Chapter 10: The Echo of the Rain
White hadn't slept for a single second since Bell vanished into thin air.
Every familiar street, every narrow alleyway, every quiet corner she liked to linger in—he searched them all methodically, his boots dragging against the concrete until the dawn slowly painted the sky a pale, bloodless gray. He found absolutely nothing. Not a single footprint, not a trace of her presence remained.
By the time the second day broke across the city, his body was completely wasted. His eyelids felt like lead weights; his soul felt heavier still. If Bell is truly the only one who can save Miss Elsa… then every single second I waste out here means I'm actively pushing her closer to death.
But the cruel, unyielding truth was that he had absolutely no idea where to find her. Without a clue, his thoughts spun endlessly in a desperate, frantic loop, circling nothing but his own immense guilt. He couldn't escape his own baseless anger—the harsh, jagged words that had cut Bell down when she had only looked up at him and called him "Papa."
White slammed his fist violently into his desk, the sharp impact echoing like a gunshot through the suffocating silence of the apartment.
"…Damn it…" he choked out, his shoulders trembling. "…I'm such an idiot."
Knock, knock.
The sudden, rhythmic sound jerked him upright, his heart leaping into his throat.
"White! Hey, White, open up—it's me!" a familiar voice called out through the wood.
Zen.
White dragged his feet across the floorboards, his entire body screaming in protest. He swung the door open—and blinked in utter confusion. Zen stood on the threshold, his usual easygoing grin completely ghosted over with worry. Standing quietly at his side was Shu, dressed in her school uniform. Her posture was stiff, her sharp eyes unusually soft and hesitant as she looked at him.
"What are you two doing here?" White's voice cracked, sounding entirely hoarse from exhaustion. "Sorry, but… could you come back another time?"
Zen frowned deeply, crossing his arms over his chest. "We've been worried sick about you, you idiot. And…" His eyes softened as he glanced at the girl beside him. "…Shu said she wanted to come along too. She asked if she could… check up on you."
White turned his dull gaze toward Shu. She shifted awkwardly under his look, her eyes darting away to the corridor walls, but she spoke gently, her words carrying a surprising, uncharacteristic warmth.
"White… you don't look well at all. If something's wrong, please… just talk to us."
Zen stepped closer, studying White's face, and his eyes suddenly widened in alarm. "…Dude, you look like the walking dead. Have you literally not slept?"
The devastating truth clung to him visibly—he must have looked every bit as ruined as he felt.
"I… I couldn't sleep," White muttered, staring at the floor.
Zen's voice grew stern, laced with genuine fear for his friend. "Why haven't you answered any of our calls? And leaving school mid-day without a single word… seriously, you're scaring us, White."
"I…" His throat tightened up instantly. Every syllable scraped like jagged glass against his throat just to get out. "…It's… Elsa… Miss Elsa…"
Before he could finish the sentence, his vision tilted violently. His chest seized up, starving for oxygen, and the entire room began to spin in a sickening blur. Shu's voice called out his name, sounding incredibly faint and distant, while Zen's strong arm lunged forward, catching him just as his knees buckled beneath him.
And then, the world crashed into absolute darkness.
Faint voices drifted slowly through the dark, heavy haze of his mind.
"Hey! White, White—" That was Zen, his tone sharp and panicked, sounding right beside his ear.
"Lay him down on the bed. Carefully." Shu's voice followed, soft but remarkably firm, taking charge of the chaos.
White felt the ghost of their hands carrying him inside, lowering his limp weight onto the mattress. His body, thoroughly broken by sheer emotional and physical exhaustion, completely refused to move. He was trapped beneath the surface of his own mind.
Shu's voice whispered faintly above him, rustling like dry leaves. "He… he mentioned Miss Elsa before he collapsed."
A heavy, ragged sigh came from Zen next. "Yeah. She's… wait, you don't know who she is?"
White felt the subtle silence of Shu shaking her head.
"Elsa's… basically his entire family," Zen explained quietly, his voice dropping into a solemn, respectful register. "They aren't blood-related or anything. She completely took him in after… well, after everything went to hell for him. He was just a little kid back then. Honestly, if it wasn't for her finding him, White… he wouldn't even be here today."
"…Adopted?" Shu murmured, her usual composed, analytical mask breaking slightly at the revelation.
