The rain came slowly at first.
It arrived the way soft things do — without announcement, without fanfare — just the faint sound of it beginning somewhere above them, and then the cool kiss of it landing on Mizuki's upturned palms. She watched the droplets collect in the lines of her hands, small and clear and quiet, and something in her chest settled in a way it hadn't in a long time.
But the wall was just high enough.
She could see the rain. She could feel it. But the horizon — the place where the sunset was still burning through in soft amber and rose on the other side of the city — kept slipping just past the top edge of the boundary wall. She shifted in her wheelchair, leaning slightly forward, tilting her head. Tried a different angle.
Still not quite right.
She pressed her lips together and said nothing. She was getting good at that — at adjusting what she wanted to fit what was available. At deciding things would have to be enough.
She gripped the armrests and tried, slowly, to push herself upward. Not because she thought she could do it properly. But because some stubborn, quiet part of her still needed to try. Her arms trembled. Her legs didn't answer. She made it halfway — the world tilting — and felt herself beginning to fail.
Then she felt hands. Steady and careful, sliding beneath her knees and around her back, and before she fully understood what was happening, she was up — lifted cleanly from the chair, held against a chest that was warm even through rain-damp fabric.
"Arashi —" she said, surprised. "What are you doing?"
"Nothing much," he said simply, already turning toward the wall, already lifting her slightly higher so the horizon opened up in front of her — unobstructed, vast, the last of the sunset bleeding into the rain clouds in colors that had no names. "You couldn't see properly. So I helped."
"You could have just —"
"This was faster."
She didn't have an answer for that.
She was in his arms, her shoulder against his chest, and the full stretch of the sky was before her now — the city glowing and blurred beneath the rain, the clouds lit from underneath in pale silver and fading gold, the place where the sunset and the storm had decided to meet each other softly, without argument.
Mizuki felt something loosen in her chest.
"Oh," she said quietly.
Arashi didn't say anything. He just stood there, holding her, letting her look.
Her cheeks were warm despite the rain. She was aware — suddenly, plainly — of how close they were. Of his arms steady around her. Of the fact that she wasn't sure where to look that wasn't either the sky or his face, and both felt like too much and exactly right at the same time.
She cleared her throat very quietly and looked at the rain.
The first proper drops reached them a minute later — light and tentative, asking permission before they committed. Mizuki turned her palms upward and let the rain collect there, watching the tiny pools tremble in the lines of her hands. There was something almost childlike about it — the complete, uncomplicated attention she gave it, like she was seeing rain for the first time or for the last time or like it didn't matter which.
Then she looked at Arashi.
He was already watching her — the way he sometimes did when he thought she wasn't paying attention. Quietly. Carefully.
"Arashi," she said.
He met her eyes.
She threw the water straight into his face.
It wasn't much — barely a splash, more suggestion than substance — but it landed squarely, and the look on his face in that half second before he registered what had happened was worth everything. His eyes went wide. His head pulled back. Water dripped from the tip of his nose, from the edge of his jaw, and for a moment he simply stood there, completely ambushed, completely undone.
Then he exhaled — a short disbelieving sound — and started to laugh.
He shifted his weight, still holding her, and the sudden movement threw his balance sideways in a way he clearly hadn't planned.
"Hey stop moving," he said — somewhere between a warning and a laugh — adjusting his grip and planting his feet more carefully.
Mizuki was already laughing. A full laugh, the kind that comes from deep in the chest, the kind she had almost forgotten the sound of. She covered her mouth with one hand but it didn't help at all.
"I am going to fall," Arashi informed her, with great seriousness, still trying to redistribute his weight.
"I didn't do anything," she said, which was a complete lie, and they both knew it.
He managed to stay upright.
For another few seconds.
Then his foot found a patch of rain-slicked tile and his balance gave up entirely — and he went down, twisting at the last moment with some instinct of self-preservation, landing on the rooftop floor with a sound that was more surprised than pained. Mizuki tumbled after him, landing half across his chest in a graceless, spectacular heap.
Neither of them moved for a moment.
Then Mizuki started laughing again — softer this time, her forehead dropping against his shoulder. Arashi lay flat on his back on the wet rooftop, staring up at the open sky, and laughed too. A long, released sound. Like something he'd been holding and finally set down.
The rain fell on them equally. It didn't ask whether they deserved it.
They lay there for a while, side by side, looking up at the clouds. The sunset had dissolved entirely into deep violet, the last light trapped somewhere under the cloud cover and glowing faintly upward — pale silver, pale gold. Rain fell into their open eyes and they blinked and didn't move.
It was cold. It was uncomfortable. It was, somehow, the best they had felt in weeks.
The laughter faded slowly — gradually, in small diminishing echoes — until there was just the rain and their breathing and the city humming far below.
After a while, Arashi turned his head.
Mizuki was still looking at the sky. Her wet hair fanned around her. A raindrop sat at the corner of her eye and she didn't wipe it away, and he couldn't tell from this angle whether it was the rain or something else. He looked at her face — really looked — at the way the gray light caught the line of her cheek, the slight parting of her lips, the particular quality of stillness she had in moments when she wasn't performing being fine.
"Mizuki," he said quietly.
She turned and looked at him.
He held her gaze for a moment before he spoke — the way he always did when he meant something all the way through.
"I want us to always be like this." A beat. "Don't give up. Please." The rain fell softly around his words. "I want to spend my whole life with you."
She looked at him. Searched his face the way she sometimes did — looking for the crack in it, for where certainty ended and performance began.
She didn't find one.
She looked back at the sky.
A long moment passed. The city hummed. A gust moved across the rooftop and the rain shifted briefly sideways.
Then, without looking at him, Mizuki reached over and hit him lightly on the arm.
"Don't say things like that," she said.
Soft. Not dismissive. Not composed either. Just soft.
Arashi didn't push. He turned his gaze back to the sky too, and they lay there a little longer — in the rain and the quiet and the particular warmth that exists between two people who are cold together and don't mind.
Then, eventually — "We should go." He glanced at the sky. "It's getting dark. And the rain's picking up."
Mizuki nodded once.
He got to his feet first, retrieved the wheelchair, and helped her into it carefully — hands steady and unhurried, adjusting until he was sure she was settled before stepping behind her. He pushed her back across the rooftop, the wheels leaving thin wet lines on the tiles.
At the door, Mizuki glanced back once — at the silver rain against the violet sky, at the city lights blurring and multiplying in the wet dark below.
She turned back around.
She didn't say anything.
She didn't need to.