I was about to leave the beauty salon for the supermarket across from it when there suddenly came a downpour. It rained heavily enough to whiteout everything around. Some people were dashing toward the supermarket soaking wet instantly. I pulled out a folding umbrella from my bag. In my school days, my grandmother would never forget to say, “Have you got an umbrella?” whenever I was leaving the house, rain or shine. That has made it my habit to carry a folding umbrella wherever I go regardless of the weather forecast to this day.
When I was a high school student, I went to school by local bus. I needed to transfer the bus on the way because the school I went to was far from my home. One day, while I was transferring and waiting for the bus at the bus stop, a heavy rain started to fall. The bus stop was on the street and had no roof. I stuck my hand into my school bag for a folding umbrella, then remembered that morning at home. Since it shined brightly and I felt it bothersome to go get my folding umbrella, I lied to my grandmother’s daily confirmation for once and said yes though I didn’t have it in my bag. As it sometimes happens, it never rains but it pours. I wasn’t carrying an umbrella on that particular day. Learning how right my grandmother had been, I was bracing myself to get drenched. Then, it stopped raining all of a sudden. To see what happened, I looked up. There was an umbrella above my head. And I saw a girl who was about my age and wearing a uniform of a different school standing close to me. I hadn’t noticed she was also waiting for the bus and stepped closer to me to let me share her umbrella when it started raining. It was her umbrella that covered me.
I had been a bad person under the influence of my mother. She was all vanity and cared only how she looked to others. She made me go to the most privileged school in the area based on her values. She believed which school they went to decided people’s rank. After I actually enrolled in that private school, I found out that other students thought in the same way as my mother did. As I was too weak to defy it, I went with the flow and soon adapted that kind of ranking myself. Each school had its own uniform by which the school a student went to could be identified. I was sporting my uniform of the elite school to show that I belonged to the upper class. Most Japanese students use public transportation to school. The students of my school including me were snobbish and overtly despised other schools’ students when we were riding the local bus together on our way to and back from school. We cold-shouldered and ignored the students of the lower rank schools as if they had been invisible. Accordingly, other schools’ students apparently hated us because of our attitudes. As a result, an inamicable, tense atmosphere was created whenever we shared public transportation. The girl who held out her umbrella for me was wearing a uniform of one of those schools that we had been looking down on.
My mother’s mantra had been that everything people do was nothing but for gain, which had inevitably inhabited my mind for a long time since my childhood. But here she was, a stranger who was getting drenched half of her body by giving up half of the cover for me. Even though she had recognized from my uniform that I was one of those pretentious students of the privileged school, she didn’t gloat over my misery. Her expression wasn’t patronizing at all, but rather apologetic as if she expected that I would consider help from a lower rank school’s student as an insult and reject it with anger. I was flurried by an umbrella offered without gain. It proved my mother’s mantra was wrong, my friends’ attitudes were wrong, and I was wrong. I thanked her and we waited for the bus together silently under one umbrella. And we separated into each other’s friends as usual when the bus arrived. Only, now that I broke an evil spell of my mother and my friends, my attitude had changed since then. I learned the school’s rank wasn’t proportionate to the students’ humanity, or rather, was inversely proportional. I greeted that girl every time I saw her and sometimes had a chat with her on or off the bus. When my friends saw me doing that, they would sneer at me saying, “Is she your friend or something?” to which I replied yes. What I didn’t explain to them was that she was my benefactor who rescued me from the evil world with her umbrella.
When I was opening my folding umbrella under the eaves of the beauty salon, I noticed a woman came out of the building, looking discouraged by the pouring rain. I thought of sharing my umbrella with her momentarily, and stopped. I’m extremely careful about helping people. Whenever an occasion arises, I muse deliberately and discreetly whether I should offer help or not because I don’t want to offend someone with my help. I imagine some people may regard it as an unwelcome favor and would rather do it by themselves. I also fear that someone takes my kindness as being looked down on. From those worries, I always try not to meddle with someone. In this case, however, I wavered because an umbrella was involved. While the encounter with the girl in my high school days popped up in my mind, I chose to stick to my way and stepped out in the downpour alone. A few steps later, the woman dashed past me in the rain. The moment I saw it, I shouted to her, “Would you get in my umbrella!?” totally unconsciously as a reflex action. She looked back in surprise and I covered her with my umbrella before she replied while I was surprised at my action myself as much as she was. We ran to the entrance of the supermarket together under one umbrella. She thanked me gratefully and disappeared into the store gleefully. Half of my body got drenched which was exactly what I had prevented by carrying a folding umbrella all those years. Although it felt stupid to get wet by breaking my principle not to meddle with others, I felt extremely good at the same time because I looked like the girl of the umbrella, half of whose body had been drenched as I was now. I realized how deeply her deed had resided in me and how much I longed to become a person like her.
