Rain - 1

The rays of the mellow setting sun crept through the window. The soft light fell on my face, startling me from my sleep. 

I shielded my eyes and slid off my chair. I stretched a bit, just as the sunshine across the floor disappeared. I looked up through the window, at the sky. A little cloud blocked the sun, its golden outline gleaming. And surrounding it, dark, dark clouds. A storm was coming.

I lazily shut the windows of my room and walked into the corridor of the desolate hostel. All the residents had gone to the music festival nearby, and I was the only one in the building. My footsteps echoed through the darkening halls as I walked out of the building towards the bus stop. I sat on the sheltered bench, my headphones on, listening to some songs. My eyes started to droop, when I suddenly heard a little plink. One plink turned into many, as the water started dripping down the plastic roof of the shelter. The grey road slowly turned black as the skies watered the earth. 

The clouds rolled over the distant hills like waves over the sea, thundering.

I was ill-protected, clearly, as my shirt was already drenched in water.

I remained under the shelter, waiting for the rain to stop. I put my headphones into my little rucksack and waited for the storm to pass.

I put my hands on the bench, and looked at the music festival. The idiots there thought they were so happy and wise. With friends, boyfriends and girlfriends. It disgusted me. 

As I was sitting there, thinking of all the ways that emotions hurt, a rain-beaten figure ran into the shelter. 

I looked up with some annoyance, expecting some sort of apology for their presence. Whoever that person was, they also looked less than pleased with someone else being there, as they fidgeted around with the tip of their raincoat. As though resigning themselves to their fate, they came, sat down on the corner of the bench and leaned on the wall of the shelter. 

This person, however, seemed different. Whoever it was, he didn't look in my direction even once. I considered it a great honor to sit in the company of a person who didn't need to talk to me. It was like providing comfort to each other by staying out of their respective ways. A position that I always respected.

The quiet of the rain was shattered by a great peal of thunder. I looked at my left wrist, then at my phone, then back into the distance. I didn't have any way to pass the time now. 

Thinking, then, would do the trick. After some time, however, I got fed up of that as well.

With some hesitation, I shifted across the bench to the seated person, who seemed to be awake and staring into the distance. I cleared my throat and said "Excuse me, sir, I'm sorry for disturbing you, but could you please tell me the time?". The person turned full in my direction, staring at me, highly affronted. Only his eyes were visible, a deep brown, and startlingly feminine. 

His eyes narrowed at me. Before I could say anything more, he shifted abruptly, causing his hood to slip back, revealing the rest of his face. Dark hair tumbled free, framing features that were unmistakably feminine—sharp but soft, with high cheekbones and a stubborn set to her jaw.

"I’m not a sir," she said sharply, the words cutting through the air like a slap. Her voice, though quiet, held a biting edge that made me wince.

My mouth went dry. "Oh—I'm really sorry, I—". She sighed in frustration, running a hand through her now-exposed hair as though the motion could dispel her irritation. "It’s fine." Her tone suggested it was anything but. She glanced away, pulling her coat tighter around herself, as though wanting to shrink back into the anonymity her hood had offered minutes before.

I cleared my throat again, the tension between us settling like a weight. "I didn’t mean to offend—"

"I said it’s fine," she repeated, quieter this time, her fingers fidgeting with the strap of her bag. Her posture remained tense, defensive, as though she was battling the urge to flee. "It's 6:30, if you still wanted to know." she said defeatedly.

The space between us felt heavier, more awkward, the bench getting more and more uncomfortable to sit on. She didn't put her hood back on, as she probably felt there was no use of it now. But who was I to judge?

The rain fell harder. My shirt was soaking wet, and my dead phone started getting soaked as well. If there was one thing I needed more than myself, it was my electronics. I couldn't expect to survive long without some form of information to save myself from my mind.

Rather desperately, I turned once again to the girl, shifted across the narrow bench again, and said shakily "Could I please make a call from your phone?". She looked at me full in my face, our eyes locked together like in a staring contest. Disdainfully, she said "Look around you. You're in a thunderstorm. Enjoy some time alone, appreciate nature. And I don't have my phone anyway". 

I just lapsed back into my corner, my head splitting because of the coffee I had in the morning. I needed more, as soon as it could happen. But I wasn't going to risk my head for my phone.

I pressed my fingers against my temples, the dull ache from the morning coffee growing sharper. The rain showed no sign of stopping, and the wind was picking up, tossing the downpour against the shelter with a relentless force. I risked another glance at the girl sitting beside me, her eyes still fixed on the rain, her expression guarded, distant. I wondered what had brought her here, to this same desolate bus stop, away from whatever it was she’d been doing before the storm.

