Chapter 5

“Do you remember where I had left off in the story last time?” Grandpa Tou asked the children.
“The Ryūgū!” a girl said.
“Tarou stayed for three days!”
“With jellyfish lullabies!”
Grandpa Tou chuckled, taking a hand over his beard. “Yes, yes, very good. Tarou stayed in the Ryūgū for what felt like three perfect days—feasting, dancing and watching sea horses race and octopuses pirouette. But then…Tarou began to think of his mother. He missed her nagging voice, missed the way she would chase him around with a ladle for giving away their dinner. He even missed the squeaky floorboards in their little hut. And so, Tarou went to Princess Otohime and told her, ‘your home is like a dream, and you have shown me more kindness than I could ever repay. But my heart… my heart aches for home.’
Otohime’s smile faded, just a little. She nodded and gave him a box, a beautiful lacquered artifact tied with a silver ribbon. ‘This is a tamate box,’ she said, ‘a treasure box. Take it with you, but promise—promise that you will never open it.’ Tarou promised. And then, with one last bow to the palace and its wonders, he rode a giant turtle to the surface, the box clutched tightly in his hands.
When Tarou stepped onto the shore he found something strange. He couldn’t recognise the way home. Everything had changed.
The beach was the same, or similar at least but the houses, the trees that weren’t as large and tall and the faces he saw were all different.
Tarou ran through the village, calling out. But no one knew him. He asked about his mother. About the fishermen. About the cats who used to nap in the sun. But no one remembered them. No one remembered him.
Dejected, he sat beneath a tree. A kind monk came by and noticed him. The monk said, ‘Urashima Tarou? A family by the name of Urashima used to live in this village but that was generations before… From nearly three hundred years ago.’
Three nights in the Ryūgū had been three hundred years on land. Alone, lost in time, Tarou looked at the tamate box in his hands. He remembered the princess’s warning to never open it but he was tired. He had no home, no family. He thought, maybe, just maybe, there was something inside that could help.
And when he lifted the lid, a puff of white smoke came out like a cloud. It wrapped around him and when it cleared, Tarou was no longer a young man.
His back bent like a bow. His hair turned white as sea foam. His hands grew wrinkled, and his voice, if he had tried to speak, would’ve come out like wind across dry leaves. The tamate box had held the years he had escaped. And now, they had come back all at once.”