Urashima Taro emerged from the sea, the tamatebako still tucked carefully under his arm. The ocean air felt familiar, but something was different. The village where he had grown up no longer looked the same.
The shore was quiet. The houses were unfamiliar. The old trees he used to climb were gone, and new paths had taken the place of the ones he knew by heart.
He wandered through the streets, hoping to find someone—anyone—he recognized. But no one knew his name. No one had heard of his family.
“Excuse me,” he asked an elderly man nearby. “Do you know the Taro family who lived by the sea?”
The man looked puzzled. “Taro? Ah… there was a story about someone by that name. Long ago. Disappeared into the sea, they say. A hundred… maybe two hundred years ago?”
Urashima’s heart sank. He turned back toward the ocean, confused and overwhelmed. The world he knew was gone — not just changed, but erased by time.
Everything he had loved, everything he had hoped to return to… had passed into history.
And he was alone.