There hadn’t been a single drop of rain falling from the sky ever since I parted ways with that peculiar girl. That left me wondering, what if she really possessed some powers and made it rain deliberately? 

I forgot to give her back the bag filled with books she had bought. When I realized that, it was too late—her figure had already disappeared into some side alley. While I could easily find her if I only ran in her direction and looked around, I decided to give up instead, because it wasn’t a life-or-death situation—I could as well return it to her as soon as I saw her next time at school. 

That’s right—it was Saturday evening. I would see her the day after tomorrow, and that was when I was going to return it to her. 

Walking down the deserted neighborhood street, my head was filled with mainly embarrassing and satisfying thoughts. I didn’t get to see her face today and I got to see only a small fragment of her hair, but... the fact that I met someone outside school was something I wouldn’t have imagined just a few months ago. Perhaps I was exaggerating, but I didn’t have any friends except for Yamaguchi. He, at this moment, unfortunately wasn’t my friend anymore. He seemed to be doing well without me, though, so I didn’t worry about it. 

About that girl... I still wasn’t quite sure if I could call her my friend. I guess some people do that, directly asking someone if they could become their friend, but I think that the process of becoming friends was something that came naturally, almost imperceptibly. That’s why I couldn’t ask her whether she was my friend or not, I had to find the answer to it on my own. 

Finally, I found myself in front of my house. That was when I, luckily, realized that I had the yellow raincoat she had lent to me still on. While I could easily excuse the bag of books, it wasn’t the case for the raincoat—nobody in my family had such a conspicuous, yellow raincoat. If I forgot about that, I would probably still find some way to explain it, for example, that I had bought it on the spot. 

Anyhow, I’d rather avoid unnecessary questions, so I took it off, folded it and tried to hide it in my hand, because shoving it into the bag with books was obviously a bad idea. 

As it should be a little bit past 7 pm right now, everyone should be at home—that was my parents and my sister, the latter I could imagine asking me uneasy questions, even though she had no grounds for suspecting something else than me going to a bookstore happened. 

Still, even though it wasn’t anything to be ashamed of, if she asked me if I perhaps, had gone out with a girl, even as a joke, I would be anxious to answer. 

“I’m back...” I said as I went through the doorframe. I could already hear some signs of life inside, but I tried to ignore them as much as possible and almost ran upstairs to my room. 

“...” 

There were two things I didn’t have when I left: the bag filled with books and the yellow raincoat. I wasn’t going to touch them until I returned them on Monday—in order not to forget about it, I brought out the books and put them on my desk, similarly to the raincoat. 

“Sorry. I took your books home with me. If you don’t mind it, I’ll return them on Monday.” 

Using my phone, I sent her a message. There wasn’t any need for it whatsoever—she should have noticed already that she was missing something. 

“Don’t worry, human. It’s not the slightest problem for me. Don’t be afraid to freely browse through them. In case you took a liking to one, I can lend it to you”, a response came a few minutes later. 

That was the last Saturday of June. On that day, I met for the first time with the peculiar girl outside school. She came dressed in an unusual, mostly black outfit, and her face was hidden with a black gas mask. Aside from that, she seemed to be much more cheerful, while still playing pretend at all times. 

On Monday, I would get to see her again. This time, without a gas mask. Her outfit would be the usual school uniform I was used to seeing. The only abnormality would be the eyepatch, but that wasn’t something I minded in the slightest. 

I guess that, after all, I could already call her my friend. 

“Yeah, she’s a peculiar one.”