When the Rain Won't Stop

The rain hammered the corrugated roof of the school's entrance like angry fists, each drop exploding into a thousand smaller ones that ricocheted off the pavement. Emi Ohara pressed herself against the brick wall, her school uniform already damp from the spray that the inadequate overhang couldn't prevent. The fabric clung to her skin in uncomfortable patches, cold and clammy like something diseased.

Four-thirty. Her mother was an hour late.

The other children had long since disappeared into waiting cars or under the colorful umbrellas of punctual parents. Even the teachers had given up their vigil, retreating to the warmth of the staff room after confirming that yes, Emi's mother was coming, yes, she was just delayed at work, yes, everything was fine.

Everything was not fine. But Emi had learned that adults preferred the comfort of small lies to the inconvenience of real problems. Her mother's job at the department store had been cutting hours, and the fights at home had gotten louder, sharp words that cut through thin apartment walls. Sometimes Emi wondered if being forgotten at school was better than being remembered at home, where the air itself felt heavy with things unsaid.

She watched the rain create rivers along the edges of the walkway, carrying candy wrappers and fallen leaves toward the storm drains. The water made strange patterns—almost like fingers reaching, grasping, trying to pull everything down into the dark. A plastic bottle spun in a whirlpool before disappearing into the grate with a sound like a throat swallowing.

"She's not coming."

Emi startled, her school bag slipping from her shoulder. A girl stood beside her, though she hadn't heard anyone approach through the rain's percussion. The girl wore a yellow raincoat, the bright plastic gone murky with age and something else—something that looked like water stains but seemed to move, to spread even as Emi watched, like ink bleeding through wet paper.

"My mother's just late," Emi said, though the words felt hollow. She'd said them so many times they'd lost their meaning, like a word repeated until it becomes mere sound. The excuse had become a reflex, automatic as breathing.

The girl—she looked about Emi's age, maybe a year younger—tilted her head with a motion too fluid, too smooth, as if her neck were made of water. Droplets ran from the hood of her raincoat, but they didn't seem to be coming from the rain above. They welled up from inside the hood itself, trickling down her pale face in steady streams that never seemed to end.

"My mother was late too," the girl said. Her voice had an echo to it, as if she were speaking from the bottom of a well. "She was supposed to pick me up. I waited and waited. The rain kept getting harder."

Emi shifted uncomfortably, her wet shoes squelching against the concrete. There was something wrong about this girl, something that made her stomach twist the way it did when she stood at the edge of the school pool and looked down into the chlorinated depths, imagining what it would be like to sink, to let the water fill her lungs.

"What's your name?" Emi asked, though she wasn't sure she wanted to know.

"Rika. Rika Najima." The girl smiled, and water spilled from between her lips like a broken faucet. "I used to go to school here. Fourth grade, Miss Koga's class."

Miss Koga had retired three years ago. Emi knew because her older sister had been in her last class, had cried when the teacher left, had kept the goodbye card Miss Koga had given each student. Three years. This girl would be in middle school by now, but she looked exactly like a fourth-grader, frozen in time like a photograph left in water until the image warped.

"You should go home," Emi said, taking a small step sideways along the wall. "Your parents must be worried."

Rika's smile widened, and more water poured out—not just from her mouth now, but from her eyes, her nose, even seeming to seep through her skin itself, as if she were a sponge being squeezed. "They stopped looking. Everyone stops looking eventually. Even mothers who promise they won't forget. Even mothers who say they're sorry, who say next time will be different."

The rain intensified, and Emi could barely see the street through the grey curtain of water. The sound had become deafening, a roar like static, drowning out everything except Rika's voice, which somehow remained crystal clear, as if it were coming from inside Emi's own head.

"But you understand, don't you?" Rika stepped closer, leaving wet footprints that didn't evaporate, that seemed to grow deeper, darker, spreading across the concrete like spilled paint. Emi could smell something now—lake water and algae, the scent of things that had been submerged too long, of summers turned rotten. "You know what it's like to wait. To watch everyone else get picked up. To pretend you're not scared that this time, this time she really won't come."

Emi wanted to step back, but the wall was behind her, rough brick scraping through her damp uniform. She could feel each individual brick, could count them by touch, anything to avoid looking at Rika's face, which seemed to be losing definition, features blurring like a reflection in disturbed water.

"Sometimes," Rika continued, her voice dropping to barely above a whisper, though it still cut through the rain, "sometimes they leave us in places worse than school. Sometimes they leave us in places we can't leave. Dark places. Wet places. Places where no one can hear us calling."