"…Sort of." Zen rubbed the back of his head, his footsteps pacing slightly on the floorboards. "I don't know the full story myself. Just that… Elsa gave him an actual home. She was truly all he had in the world."
Gradually, their voices faded into a distant murmur, and White fell deeper, drowning into the profound depths of his unconscious mind.
And there, in the quiet darkness of his sleep, old memories rose to the surface like buried ghosts.
His grandmother's voice echoed first—faint, dry, and distant, like a sound traveling across a vast expanse of time.
She had told him once, long ago, about his mother. About how she had fallen for a man, deeply and entirely foolishly; how she had genuinely believed that their love could conquer any obstacle. That love had eventually manifested into him.
But the man hadn't wanted a child. He didn't want White. He had demanded that his mother erase his existence before it even began. And when his mother steadfastly refused, the man simply vanished into the night, abandoning them both.
His grandmother had tried her best to support them. His mother had tried too, at first. They spent months, then years, hoping against hope that the man would eventually return to them, but the unforgiving years simply ate away at her youth. Hope eventually turned sour. The long nights drowned completely in bitter bottles and thick, suffocating smoke.
By the time White was five years old, his mother had stopped speaking to him entirely. She looked at him as if he were nothing more than a ghost haunting her house—the living, breathing reminder of why her grand love was gone.
At eight years old, his grandmother passed away. The only person who had ever even attempted to shield him from his mother's resentment was gone.
And then came his mother's final choice.
He remembered that day vividly. The day she told him to wait quietly in front of a massive, grey commercial building. She had smiled faintly at him—a rare, fragile expression—and told him she would be back very soon. She promised him.
But she never came back.
Hours turned into days. Days bled into a cruel forever.
A child entirely abandoned, left to wander the unforgiving streets alone and survive on whatever discarded scraps he could scavenge, the relentless rain soaking through his rags. He could still remember crying beneath a rusted, forgotten staircase in an alleyway, his voice growing entirely hoarse as he begged for a mother's name that would never answer him.
The rain that day was merciless.
It soaked entirely through his thin shirt, turning the cheap fabric as heavy as lead, clinging freezing and wet against his trembling skin. His small hands were completely numb, shaking violently as he wrapped his thin arms tightly around his knees beneath the safety of the rusted staircase.
He was so tired of crying. He was tired of being constantly hungry. He was tired of waiting for a mother who had chosen to forget him.
At some point, even his small voice had completely given out, leaving him in silence.
If I just close my eyes right now… maybe I'll just disappear entirely, the young boy had thought, shivering. Maybe it will hurt less if I stop trying.
"…Hey."
A sudden voice broke clearly through the roaring of the storm.
When he lifted his heavy head, he saw her.
A young girl was standing there, holding a wide umbrella above her head, shielding herself from the severe downpour. Her raven-black hair stuck to her cheeks, damp at the ends from the wind, yet she smiled down at him as if the miserable weather didn't matter at all.
She stepped closer, tilting the large umbrella forward so that it completely covered him too. The sudden, abrupt absence of the freezing rain above his head made him blink in utter confusion.
Her warmth, her vibrant presence, her absolute kindness—it felt completely unreal to his eight-year-old mind, like a fragment from a storybook. Who in their right mind would ever bother saving a broken stray like him?
"You'll get terribly sick sitting in the cold like that," she said softly, her voice cutting through the damp air. "Come under the umbrella with me."
His small lips parted, but absolutely no words came out. His throat hurt far too much to speak, and even if it didn't… what could he possibly say to a stranger? That he was abandoned? That nobody in the world wanted him?
The girl crouched down, bringing herself to his eye level. Her school uniform was damp, her shoes were entirely soaked, but she didn't seem to care about the discomfort at all. She only cared about him.
"What's your name?" she asked, her smile gentle enough to break the remaining walls around his heart.
"…W-White," his voice came out cracked, trembling violently.
"White." She repeated the name slowly, her voice treating it as if it were something immensely precious. "That's a truly beautiful name."
His small chest tightened painfully. To her, his name wasn't an unwanted burden. It wasn't a curse. She said it as if it actually meant something valuable.
"Do you live somewhere near here? I can walk you home."
"…I don't know."
Her head tilted in genuine surprise. "Don't know?"
"I don't… have a home anymore," he whispered, his throat catching on a sob as he stared at his muddy shoes.
