Misaki City welcomed another chilly spring rain.
Unlike the rain in a metropolis, the rain here had a clear, translucent texture like cream, making even the curtain of fine, needlelike drizzle a rare and lovely sight.
In a mere ten years, Misaki had gone from an obscure, ordinary town to the present-day Misaki City. The areas once covered in fields and forests had gradually modernized amid its rapid growth, leaving no trace of the little town's former pastoral charm. Yet the enormous funds required for urban development, coupled with the economic collapse, had left its hills and mountains looking just as they had ten years ago.
Only the flat surrounding areas had been urbanized. Strictly speaking, though, the city had actually become livelier. Although some opposed the change and preferred living beside the fields, most residents still yearned for city life.
Street development and major facilities such as high schools had all moved into the city proper, and buildings containing enormous shopping centers had replaced the abandoned factories. Yet even these changes could not shake the city's pristine natural character.
Aoko Aozaki opened her red umbrella and gazed at the sunlight streaming down from the distant sky.
She neither liked nor disliked rain, but walking along the wet streets still brought back all manner of past connections and encounters.
Originally, upon graduating from middle school, she had planned to head to Tokyo like most people living in this little city, work part-time at a bar with a national university as her goal, and spend each day rushing about in pursuit of that modest dream.
But her older sister's sudden departure from home had naturally shattered that dream.
The Aozaki Family's true business, along with the whole mess that came with it, had been dumped into her hands.
Then the girl,