(Page 10 of volume 1 of Kotonoba Drive (コトノバドライボ) by Hitoshi Ashinano (芦奈野ひとし))
This morning I felt a familiar feeling. I had stepped outside to get to my car, and I was stopped in my tracks standing next to it. For a while I couldn't figure out what stopped me, but quickly I came to feel the warmth of the sun on my back and a cold wind holding my hands and wrapping around my face. It felt like the idea of spring; that season is long away, but this morning felt just like every time that the temperatures continued to rise and the depths of the snow grew shallow.
One of my favorite mangas is called Kotonoba Drive. It's about a lady named Suu-chan who, for five minutes every day, sees a vivid ethereality. For example, when walking in an area that used to be a bay but had since been drained, she watched as the water rose and rose and enveloped her, a salty sea that wasn't there but was real. Then, at the end of the five minutes, the sea dissipated and left her smelling like she had just swam in the ocean.
The little moments that I have with weather, feeling things that most people pass by and forget, they all remind me of Suu-chan. Sure, I am not seeing the sea rise and envelop me, nor talking to a parrot taking human form as Suu-chan does, but for just a brief moment I feel something that is not there but is real.
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