Not too long ago, the Pacific War ended in our defeat.

As our folks had a lot of mouths to feed, our finances were rather tight. We were expected to pay our own expenses. When school was out for summer, we scrambled to earn some money for stationery and sweets.

One day I left home in the wee hours of the morning to work as an assistant for a horse-drawn cart in a neighboring town. I set out early because we had to walk the horse before it got hot. Mother had prepared me a bamboo bento box with rice balls. I took out one and nibbled at it as I walked. It was tightly condensed into a ball shape as it contained more wheat than rice. Even so, I savored its rich, salty flavor. When I received a day’s wage, I wanted to give half to Mother and buy my baby sister cinnamon candy at a general store in town.

When I finished half of my rice ball, a female figure headed toward me through hazy darkness. As I wanted to wish her good morning, I swallowed the grains inside my mouth. Yet I became frozen at her strange look and shut my eyes.

She was clad in a white kimono and long strands of hair covered her face. As I half opened my eyes, she passed briskly and soon vanished. Rumor had it that two villages fighting over water cursed each other. According to another rumor, a local woman suddenly died because her mother-in-law put a curse on her. Even so, I had never seen such an apparition before. The villagers might have nailed straw effigies of their victims into a sacred tree at a small shrine in the nearby mountain.

***

After the rice crop was harvested, I took my baby sister to a festival. As the bell tolled, we sat on a stone step of the shrine to eat mochi covered with grated radish. Then a man in a convulsion with his eyes rolled back in his head was carried off on a door panel, causing a commotion among the festival-goers. I stood up.

“Don’t eat them! The mochi have rat poison!” someone cried.

“Hey, that lady is staring at us,” my baby sister said, pulling the hem of my kimono sleeve.

When I turned, I saw a shadowy figure by the red-and-white striped curtain put up on the grounds of the shrine. She wore a faint smile.