The Story My Grandfather Told Me

Masaaki Mitsuyasu
1 min readDec 17, 2020

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The sword has been hidden in the back of my grandfather’s barn. I heard the story of it from my grandfather. He said, “That sword has killed a demon.” The demon is a figure which transformed from a person who couldn’t die after committing misdeeds. “The sword wants to swallow blood.” He continued. “If you took the sword, you would be obsessed with an evil spirit and have hostility against anything. After that, you could become a demon.” According to him, a long time ago, there was a person who had commercial success. He became prosperous because his business widened expansively, but he schemed to give his workers meager payment. One day, one of them demanded he improve his commerce, but the rich person declined his demand. As the worker’s animosity increased, he killed the rich person with the sword the worker had secretly. However, he didn’t die, and he became a demon. The demon pulled out the sword, which stuck to his body, and killed the man with it. The demon unintentionally looked in the mirror and noticed that he had transformed into an ugly figure. He became frightened of himself and committed suicide with the sword. My grandfather said, “He had a son, so the son received the sword as a memento of his late father. He was your grand-grandfather.” I was interested in this story. I asked him which guy was my ancestor, but he never answered, just looked at the barn.

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