The word lanterns appeared constantly throughout the journals left behind by artisan Daichi Mori, who crafted ceremonial lanterns with his wife Emiko and their youngest son Ren in the narrow hillside district above the old river canal. Their lanterns were carried during shrine festivals, funeral marches, and summer celebrations throughout the city.
People once said no family painted light more beautifully than the Moris.
Then the festival fires began.
Ren Mori and the River Courtyard
Seven details remained behind to explain the family after the townhouse was abandoned: Daichi’s ink brushes resting beside unfinished lantern frames; Emiko’s folding fan left near the kitchen doorway; Ren’s wooden sandals abandoned beside the rear garden steps; a cracked lantern painted entirely black hanging from the ceiling; unpaid festival orders bundled beneath silk cord; muddy footprints leading repeatedly toward the flooded courtyard well; and a final sentence written shakily inside Daichi’s notebook reading, “Do not light the final lanterns after the river rises.”
Nobody in the district understood why he wrote it.
Several neighbors later claimed Daichi accepted a strange private commission shortly before severe typhoon flooding struck the lower canal streets during the summer of 1949. According to local rumor, the requested lanterns were painted only in black ink and contained no candles inside at all.
Ren reportedly became obsessed with carrying one through the courtyard after midnight.
People claimed the lantern still glowed somehow.
The Night of the Flood Festival
The Mori family decline accelerated after the annual river lantern festival was interrupted by catastrophic flooding that swept through the canal district during one of the worst storms in decades. Entire streets disappeared underwater before dawn.
Yet witnesses later claimed dozens of lanterns could still be seen floating through the flooded alleys after midnight.
Several residents reported hearing festival bells despite the ceremony being canceled completely.
Then Ren vanished.
Daichi and Emiko disappeared the following evening.
When authorities eventually searched the Mori townhouse months later, every lantern inside the workshop had collapsed from moisture and age.
Except one.
The black lantern Ren carried through the courtyard remained hanging untouched above the flooded well.
The final page of Daichi Mori’s notebook mentioned the lanterns only once more before ending abruptly:
“Something in the river kept following the light home.”
