Rain and Books

This is a story about a book that wanted to touch the rain.

I am something that lives on a bookshelf in an old house.
The bookshelf is in a tatami room facing the veranda of a house where drafts whistle through.


My master is a young man as quiet as a moonlit night, and he works as a farmer. He seems to love the rain because it helps his crops grow well, and it was his custom to read me after he finished maintaining his farm tools on rainy days.

As the sound of rain fills the dim room, the sound of my paper body being turned echoes.
That time made me feel a fleeting eternity, as if only my master and I had been cast away into a distant world.

I want to touch the rain that my master loves.
For some reason, I began to feel something special about the rain.



After the village Bon festival, my master began to go out often, and I hardly ever left the bookshelf.

My master was a person who wore the loneliness of the transition from summer to autumn, but recently he began to wear the softness of the transition from winter to spring.



That day, it had been drizzling since the morning.
My master was dressed more neatly than usual, and while he was reading me, he kept glancing toward the veranda.

A light ink-colored darkness drifted through the room, and the sound of rain echoed refreshingly. I dozed off, happy to be held by him for the first time in a while and comforted by the warmth of his hands.

"Ichiro-san."

A while later, a voice like a ringing bell called my master's name from outside the shoji screen. Still holding me, my master hurriedly grabbed his large luggage and jumped out from the veranda.

My master took the white hand of the woman who was waiting, and at that moment, I slipped and fell into the mud.
Then the two of them locked eyes and ran off together into the clear blue air.
That sight was enough to make me realize that I would never see my master again.

When I looked up at the sky from the mud, countless transparent droplets were pouring down.
This is rain.
I feel as if I have touched the rain before.

Thick, layered clouds were swept away by the wind, and eventually, golden light shone through, and the transparent droplets began to sparkle.
It was a sparkle like the marble in a ramune bottle.


In that sparkle, I remembered the day my master picked me up.
I had been in a musty bookstore in the city for a long time, but my master chose me from among many books and brought me out into the world.

My master, who still had a touch of childhood, hugged me dearly after buying me at the bookstore and brought me home, splashing through the puddles.

That day was also a sunshower like today, and it dampened both me and my master slightly, but his left cheek was illuminated by the sun.

After arriving home, my master carefully wiped me with a hand towel and read me intently while lying in the tatami room.


Ah, it was not that I wanted to touch the rain, but that I wanted to touch the memories within the rain.

The golden droplets falling from the sky were not created by the rain and the sun, but are likely what the memories of my master and me emit.

That sparkle and my paper body seem to be slowly blending together.

(1200 characters)

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