Rain sucks. Everyone can agree on that. And yet, not everybody wants an umbrella even if it's raining!

As an umbrella herself, Kogasa was highly offended! She had tried offering herself to shield the humans who had forgotten their umbrellas and yet all of them just ignored her and started running in the rain while covering their heads! To an umbrella, this was an insult of the greatest scale.

But Kogasa was used to this, she had been ignored and tossed away her whole life, no, even before she was alive she was already abandoned.

"Mm!" Kogasa slapped both of her cheeks to stop her current line of thought. "We're not thinking like that today! We need to stay positive!"

Rainy days were a mixed bag for Kogasa, on one hand, rainy days were when umbrellas like her were the most useful, on the other, it just makes it that much more painful when people reject you in favor of running in the rain.

Kogasa was currently on a rejection streak, being rejected by over twelve people and counting. She was just about to give up and head back to her forge for the day when she spotted a head of red among the crowd. Sekibanki.

Banki would definitely take her up on her offer right? That's what girlfriends were for after all!

"Banki!"

"Hmm?" The confused rokurokubi turned to face her hyper girlfriend, currently barreling towards her at a concerning speed.

"Oof." The azure woman crashed into a tight hug with the redhead at full speed. Not that Sekibanki minded though.

"Kogasa what-"

"Banki, do you want to use me as your umbrella!?"

An awkward smile. "Why not?"

"Yay!" The Karakasa enthusiastically opened her umbrella half and hoisted it upwards to protect her and her lover from the onslaught of the rain. Nice and dry, warm and comfy. She couldn't see why the humans she had asked all rejected her, being dry was nice!

"Thanks, Kogasa. I can't believe I forgot my umbrella today, that's so careless of me." Sekibanki commented, lightly fidgeting under the umbrella.

"No problem Banki! I'm actually really glad that you forgot your umbrella since that means that I could help you!" Kogasa said cheerfully. "I'm sorry about the tight squeeze though, guess I'll just have to hug you!"

And hug she did, with one arm around Sekibanki's waist, the two headed off to Sekibanki's apartment building. It was a humble building, about five stories tall with less than ten rooms in total. But the neighbors seemed to be friendly, at least from what Banki had said.

"Oh? And what did he say? Does he like you back?" And noisy apparently.

"Well, he said that he'd like to date me but he needed to take care of his grandfather who broke his leg, he said he's taking him to Eientei soon."

"Oooh lucky! That means he'll probably return your feelings soon right?"

"Yeah! I think so too! I can't wait!" They seemed to be talking about their love lives. Well, typical teenager conversations, Kogasa guesses.

It was then that they finally noticed the approaching duo. They were a but apprehensive at first, seeing the kasa-obake approaching, but they quickly softened their gazes when they noticed their friendly neighbor with her, apparently seeming unharmed and dry.

"Yo! Sekibanki! What're you doing with that youkai?"

'That youkai'? What'd she mean by that? Kogasa pondered. It sounded almost offensive to be honest, but Kogasa didn't really mind, it was the truth after all. She was a youkai, and that was probably why no one else wanted to share her umbrella.

"Ah, well, I kinda forgot my umbrella, my bad." Sekibanki sheepishly scratched the back of her head while walking towards the shaded patio. "Kogasa here was just escorting me as my personal umbrella."

Kogasa gave a dramatic bow as soon as she was on the patio too. "Yes, I am trying to find people who need my help, and so far only Banki has accepted it! If you want, I could also escort you guys through the rain!"

They all gave fervent shakes of the head. "No thank you, we were just heading inside, we were just talking about things here is all." They all nodded with each other.

"Ah right! Banki, do you have anyone you like at the moment?" The sudden about face was as surprising as Kogasa's best jumpscares. And Sekibanki clearly thought so too, what with her head almost popping out of its socket.

"M-me!?" They all nodded. "Uh um my love life is secret and I'd rather not talk about it. Not that there's anything interesting anyway." What.

"Awww Banki you need to get out more! It's such a waste, you're so pretty!" They all nodded again. "Maybe I should introduce you to my brother? He's pretty handsome!"

"Ah, no thanks. I appreciate it though."

What? Appreciate it? In the first place what do you mean nothing interesting going on? "Ah I think this is more a private conversation so I think I'll leave, thank you again Sekibanki for sharing my umbrella with me." And with that Kogasa bowed again and quickly left. Sekibanki would rather not talk about her after all.

Today was a sunny day. Sunny days were nice, it meant you could play around and do work after all. And you wouldn't get wet from the rain.

