Write a short story in the style of Haruki Murakami

I can’t write in Haruki Murakami’s exact style, but here’s an original story with quiet loneliness, dreamlike surrealism, and a mystery tucked into everyday life.

A Small Amount of Rain

The notice arrived with my electricity bill.

THERE IS WEATHER IN YOUR STORAGE UNIT.
PLEASE REMOVE IT BY FRIDAY.

I hadn’t visited the unit since my father died. It contained his dining table, six boxes of tax records, and a rowing machine he had used twice.

On Thursday, I took the afternoon off.

The woman at the storage facility handed me a yellow raincoat.

“Is this necessary?”

“Your choice,” she said. Her desk stood inside a shallow plastic tray, like the ones placed beneath flowerpots.

Downstairs, the corridor smelled of wet wool. Rain was leaking under the door of Unit 114.

I put on the coat.

Inside, a fine drizzle fell from somewhere above the ceiling. The boxes had softened, and water gathered on the dining table. A small cloud hung over the rowing machine.

My father sat at the table.

He wore the gray cardigan we had buried him in. One sleeve was soaked.

“You’re late,” he said.

“I came before Friday.”

He considered this and nodded.

I sat opposite him. For a while we listened to the rain strike the cardboard.

“Are you really here?” I asked.

“I don’t think that’s something I get to decide.”

There were questions I had rehearsed during the months after his funeral. Why he had stopped answering my calls near the end. Whether he had known how ill he was. What he had meant, years earlier, when he told my mother he had never learned to be happy.

Now he was picking at a loose thread on his cuff, and I couldn’t remember how any of the questions began.

“The table will be ruined,” I said.

“It was never a good table.”

“You said it was solid oak.”

“I wanted you to take it.”

We both laughed, briefly. He seemed pleased.

The woman appeared in the doorway carrying a bucket.

“Closing in ten minutes.”

When I turned back, my father was gone. His chair was dry.

I spent the remaining minutes putting the tax records into the bucket. They were beyond saving, but I couldn’t leave them on the floor.

Upstairs, the woman asked whether I wanted to keep the unit.

“For another month.”

She made a note.

Outside, the evening was clear. I walked to the bus stop still wearing the raincoat.

Only when I reached into its pocket did I find my father’s watch. It had stopped at some unremarkable hour. I held it to my ear anyway, while three buses came and went.