Japanese Folklore

Haru Salvador, aspiring fashion designer and assistant of the most capable chief editor of the most popular fashion magazine life was about to change. It all started when he met the handsome japanese model and business man Zen Kirishima. What would happen when an secret of Zen comes in light which could spin Haru's upside down. His life will be changed like never before. And to make things worst there bond is tested in many steps. Will their bond be able to overcome this test or destroy them?

Every year, the village had to choose a girl of age to become the Blossom Bride. The girl who was chosen would be sent into the cave as the village god’s wife. She would spend the entire night with him. If she came out alive, she would be honored for the rest of her life as a village elder. Any child she bore was said to be blessed, destined for a life of effortless fortune. If she died, the village would simply wait for the next year, when another Blossom Bride would be chosen. The blessing of the Blossom Bride was believed to pass on to her parents and elders as well. However, no one wanted to be chosen. To escape the ritual, families quietly left the village, one after another. I was the only one who volunteered. I had a lust problem, and I had always wondered what it would feel like to be with a god.

I sell handmade fortune cookies in the park. Each one costs $10,000, yet every day, people fight to buy them. That’s because what I sell are fertility fortune cookies. Eat one, and you can get pregnant instantly. You can even choose what kind of child you want. Slip in a double-yolk charm, and you’ll have twins. Seal in a perfect test paper, and your child will be a genius. A spayed female dog ate one and ended up pregnant with six puppies. Someone buried a fortune cookie beneath a withered tree, and by the next day, it had burst into full bloom. I sell fortune cookies to both women and men—anyone who wants to get pregnant. I turn no one away. Even animals, if they so much as make a sound, I’ll feed them. Until one day, a young woman, Mara Kessler, who had been standing in line from dawn until dusk, finally stepped forward and timidly said she wanted to buy a fortune cookie. I only took one look at her, then staggered back in terror. "I can’t sell to you. Leave. Now."

My mother's honey shop served only women, and she sold only one type of honey. The honey was contained in small glass jars, and it had an eerie name—Heart-Eroding Honey. Whenever women came to buy honey, my mother would personally lead them through the shop and into the mysterious beehive room in the backyard. Shortly after the door was closed, there would always be faint, suppressed moans coming from inside. I never knew whether it was from pain or satisfaction. However, when the women reemerged, they would all have rosy faces and radiant smiles, as if they had been completely nourished.

Ladies, never hike up a mountain on your own! During a holiday, I've received a request for help from an Internet user. Apparently, a young woman has gone missing after she's gone on a mountain hike. A quick session of divination tells me that the woman is already dead. To make things worse, her corpse is stuck at the moment. Having taken on the request made by the woman's parents, I enter the mountain and start looking for her. In the end, I'm able to locate her body in a cave. Not only is her belly swollen with pregnancy, but… but her belly is also moving due to fetal activity. What's scarier is that there's something even more terrifying being hidden beneath her corpse…

A curse is cast upon everyone in this village, reducing us to mutes. But once a villager's lover takes three laps around the back mountain and marries said villager successfully, the curse on that villager will be broken. My childhood friend, who's the same age as me, has already gotten married and embraced his life as a regular person. Even my cousin, who's just turned 18 years old, has her curse broken as well. I, on the other hand, am about to turn 30 years old soon, and yet I'm still a mute. Whenever I'm about to get married, all of my ex-fiances, who kept telling me that they'd love me with all their hearts, would do anything just to terminate our engagements right after they came out of the back mountain. In order to proclaim his deep love for me, my tenth fiance, Isaac Jameson, tells me confidently that he'd definitely marry me once he's done with his laps around the mountain. But as soon as his words fall, his expression changes the moment he sets foot into the mountain. To my horror, Isaac picks up an axe from the ground and begins hacking at me with it. "Why are you still alive in this world? Why can't you just die already?" I can only lie on the ground while suffering from intense pain. I have no idea what's in the back mountain and why the same outcome will happen every time. Why is it that the entire village can break their curse so easily, and yet I can never get married despite having gone through it ten times in a row?

There's a little shop downstairs that sells organ soup. It's always packed with customers. People line up as if bewitched, eager for a bowl. I've often wondered what secret ingredient made their soup so irresistible. This afternoon, I finally found my answer. Floating in my bowl was a piece of human skin—inked with a tattoo I knew all too well. It was the one etched on my boyfriend's arm.

In our village, once the girls turn 16, they must begin fasting and take a secret formula to produce bloodstones. My mother says this is the necessary path for a girl to become a rabbit-woman. It is also the most important thing in her life. On the day my sister turns 16, a rabbit tail grows from her tailbone. She no longer has to work in the fields. She only needs to lie in her room each day and take the formula. From that very night on, I see one man after another—sometimes several at once—enter her room. Before long, the sounds of heavy breathing begin to come from inside...

My mother brings home a woman named Julia Hayden from the back of the hill and makes her my sister-in-law. Our family is poor. As Julia is beautiful, my mother forces her to work as a prostitute in secret to earn money for the family. But a villager, Lara Clay, says Julia is not human. When my brother sleeps with her, I peek inside through a crack in the door. In the dim yellow light, I see the shadow of a huge snake tightly coiling itself around my brother's body on the wall...

A divine tree that is worshiped by many generations of people in my village grows on the tall mountain located on the village's west. Apparently, the divine tree loves being watered by women's lustful juices. In order to garner the blessings and protection from the divine tree, the village will pick out a woman to serve it every month. Since young maidens are shy and reserved by nature, the juices they secrete aren't enough to satisfy the divine tree. In that case, the village will be plagued by misfortune and disasters. Because of that, there are rumors saying that the divine tree prefers married women instead. All the married women in the village refuse to serve the divine tree. I, on the other hand, yearn to get picked out by the village every day. After all, I'm born to feel pleasure at its height. Unfortunately, my weak husband can never satisfy my urges.