Her eyes flickered with a profound sadness, but her smile only grew warmer, shielding him from her own grief. "Then maybe we can go to the police—"
"No!" He flinched violently away, the mere thought of being dragged back to his mother freezing the blood in his veins. He shook his head violently, tears blurring his vision. "I… I don't want to go there. Please."
Why? her expressive eyes asked silently, but he couldn't bring himself to voice the pathetic truth aloud. Because my own mother doesn't want me. If the police take me back there, I will only cause her more pain.
He clenched his small fists tightly together. If he admitted that aloud to this girl, it would become too real. It would shatter him completely into pieces.
She studied his trembling form quietly. White waited for the inevitable look of pity. He waited for her to turn around and walk away, just like everyone else in his life always did.
But instead of leaving, she simply sat down on the damp concrete right beside him. Under the exact same umbrella. As if being drenched together in the cold was infinitely better than leaving him to face the storm alone.
"One day," she said suddenly, her gaze shifting upward toward the soft break in the heavy clouds. "The rain will always stop, White. No matter how heavy or terrifying it gets. And when it finally does… there's always a beautiful rainbow waiting just after."
Her words reached somewhere deep and forgotten inside his chest—a frozen, dark place he thought had hardened long ago.
The downpour gradually slowed to a gentle patter. His frantic heartbeat slowly began to match hers, becoming steady and calm. For the very first time in his existence, he wasn't just a forgotten child lost in a storm.
He was… seen.
Finally, as the sky cleared slightly, he gathered the small amount of courage he had left to stand up, preparing to leave and scavenge through the trash for food again. But before he could take a step out into the open, her voice called out sharply behind him.
"Wait, White!"
He froze in his tracks, turning around with wide, startled eyes.
She took a decisive step forward, her umbrella still held high, shielding him even though the skies were clearing up. Her smile was radiant, entirely honest—like pure sunlight piercing through the storm clouds.
"If you don't want to go back to that home… then come to mine," she said, her voice full of an absolute, unyielding certainty. "My family will take you in."
Her words completely stopped the breath in his lungs.
He had been expecting a piece of bread, perhaps. A discarded blanket, if he was incredibly lucky. But never this. Never the one thing he had long accepted was entirely impossible for someone like him.
"A… home?" His voice broke completely as a fresh wave of hot tears welled up in his eyes.
She nodded firmly, looking at him with the kind of absolute conviction that made him believe in miracles again.
"Yes," she said, her voice enveloping him like a warm blanket. "You don't ever have to be alone in the dark anymore, White. You can come live with me."
The dam broke. The tears poured freely down his grubby cheeks, feeling hotter than the rain. He hiccupped loudly, desperately trying to wipe them away with his dirty hands, but the more she smiled at him, the more he cried.
Because for the very first time in his entire life, someone actually wanted him.
She stepped closer, her voice turning even gentler as she reached out a hand. "Let's go home, little brother."
White's eyes snapped open.
He sat up violently in his bed, his chest heaving as he gasped for air, his uniform shirt completely soaked through with cold sweat. The phantom sound of pouring rain still echoed faintly in his ears.
He looked around the room. The morning light was filtering weakly through the window blinds, casting long, pale shadows across his desk. The apartment was profoundly quiet. Zen and Shu were nowhere to be seen—they must have left after making sure he was stable.
But as the fog of sleep rapidly cleared from his brain, the true meaning of his dream hit him like a physical blow.
He stared at his trembling hands, his breath hitching. The girl in the rain… the one who held the umbrella… the one who gave me a family…
It wasn't a random memory. It was the absolute foundation of his existence.
"Elsa…" White whispered, the sheer weight of the realization crashing down on his chest.
It wasn't just that Elsa had saved him when he was eight years old. It was that his very desire to keep that warmth—his terrifying fear of returning to that cold, lonely staircase—had driven his subconscious wish on the night of the accident. He hadn't just wished to survive; he had wished to protect the only home he had ever known. And the universe had exacted the toll from the very source of that happiness.
He swung his legs out of bed, his exhaustion completely burned away by a sudden, desperate panic. He had to find Bell. He had to beg, pray, or do whatever it took to rewrite the scales, no matter what the next price would be.
Because the rain was starting to fall again, and this time, he was the one who had to hold the umbrella.