Episode 5 — The Umbrella That Wouldn't Stay Found

Myu had been saying the umbrella was alive for six months.

She had said it to Ryu (who wrote it down without comment), to her teacher (who said “Myu, please focus”), to the vice principal (who said “isn’t that charming”), and to Rin (who said “what umbrella?” and then got distracted by a stone fox doing something unusual). Nobody had believed her, which was typical, and nobody had gone to check, which was also typical, and then one Tuesday afternoon during cleaning duty the wagasa hopped three feet to the left and Ryu looked up from her notebook and said:

“You were right.”

Myu had the grace not to say I told you so. She was already moving.

The school’s wagasa had been in the entrance hall since the school’s founding. It was a traditional Japanese oil-paper umbrella — lacquered bamboo ribs, paper the color of old bone, a handle worn smooth by a hundred and forty years of hands. It lived in a dedicated stand near the door, was polished every year, and was offered to important visitors when it rained. The vice principal called it “part of the school’s spirit of hospitality.” The current students mostly walked past it.

Myu had noticed the eye two months into first grade.

It appeared on the surface of the paper — amber, round, old — and watched the entrance hall with the patient attention of something that had watched the same spot for a very long time. It disappeared when adults looked directly at it. It watched Myu back when she looked at it sideways. They had developed a sort of understanding.

Then she’d cleaned near it, and it had moved away from the mop, and she’d realized the understanding was more complicated than she’d thought.

“Don’t run,” Ryu said, behind her. She had her notebook open.

Myu was already running.

The problem was that the wagasa was fast.

It moved in a sideways hop — paper canopy tilting and righting, lacquered handle swinging — and it had apparently been watching the school’s layout for a hundred and forty years and memorized every shortcut. It went left at the entrance, right at the science room, straight through the music corridor without slowing down.

Myu matched it step for step, which was the most important thing. If she lost visual contact, she would lose it entirely.

“West stairs!” Ryu called, two steps behind her, notebook still open. “It’s heading up!”

The wagasa took the stairs without breaking rhythm. The paper rustled against the railing. It had one leg and no hands and was somehow faster on stairs than Myu, which was genuinely offensive.

She pushed harder.

Second floor: past the library (the librarian glanced up; they did not stop), past the old science storage, left at the junction where the east wing began and the floor got slightly warped and the afternoon light came through at a different angle.

The wagasa slowed.

Not stopped — slowed. The hops became smaller, more deliberate, like something arriving rather than fleeing. It went to the end of the old east wing, pushed through a door that hadn’t been opened in some time (Myu caught it), and entered a classroom that smelled of old chalk and cedar and time.

It stopped in the center of the room.

The classroom was unused. The desks were still arranged in rows, old-style, wooden. The windows faced west, toward the mountain, toward the path that wound up through the cedars toward — Myu could just see it — the first gate of Akatsuki Inari Shrine.

The wagasa stood in the middle of the empty room.

Its eye looked at the mountain.

Myu stood in the doorway, breathing hard, and looked at the wagasa looking at the mountain, and felt something shift in how she understood the situation.

“Ryu,” she said. “What’s up there?”

Ryu was already at the window. “The shrine,” she said. “Our shrine.” She opened her notebook to a fresh page. “It can see the path from here.”

The wagasa did not move.

Myu sat down on one of the old desks. The wagasa’s eye remained fixed on the mountain. The afternoon light came through the dusty windows and made the old paper look golden.

“It wants to go there,” Myu said. It wasn’t a question.

“I think so,” Ryu said. “But it can’t get there alone.”

Myu thought about this for a moment. Then she stood up, straightened her jacket, and said: “We need Rin.”

They found Rin sweeping the inner courtyard of the shrine, which was where she usually was at this time of day. Myu ran the entire uphill path and arrived at the gate still moving, and grabbed Rin’s sleeve, and said: “There’s a wagasa at the school. It has one eye and one leg and it ran away from us and showed us a classroom and it wants to come here and Ryu has notes.”

Rin stopped sweeping.

She looked at Myu. She looked up the mountain path, toward the school, and then back at Myu. “You chased it,” she said.

“Yes.”

“It showed you a classroom.”

“With a window that looks at the shrine. Yes.”

Rin leaned the broom against the courtyard wall. “I’ll come tomorrow morning,” she said. “Before school. Tell the vice principal.”

“I already texted Ryu to tell him,” Myu said.

Rin looked at her for another moment. “You’re going to be very good at this someday,” she said, which was the best thing anyone had ever said to Myu in her entire life.

To be continued in Episode 6: “The Umbrella Comes Home”

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