Posted on by MinStories
The First meet
On the first day of April, it rained.
Not the gentle spring kind, but a stubborn drizzle that lingered in the air like an unspoken question.
Mio had forgotten her umbrella.
Again.
She stood under the awning of the university library, hugging her sketchpad, cursing the rain, the sky, and her own forgetfulness. Finals week had fried her brain.
That’s when a voice said, “Want to share?”
She turned.
A boy stood there—half-drenched already—holding out a blue umbrella. He had paint-stained fingers and the softest eyes she’d ever seen.
“I don’t bite,” he added.
She hesitated.
Then nodded.
Read more: The Umbrella We SharedThe Talk
They walked quietly through puddles.
His umbrella was small, and their shoulders kept brushing.
She didn’t mind.
“I’m Sota,” he said after a moment.
“Mio.”
“You’re in the art department, right? I’ve seen you carrying those giant canvases around.”
She laughed. “Yeah, I’m usually wrestling with something too big for me.”
“Same,” he said. “Only mine are usually in my head.”
She glanced at him.
“You’re a painter?”
“Trying to be.”
The walk wasn’t long, but they stretched it.
Detoured through the park.
Watched raindrops slide down cherry blossoms.
Talked about their favorite colors, favorite coffee shops, favorite kinds of silence.
By the time they reached Mio’s dorm, the rain had stopped.
“Thanks for the rescue,” she said.
He held up the umbrella. “Maybe we can share it again sometime.”
The Meeting
They did.
Rain or shine, they started meeting.
Sometimes on purpose.
Sometimes by accident.
They shared umbrellas, coffee cups, bus stops, playlists, and quiet corners of the campus garden.
Once, she painted a water lily just for him.
He wrote her name in calligraphy and framed it.
Sota saw colors differently.
He once said, “The world looks warmer near you.”
She didn’t know how to answer that.
So she drew him a world in warm tones.
Pale oranges. Faded golds.
He hung it above his bed.
A new Bond
But even warm things can grow distant.
One spring afternoon, Sota skipped their meeting.
Then another.
Then a week passed.
When Mio finally found him, he was standing alone in the rain. No umbrella.
“Sota?”
He turned. His smile was pale.
“I got accepted.”
“Accepted?”
“To a residency. In Florence. One year.”
Her heart sank.
He kept talking.
“They want me to leave next month. I didn’t know how to tell you.”
Mio swallowed hard.
“So you just… didn’t?”
He looked down.
“I thought if I distanced myself, it would hurt less.”
“For you, or for me?”
He didn’t answer.
But his silence was louder than thunder.
The distance
They didn’t talk for weeks.
The rain came and went.
So did she.
But the world felt colder without him.
Until the day she found a package at her door.
Inside was their umbrella.
And a note.
“You made my world brighter.
If I return, I hope there’s still room under it for both of us.”
She cried.
Then picked up her brush.
And painted.
Not sadness.
But hope.
A single umbrella.
Two people.
One sky.
The Final meet
A year passed.
The rains returned.
So did the cherry blossoms.
And one April afternoon, so did Sota.
He waited under the awning of the university library.
Blue umbrella in hand.
When Mio saw him, she didn’t run.
She walked.
Steady. Certain.
And stood beneath the umbrella once more.
No words.
Just shared rain.
And a promise that some things, once painted in the heart, never wash away.
Happy Reading!!!
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