A bolt of lightning tore through the dark clouds, bringing rain to Mount Sagiri.
Haruto woke from his dream with a cold, wet face. He reached up and found it covered in water.
He had no idea whether they were tears shed in his sleep or rain blown through the window.
Through the window, he could see the boys gleefully stripping off their shirts and charging into the rain.
Won't they catch a cold? he thought.
Then it suddenly struck him that, a few years earlier, he would have been the one laughing out in the rain.
At that realization, Haruto's face fell. He refused to admit that he no longer counted as a boy.
He reached out to prop up the window's rain awning, then burrowed into his blankets to watch the rain.
He especially didn't feel like moving today.
He didn't want to train, think, teach his students, or patrol... no, patrolling his territory was still necessary.
The rain trickled past his eyes, forming continuous strings of beads.
Haruto drew his gaze away from the running boys and turned it toward the endless raindrops.
"Trace its shape with your eyes."
He remembered Sōma's words.
Demons, people, lightning... and raindrops, too.
He tried to catch the trails of the falling raindrops with his eyes and lock onto their movements. That wasn't difficult for Haruto.
The rain's path was easy to predict. Gradually, he became absorbed in it, feeling as though the drops were sliding down along paths he had prescribed.
...Then, slow down...
He felt as though he was simply spacing out, with nothing on his mind.
Strangely enough, those strings of raindrops really did begin to slow before his eyes.
As though someone on the other side of a screen had pressed a slow-motion button, everything before him