“What’s with this boy…?”
And the boy’s strange behavior didn’t stop there. The boy seemed extremely taken with Miss Umbrella.
He woke up in the mornings holding her. Then the whole way to school, he had a one-sided conversation with Miss Umbrella. And later, when he came back to get her, he talked to her about what had happened during the school day.
Miss Umbrella told me she was really bewildered by this turn of events, which was unlike anything she had experienced in her life before. I believed she was. I was bewildered just hearing it.
Nonetheless, the boy was only ten.
It is a sensitive age.
Sometimes when people are young, completely ordinary objects become valuable treasures to them. Surely, to that boy, this scavenged umbrella was exactly such an object.
But Miss Umbrella had completely lost her ability to trust people.
Because she was always discarded in the end.
“Heh-heh-heh, Miss Umbrella, listen to this. Today, you know what? I got praised by my teacher at school! Why do you think that was? It was because my grades are really good!” The boy threw out his chest proudly.
Will it be one week, or two, or maybe just one day?
At some point, I know this child will get bored with me, like all the others—
“Miss Umbrella, I have today off school, so let’s go out somewhere together!”
However, whenever the boy had spare time, he took Miss Umbrella around with him.
“Let’s go to the library today!”
They were always together on his days off.
“It’s raining! Now’s your time to shine!”
On rainy days, they would go out with no destination in mind.
“Aw man, won’t it ever rain? I wanna put my umbrella up already.”
On sunny days, he waited impatiently for rain.
“Every day has been so much fun since I picked you up, Miss Umbrella.”
Even so, she was certain he would get bored of her before long, so she stayed silent.
“I wish it would just rain forever.”
But she gradually came to trust the boy, who always spoke to her with a smile on his face.
And so the time she spent alone with the boy continued right along.
A week before Mistress Elaina and I encountered her—
“Yay! Finally some rain!”
That boy was as restless to get out into the depressing, pouring rain as anyone else would be on a bright, sunny day.
To him, rain was shine.
“Miss Umbrella, where should we go today?”
It was his first day off in a long time. The boy carefully put his dear umbrella up and took a walk around town.
Before she knew it, the umbrella began to feel like she wanted to reciprocate the boy’s feelings.
“……”
She thought about where she might like to go.
Though she knew for certain that even if she spoke words, they wouldn’t reach the boy’s ears, she still told him, “Anywhere is fine.”
That was honestly how she felt. “As long as it’s someplace where I’m keeping you out of the rain as an umbrella should, anywhere will do—”
That was her most cherished desire as an object.
All she wanted was for someone to take very good care of her, for a long, long time, and make good use of her.
She wondered if her sentiment made it through to the boy.
She knew that her words must have sounded like weird noises to him. Just like they always did.
“……”
The boy was silent.
Ah, I knew it, he’s withdrawn from me because I made a strange noise—, she thought despondently.
“—Huh? What’re you doin’ here?”
However, none of her words, or rather, noises, had made it to his ears in the first place.
“You’re in an awful good mood today, when you’re so quiet at school.”
Right in front of the boy stood three other boys who were about the same height.
“Ah, uh…”
The energy the boy had shown just a moment earlier abruptly vanished. He fell into silence, almost like he was a different person entirely.
The side of him that was always cheerfully chattering to Miss Umbrella was nowhere to be seen.
“Huh, what’s with that umbrella?! It’s so old-fashioned! Don’cha have your own umbrella?”
“Ah, uh…well…” The boy grasped Miss Umbrella tightly in both hands and held her up. “Ah-ha-ha, I borrowed it from my dad…”
“Oh, didja?”
Miss Umbrella knew that the children surrounding the boy weren’t saying those things out of malice. They were just too honest. They didn’t consider the boy’s feelings.
“But man, your dad has a super-weird umbrella.”
“It’s ugly!”
“It’s old!”
They said whatever they liked. But they weren’t trying to be mean.
The umbrella knew that perfectly well.
She knew what children were like.
But she felt angry at the children for mocking the boy who had been treating an umbrella like her with such care.
She didn’t want them to ruin this for her.
Not when she was finally enjoying every day.
“Ugly, you say? Old, you say? Don’t you thumb your nose at me! I am a glamorous umbrella! How rude of you!”
She got angry and shouted loudly. Her voice probably reached the boys’ ears as the sound of a dog crying, just as it had sounded to Mistress Elaina.
Needless to say, that made it obvious that she was more than an ordinary umbrella.
“W-waaahhh!”
“What’s with that umbrella?! It’s freaky!”
“It’s a monster! A monster!”
All of the children shouted as they snatched the cursed umbrella from the boy and threw it away on the side of the road.
“Ah—”
The boy reached out for the discarded Miss Umbrella.
“Come on! Let’s get out of here! That umbrella’s dangerous!”
But one of the children took the boy’s other hand and pulled him away. The children seemed frightened, but also they seemed to be enjoying themselves as they then ran away into the city with the boy in tow.
After that, some kind passerby had found Miss Umbrella, who had been left by the side of the road still open, and placed her in a box.