A short story in which a pregnant protagonist faces her own body and choices through old knowledge about lantern plants and her relationship with her grandmother. The feel of local life gives the story its shape.

Using the lantern plant as a clue, the protagonist confronts her own body.

A short story built around the idea of making a Bon festival spirit horse from bitter melon and cheese. Beneath its modest humor lies the texture of everyday life and family memory.

A spirit horse made of bitter melon and cheese gently brings family memories back.

A one-night story about a protagonist who carries pain around her coming-of-age ceremony and her family, and tries to restart her life. Encounters with a bar owner and Ai slowly loosen emotions she had kept shut.

A night for starting over, and for facing family pain.

A story in which three people are loosely entangled, leaving a strong impression through its dense bodily sensibility and its candid treatment of romance. The comfort of a relationship that avoids hurting anyone coexists with a readability that wavers as the point of view shifts.

The warm, soft temperature of the relationship holds all the way to the end.

A work that looks at everyday values and family relationships through the conversations and behavior of older women. Its correctness comes through, but it leaves a somewhat quiet impression as a story.

Within its correctness, it searches for room to leap a little farther.

A work built around relationships that emerge in a snack bar and an event surrounding a first sexual experience. The sexual descriptions and the atmosphere of the setting are deft, but the protagonist’s passivity holds back the story’s momentum.

It gathers the lingering texture of dark events in a night at a snack bar.