Kesaran-Pasaran

When I walked into the village, white fur balls kept falling from the sky.

“What are they?” I asked a villager.

“They’re kesaran-pasaran.”

They floated through the air like dandelion spores. On sunny days, they fell and covered the ground. On rainy days they spread and multiplied. The dead ones fueled the city. Their spirits harvested crops and generated electricity.

“What do we know? Our livelihood totally depends on them,” the villager said, laughing.

One day I left the village. When I turned back, the village was gone. Instead, white fluff balls spread as far as the eye could see.

From Guest Contributor Yukari Kousaka

Translated by Toshiya Kamei

Born in Osaka in 2001, Yukari Kousaka is a Japanese poet, fiction writer, and essayist. Translated by Toshiya Kamei, her short fiction has appeared in New World Writing.

Light Finds A Way

In the urban underbelly of the city, an entire population of unfortunates spent their entire lives in the blackness of the sewers. For generations, they'd had nothing but rats and each other for food, until Earl began cultivating rows and rows of crops in the light-deprived tunnels, where not even electricity reached. He made himself into the richest man in the world, yet no surface dwellers had ever heard of him.

When asked how he grew food without light, Earl claimed his crops were nourished on the clarity of his conviction. In reality, he was smuggling sunlight from above ground.

Scarecrow People

Joey always hated the scarecrow people, especially when everyone else welcomed them. They'll keep the birds away, people said, and tend to the crops. Scarecrows are made to work in the fields. It's their nature.

But Joey asked the tough questions. Where did they come from? How do they talk without a mouth? When people started dying, it was Joey who led the mob that burnt all the scarecrow people like so much dry straw.

When the truth came out, and Bill Bates turned out to be a serial killer, Joey refused to feel remorse. They were still better off.