**PART 3: When Sunlight Burns**
Hina and Hodaka traveled to Shinjuku the next day. The rain didn't let up, but something else had changed. The clouds no longer felt indifferent. They *watched*.
They found Airi at an old Shinto shrine, curled beneath a broken fox statue. Her eyes were vacant.
"You're... the sunshine girl," she said softly when she saw Hina.
"I was," Hina said. "But you are now. And it'll kill you if you don't learn to carry it."
Airi wept. She had seen the Realm Above. She had floated alone among the clouds. She had spoken to a great serpent of wind and a woman made of thunder. They had offered her sunlight - and no explanation.
"They said the sky is unbalanced," Airi whispered. "That one Weather Maiden isn't enough."
Hina looked at her pendant, which was beginning to dim.
---
**PART 4: A Festival Beneath the Waves**
Tokyo decided to celebrate its first sunshine in years. A festival was organized - complete with floating lanterns, boats, rooftop dance troupes, and fireworks launched from rafts.
Hina, Hodaka, and Airi walked through the flooded streets that night, surrounded by music and laughter. But the clouds began to churn.
"It's too soon," Hina whispered.
Airi's eyes widened. She collapsed mid-step, gasping. Her hands sparked with light.
"She's overusing it," Hina said, catching her. "It's feeding on her."
As the fireworks burst in the sky, the rain came down harder - no longer water, but *glass*. Sharp, slanting sheets.
People screamed. The sky opened.
Airi floated upward, unconscious.
---
**PART 5: Return to the Sky Realm**
"You can't go again," Hodaka begged.
"She won't survive up there alone," Hina said.
She kissed him - soft, slow, final - and stepped into the puddle beneath the torii gate. Light erupted.
She rose.
Above Tokyo, Hina found Airi entangled in vines of light, struggling, fading.
"You're not meant to hold it alone," Hina said, reaching her. "We'll carry it together."
But the Sky Realm was angry. Thunder gods and wind serpents howled. The balance was broken.
And then - Hodaka arrived.
Not through a gate, not with magic - but with sheer will. He climbed the Realm through a ladder of falling rain.
"You promised you'd come back to me," he told Hina. "So I came to you."
Together, the three of them created something new: **a bond between skies and earth**, between love and light.
The Sky gods relented.
---
**PART 6: The New Pact**
When they returned, the sky was neither blue nor gray - but silver. Balanced. It rained gently, like a whisper.
Airi no longer held the burden alone. She, Hina, and another Weather Maiden in Kyoto shared it - linked by ritual, memory, and understanding.
And the city began to heal.
Hina and Hodaka re-opened Amano Kitchen. They sold ramen beneath a clear tarp roof. People came from all over to eat, laugh, and glimpse the girl who once saved the sky.
---
**Final Scene: Under the Sun**
One morning, Hina woke to the smell of coffee and the sound of birds.
Outside - real, golden, *whole* sunlight poured into the alley.
She stepped outside and saw Hodaka waiting, a ring in his hand.
"The sky isn't mine to promise," he said. "But I can promise you this. Rain or shine."
Hina laughed, eyes wet with joy.
And above them, the clouds held back.
---
**THE END.**