It began with a voice.
Not just any voice — the voice. It came from the speakers, but it sounded as if it rose from the invisible space between heartbeat and hallucination. It spoke. Clearly. Tenderly. Omnisciently. Every word vibrated inside him like a secret command.
"Go out," it said. "The world is waiting. It’s your turn."
He nodded. Of course it was his turn. Today. Now. The music meant him — only him.
He held his breath. Each syllable glowed inside him as if someone had tuned the meaning of life to his frequency. It couldn’t be coincidence. This was the day the cosmos itself spoke through him. And the cosmos wanted him to speak to people. Unfortunately, cosmos and weather were out of sync. It was raining like judgment day.
Bad timing, he thought. Typical universe.
Outside, the rain tested its own limits — a roar, a deluge, a divine reset. He opened the umbrella. Stepped out. Like a pilgrim who finally understands that revelations rarely happen in sunlight.
The street was a sea of lights and puddles. Cars hissed by and people hurried past as if trying to escape the world itself. And in the middle of it stood him — the chosen one against his will. A drop of reason in an ocean of indifference.
"Would you like to share my umbrella?" he asked a woman, and his voice sounded as if destiny itself had flinched. She looked at him — startled, unbelieving, almost reverent — then shook her head and stepped back, as if one could ward off fate by refusing kindness. He nodded.
Tests must be difficult.
The music in his head applauded softly. So he went on speaking — sometimes shy, sometimes friendly, and sometimes so unsure that even the rain seemed to pause and listen.
No matter how often he asked, people stepped aside. Some smiled, some looked down, and others fled as if afraid he might beat them with the umbrella. He saw mirrors in their eyes, and in every mirror a flicker of himself.
Fleeting. Flickering. Foolish.
With every attempt something loosened — fear, shame, the old trembling before the world’s judgment. He stood there, dripping, blissful, exalted. A prophet with an umbrella. The Messiah of the pedestrian zone.
Then he laughed. Softly at first, then louder. A laugh that turned all stupidity into beauty. He laughed at himself, but also at the people. The whole scene seemed so surreal that he could barely stand from laughing. Had he been a passer-by himself, he would’ve thought he was insane.
And yet, with every rejection, something in him grew. He felt how the rain no longer touched him, how he became a statue amid the storm — a monument to foolishness and to freedom.
The rain clapped like applause, and for a moment it sounded like heaven. This was no longer a mission — it was revelation. And the thought was so beautiful, so pure, so absurdly true that he believed, for one brief instant, that the rain was falling only to celebrate him.
Then he understood:
“Maybe I’m the idiot.
But I’m dry.
And you’re not.”
