sky, the growing smell of ozone hanging in damp stagnant air.
The conversations turned grim; Urara never liked talking about death, or people disappearing, or anything. She hated it, they always made her so sad. Yet, Rice would always creep towards it.
The memory stings more than ever.
“Rice doesn’t really have a future…” She once said. “Rice will probably disappear long before then.”
Words that now are like a tornado scouring the ground, leveling a community, leaving an indelible scar in its wake. Urara remembers her stomach twisting.
“What… what are you saying, Rice?” Urara’s voice wavered. “Urara doesn’t like it when you say such scary things about yourself! You have a future!” Of course Rice had a future! She wasn’t going to just drop dead, right? Maybe that sliver of hope was always held onto spelt oblivion; that belief because surely Rice must get better someday, and that Urara could do something about that unstopping shelf cloud.
“It’s… Don’t worry about Rice, got it?” Rice’s expression chewed at something deep within. Everything felt wrong and yet, and yet she didn’t say anything. “Oh, um! Actually, Rice was thinking super hard about what to get you because she cares about you lots!” Any other time, that would have flustered Urara, and here it only adds to the rotten feeling in the air. “Rice thinks you will like this!”
It was nicely wrapped. Urara felt like opening it then but… couldn’t bring herself to. “Really?” It still meant a lot. Finality marred it. A insouciant smile on Rice’s face. She almost didn’t want to accept it, and yet she did. What could it have meant except that somebody who she cared about got something for her? How could she not interpret it as a goodbye?
She always got gifts for Rice, so why would a gift be anything but that? Sure it was weird, sure something seemed so horribly wrong, and yet she didn’t act upon that worry. Lady Hindsight will always be a cruel mistress, and there was no exception.
Because what else could that gift have meant?
Today is any other day. Foul weather hangs in the forecast, a creeping unease stabs and twists in the back of Urara’s head.
The gift Rice gave her is by her bedside. An adorable cherry-blossom patterned set of ear socks and a similarly designed bow. King helps her tie the bow and she is on with her day.
The day goes on without a hitch. She wishes Rice would be there to see her wearing them, but she can’t find Rice anywhere. Maybe she’s just not feeling well, which would explain all of Rice’s weirdness the last few days.
It’s quiet.
The storm comes in late in the day. Thunder and lightning force her indoors. She doesn’t like it, but she just has to accept it. Rice is still nowhere to be seen.
And yet…
Rice is like the rain, because she doesn’t want the rain to end.
But like weakening winds and the sun peeking through the clouds signaling rainfall’s end, she threatens the same. The most horrifying of messages meet her before she goes to bed.
She’s been restless this night, same as the nights prior, toiling away over her nagging heart. Her phone buzzes, and she knows King would chastise her for using it this late, but she does so nonetheless.
Like a thunderclap, the phone’s clattering against the floor echoes out deafeningly loudly
Her heart stops for a moment. She rises. She doesn’t care about being quiet, or subtle, or anything really. Rice is in danger.
The rain is going to end. She doesn’t want it to. She doesn’t want it to, she won’t let it. Her heart pounds. A horrible maze of strange misshapen puzzle pieces come together. She frantically forces herself out of bed.
She hears King stir, call out, she doesn’t stay. She runs. She runs as fast as she can. The simple halls feel more labyrinthine than they have ever. She barrels down the stairwell. She doesn’t care. She doesn’t care if she is loud, she doesn’t care if she is making a commotion. She needs to save her rain. She can’t lose her, she doesn’t want to lose her.
The dorm head shouts out, gets in her way, but she pushes past, blowing through her and knocking her out of the way.
Her rain will stop soon if she doesn’t do anything. She can apologize later, make it up for them later, but not now, she needs to save Rice.
Breaching past the door, she sees a figure atop the dorm adjacent, stood upon the side.
Rice!
She doesn’t yell. She’s sure Rice wouldn’t hear her. Rice’s too high up and the rain’s too heavy to make Haru’s voice out clearly.
She forces her way into Miho dorm. She’s sure she broke the door. She can make up for it once Rice is safe. Once the rain doesn’t end. She runs, and runs, and runs. She doesn’t care about being quiet, she sprints up the stairs—she trips over a step, she tumbles down five or so. It hurts, but it doesn’t matter. She can take it, she can still stand. She forces herself back on her feet, returning to her desperate forward march.
She can’t lose her.
Nobody is coming after her. She doesn’t note it. She doesn’t worry herself with that. All she cares about is making sure the rain doesn’t go. That the joys and tumult of it never leave her side—that the girl she can never stop thinking about doesn’t disappear.
She runs and runs. Her footsteps echo out through the stairwell, her panicked breaths barely are heard over the frantic pounding in her ears. “Rice, wait! I’m almost there!” She shouts. She’s almost at the zenith of Miho.
And like a thunderstorm, the last crack of thunder leaves trepidation in its wake, just like the slam as the door is kicked open. She yells. “Rice! Don’t…” There’s nobody here. The empty space is nauseating. “Rice…?” There’s nobody there.
She slowly creeps forward. “Rice? Where… Where are you?” There’s nobody there. There’s only one way off this roof. She would have seen her, right? She was just up here, right?
