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Izumo, 1996
Heavy rain during the summer is not strange in Izumo, but it came as a surprise to Yoh that evening. When Anna and he left the local fair, there was not a single cloud in the sky, and like a curse, the day had turned grey in minutes when they were going home. The two were now running down the street, with Anna a few steps close behind him; he could hear the splashes of their shoes against the wet concrete, even under the deafening sound of rainfall.
“There!” he yelled, pointing to a bus stop around the corner.
The roof of the stop was wide enough to shield them, and when he reached it, he plopped to one seat to catch his breath.
“It’s so cold!” he said, taking his headphones off and shaking them to dry them.
Anna didn’t reply, she just stood by the clear panels of the stop, squeezing water out of the skirt of her dress. The fabric was soaked to the point where it didn’t look pink anymore; it was almost red. Yoh hadn’t carried a jacket or anything that he could offer her, not that it would’ve helped much. They both looked like they had jumped into a pool.
“My shoes are ruined,” she said simply, staring down at her feet.
The sneakers she was wearing were brand new, completely white; now they had mud around the soles and the tips of the laces were a very nasty grey. Yoh knew that wasn’t his fault, but felt the need to apologize for it. Unable to find the right words, he just stared painfully at her while biting his lip. Anna didn’t seem to notice and sat next to him on the bench, still looking at the poor state of her shoes.
“Don’t worry! We can wash and dry them, they’ll be good as new,” he said, completely unsure if that was true or not.
Anna shrugged. Just that. She didn’t say a word or made a sound that could tell him how she was feeling about what he said, but not being slapped for it was a good sign. With rain still pouring around them, the two sat in silence for a few minutes that felt like hours. Yoh was only eleven years old, but being the school’s outcast, he wasn’t exactly cultivating any skills talking to girls. Sitting in silence was bad, right?
“We’ll be home soon, we’ll keep walking when the rain stops,” he said, thinking she could use some reassurance.
Anna turned to look at him for a second, nodded, and went back to look at the street, undisturbed. Perhaps the one who needed reassurance was him. Grandpa told him he needed to act like a gentleman, so far he just felt like a sneaker ruiner… but he would not give up. The day wasn’t over until they got home for dinner.
“So, eh… Grandma told me you enrolled in school, do you like it?”
“I like to play jump the rope with the girls in my class,” she said, tilting her chin up, “I’m pretty good at it.”
“Everyone can play jump rope,” he said, chuckling.
“It’s not as easy as it looks!” She objected, “what do you do during recess, anyway?”
His chuckle went from amused to awkward, and he pointed to the headphones around his neck, “I find a quiet place to play music, sometimes I don’t hear the bell and that makes me late for class.”
“Do you trade songs with your classmates?”
“I don’t talk to anyone in class, they think I’m weird,” he shrugged.
Anna looked at him in a way that, saying nothing, made him feel like she was trying to comfort him somehow. Her amber eyes didn’t feel as mysterious as they usually were, even when the rest of her features remained still. Yoh was now realizing how embarrassing it was to admit he didn’t have any friends and felt his cheeks burn up.
“But I don’t mind. I don’t really like any of them either,” he added, putting the headphones back behind his ears, “and they don’t have good songs to trade.”
Ready to change the subject, he almost missed something incredible: for a brief second, she had smiled. Maybe it was that his chuckle was contagious, or she found his lack of friends funny, but it was a win he was happy to take. A pair of headlights reflected on the panels of the bus stop, and Yoh recognized the beat-up old car that his mother drove to work just as she stopped right in front of them.
“There you are! Hop in, it’s pouring out here!” She yelled from the driver’s seat.
The next day was time for Anna and Grandma Kino to return to Aomori. She barely said anything to him after Keiko had rescued them from the bus stop, but this time, there were no tears or slaps before they boarded the train. To him, that was enough to consider the weekend a good one, but there was a strange package over the kitchen counter when his Grandpa and he returned from the station.
“I believe that’s for you,” Yohmei said, sitting at the table while his shikigami poured him a cup of tea.
Yoh unwrapped the white handkerchief to find a bright red jumping rope inside, with its plastic handles worn off. There was a note inside, although he knew exactly who had left it:
‘Practice so you can play with your classmates in the fall. Anna.’