“Kyah…! You pushy man—”
Miss Umbrella was thrilled. He looked like he was well-off, and he showed his humanity by taking her with him at just the right moment, which really pushed Miss Umbrella’s buttons, she said. It’s hard to describe the feeling of hearing an object that you only just met tell you about its romantic preferences.
It sounded like her relationship with this attractive fellow continued for a little while, but according to Miss Umbrella, the man was horribly abusive.
“Tell me, where are you taking me today?” asked the girl under the umbrella.
Even though the pretty man had Miss Umbrella’s companionship, he nevertheless allowed another woman to stand underneath her!
“Where do you want to go? We can go anywhere you like.”
“Do you like me?”
“Of course! You’re the best.”
“Oh, you! You must say that to all the girls.”
The woman smacked at the pretty man’s shoulder, looking not entirely displeased.
Several days later—
The man had let another woman under the umbrella and whispered to her, “You’re the best…”
Even I thought the man in her story was scum.
The pretty man already had a favorite girl, but by confiding in them and showing them that he was vulnerable by saying things like “Things haven’t been going so well with my girlfriend recently…,” he awakened the maternal instincts in the other women and went through them one after the other. Perhaps because he was easily able to pick up women, and just as easily able to discard them, every time he went out, there was a different girl underneath Miss Umbrella.
He let many people underneath Miss Umbrella.
Then suddenly, one day after about three weeks had gone by, he discarded her. Miss Umbrella, who had been sadly discarded for a variety of different reasons, was once again simply an abandoned object.
She was left behind at a café, just like when they had met.
And after that, she was passed between different people again. One day, it was a middle-aged man. Another day, a young girl. One day, an old man, the next day, an old woman.
Many people walked around holding her overhead.
It was all temporary, just long enough to keep them out of the rain.
“Heh-heh… And so you see, I have already been sullied by many people’s hands…,” she said, laughing in a self-deprecating way. I decided to ignore her questionable remark.
“So then, when did you meet your current owner?”
“How lovely of you to ask!”
Her voice leaped with excitement.
“Mnh, mnh…” And just at that moment, Mistress Elaina began breathing deeply in her sleep. The story was long, and she was tired, plus she hadn’t been sleeping very well for the past few days, so I suppose it was inevitable.
According to Miss Umbrella, the encounter with her current owner had been a true stroke of fate.
It was raining that day, and she was waiting by the side of the road where her previous owner had abandoned her.
Just like the day when she had first been thrown out.
“Whine…whine…”
She had been sorrowfully weeping.
Every time it rains, I spend the whole day being passed from person to person. What on earth am I doing with my life? It wasn’t supposed to be like this.
She no longer had any pride in herself as a glamorous umbrella.
She wondered if this treatment would continue for the rest of her life—and as she was thinking such thoughts, her tears never ceased.
But then, on that day, another stranger picked her up.
“Man. Sudden rain showers sure do suck.”
It was a young boy, only about ten years old.
She cried out, “Oh, how miserable…! In the end, even a child has picked me up…! I can’t believe it, a glamorous umbrella like me! I’ve fallen as far as I can fall!”
She grieved and moaned. From the boy’s perspective, her laments must have sounded like nothing more than some strange noises, or maybe the crying of a puppy dog.
But at any rate, the boy didn’t seem to listen to her voice at all.
“Wow! This umbrella is super cool!”
The black umbrella opened with a thwap in the falling rain.
“Humph. I’m a high-quality, glamorous umbrella, you know? It’s only natural that I should be ‘cool,’ or however you put it. What’s wrong with this child…?”
Even as she grumbled her complaints, the umbrella protected the boy from the rain so that he wouldn’t get wet.
The boy was in a good mood as he walked through the rain.
“I’m sure this boy is just going to throw me away in the end like all the others…”
She no longer felt any joy when someone picked her up. Instead, she thought about how many people had abandoned her so far.
This child will throw me away in any case. I make myself miserable by getting my hopes up.
She had even stopped crying out as she had before. She had been reduced to nothing more than an ordinary umbrella.
“I’m home!” As soon as the young boy got home, he took the umbrella straight into the bathroom. “You got real dirty in the rain, huh? I’ve got to clean you up proper.”
The boy rinsed away the raindrops that were clinging to the umbrella with clean water and then dried her off in his room.
The filth that had clung to Miss Umbrella for so long was washed away.
“Hmm… He’s quite perceptive for a child…when it comes to umbrella care.”
As impressed as she was, Miss Umbrella still cautioned herself, “This child is going to throw me away in the end. He’s definitely going to throw me away. I mustn’t have any expectations—”
But the boy was quite an eccentric child.
“Wow, it really is super cool, huh…?”
The boy gazed ecstatically at Miss Umbrella once she was dried off in his room. He must have had a lot of time on his hands, because after that, he spent a while drawing a sketch of Miss Umbrella. Then when night fell, he went to sleep cradling her in his arms.