Rika reached out a hand, and Emi could see that her fingers were pruned, the way they got after too long in the bath, but worse—the skin was starting to slough off in pale strips, revealing something underneath that wasn't quite flesh, wasn't quite anything that should be on a human hand. The fingernails were black, not painted but stained, as if something had gotten under them and spread.

"We could wait together," Rika said, and her hand was so close now that Emi could feel the cold radiating from it, a cold that had nothing to do with rain or weather. "It's not so bad once you get used to it. The water is everywhere, you know. In the pipes, in the walls, in the air we breathe. You can travel through it, go anywhere. Even home. Especially home. You can stand by their beds while they sleep, drip on their faces, remind them of what they forgot."

Emi's heart hammered against her ribs. She could feel her pulse in her throat, quick and frightened as a trapped bird. "Please," she whispered, though she didn't know what she was asking for.

"I stood by my mother's bed last night," Rika said conversationally, as if discussing homework. "She doesn't sleep well anymore. Keeps dreaming about water. About drowning. She takes pills now, but they don't help. Water always finds a way in. Through the cracks. Through the dreams. Through the guilt."

A car horn honked, sharp and sudden through the rain. Emi's head snapped toward the sound—her mother's beat-up Honda idled at the curb, windshield wipers struggling against the downpour, headlights cutting weak yellow paths through the grey.

"Emi!" Her mother's voice, thin with worry and thick with guilt. The car door opened, and her mother stepped out, not even bothering with an umbrella, letting the rain soak her office clothes. "I'm so sorry, baby. The train was delayed and then the traffic—"

Emi looked back at where Rika had been standing, but there was only a puddle of murky water, already being washed away by the rain. No, not washed away—sinking into the concrete itself, disappearing into hairline cracks she hadn't noticed before. The smell lingered, though, lake water and rot and something else, something like disappointment.

She grabbed her school bag and ran to the car, not caring that she was getting soaked, needing to feel the rain on her skin, clean rain, normal rain, rain that came from the sky and not from inside a little girl's body.

"I'm so sorry," her mother kept saying as Emi climbed into the car. "I know I said I'd be on time today. I know I promised." Her mother's hands shook on the steering wheel, and Emi could smell wine on her breath, faint but there, mixed with mint gum that didn't quite cover it.

As her mother pulled away from the curb, Emi looked back at the school entrance. For just a moment, she thought she saw a small figure in a yellow raincoat, still waiting under the overhang. Still watching. The figure raised one hand—a wave or a promise, Emi couldn't tell.

Water dripped from the car's ceiling, though her mother didn't seem to notice. It landed on Emi's hand—cold, so cold—and smelled of forgotten places, of things that sink and never surface again. She looked up at the car's roof, searching for a leak, but the fabric was dry. The drop had come from nowhere, or from everywhere, or from the space between.

"Everything okay, sweetheart?" her mother asked, glancing in the rearview mirror. Her eyes were red-rimmed, whether from tears or exhaustion or something else Emi didn't want to think about.

Emi wiped the water away and forced a smile, the expression feeling like a mask, like something that might slip off if she wasn't careful. "Everything's fine."

But she could still hear it—beneath the rain, beneath her mother's continued apologies, beneath the squeaking windshield wipers that seemed to be saying too late, too late, too late—a child's voice, patient and terrible:

She's not coming. She's never coming. But I'll wait with you.

The rain followed them all the way home, and when they finally reached their apartment building, Emi noticed water pooling in places where rain shouldn't reach—under the awning, inside the lobby, at the bottom of the stairs. Her mother didn't seem to see it, stepping through the puddles as if they weren't there, leaving no ripples.

That night, Emi lay in bed listening to the rain against her window. Sometimes, between the drops, she thought she heard a child crying. Sometimes, she thought she heard her own name, spoken by a voice that echoed as if from far below.

In the morning, her mother would promise to pick her up on time.

In the morning, Emi would pretend to believe her.

And somewhere, in the spaces between raindrops, in the pipes that ran through the walls like veins, Rika Najima would be waiting. Patient as water. Inevitable as drowning.

The yellow raincoat hung in Emi's school cubby the next day, though she'd never owned one. It dripped steadily onto the floor, a sound like a ticking clock, like a countdown, like a promise.

She left it there.

But she knew, with the certainty of a child who has seen too much, that it would follow her home anyway.

Water always finds a way in.