The weather forecast is the yardstick for going out, and there was no grand reason or purpose for choosing a day marked with a gray icon that clearly signaled rain clouds. It was just an act I tried to resolve something, which eventually hardened into a habit. I placed myself in a park where umbrellas came and gone, my skin wrapped only in clothes. The folding umbrella pushed to the end of the bench was pretending to be lost property, but it was certainly mine, and its reason for existence must be to block this rain—yet most things that make up the world are merely done out of courtesy.

It's the same for the moment when a grievance finally crosses the lips and turns into an incomprehensible riddle. No matter how much you cover it with your hands, the falling raindrops will sear your cheeks, and we, helpless in the face of a natural mess, can only manage to cook up plausible excuses. Pretending to be fine is easy. Because everyone who hasn't realized that is like a downpour, my kind are always the first to survive. People who, having filled their bellies with sighs, would become jellyfish and reach a lonely island even if this place were a vast ocean.

So, the reason I'm telling you this is...