Yellow umbrella.

It is rainy season in Japan now, so that every day is almost certainly wet. I can't say I enjoy this time of the year so much. I am a walker, and do not like to carry around an umbrella. I do, however, have a cherished memory associated with the rainy season. It started with an umbrella.

I was 9, a 3rd grader in the elementary school. One day it was raining hard, and I was alone in the classroom. It was dark inside and outside. I was feeling lonely. I don't recall why I lingered on in the classroom. Maybe I left something behind and returned to get it. I was a careless boy then, and probably still am.

Feeling the pain, I went to the window, and looked on the school ground. There was not a soul there, except a classmate of mine. It was Kumiko. Kumiko held a yellow umbrella, and walked alone in the pouring rain, in the middle of the school ground.

I do not know how it happened. Kumiko seemed so small, so isolated, and yet she carried on with her steps, holding the yellow umbrella, walking towards the school gate, perhaps in pain like myself. Exactly at that moment, I realized that Kumiko was dear to me. It was the first time in my life that I ever realized that someone was so special in my heart. It was a moment of love.

Thus, the rainy season is somehow associated with the image of Kumiko, with a yellow umbrella, walking alone in the school ground. When I think about it, the raindrops becomes tears from a past long gone.