Japanese Folkfore Horror Kuchisake Onna | The Odyssey Online
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Arts Entertainment

Fiction on Odyssey: Am I Still Pretty?

A retelling of the Japanese horror story about a young woman wondering around asking men if she is pretty. If they answer no, she scars them, like she was.

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Rodolfo Clix
https://www.pexels.com/photo/woman-biting-gray-nails-in-her-mouth-1161930/

The November rain trickled down, light and somewhat nostalgic. The abandoned streets screamed in agonizing loneliness as families huddled for warmth in their grand, brick homes.

An ebony trench coat wore a middle-aged man. With eyes covered in exhaustion and wrinkled face that lived too long of a life, he kept marching to the beat of descending rain droplets.

` Through the dark drapes of his bangs, a petite girl standing still caught his eye. She stood there, silent and emotionless. Her chestnut hair seemed to have frozen autumn's unyielding cold. With skin as warm as a burning inferno, the chilly loneliness of autumn seemed to have melted away, and summer bloomed with riveting beauty. Even though half of her face was covered with a crimson red scarf, her mocha eyes revealed all the magnificent beauty locked away in her heart.

"Am I pretty?" The petite girl spoke, breaking the man from his hypnotic daze. Was she pretty? Is summer not the warmest season? Is a lotus not the single most delicately beautiful flower? Is a sapphire not the rarest of gems? Even Sandro Botticelli's Birth of Venus couldn't rival her beauty.

"Of course you are pretty!" The man exclaimed. "Beyond pretty. You're absolutely stunningly beautiful!" He added to emphasize his devotion to her extraterrestrial allure.

She only chuckled in reply. With the swift motion of her slender fingers, she tugged at her crimson scarf, and said, "Well, am I still pretty?"

The crimson scarf fell, and the soil-mixed water besmirched it. Horror overcame his eyes as his mouth gawked opened. The beauty of her mocha eyes was robbed by a massive cut that ran across her face, revealing the inside of her bloody cheeks. Her teeth look as if they were sharpened like knives for purpose of cutting through stubborn flesh. He tried to hide his dread, yet his voice betrayed him: "Y-Yes, yo-you're absolutely be-beautiful…"

She removed her hands from her peacoat, exposing ungroomed, yellow nails that could pierce through the flesh of fresh cattle. Fury hijacked her beautiful persona as she launched herself at him, screaming "LIAR!!"

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This article has not been reviewed by Odyssey HQ and solely reflects the ideas and opinions of the creator.
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