POV: Haruka
Rain started falling softly. A drizzle, as though murmuring that something would change.
Haruka was sitting at the dinner table, barely eating. Chopsticks clink, tick-tock clock, her father's usual criticisms—all merged into white noise. But her heart pounded so loudly it could've broken through her ribcage.
She had already packed. Nothing big. Just a change of clothes, her old notebook, the folded piece of paper titled "Things I'd Do If This Life Were Mine," and the number Kaito had scribbled years ago—worn and creased from being read too many times.
But what she hadn't expected was this.
Earlier that evening, she had found it in her poetry book—the one she believed her mother had forgotten she ever wrote in. Tucked inside the pages, like a silent communication, was an envelope. No message. No indication. Just some crisp bills and a bus schedule circled in red.
It was enough.
Her own hands trembled when she tucked the envelope back into her bag again. Her mother's eyes never left the table during dinner, but Haruka noticed how her mother's hand kept straying and straying to brush against the edge of her empty tea cup, a nervous habit.
That single habit said it all.
Her mother knew.
And for once, she wasn't stopping her.
Ten minutes after the dishes were cleared, Haruka slipped on her worn sneakers and her navy windbreaker. Her father had retreated to the study, and her mother stayed in the kitchen, scrubbing dishes that were already clean.
"Mom," Haruka whispered from the doorway.
Her mother didn't turn, but her hand paused in the water.
"…You'll catch a cold," she said softly. "It's raining."
Haruka's throat tightened.
"I have an umbrella."
Her mother nodded, eyes fixed on the sink.
With silent feet and a pounding heart, Haruka disappeared into the night.
The streets shone with rain, the lights smudging like watercolor on the ground. Her backpack thudded softly with each hurried step. The bus stop was three blocks away, and the schedule had said the last departure was 8:47 PM.
8:42.
She sprinted the last corner, her breath rent, her socks wet through.
The bus was still there—door open, engine humming like a lullaby.
She got on, hands shaking as she inserted the fare. The driver barely looked up. Just nodded, and she slipped into a window seat near the back.
The doors whooshed closed.
As the bus pulled out, she turned to look out the window one last time. The outline of her street melted into rain and darkness.
And just like that, she was gone.
The bus was quiet. A couple of elderly passengers dozed near the front. A schoolgirl listened to music with her head against the window. No one noticed Haruka gripping a crumpled piece of notebook paper like it was the only thing anchoring her.
She unfolded it again.
"Things I'd Do If This Life Were Mine."
– Work at a bakery
– Write poems without hiding them
– Go to my university
– Drink coffee without disturbance
– Live near the ocean
– Be able to cry and laugh
– Be able to walk beneath the stars without fear
– Live with Kaito
The last sentence had been written hesitantly. Slowly. As if the ink had paused to think if it was courageous enough to pen the words.
She looked at her reflection in the dark window.
Her face was damp with rain. Her hair stuck to her cheeks. But her eyes—
For the first time in years, they looked awake.
The bus reached the station just past ten. From there, she would take the midnight train. She didn't even have a full plan—just a map in her mind, drawn from scraps of memory and one late-night phone call.
Kaito… I'm coming.
She sat on a bench beneath the platform's dim lights, knees drawn up to her chest. Her phone was off. She'd left her charger at home on purpose. There would be no turning back.
Somewhere in this city, her mother would maybe pace quietly. Or cry. Or just sit in the kitchen and wait for morning.
Haruka closed her eyes, whispering a thank-you into the stillness.
For not stopping me. For seeing me.
When the train pulled in, she got on it with dragging feet, half-drenched, wholeheartedly certain.
The rhythm of the wheels on the rails rocked the carriage quietly. Haruka found a seat by the window and rested her forehead on the glass. Her breath fogged the pane, but beyond it, she saw her reflection again.
The girl in the window wasn't hiding.
She looked like a person who had just decided. A person who had shrugged off the heavy mantle of other people's expectations and stepped out into the rain with her name in her hand.
Kaito…
She remembered his voice on the payphone—gravelly, shocked, trembling with unspoken things.
She remembered the sticky notes, the hot drinks, the way he never told her to hurry.
She recalled the garden at the rear of the old café. How, possibly just possibly, they had both been lost and found something of themselves in each other.
The train started moving, and so did she.
Not to a place, but to a person.
To a promise.
To the self that had been waiting all along.