Pathway to Japanese Literature
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Hanshichi's Detective StoriesAuthor: Okamoto Kidō
| Original Title | 半七捕物帳 |
|---|---|
| Author | 岡本 綺堂 |
| Genre | Historical Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | In the frostbitten winter of Edo, two young women hurry home beneath a moonless sky, their path lit by trembling lanterns. A spectral white butterfly materializes in the frigid darkness—an impossibility in the dead of January—fluttering toward a graveyard’s shadows. Whispers follow: the apparition haunts only at night, a harbinger of calamity. Those who glimpse it fall ill, plagued by fevered dreams of wings and loss. As rumors swell of deaths linked to its visits, skepticism crumbles. A resolute samurai vows to unmask the mystery, yet the night claims him without a wound, his hand frozen on his sword. The butterfly’s curse tightens its coil—vanished watchmen, stricken households, and a girl whose half-blind gaze hints at secrets darker than the alleyways she flees. In a world where the dead outnumber the living, Edo’s icy winds carry more than cold; they bear a question that chills the soul: What hunts in the dark when the butterfly takes flight? |
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