As story after story drifted by, Maomao listened in a daze. Sitting to her left was Yinghua, who gripped Maomao's hand tightly and clung to her at every turn.
(Still going through her growing phase, huh... or has she stopped growing?)
She had this thought as she felt the weight pressing against her. Before long, the turn had reached their side.
Maomao rubbed her sleepy eyes. She felt sluggish and drowsy. Over a dozen people were crammed into the small room. Everyone must have been concerned about body odor, as incense was burning everywhere. With her sensitive nose, Maomao was feeling a bit tipsy from it all.
Shisui pulled down the cloth that had covered her head and brought the flame in front of her face. For someone of her stature, her childlike features were well proportioned, but when lit by the flickering fire, they carried a strange intensity.
"This is a story from a far eastern land,"
Shisui began to speak, deliberately lowering her childlike voice. Her narration gradually shifted from that of a young girl to that of a weathered storyteller.
○●○ In a certain country, there lived a famous monk. The lord of a neighboring country had passed away, and the monk traveled there to perform memorial rites. On his return, while on the road home— Since the journey back to his own temple required crossing two mountains and could not be completed in a single day, the monk decided to take lodgings for the night.
The trip there had gone well. The weather was clear, the road was smooth, and on the way he had even stayed at a temple where he knew a fellow monk.
He'd made a mistake.
The monk reflected. The return journey was supposed to follow the same route, but his steps felt strangely heavy. The sun had set when he'd covered only about two-thirds of the distance, and he couldn't reach the temple where he'd planned to stay that night.
Being on a pilgrimage, the monk had no attendants with him, and no horse.
All around him was nothing but a plain of susuki grass, and even if he tried to camp outdoors, he could hear the distant howling of wild dogs. Being set upon by a pack would be the end of him.
What caught the hurried monk's eye was an old, dilapidated farmhouse. He quickened his pace and knocked on the door of the thatched-roof dwelling.
"Excuse me — might I trouble you for a moment?"
A young couple came out. The monk explained his situation and asked if they might let him stay the night, even in a corner of their storage shed.
"Well, well — you must be exhausted from your long journey."
The young wife hosted the monk. The eggplant and cucumber she served, though nothing special, were delicious.
The husband, meanwhile, stared at the monk with a suspicious look in his eyes.
There was no helping it — a traveler casually intruding into a young couple's home like this.
The monk carried very little. He had only the bare minimum in travel funds.
And yet, the couple treated him as a guest and even prepared a sleeping place in a separate room.
Grateful for the soft futon, the monk wondered if there was anything he could do in return.
And so, thinking that the only thing he had to offer was a sutra, he began to chant.
Normally, once he started chanting, he would remain focused until the very end, but today he found himself strangely distracted by the sounds outside.
Besides the rustling of miscanthus in the wind, he could hear something like the ringing of a small bell.
Were they insects?
The monk kept chanting while listening more intently.
Then he realized — that bell-like sound was a human voice.
"What are you going to do about it, dear?"
It was the wife's voice from the house.
"Nothing. Isn't that fine enough?"
The bell-like voice belonged to the husband.
The monk thought it was a peculiar voice. But once he had begun his sutra, he would not stop.
"That won't do, dear. I don't want to be left alone."
The wife raised her voice.
She seemed to be speaking as though she didn't want to be overheard, but the monk's hearing was keener than most. He told himself it wasn't proper to eavesdrop and tried to focus on his chanting, but the voices still reached his ears all the same.
"Even if that's not what you intend, I'm going to do it."
"Do what?"
A chill ran down the monk's spine.
Should he stop chanting and step in to break up the couple's argument, or...
No — he would not stop the chanting. Better not to stop. For some reason, the monk felt certain of it.
Why was it? His entire body was tingling. Even his cleanly shaven, smooth head — the pores were standing on end.
What is this?
Now, then. Let's begin.
The poorly fitting sliding door was opened.
There stood a woman with bulging, unblinking eyes, holding a billhook.
The monk moved only his eyeballs, his mouth still chanting the sutra.
Where did that monk go?
The woman crossed in front of the monk with a rasping, rustling sound.
But she did not notice him.
Where was he? Had he fled?
The woman left the room.
The stretched shadow she cast was of a strange shape. Nothing that could belong to a human — that shadow overlapped with yet another strange shadow.
Search for me, you. Search. If you don't, if you don't— The woman was agitated. What was she so agitated about?
You...
A tinkling sound, the chime of a small bell, was heard.
Following that sound came a crunching noise, like paper being crumpled and chewed.
The chewing sound continued.
The monk, throughout all of this, never stopped chanting his sutra.
