Tense, subtly disturbing literary horror in which a girl loses her mother, and her father blindly invites his girlfriend into the home to care for her. On shaky new ground, the girl struggles, then develops an uncanny grasp of her mother's pristine life and the new interloper's messy past. As the months go by, the knowledge slowly ferments.

Kaori Fujino, a lifelong resident of Kyoto, is best known for fiction that reimagines tropes from horror, science fiction, Hollywood thrillers, urban legends and fairy tales. She holds an MA in aesthetics and art theory from Doshisha University. In 2013, Fujino was awarded the Akutagawa Prize, Japan's most prominent literary prize, for Nails and Eyes. In the fall of 2017, she was in residence at the University of Iowa's prestigious International Writing Program. Her stories have appeared in English translation in Granta, Monkey and the US-Japan Women's Journal.