Three storms, three promises

When it rains in Wulien, fountains overflow onto pavements. Every tourist’s guide mentions the summer seastorms, but only in the way one glosses over secrets before a stranger. They say nothing of the way the rain beats, turning roads to rivers, or how the squall winds sing on storefront strings, the shutter-snaps of lightning before the thunder drops. When it rains in Wulien, it pours.

From the day they first met on the bay, Jinai and Anqien could never forget that fact.

The newborn team had seen each other once before, among Cloud Connectors’ boardroom windows, separated by so many tables. That had been a different light, thinned and filtered by tinted glass and reflections in mounted filographs. They could not have foreseen the years that would begin in in that room, although both had had a curious inkling, like an ache that portended rain.

But here, the sun shone through hair, as through photo film, revealing different selves. As they beat clumsily onto the velvet tides of Muli Bay, Anqien began to coalesce a sense of Jinai that was more than a construct of light on a screen. She was real, flesh and blood and freckles on cheeks, and when her searching eyes met the glaring sun, they squinted.

They weren't ready for her, they thought, and they never would be. They thought so hard that neither noticed the sun as it was swallowed by stormclouds. The forecast had said the rain would come, but it was one thing to hear its name, and another to drown in it.

At the first scream of wind on the mast, the fledgling team gybed to starboard, Jinai crying, “Let’s go!” as she waved for Anqien to turn the helm. A breath’s hesitation, and then winches clicked, rope skittered, sea foam surged over their shoes. They swung away from the wind, skidding on the deck, while the mainsail swelled overhead in white and maroon.

As they hurtled back landward, Jinai leaned at the stern and raised her head to the rain with a screaming laugh. “Look at us go!” she cried. “The Cloudlander is back on the bay!”

And gods, if it didn’t make Anqien’s heart soar to hear that sound. “You’re gonna fall overboard,” they called back.

“And it won’t be the last time!” Jinai shouted to the sky as it was rent by rain, despite Telaki’s protests in their ears.

---

Storms of such a calibre came and went like moods during the monsoon season. It was nothing new to either of them, but this squall was different—the one that struck when Anqien first saw Jinai cry.

It charged into the city like a battering ram, no umbrella a worthy shield from its roaring rain. Lamplight splashed on pavements while the sky churned navy grey.

Her fingernails dug into their shoulder. “Why should I?” Her voice trembled, like a gutter about to burst. “Why should I even bother with my career?”

“Because you deserve a better life than the one he left you with,” they murmured, a far cry from the thunder.

The petrichor wafted through her windows, and the rain rushed down pipes, a strange pair to flood the silence between them.

“We were gonna live here…we were gonna settle. I got this place—for us.” The words were scattered by sobs. But the rain carried leaves down driveways and water curtained the windows, and Josa had given up on her, the way ex-lovers did.

“It might be naive for me to say, but if he had been worth it, he would have stayed.”

“He moved for his dream job. It was what he’d wanted for years. I couldn't have done anything to stop him.”

“And you wanted this for years, too, didn’t you?”

“I bought this place.”

Sympathy clouded Anqien’s eyes, though their face was twisted in a frown. There was nothing they could do but listen to her words, and mute the agony like earth muted rain. And they could keep doing that, if it meant keeping her in their life.

“I wish I could just scream,” she finally whispered. “I don't know how else to cope at this point.” 

“You can scream.”

And she did. Wind whistling through gaps in windowpanes, stormwater split by drain grilles, the first storm of summer screamed itself hoarse and she gripped their arm so hard they bruised. But it wouldn't be the last time.

The rain swept it away in a swirl, the sorrow and shame. Jinai held Anqien for the rest of the hour, and then she never held them again.

Oh, they were going to slip up. Oh, it was only a matter of time.

---

It didn’t take long—one blunder and then another and with comical timing, they realised they were in love.

The big race ended in the birth throes of summer, the way it always did. Anqien watched Jinai like one does a shooting star, staring unblinking as if it might wink out at any moment into the velvet night.

But she fell and fell, and they chased her light, and they crashed together in the twinkle of that blazing blue sky, the apocalyptic collision of a meteor and a moon. And as they did, as was tradition, the sky was swept by glowering grey.

While they kissed under canopies and sighed each other’s names, branches began to whistle their warning. In windows, the sky was shot through with black.

Then with a roll of thunder, the symphony they both knew by heart roused around them, plucking the strings of the bay, the cables and vangs, the guy ropes of storefronts. The weathered walls of Wulien reverberated with the first swell of rain, as if they had been built to do so, an amphitheatre for the rain.

Two fools kissing became two fools sprinting from the downpour, drenched to their toes. Diners peered through the restaurant facades with toasty bowls of noodles, but it was all wind chill out here, and mist splashing their shins.

They laughed, backs to the glass, as torrents cascaded onto the concrete. Pools on granite, rivulets on cheeks, not an inch of Wulien would be dry once the storm was through.

“I told you we'd forget about the rain,” laughed Jinai. “I told you, it always happens.” Ringlets of hair hung damp on her brow and when she grinned, their heart ached for all the joy and tears to come.

“Worth it,” they replied, squeezing her wet hand with theirs. “And it won't be the last time.”