I decided to translate another Japanese story today. The story orginally comes from http://hukumusume.com/douwa/pc/jap/07/04.htm Enjoy.
The Dancer’s Fan
A long time ago in Kyoto there was a famous dance instructor who has many students. One of his favorite students was a girl by the name of Yukie. Yukie absolutely loved to dance and practiced her dancing hard every day.
Every time Yukie came to the dance school she would bring her dancer’s fan. A dancer’s fan is a folding fan that is bigger than a normal folding fan and is usually covered with beautiful drawings. Yukie’s fan was given to her by her father and the design was made by a very famous artist. As you can imagine, Yukie’s fan was very beautiful, with a drawing of a singular cherry blossom at the peak of its beauty.
Yukie spent a long time practicing every day with her fan, but one day, for some reason, she forgot her fan at the dance school. The dance instructor, when he noticed the fan for the first time, thought that it was strange that Yukie would forget her favorite fan. He decided to just give it back to her the next day when she came back for dance practice.
The strange thing was, the next day Yukie didn’t come to dance practice. She didn’t come the day after that or even the day after that. The dance instructor was getting worried about Yukie so he picked up her fan and gave it a good looking over. He was shocked to see that the drawing on the fan changed from a singular cherry blossom to many cherry blossoms filling up the entire span of the fan.
At that moment the dance instructor’s friend, a fortune teller, came and paid him a visit.
“Welcome, my friend. Here, take a look at this. One of my students forgot this here. Isn’t it beautiful?” he said passing the fan to the fortune teller.
“It’s beautiful... But, I’m sorry to say that these flowers will not last until the end of the day.”
After the fortune teller left, the dance instructor found himself worrying about what he was told about the fan. As he looked at the fan he found himself getting more and more drawn in by its beauty. He only came back to reality when is wife came into the room and told him that his dinner was ready. He had no idea how much time actually passed as he was looking over the fan.
The dance instructor stood up, still holding the fan, and he was surprised to see a couple of pale pink flower petals fall from the open fan. Even though there was no wind the petals flew up and danced in the air before disappearing into the darkening sky.
“What sort of magic is this?” said the instructor dumbfounded. He looked down at the fan and gave out a shocked yell when it saw that the fan, which before had a drawing of beautiful flowers, was not completely blank.
“Something must have happened to Yukie!”
The instructor ordered a carriage and hurried on to Yukie’s house. As soon as he got to her house the door opened and Yukie’s mother came out.
“My daughter has just died. Please come to view her body,” said her mother.
As they walked into the room the instructor found his breath taken away by shock. Yukie was lying in the middle of the room, as if she was sleeping, and she was surrounded by the cherry petals that have come out of the fan.
The end
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