Rice is okay. She has to be. “Rice where are you? Please, I’m here! You don’t have to do something so scary! I’m not mad!” She pleads. “So… please don’t hide! Urara wants you to be okay!”
There’s only two ways off this roof.
She doesn’t look off the ledge. She doesn’t want to know. She doesn’t want to know. She can hear a scream from below. “Rice?” Her voice shakes. “Don’t… don’t mess around like this… Urara is sc–scared…” Her damp clothes stick to her, the cold bites at her. The shivering only blends more into her own trembling.
There’s nobody else here. Just a pair of shoes—a note tucked in within them as if to protect it from the storm, and that endearing bowler cap. She doesn’t pickup the note. The noise below has become impossible to ignore. There’s cries and shouts. Somebody might need her help. A pit deeper than deep forms in her stomach. She looks do—
She shouldn’t have looked. Her breath hitches. She shouldn’t have looked. The sight stings and stabs. She shouldn’t have looked. Like a deluge of pelting hail smashing into her, like lightning searing her from the inside out.
Rice was like the rain. Beautiful at times and always far too fleeting, coming just as suddenly as it leaves.
Rice is down there. Splayed out, barely recognizable from the height. Ambulance sirens wail. The horrid sight and sound, the painful cold, the winds all of it etch themselves into her brain. An unforgettable moment.
Rice was like the rain, because the rain was always something she looked forward to being with. And yet. And yet…
“R–Rice…?” The shearing winds within drown her voice out in piercing noise.
She knows Rice can’t hear her. Rice is not here. It’s just her and the rain. The words she never had the courage to admit will never be spoken to the girl who needed to hear it most.
And like the rain, the absence of her leaves decay and desiccation. The soil cracks and breaks and plants wither and die. She doesn’t know what to do anymore. She screams for Rice. She screams for Rice to come back. To never go, to never leave her again. She shouts out and cries, she shouts and shouts, but nothing comes. Rice is not with her anymore.
Rice was like the rain. She wishes she wasn’t.
For the shortest of moments she thinks of joining Rice—to cast herself towards oblivion, to vanish just like the passing smell of petrichor after the storm’s long over, but she doesn’t. She doesn’t move.
She wishes the rain will never end. That she can hold onto those fleeting moment and let them never pass. That Rice will come back in some way, alive. But unlike the rain, that will never happen, Urara knows that.
“D–don’t… don’t leave me…” Her frail voice pleads, shredded apart by her previous bout. She’s alone up here. She crumbles, her legs give out. The downpour pelts her, ice cold spears digging into her. Warmth trails down her face. “Why…?” She clutches onto the rain-soaked bowler cap.
Rice was unlike the rain. The rain needs to end, or else the plants that depend on it are suffocated, but that didn’t apply to Rice. That didn’t apply, so why did she have to leave? Why did she have to go?
Arms wrap around her, dull pressure pushing into her. She doesn’t have anything left in her to fight it. Any assurances cannot undo what’s been done, they cannot bring back her rain. She wants Rice back.
She misses the rain. She wishes the rain would never end.
The morning after it comes. She isn’t fully there. A jagged hollow hangs within, fleeting wisps of what transpired come and go. Her body feels like its made of lead and like everything is stuck on delay.
She doesn’t feel alive.
Amorphous static has taken its place in her head, blotting out any thoughts. Vacuous noise tainted by an ailing heart.
The rain has ceased. The sun peeks through the windows. She doesn’t have it in her to rise from bed. She curls up. The bowler cap is beside her bed.
Something swells and bursts out from within at the sight. Tears spill once more. It hurts. It hurts more than anything. Pain, crushing her chest into oblivion. Grief, rending her lame and her legs unable to run. Anger, hot like the tears running down her cheeks.
'Urara should’ve been there' echoes through the miasma in her head. She should have left sooner. She was too late. But, what’s done is done. There’s no going back.
She wants there to be rain again. The gaping wound doesn’t seal, it festers and rots within days. She trudges through the day by day, she doesn’t have it in her to act happy about anything.
King looks at her with an expression she can’t understand. She ignores the offer to go out. She doesn’t want to do much. She pushes past her roommate, head hung low, before returning to bed.
She wants the rain to come back.
She doesn’t hear much about Rice Shower. No memorials, just gossip about how she vanished one day, just gossip about the why to her sudden disappearance. She knows what happened, and yet thinking about it is like jabbing a screwdriver into a open laceration.
She curls up.
She’s cold. She wants her rain back. She loves her rain, she wants to tell it to her. She doesn’t want to wait anymore. She doesn’t want to be scared and waiting to know about the fate of her rain anymore, she wants it to be over.
She doesn’t know how to move forward, she doesn’t want to. She misses her rain.
Two and a half pass and… the first drops of rainfall come once more.
Her phone buzzes. She lazily lifts up her phone and checks the notification—she almost drops her phone. She wants to cry. A shuddering gasp leaves her.
Her rain is back.
Not unscathed, nor ever able to be same, but her rain is back. Rice is alive. Rice is alive and that’s all that matters. She doesn’t care if she is crying, she doesn’t care if King is staring at her with that troubled and worried expression, because Rice is alive. A noxious weight feels like it is lifted off her shoulders.
And yet, like the mile wide path of a tornado that scars the very landscape, the wound remains.