Original: https://watanabefuckin.fanbox.cc/posts/4653898

Watanabe Ryouichi is the idiosyncratic writer of several well-known visual novels like the -kuru series, parts of Aokana, and many others, but did you know that he also has a fanbox where he just writes random stuff? I was strangely inspired by this umbrella story when I read it this morning, so here’s a translation. Let us hope I managed to capture at least some of his style. Or at least supplanted it with another fun style. Either works for me COPIUM.

This kind of seating arrangement seems more common on Japanese commuter trains specifically.

Why does this umbrella haunt me?

By Watanabe Ryouichi

I boarded a mostly empty train.

Sitting down at one edge of a sofa seat with my back to the window, I noticed a cheap vinyl umbrella hanging from the handrail at the other edge.

Someone had to have forgotten it there.

Or was I wrong? It looked very worn. The usual transparent vinyl had been blackened throughout, and at the edges muddy water pooled. Was someone trying to make a larva breeding ground? I had to wonder.

It felt like some new breed of flesh-eating maggot could jump out of it, hissing, at any second…

…And it was occupying the seat right next to me.

It was one heck of an umbrella. You had to wonder at the mental state of whoever had used it hard enough to leave it in this state. Still, it wasn’t my umbrella.
—In an instant, my curiosity waned.

As I was about to get off the train, an old lady called out to me:

“Hey, hey you! You forgot your umbrella!”

The doors were about to close again. I had to get off!

“O-Oh yeah,” I said, hastily picking up the umbrella.

The old lady beamed magnificently at me. “Good that I told you!” she said.

I didn’t want to wipe that smile off her face, so in the end, I got off the train with the mystery umbrella in the crook of my arm.

…What am I supposed to do with this thing?

I suppose I could just hand it to the staff at the ticket gate, but considering how beat up it was, they’d probably think I was asking them to throw it away rather than genuinely turning in a lost item.

“Does this guy think we’re a landfill?!” they might think, and I wouldn’t blame them.

So in the end, I went through the ticket gate without speaking up.

—I’d stolen the umbrella!

Yeah, I thought it must have been thrown away deliberately. But that was just my opinion: perhaps its worn-out state was a sign of love, not neglect?

And what was I supposed to do with it now?

In the end, I got home without reaching a decision. One year later, it’s still with me.

—Seriously, what am I supposed to do with it?

If only I’d had the strength to tell that old lady it wasn’t my umbrella back then…

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