He chanted, and when the sound of his voice ended, he stepped outside.
Without greeting the young couple, without meeting their eyes, he walked out of the house.
Fragments of thin, brown insect wings lay scattered on the ground.
Ting... ting...
The sound of insects drifting from the fields of silver grass rose and then faded.
The monk pressed his palms together before the tattered insect wings, and still chanting his sutra, he walked on until dawn.
○●○ Maomao thought that inflection and cadence truly mattered when telling a story.
Everyone was captivated by Shisui's tale.
Even though she normally spoke in a childish, innocent manner, her current storytelling voice was like that of a completely different person. From the side, her face illuminated by the fire looked like someone else entirely too.
(Something about her really does look familiar, doesn't it?)
She had thought so before as well, but still couldn't quite place it.
As she gazed vacantly at that profile, Shisui turned and gave Maomao a little smile. She blew out the flame she'd been holding, tucked the oil and wick into the brazier at the center, and tidied up.
"Next, next!"
Shisui beamed with a carefree grin.
Ah, right, Maomao nodded. When you came to a gathering like this, you were expected to tell that sort of story too.
(What should I talk about?)
Honestly, Maomao was not the type to believe in such things. And so nothing interesting came to mind, and she resigned herself to telling a story she'd once heard from her old man.
"This happened several decades ago, but there was a tale about ghostly lights appearing at graves."
Perhaps it was because Maomao herself had taken on the role of narrator, but Yinghua had moved away from her, wrapped in a blanket with only her eyes peeking out.
"It seemed terribly suspicious, so a group of brave young men went to investigate the true nature of the ghostly lights. And then—"
Yinghua was gnawing on her lip while staring at Maomao. If you're scared, just cover your ears, Maomao thought.
Unfortunately, the story Maomao was telling was hardly the spine-chilling ghost tale everyone had been hoping for.
"It turned out to be nothing at all—just a man who lived in the same town walking through the graveyard. Someone had simply mistaken his flickering lantern for a ghostly light."
"Oh, is that all," Yinghua let out a breath of relief.
"He was just doing a bit of grave robbing, that's all."
Thud—Yinghua's forehead bumped into Maomao's shoulder. Yinghua's gaze fixed firmly on Maomao.
"Grave robbing, you say?"
"Yes. He seemed to have fallen under some sort of eerie curse—he would grind up human livers and smear them on his body..."
Thud—this time Yinghua's forehead knocked squarely against Maomao's.
Maomao rubbed her forehead and said, "That's the end of my story," bringing it to a close.
It was Yinghua's turn next, but her account ended in a muddled mess, leaving only a single light remaining.
The lady-in-waiting who had greeted them at the start held the last light.
(Come to think of it) The lady-in-waiting had been arranged with one at each of the four walls and two between them—twelve in all.
But hadn't this lady-in-waiting originally said there were "thirteen stories"?
What could that mean, Maomao wondered.
The lady-in-waiting spoke of the era of the previous emperor.
It was a story about the lady-in-waiting who had swelled beyond measure, and among them, a handful of girls who had become the emperor's consorts.
Maomao just couldn't follow it. Her head was swimming.
Maomao stared blankly at the brazier in front of her.
(Huh?)
The lady-in-waiting said something dreadful that made everyone around her shudder, but Maomao hadn't caught it clearly.
"Now then, moving on to the thirteenth story—"
It was just as the lady-in-waiting was about to continue, about to drop the last flame into the brazier.
Maomao stood up and flung open the tightly shut window.
"Wait, Maomao!"
Yinghua tried to stop Maomao, but Maomao was not one to be stopped.
Wind rushed in suddenly, and the cloths draped over everyone's heads fluttered and snapped.
Maomao took a deep breath of the fresh air and exhaled.
(No wonder heads were getting foggy.)
The extinguished fire had been put back inside the brazier, where there was charcoal. The last embers at the core had spread to the rest of it.
A tightly sealed, narrow room, with charcoal undergoing incomplete combustion—when all those conditions came together, what would happen?
Maomao rushed to the ladies-in-waiting who had been gathered around the brazier and were now slumped over, slapping their cheeks one after another and dragging them to where fresh air could reach them.
Yinghua, who had been watching, seemed to grasp what was happening and started helping Maomao.
When fire burns in a place lacking sufficient air, it releases air that is harmful to the human body.
Her head had been feeling foggy the whole time because of that.
*(I realized far too late.)* She wondered why she hadn't noticed sooner, and felt she had done the organizer a disservice.
Maomao turned towards the court lady's position, but no one was there.
"...Ah. Just a little more."
She heard a voice like that, but the court lady was nowhere to be seen.
