Whoosh!!!
The rain kept falling.
The atmosphere was hardly pleasant.
Denji sheltered alone in a phone booth.
"I should've asked Master to take me with him."
"It's raining so hard. Who knows when it'll stop?"
"At least the clothes Master bought me didn't get wet."
Denji pressed his face against the phone booth's glass, watching the heavy rain outside.
Suddenly, he spotted what looked like a shark fin swimming back and forth along the street.
"What's that?"
"A devil?"
Before Denji could get a good look at it, the fin vanished.
The shark fin on the street disappeared into the downpour.
Just then, someone opened the phone booth's door.
"Oh, wow, it's really pouring! Thank goodness there's a phone booth to shelter in."
Denji turned toward the voice.
A girl, soaked from head to toe, was wringing water out of her clothes.
"Who are you?"
"Hi, I..." The girl had only just started speaking when the sight of Denji's face made her burst out laughing.
The scene had all the makings of a romantic encounter.
But the girl's uncontrollable laughter shattered that atmosphere.
"Hahahaha!"
"What are you laughing at?" Denji was baffled.
"Sorry! Oh, sorry, I'm sor..."
As she laughed, the girl suddenly stopped.
She seemed to have remembered something sad.
Then she started crying.
Her abrupt swings between laughter and tears left Denji at a loss.
"What's wrong with you? First you laugh, then you cry."
"Sorry. You look so much like my dog that died. Seeing you made me laugh, but then thinking about my dead dog made me sad."
"I'm not a dog!!" Denji protested.
"Sorry, sorry. I'll go outside."
With that, the girl turned to leave.
But the rain outside hadn't stopped.
And there was nowhere else nearby to take shelter.
Denji figured he might have