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Crimson DragonflyAuthor: Makino Shinichi
| Original Title | 茜蜻蛉 |
|---|---|
| Author | 牧野 信一 |
| Genre | Modern Short Fiction |
| Author Type | Male Author |
| Summary | In the quiet twilight of his mother’s garden, a weary son returns home, adrift and haunted by failures. The air hums with unspoken history—overgrown water mallows choke the pond, kabuki plays murmur from a radio, and shared smiles with his mother hold decades of unvoiced understanding. Yet beneath this fragile peace simmers turmoil: a fractured marriage, a son sent to boarding school, and debts that gnaw like shadows. His wife’s family—a chorus of vanity and spite—looms large. There’s Bensuke, the preening brother-in-law draped in self-made delusions; sisters sharp-tongued and mercenary; a father whose grandiose schemes dissolve into drunken farce. They mock his poverty, his art, his worth. Amidst it all, his mother’s lamplight offers fleeting solace, a tether to tenderness in a world where pride and shame collide. But escape is a mirage. Manuscripts torn, pride battered, he flees into the night—a man caught between duty and despair, yearning to reclaim dignity yet shackled by the very bonds he cannot sever. |
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