"Hey, what was that talk about earlier?"
After the gathering dispersed in confusion, Suishi asked her.
Yinghua tilted her head as if to ask, "Who's this child?" Suishi had taken a liking to the cloth draped over her and remained wrapped up.
"About earlier?"
It was the talk about the spirit lantern. She must have remembered Maomao saying she would explain later.
"The talk about the Forbidden Forest. It might be a superstition, but it can't be said to be completely without basis."
For example, if the forest was full of dangers.
The forest was rich in food, but equally abundant were the things that could not be eaten.
What if the origin of it being called the "Forbidden Forest" lay in those very things? If the village had been settled only by people who had migrated from other lands.
If the foods found there that could ruin your body if eaten carelessly became known as "taboo" over the passage of years.
And because they adhered to the prohibition, they never learned which things in the forest were edible and which were not.
Then, one could deduce this.
A mother and child, starving from a poor harvest, would want to partake of the forest's bountiful gifts. However, doing so would break the village's rules. So, they would enter the forest secretly, avoiding others' eyes.
At dusk, when there was still light outside but it was hard to see from one's surroundings. They would use that brief time to enter the forest and gather mushrooms and nuts.
And as the sun set, they would return home.
All without ever knowing what it was they had harvested.
"There is a type of mushroom called a moonlit mushroom."
She uttered the word "mushroom," and even she herself grimaced for an instant, but she pressed on without letting it bother her.
"It's a very delicious-looking mushroom, but it's toxic and will upset your stomach if you eat it. And, true to its name, it has a peculiar characteristic."
When it grows dark, it emits a light. Its appearance is truly beautiful—so beautiful, in fact, that she once tore off a piece and popped it in her mouth, only to have her father make her spit it out. That was a fond memory.
The mother and child harvested the mushrooms before they began to glow, never learning that they were the luminous kind, and walked the night road. The light leaking from the basket, seen from a distance, might have looked like ghostly flames.
And then, once they arrived home and lit the lamps, the mushrooms stopped glowing. That was when they ate them.
Normally, a poison that wasn't potent enough to kill—what would it do to a person already lacking in nutrition? The child died, and the mother died too.
And what the mother had wanted to convey, in her final moments— *(There are delicious mushrooms in the forest.)* —was perhaps something like that. A small act of revenge against the villagers who had done nothing to save mother and child.
"So that's what it was~"
Shisui smiled with satisfaction and fluttered the cloth about.
"Well then, I'll be heading this way~"
With a patter of footsteps like a child at play, she was gone.
Not that she was one to talk about others, but Maomao thought the girl certainly had a willful, headstrong personality.
"Hmph, it wasn't even that big a deal."
Yinghua puffed out her small chest with an air quite different from moments before.
"I'm sure the other stories have some twist behind them too."
"I wouldn't be so sure about that."
Maomao and Yinghua made their way back to the Jade Pavilion at a leisurely pace.
"My, you're back sooner than I expected."
The one waiting for them— —was Hongniang.
She was sitting there doing needlework, stitch by stitch.
"Yes, there was a bit of a commotion."
"Well, that's about what I figured."
For some reason, Hongniang nodded as if satisfied.
"The lady-in-waiting who handled it up until last year passed away, you see. I was worried about who would take over this year."
Hongniang set down her needle and let out a soft sigh.
"She was a capable, wonderful lady-in-waiting, and she looked after me as well. In the end, she finished her days without ever leaving the inner palace, though."
Maomao looked at Yinghua's face. Her usually composed expression was growing paler by the moment.
"Um, that lady-in-waiting..."
"This is just between us, but she was someone the late emperor had taken to his bed. I'm not too fond of those kinds of arrangements, but once you've taken it up as a pastime, it would be poor form to stop, wouldn't it? Still, I did think it would feel strange if the tradition just vanished the very next year after her death, so I'm glad someone's carrying it on."
Hongniang put her sewing tools away into a lacquered wooden box, then headed toward the bedroom with a yawn.
Something about this story rang a bell. It sounded like the ghost story that the lady-in-waiting who used to be in charge of this had told. Maomao didn't remember the details, but judging from Yinghua's pallor, she could tell it matched up perfectly.
(Mmh.)
Maomao crossed her arms and tilted her head.
There are plenty of things in this world that just don't make sense.
At the very least, she was glad it hadn't become the thirteenth ghost story.
That said, that night, with a frightened Yinghua clinging to her in bed, it was so hot she could hardly sleep.
There are also suggestions to bring in Jinshi, but he is off duty until he recovers from the shock.
He's carrying on with his work while being a bit sulky about it.