Chapter 12

 

                                                                        Will We Meet Again

The station was quieter than usual.

It wasn’t the noise of rushed footsteps or the clatter of trains—just the soft hum of announcements and the distant echo of rain outside. The skies had opened once again, and everything was touched by silver. The scent of the downpour mixed with the smell of concrete and rusted rails, like a familiar memory coming back home.

Renji stood on the platform, hands deep in his pockets, umbrella gripped tightly. He hadn’t been waiting for long, but it felt like years.

He told himself he didn’t know why he was here.

But he did.

He’d read her letter again that morning—the one she’d left behind when she vanished from school. Her handwriting had trembled across the paper, filled with hesitation, guilt, and longing. It wasn’t a goodbye. Not really. It was a question she hadn’t dared ask.

And now… he had the answer.

He looked up as the train arrived.

And then—he saw her.

Yui.

No umbrella. No suitcase. Just her, hair damp from the rain, standing still on the opposite platform.

Their eyes locked through the misted air. For a moment, the noise of the world vanished.

She walked slowly toward the stairs, down, across the tunnel, and up again—until she was in front of him. Closer than she had ever been.

“I thought I missed my chance,” she said.

“You didn’t,” Renji said.

She looked down at the umbrella in his hand—the old, slightly broken one, with the faint blue ink inside: Ame Yui.

“I never forgot,” he added.

Yui’s lips trembled, and her voice cracked, small and raw:

“I was scared to come back. I thought I didn’t deserve to.”

“You do,” he said simply. “You always did.”

The silence that followed wasn’t awkward. It was full of answers.

Then, as if pulled by something stronger than memory, Renji opened the umbrella and stepped closer.

She stepped under it with him.

Rain tapped above their heads.

And under the old fabric, with the name of a girl who had once handed it to him without a word, they kissed.

Soft.

Real.

Not as strangers or as memories—but as who they had become.

The rain around them blurred the world, but not what mattered.

Because sometimes—

When the rain falls twice...

The one you waited for finds their way back.

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