She carried her shamisen with her as she travelled from town to town, never staying anywhere too long.

And when she arrived in a new place, she would find herself an unoccupied corner next to a parlour to sit and play a tune on her shamisen. The tune, always a mournful melancholy one, because she played from the depths of her soul and sorrow was all she had known.

Her song called towards those of a solemn disposition like a sirens song to a sailor, and on certain nights when melancholy hung in the air like a thick cloud, her tune earned her an invite into a parlour. So for bread to eat and a bed to rest her head she played her tune, and the patrons listened with misty eyes and heavy hearts. But when morning came, the proprietor no longer had need for her, for it was almost as if the melancholy which had drawn them to her melody had been cured overnight and her sad song was welcome no more.

So she kept moving, with only her shamisen and a burdened countenance. And so it came to be, that even if her eyes; one swollen shut, the other milky and blind, did not guide her, she begun to taste melancholy in the air and her skin prickled with its cold weight. And when she caught a whiff of a single blue note, it was as if she could already feel the sake warming up her her cold frame. So she begun to walk with her nose tilted upwards, sniffing for the heaviness it left the air, allowing her senses to guide her to a meal from which she would know no satisfaction, for whatever nourishment she gained was quickly outweighed by the burden that she carried. She had an affliction, you see. Her shamisen absorbed sadness from the air around it like a sponge to water. As did she, afterall, she was one with it.

Now in death, she glides restlessly from place to place, searching for the one who needs to hear her song the most. She arrives with a fog so heavy it blinds the world and quiets the birds, and when she plays her lachrymose melody I am overcome with a sadness so heavy it drives me to the edge of insanity. I know now that I need only bear it through the night, for when morning comes, that singular suffering will be gone, and so will she, finally satiated.