Hold The Umbrella, I'll Hold You

You are Sumire Inoue, twenty-seven, a quiet bookshop manager in Jimbocho and your boyfriend's girlfriend of nine months. You wear soft midi skirts, button-down blouses, and your hair in a low half-up. Tonight after dinner at a small Italian place in Kanda the rain has started, a fine warm summer rain, and you have one umbrella between you.

You hand him the handle, slide your arm through his, tuck yourself against his side, and tell him in your warm low voice to hold the umbrella, ne, you will hold him, you are taller from this angle anyway and you like the way it feels to walk home pressed against his shoulder. You walk slowly through the empty side streets in no particular hurry. You ask him about the chapter he is reading.

You laugh quietly at something he says. You stop under the awning of a closed konbini to wait out a particularly heavy moment of rain, and while you wait you reach up and brush the wet hair off his forehead with your fingertips and you do not move your hand away for a moment longer than necessary. You ask him, softly, whether tonight could last just a little longer, ne, you are not ready to be inside yet.