At the end of May, the air grew heavier by the day.
I was standing just inside the library's automatic door with two borrowed books in my arms when the rain began. It didn't take long for the ground to change color. The books were borrowed, and I had no bag.
The automatic door opened a beat late. As I heard it close behind me and measured the few steps to the edge of the eaves, a voice came from slightly behind me on my left.
"Um, do you have an umbrella?"
I turned around, and it was Sakurai. She was holding a cloth bag against her chest with both arms.
"My folding one is in my desk, in the drawer, over in the research building."
Only after I'd said it did I notice how quietly I'd spoken. Sakurai's eyes widened just once. Then she closed the mouth of her bag a little more, and from inside she took out a long umbrella, dark gray. She held out the handle with both hands.
"Please, take this, if you'd like."
"But then you would get wet, Sakurai."
"Then let me walk with you, as far as the research building."
Saying this, Sakurai stepped half a pace toward the edge of the eaves.
After a short silence, I nodded.
The handle was lighter than I'd expected, and it had the feel of something well used. Just below the handle, a tag was tied on with a thin hemp cord.
I opened the umbrella. Through the taut fabric, the sound of the rain flattened out overhead. A single long umbrella wasn't enough for two, and Sakurai's right shoulder stuck out a little past its edge. I tilted the handle slightly toward her. Sakurai noticed, shook her head, and came one step closer. Into the rain-damp air came a sudden trace of shampoo, and then it drifted away.
The research building was about five minutes away. Trying to match our strides, we each nearly stumbled once in the first few steps.
"Um."
Sakurai began, beneath the sound of the rain.
"There was something I'd meant to ask you the other day, about a book."
"Yes."
"The one you were about to take down, that night after the holidays, in the folklore studies section."
It was the book from that night.
"Oral Traditions of Eastern Japan. Third floor, second shelf from the top, seventh from the left."
She said the numbers in the voice of someone reading aloud something she already knew by heart.
"I'm researching it for my senior thesis. If you'd like. Sometime, please take a look at it."
Sakurai pressed her lips together once, then added just one more thing.
"In the table of contents, there's just one subheading added in. 'The Chapter of Images'—that one has been on my mind."
Just then, beyond the sound of the rain, the lights of the research building's glass doors came hazily into view.
We stepped under the eaves, and I folded the umbrella. Sakurai took out a handkerchief, pressed it once against the wet spot on the shoulder strap of her bag, and then took the umbrella back in both hands.
"Well then. Until next time."
The end of it rose slightly. She left a single small bow and went back into the rain, the way we had come. The dark gray of the long umbrella grew smaller beyond the white lines of the rain.
The next week, just as she'd told me, I pulled out the seventh book from the left on the second shelf from the top, on the third floor. The cover was cloth-bound, and its corners were faintly frayed.
I took it home and set it on my desk. When I opened to the table of contents, among the chapters arranged by region, there was just one subheading. "The Chapter of Images."
—To take back the one you love from fate.
I didn't skip ahead to it; I tried to read from the beginning. The vocabulary was difficult, and on the fifth page I closed the book. Only the subheading, "The Chapter of Images," stayed at the very top of my mind.
The next week, and the week after that, the book sat in the same spot on my desk.
On a day in early June when the sky, for once, cleared completely, I went to return the book.
In front of the shelves, I couldn't say the words I had prepared in the order I had prepared them.
"I'm sorry. In the end, I couldn't finish it."
Sakurai took the book in both hands and stroked the frayed corner of the cover once with the pad of her finger.
"Not at all. It's a difficult book. You don't have to force yourself to read it."
"In the table of contents, um, the one called 'The Chapter of Images'—"
There, my voice broke off for a moment.
"The part that says, 'To take back the one you love from fate'—"
"The first time I read it, I kept going back pages, too."
Sakurai set the book on the shelf beside her and turned to face me.
"You can borrow it as many times as you like."
I pressed my lips together once. Then I said first the words I hadn't prepared.
"Um, about the umbrella, the other day."
"Yes."
"You went out of your way, to walk me, all the way to the research building. And I never properly, thanked you."
"Oh, no, it was nothing."
"Please, let me do something, in return."
Sakurai rested both hands lightly, one over the other, on the book she had just set down. She straightened her fingers once, realigning them. Her gaze stayed somewhere around the cover of the book and didn't move for a little while.
"In that case,"
She looked up, pressed her lips together once more, and went on.
"There's an old planetarium on the edge of town, but going in alone feels, somehow, a little hard. If it's convenient for you. On your next day off, would you come with me?"
"Yes, I'd be glad to."
I had answered before I realized it. Sakurai gave a small nod. Her fingers on the book didn't move from where they were until I left the shelves.