[In keeping with long-time legends of the ghosts and spirits that reside in Kyoto, this piece reminded the judges of the Kwaidan stories gathered by Lafcadio Hearn, simultaneously chilling and tender.]

Yurei Ame/ Ghost Candy
by Marianne Kimura, Canadian, resident in Kyoto

Who was that?

The same woman as last night and the night before.

The one in the midnight-blue kimono?

Yes, with the pattern of the moon and the rabbits in yellow and gold.

What did she want? The same thing?

Yes, the same thing.

Dusk on Matsubara Street, the sound of the temple bell at Kinnenji, to the north, tolling evening prayers. Yasaburo started stacking the bags of barley-tea candy into a large shallow box made of paulownia wood to protect them from the humidity and dust.

The shadows flickered near the faded red shop curtain in the doorway and Yasaburo held his breath as the young woman glided in.

One bag, please.

Yasaburo’s voice clotted up in fear, but he somehow managed to croak out the price, for the sake of maintaining appearances, though the woman in the midnight-blue kimono was already holding out the right coin. He took it gingerly and her fingertips, like icy swan’s feathers, brushed against his skin. The coin was as cold as death, like all the others she had given him.

Thank you, she murmured, so softly it was hard to catch.

Or was this whisper just Yasaburo’s imagination?

She lifted her left sleeve and dropped the bag inside the silken pocket. The shimmering yellow moons on her kimono glimmered faintly, rocking to sleep the rabbits, pale and peaceful celestial stowaways.

Exactly three days later, the baby, very much alive, would be found, muddy, naked, and crying in an open grave, though his mother, the woman who they assumed was his mother, that is, had been buried after her funeral ceremony, seven days before that.

Yasaburo received this miraculous news first with trepidation, then, as the days passed, with an increasing sense of serenity, but the woman never returned.

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For more by WiK member Marianne Kimura, please click here or here or here.