Seconds stretched into minutes. I tapped my fingers nervously on the wet bench, trying to ignore the growing cold that crept up my spine, my soaked shirt clinging uncomfortably to my skin. I had half a mind to stand up, to leave, but the rain had thickened into a torrential wall. I was stuck here. With her. We stayed silent, the only sounds between us the steady drumming of rain and the occasional distant rumble of thunder. For reasons I couldn’t quite understand, her words lingered in my mind. I hadn’t even noticed the wet grass, the smell of the earth as it soaked up the rain, or the muted light turning the landscape into an almost otherworldly painting.

I glanced at her again. She hadn’t moved, hadn’t bothered to wipe away the raindrops that dripped down the tip of her nose from the edge of her hood. Her hands were clenched into fists, her entire body still tense, like a spring wound too tight.

The silence became unbearable.

"I guess I don’t enjoy being alone as much as I thought," I muttered, more to myself than to her, my voice low. But she heard. Her gaze flickered toward me for the briefest second, her expression inscrutable.

"You’re not the only one," she replied, her voice so quiet that I had to strain to hear it over the rain. It wasn’t an invitation for conversation, but it wasn’t outright rejection either. There was a strange sort of honesty in her tone, something that made me think, for the first time, that maybe we weren’t so different. 

I leaned back against the cold metal of the bench, stretching out my legs. "I always thought being alone was easier. Less noise, less… people."

Her lips quirked upward, but it wasn’t quite a smile. "It’s quieter, sure. But sometimes the quiet gets too loud."

I turned my head slightly, studying her face in profile. Her features were still sharp under the soft, fading light, but there was something softer now in the way she spoke. Maybe it was the rain, maybe it was the shared discomfort of being caught in a storm, but the air between us felt a little less tense.

"You don’t seem like the type to come to festivals," I said, trying to keep the conversation light, though I wasn’t sure why I was even trying. 

"I’m not," she admitted, pulling the hood tighter around her face. "I wasn’t there for the festival. Just needed to get out for a bit. Thought the storm would clear my head." She shrugged, the motion small, almost imperceptible. "Guess I miscalculated."

I gave a small laugh. "Same here."

For a while, neither of us spoke. The rain had slowed, but the clouds still hung heavy and dark above us, like they were deciding whether to unleash another downpour. She shifted beside me, her body relaxing slightly, though her gaze remained fixed on the distance. I didn’t press her for more; it felt like we had settled into a fragile truce of sorts, where silence wasn’t uncomfortable, just… there.

"Do you always come off so harsh?" she asked suddenly, her voice cutting through the steady hum of the rain. I blinked in surprise, caught off guard by her directness.

"I—what?"

She turned her head fully this time, and there was something almost playful in the way she narrowed her eyes at me, the earlier sharpness fading from her expression. "You looked at me like you wanted to throw me out into the rain the moment I got here."

Heat crept up my neck. I hadn’t realized I’d been that obvious. "I don’t know, I just… people usually don’t give me much of a reason to be friendly, you know?" I sounded defensive, even to my own ears.

She tilted her head, considering my words. "Maybe they think the same thing about you."

I opened my mouth to protest, but stopped. She wasn’t wrong. It was easy to wall myself off, to assume everyone else was the problem, but I wasn’t exactly giving anyone a reason to think otherwise.

"Maybe," I agreed, rubbing the back of my neck awkwardly. The tension between us lightened, just a fraction, but enough that I could breathe a little easier.

"Why’d you stay?" she asked after a beat, her voice softer again. "If you hate people so much, why sit here with me?"

The question hung in the air, a challenge and an invitation at the same time. I didn’t have an answer ready. I could’ve made some excuse about the rain, about my dead phone, but that wasn’t really it.

"I don’t know," I said finally, my voice quiet, almost drowned out by the rain. "Maybe I didn’t want to be alone right now."

Her lips twitched again, that almost-smile returning for the briefest moment. "Maybe that’s not such a bad thing."

We lapsed into silence again, but this time it felt different—less heavy, more open, like the storm had shifted, both outside and between us. The air around us was still damp, the bus stop shelter dripping with rainwater, but I no longer felt the cold pressing in on me quite so much.

Without warning, she stretched out her legs, mirroring my earlier position, her body finally relaxing. She looked at me from the corner of her eye, something softer in her gaze now.

I couldn't help but look at her and smile.