2025 Star Festival Prompt
Personal Raincloud (11) : It’s a beautiful, sunny day in Destiny City–for everyone but you. There’s not a cloud in the sky–except for yours. No matter where you go, a dark cloud seems to hover, casting shadows wherever you go. It’s been raining since you woke up today, and it’s like bad luck and bad weather just follows you. It’s a constant downpour, always exactly where you are. The raincloud is usually big enough to easily cover a full building, so if you stick around for too long, your misfortune will turn into someone else’s too. The raincloud might follow you for a few hours or for the whole day before slowly fading; there’s no escaping it, or the strange, sombre mood that seems to follow you.

Roka woke up feeling miserable. When he looked outside, there seemed to be a shadow hanging over his building which was odd because there didn’t appear to be any clouds in the sky that Roka could see. He quickly got dressed and ready for college before going outside to try to determine the source of the shadow. It turned out to be a giant dark cloud, and what Roka had been too sleepy to realize before was that it was raining down only over his building.

He tried to out-run it, thinking he wouldn’t need to get an umbrella if he just left the building that it, for some reason, seemed to be hovering over. Unfortunately, he was wrong. It wasn’t the building it was hovering over. It was him.

When he tried to catch a bus, it followed the bus, causing vehicles everywhere to honk in confusion. It caused people to stare when he walked to his first class and distracted his fellow students with its rain pattering on the windows while he was in the college building. It was as if the thing was alive and didn’t want him to forget that it was following him even if it couldn’t reach him indoors.

Why? Did it have something to do with him being a White Moon Senshi? He didn’t think he’d heard of this happening to anyone else before, though. Perhaps it did and he just wasn’t aware. He had only recently returned to Destiny City from Japan, after all.

After one of his classes, he went to a library and stood at a window, watching it rain and thinking. In his hand, he fiddled with an emerald star charm he had received from someone earlier for the upcoming Destiny City Star Festival. The weather reminded him of how in Japan, at least, the people wished for clear skies during the Star Festival so that the star-crossed lovers, Orihime and Hikoboshi - the stars Vega and Altair, respectively - could meet for their once-a-year reunion.

The story went that if the skies weren't clear, the magpies that made a bridge between the lovers across the Milky Way wouldn't come to help them. But surely one storm cloud in the sky wouldn't prevent Orihime and Hikoboshi's reunion, would it?

Sighing wistfully, Roka remembered his first love and all the obstacles that kept them from being together. Like the star-crossed lovers, he, too, had wanted to abandon his duties in order to follow his heart. Love was not logical; it made people behave in impractical and unpredictable ways. So much so that even if they knew their relationship was doomed, they still pursued it; sometimes even harder than if their relationship hadn't been forbidden in the first place.

Remembering this, the silver-haired young man's face darkened as he also recalled what kind of person his first love had turned out to be. It had seemed he had almost turned his back on his family for nothing. If Orihime's lover, Hikoboshi, as the celestial cow-herder, was anything like that - a cheater, perhaps, who had another lover he spent the rest of the year with, perhaps it was best that they not meet after all. And suddenly, Roka wondered if maybe his little storm cloud wouldn't have been good for warding the helpful magpies away.

As soon as he thought that, however, the storm cloud over the library began to fade and dissipate until it was completely gone. Either it had used up all its rain or maybe - just maybe - it had responded to Roka's wish for it to be there. The college student sighed and packed up his things, including his star charm, preparing to go to his next class. Why did things never turn out the way he wanted them to when he wanted them to? The universe seemed determined to be against him no matter what.