The first rain of June fell with a sound like someone sighing in the distance.
The mini truck’s wipers wiped the windshield at regular intervals. The moment they wiped it clean, fine raindrops blurred my view once more. As I drove up the prefectural road through the mountains, the cedar forests on both sides breathed out a damp scent, making me feel as if opening the window just a sliver would dye the inside of the truck green.
“Regarding Miyashita-san’s house. The grandmother passed away this spring, and it seems her grandchild came to clean things up. You go handle the estimate.”
This morning, my old man said only that before leaving for another job site himself. The way Asakura Construction hands out work is always like this. The explanations are lacking. The missing details apparently mean you will understand once you get there.
I knew the Miyashita house. It was an old single-story house located just off the old road at the edge of town. When I was a kid, I rode my bicycle past it countless times. All I remembered was that it was a house with a large yard.
I parked the truck in a gravel-paved lot and turned off the engine. Instantly, the sound of the rain grew louder. The noise hammering the corrugated iron roof of the storage shed, the noise of water overflowing from the gutters and drilling into the ground, the noise of every single leaf catching the rain. Overlapping together, they became a single low murmur.
I opened my umbrella and walked through the gate.
The garden was in ruins. Even though it should not have been three months since it lost its master, the weeds had already grown knee-high. Neglected garden trees spread their branches at will, and moss crawled up over the stepping stones. Deep in the back, an old stone well was visible. Its wooden lid was half-shifted, revealing a black opening.
Only one corner of that garden was strangely tidy.
In front of the veranda, in a sunny spot, a single narrow ridge had been made. There was not a single weed there, and green sprouts arranged at equal intervals grew straight up while being struck by the rain. Judging by the shape of the leaves, it was not a vegetable. It was some kind of flower.
In this wild garden, only that spot looked as if someone had been tending to it until just a moment ago.
“――Excuse me.”
Hearing a voice, I raised my head.
On the veranda, a woman was sitting alone.
A white blouse and a navy skirt. She sat hugging her knees, drops dripping from her wet hair. She didn’t have an umbrella. Apparently, she had been caught in the rain out in the yard and fled to the veranda just like that. Although she was wet enough that her clothes were sheer around her shoulders, she herself did not seem to mind it at all, gazing vacantly at the garden.
No, what she was looking at might not have been the garden, but the sprouts on that ridge.
“I am from Asakura Construction. I’m here regarding the estimate.”
“Ah, yes. I am Miyashita. I am sorry for making you come all the way here in the rain today.”
She stood up and bowed. In that moment, a drop falling from the ends of her hair made a tiny stain on the veranda floorboard.
As she lifted her face, she glanced at me, tilting her head ever so slightly.
“…Asakura-san. By any chance, are you Ryo-kun?”
Unexpectedly being called by my given name, my response was delayed.
“That’s, right, but.”
“Thought so. You don’t remember me, do you. I am Miyashita Akari. I used to come here every summer vacation back then.”
Miyashita, Akari.
I searched deep within my memories, but came up empty. Summer vacation. This house. Had my childhood self ever played here with someone?
“I am sorry. I don’t.”
“That’s okay. I had forgotten as well, until I saw your face.”
Having said that, she glanced briefly toward the back of the garden. At the end of her gaze was that old well.
“…Do you not remember the well, either?”
“The well?”
“No. It’s nothing.”
She smiled. It was a soft way of smiling. A smile like a thin film, neither blaming me for being forgotten nor actually thinking it did not matter.
That was my first conversation with Miyashita Akari, or according to her, our first in years.
＊
The inside of the house was cooler than the outside.
Stepping up into the entryway, there was the smell of tatami mats, old wood, and incense. It was the ingrained scent of daily life unique to houses where people had lived for a long time. At the end of the hallway was a Buddhist altar room, where a brand-new portrait of the deceased was displayed. A petite old woman smiling, her face tanned by the sun.
“My grandmother. Her name was Fumi.”
“…My deepest condolences.”
“Thank you. She was ninety-one. They say she was out in the garden right up to her last day.”
Saying so, she quietly closed the shoji screen of the Buddhist altar room.
I took a look around the entire inside of the house. A section of the kitchen floor was sinking. On the ceiling of the north room, a leak stain spread out like a map. The fittings also fit poorly. There were places where the bases of the pillars were damaged by years of humidity.
Applying a carpenter’s square, I measured dimensions and jotted them down in my notebook. The beam thickness. The spacing of the floor supports. The ceiling height.
This house was probably built around the beginning of the Showa era. It had a efficient layout, devoting a large space in the south to the tatami reception room, connecting the room and garden seamlessly through the veranda. The pathways for summer breezes were properly planned out. The carpenter who built it likely knew this land’s humidity and wind very well.
Noticing myself indulging in such thoughts, I snapped my notebook shut.
Reading the intent behind a floor plan was no longer my job. Three years had passed since I stopped drawing blueprints. All I needed to look at now was what was rotten, and what needed fixing to make it sellable, that was all.
“The tatami reception room is in good shape.”
“It was the room my grandmother cherished the most.”
The main room was about ten tatami mats in size, and a hanging scroll remained suspended in the alcove. The woodwork in the transom was elaborate too. In the corner of the ceiling, several old paper lanterns were hanging. The Japanese paper was sun-baked, turned to an amber color.
“Grandmother used to light those every year for Obon. She said that even though there was electricity, these looked cooler in summer.”
She said looking up at the lanterns.
The glass doors facing the veranda of the main room had frosted glass on their lower half, making the rain-soaked garden look hazily blurred in green. Through the glass, the rain sound became just a little bit softer.
“So, regarding the details of your request.”
When I brought it up, she sat in seiza posture in the center of the room and straightened her back.