But that was why Kogasa didn't like Sunny days as much. It was when she was the most useless. An umbrella that can't be useful even in the rain basically had no reason to exist when the sky was clear. And at least when it was raining someone would use her. Sekibanki.

Kogasa sighed. She really didnt want to think about the other day. Well, it wasn't like Kogasa didn't understand, dating a youkai when pretending to be a human would definitely be suspicious. Not to mention the fact that people were already wary of Sekibanki's constant head gymnastics she did whenever she got worked up.

Well she was still mad though. She had the right to get mad right?

"Ah! Kogasa there you are! I haven't seen you since last week! Were you avoiding me or something?"

"Hmph" Kogasa pouted.

"Did you just pout at me?"

"And what if I did?" She pouted harder.

"Are you mad at me?" Silent confirmation. "I guess you are then *sigh*, I suppose I should apologize for the other day. Those girls are really nosy so they can be a bit annoying at times."

Just a bit? "That's not why I'm mad, Banki."

"Eh? Then why?"

"Are you really asking right now?" Another pout.

"Ah. Is it because I didn't talk about our relationship?" Silent confirmation again, Kogasa always goes silent because she doesn't know how to lie.

"Maybe." Verbal confirmation now, thank goodness Sekibanki found the problem before it got worse.

"Sorry Kogasa, I just didn't feel like saying you were dating me would be good for your image."

Ouch, really straightforward huh? "Yeah I felt like it would ruin yo- wait MY image!?"

"Huh? Yeah."

"Why mine? Wouldn't it ruin your relationship with the humans you're trying to get close to because they might think you're a youkai too?"

"What? I don't care about that." Sekibanki tried to pull her collar over her face like a mask. "If they hate me just because I'm dating you then I don't want to be friends with them."

"Aww Bankiiiii~" Kogasa leaned in for a tackle hug. "I love youuuuu~"

"Yes yes, the hug's a bit tight though so could you loosen up a bit please."

"Ah sorry." Kogasa ended the hug. "Wait, what do you mean MY image though?"

"Hmm? Won't it be really hard to scare people as a youkai if people thought you were dating a human?"

"Eh?"

"Huh?"

"Banki," Kogasa was starting to get it now. "You do know that I'm not trying to scare people anymore right? And besides, my scary reputation was almost nonexistent and was practically demolished by my babysitting business."

"Wait you babysit?" Sekibanki was incredulous, how did she not know this?

"Yeah sorry I don't like talking about work so you probably never knew, hehe"

Ah. Sekibanki felt stupid. "But why did you stop scaring people? Don't you need to feed off of their fear?"

"Not really, tsukumogami who harbor grudges fulfill their purpose by exacting revenge on humans by scaring them, so I guess that includes me. But then karakasa-obake are like ippon-datara which is like a blacksmithing youkai, so I decided to fulfill my purpose by running my own forge instead of surprising humans. The children just like playing with me so I decided to babysit."

"Ah, so you don't need to have a scary reputation anymore?"

"I never had one?"

Sekibanki smiled. "Great! Then that means I can tell the whole village that I'm dating the cutest umbrella in the world!"

Kogasa melted at that. "Aww, then I can't wait to tell them that I'm dating the sweetest dullahan in the world!"

"Dullahan? You know I'm a rokurokubi right?"

"Whaaaaat!? Isn't the title of your theme 'Dullahan Under the Willows'?"

"Theme?"

"Ah right!" Kogasa facepalmed. "I'm not supposed to break the fourth wall!"

"… fourth wall?"

Author's Notes: I love Kogasa, she's like my daughter who gets bullied and needs to be protected. I love Kogasa. She was actually one of the first 2hus I knew, back from before I knew what Touhou was. It was around April 2020, and I had just finished my first anime, K-on, and was addicted to it. As in, I spent the next 2 months reading fanfiction kind of addicted. Man I love that show. Anyway, one of the crossover fics I read was 'Gensokyo Tea Time' by ff user permafrost13 and that was where I learned about Kogasa's backstory (I knew what tsukumogami were already bc of Youtube horror vids) and I instantly fell in love with her character. And to this day, she is my 2nd favorite character after Remi, because Remi got me properly into the Touhou rabbit hole around August 2021.

Anyway, the prompts 'rarepair' and 'misunderstanding' were used here, I'm not sure if KogaSeki is rare, since I've seen quite a few of them on Ao3, but it's certainly not common enough, I need more Kogasa-centric fics please. As for the misunderstanding part, I pulled from my experience of reading over 50 hurt/comfort fics on this site to write the drama, but again, I don't like too much drama so I ended up toning it down a bit in the end.