In the old district of Gion, where paper lanterns swing gently in the night breeze and the scent of sakura mingles with incense, lived a girl named Aiko. She was seventeen, with quiet eyes that seemed to hold a hundred stories. Her family ran a small shop that sold handmade lanterns—soft, glowing globes of color that lit the streets during festivals.
But there was one lantern Aiko never sold.
It was a small, faded red lantern with gold threads wound around its top like a crown. It hung at the back of the shop, always lit, even when the others were not. Her grandmother called it “Yūrei no Tomoshibi” — the Light of the Ghost.
“Never touch it. Never move it,” her grandmother warned. “It glows for someone who has not yet come home.”
One rainy night, just after Obon—the festival of spirits—Aiko saw a girl in a white yukata standing in the alley beside the shop. She was barefoot, soaked, and staring up at the red lantern through the rain.
“Are you lost?” Aiko asked gently.
The girl didn’t answer. She simply smiled, a sad kind of smile, and pointed to the lantern. “That light… it’s mine.”
Chilled, Aiko stepped back. “What do you mean?”
“I was meant to return… but I never did,” the girl whispered. “Tell your grandmother… thank you for waiting.”
The next morning, Aiko found the red lantern had gone out.
When she told her grandmother what happened, the old woman closed her eyes and whispered a prayer. “She was waiting a long time. I wondered when she’d finally find the light.”
They never saw the girl again. But from that day on, a new lantern hung in the back of the shop—blue, this time, with a silver thread.
Aiko didn’t ask who it was for. She just made sure it never went out.
