From the Judges:
“This piece deftly and succinctly describes a location as well as a period of extended time and suggests how perception evolves as one becomes more familiar with a particular place and oneself. Here the theme is wanderings in the ancient capital of Kyoto and the surprising things one can discover, including many ways to be lost. A desire to lose one’s way in a foreign culture provides a novelty repose from issues which plague the heart.”

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I lose my way in Kyoto for the first time that spring. Sensei swings his cheap umbrella like a dance cane and tells us it’s all part of the adventure. Finally reaching Fushimi-Inari, the rain is gentle; it slips through the spaces in between endless torii.

At the shrine, I pore over the wishes people have written on wooden boards, scanning for the few words that I can read. My wish? There’s someone who won’t ever love me back. Strangely enough, I no longer care.

400 days. It is summer. My brother wants us to move without agenda. We venture into the dark womb of Zuigudo Temple, find an old carpet, miraculously identical to one from our childhood home, within a dusty curry shop, watch a master archer pull back the bowstring and strike his target–again. Again. One more time, again.

My brother leaves all the words to me. We roam around like strays. He loses his wallet. We talk it over outside a palace with nightingale floors. Things work out in the end.

1100 days. Winter. My words to my parents feel unfamiliar, my native tongue unwieldy. The cold creeps into our bones. We gather around that gold pavilion as if we might find warmth. My mother’s eyes remain fixed resolutely upon everything remotely like it, everything that shines. My father? Every time he coughs, I try not to flinch. He is pleased with any mention of the old gods.

In the night, when they slept, I slipped outside. I tried to get lost somewhere in Kyoto. Somewhere I’d never been. There must be somewhere like this. Somewhere yet unknown to me. Somewhere to swallow them up, my words and prayers and screams, swallow them whole.

Image provided by Hayley Noel Wallace

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Hayley Noel Wallace is the published author of over a dozen short stories. Her fiction has been featured in Deep Magic, Liquid Imagination, and many other anthologies. One of her short works of horror, ‘White Cat,’ has also been adapted for the No Sleep Podcast. You can find her collected works at www.noelwallace.com.

For the full list of this year’s competition winners, click here. For this year’s original competition notice (with prize details), click here.