“It has been decided that we will sell this house. A buyer has already been found, and before handing it over, I want to do minimum repairs and clean up inside. The roof leaks, the floor, and… also, the buyer asked if we could fill in the garden well.”
“The well.”
“They are a married couple expecting a baby. They said it is dangerous.”
That made perfect sense. I added “well backfilling” to my notebook. Custom in these parts dictates requesting a purification ritual when filling a well. I noted that down too.
“What timeframe are you looking at for the construction period?”
She paused for a moment.
Beyond the glass door, the rain grew stronger.
“Could you finish it before the rainy season ends?”
“By the end of the rainy season?”
“I am getting married in autumn.”
She spoke those words in a voice as casual as if discussing the weather.
Then, without even being asked, she added on.
“Did you think getting married at twenty-three is too young?”
“No, not really.”
“Everyone tells me that. That it’s early. But, it’s already decided.”
Only the words ‘already decided’ carried a slight stiffness.
“There are preparations over there as well, so I want to clean everything up here and leave town before summer comes. Until then, I intend to stay in this house and sort through grandmother’s belongings.”
“…Congratulations.”
“Thank you very much.”
It was that thin, film-like smile once again.
I wrote down in my notebook, “Construction Period: Until the end of the rainy season.”
Until the end of the rainy season. If it followed typical years, that meant mid to late July. A month and a little more. Maintenance on the roof, floors, and fittings, plus backfilling the well. Considering manpower and planning, it was tight, but not impossible.
“Exterior work cannot be done on rainy days. Depending on the weather, the schedule might shift slightly.”
“So rainy days mean days off.”
“That’s how it turns out.”
“Is that so.”
She directed her eyes outside the glass door.
“Then, I hope it rains a lot this year.”
Unable to gauge her meaning, I stayed silent. These were not words meant to come from someone who was supposed to be rushing the deadline. Yet she offered no further explanation, merely gazing quietly at the green beyond the frosted glass.
＊
As I was putting on my shoes at the entryway when leaving, she said, “Ah,that’s right,” and brought an old towel from the back.
“Your shoulder is wet.”
Prompted by her words, I looked to see that my left shoulder, which had protruded past the umbrella, had darkened with moisture.
“Miyashita-san, you were much wetter than me, though.”
“I am fine. I am used to it.”
What she was used to, I didn’t ask. I accepted the towel and wiped my shoulder. It smelled not of detergent, but of sunshine and camphor. It was probably something brought out from her grandmother’s chest of drawers.
“Excuse me, the garden.”
As I handed back the towel, I asked.
“That ridge in front of the veranda. What is planted there?”
For a moment, her eyes widened. Then, she slowly shifted her gaze toward the garden.
In the rain, only that single line of sprouts reached straight up toward the sky.
“Dahlias.”
“Dahlias?”
“Grandmother grew them every year. Planting bulbs when spring came, blooming around the rainy season… When I was a child and came in summer, it was always bright red in front of this veranda. I have never seen dahlias anywhere else but here.”
Resting her hand against the post of the veranda, she stared at the garden ridge.
“Those were planted by grandmother this spring. Just a little while before she passed away. Even though no one has watered them, the sprouts came up properly. …Without even knowing that their master is gone.”
Raindrops fell onto the sprouts, repelling off them.
I knew almost nothing about the flower called dahlia. Excessively showy, large flowers you see displayed in florist shops. My knowledge went no further than that. I felt like I finally understood why only that one corner of this wild garden was tidy.
“When do they bloom?”
“At the earliest, maybe around the end of June. …I want to see them bloom before leaving town.”
Having said that, she looked at me as if startled.
After saying so, she turned her eyes to me, looking as if she has snapped back to reality.
“I am sorry. This is talk unrelated to the construction.”
“Not at all.”
I opened my umbrella.
“Then, I will come by on days other than rainy ones.”
“Yes. I am in your care, Ryo-kun.”
Once more, she called me by my given name.
Before stepping out the gate, I looked back just once. She was still standing on the veranda, looking down at the dahlia sprouts hit by the rain. Her wet hair remained stuck to her cheeks.
＊
Returning to the truck, I opened my notebook.
Turning the page, the numerical figures of the dimensions I had just measured were lined up. The thickness of the beams, the spacing of the pillars, the height of the ceilings. While gazing at the numbers, the hand holding my pen moved on its own, beginning to draw lines in the margin.
The entryway. The hallway. The altar room. The ten-mat main room extending to the south, and the veranda framing it. The direction of the wind blowing through to the garden.
After drawing a few squares, my hand stopped.
――So, whose sake are these lines drawn for.
These were the words said to me by the director at the Tokyo office. During the winter when I was twenty-one, the director returned the house blueprints I had spent three nights completing to the desk after turning just a single page. It’s pretty, but I can’t see the face of the person living there. You’re always just drawing the lines you want to draw, he said.
I couldn’t argue back. I didn’t know what was lacking, either. Repeating the same thing without understanding, and continually being told the same words, I quit the office in the spring of my second year. More than just quitting, I ran back home.
Ever since then, I haven’t drawn blueprints.
Over the half-drawn floor plan, I drew two diagonal lines with my ballpoint pen. I intended to erase it. However, the squares beneath the lines stood out even more clearly instead.
I flipped back a page.
Construction Period: Until the end of the rainy season.
Staring at those characters, I was remembering her words from earlier.
――I hope it rains a lot this year.
When I activated the wipers, Miyashita’s house, which had been blurred by rain, became clearly visible for just an instant. And then right away, it dissolved into the green blur once more.
Until the end of the rainy season.
At that time, I had simply written that deadline into my notebook as a mere construction period.
It would be a little further in the future when I realized that it was the exact length of time I could spend with her.
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