Stitching Of The Curse

Long before it was Hotel Toyohashi, the place bore a different name: Horaji Ryokan. 

In 1923, it had been built as a quiet escape for traveling monks, grieving families, and lovers on borrowed time. But it wasn’t until 1930 that the curse began to breathe.

Marie Ravu arrived that spring. A woman exiled from Louisiana, her body spoke the grace of a dancer but her eyes carried the knowledge of dead gods. They called her a witch. A voodoo priestess. Some whispered she’d murdered a nobleman’s son back in America. All Marie ever said was, "He wasn’t faithful."

She had found a quiet life at the Ryokan. To most, it might have seemed like a prison—but for Marie, it was a kind of heaven. A place to disappear, to start over. And it remained so… until Shion arrived. A broken shamisen player whose melancholic notes could summon the rain, Shion stumbled in one storm-soaked evening, lost in every sense of the word.

In time, Marie stitched his spirit back together. And Shion, in turn, taught her how to laugh again. Their love bloomed swiftly, quietly—something forbidden yet undeniable. It was born from the loneliness of two exiles, each banished from their own past, and drawn to one another like shadows at dusk.

It could have remained a secret—a fragile, unspoken bond. But the dolls changed everything.

As if sealing a vow, they created a lover’s covenant. Marie, with trembling hands, crafted a voodoo doll, infused with the rites of her homeland and the ancient pulse of her craft. Shion offered her a waraningyō, shaped by the quiet mourning of old Japan. In a hushed, sacred moment, they exchanged their dark totems like vows—binding their souls not only in love, but in shadow and consequence. It was Shion’s idea—part joke, part desperate hope. A protection spell, he said. Marie took it seriously. For a time, their love flickered as a brief, tragic romance. But then, the lovers crossed a line: together, they conspired to kill Shion’s former partner through a voodoo spell. And it worked. The girl died.

Ichiro, an elderly monk and the inn guardian, accused Marie of witchcraft. He bound her to an ancient tree in the forest, and with the help of townspeople, set her ablaze—blaming her for the mysterious death that had unsettled them all.

Grief-stricken and furious, Shion locked himself in Room 219. There, he poured his pain into ritual. From 1:00 AM until sunrise, he crafted a hundred waraningyō dolls—each one threaded with vengeance—and buried them beneath tatami mats, inside bedrooms, and throughout the gardens of the inn. A curse was born: one that punished guests who betrayed love, condemning them to voodoo-marked deaths.

At dawn, Shion hung himself in Room 219.

But death did not free them. Shion and Marie’s spirits did not pass on. Instead, they fused into something far more terrifying—a force that lingered, not as ghosts, but as judgment. Judgment for those who turned love into lies.

Decades passed.

In 1949, Ichiro—grieving his daughter’s suicide after betrayal—used an old spell Marie had left behind. He murdered his son-in-law using a waraningyō. That death awoke something long buried. The spell rippled through the wood, and the floorboards began to hum again. Rooms turned cruel.

The curse was born again. But this time, it grew roots.

Mr. Nakai, the grandson of Ichiro, arrived in 1979, just as the Ryokan was renamed Hotel Toyohashi. Young, lonely, and hungry for affection, he spent most of his early years managing the hotel by day and drinking at hostess bars by night in Toyohashi and Toyokawa. He brought women back—not one, not two, but many.

They laughed. They drank. They kissed. They lied.

Eventually, Nakai stopped believing in love altogether. Bitterness took root where hope once lived. One by one, he lured the women who had betrayed him back to the hotel, as guests—his voice warm, his smile convincing. But behind the charm was a darker intent. In secret, he began practicing voodoo rituals, crafting waraningyō for each woman. What began as symbolic revenge turned deadly. Each doll carried a silent curse. Each visit ended in quiet elimination.

It feeds.

One girl collapsed in the hallway. Another drowned in the bath though the tub was dry. One vanished entirely—only her earrings remained in Room 214. Nakai buried what he couldn’t explain. Literally. In the basement of the hotel, where even his staff wouldn’t go.

But there was a rule. A sacred one.

The curse didn’t touch Nakai. Because Nakai was never a guest. Never signed in. Never checked into a room. He lived above the spell’s reach. Like a god watching the temple burn.

Until now.

That same day, chaos rippled through the walls of Hotel Toyohashi. Room 219 had become a crucible of heartbreak and confusion. Haruki stood accused. Hana screamed in disbelief. A naked woman—dazed, and seemingly possessed—sat trembling but alive. Haruki’s friend wept uncontrollably in a corner, while investigators swarmed the halls, trying to make sense of the nightmare.

Investigators discovered a waraningyō hidden inside Haruki’s sling bag. It was now under analysis—its origins, purpose, the energy it might carry. One officer even suggested that Haruki had used witchcraft to manipulate or entice a woman. The implication hung heavy in the air.

But Haruki didn’t cheat. He hadn’t even touched her.

And that’s why Marie and Shion watched him—from the quiet edges of time. Not out of vengeance, but recognition. They had seen into his heart: fractured, loyal, and painfully honest.

The dog sat outside Room 219, ears alert. Not barking. Listening. Its tail tapped once. Then twice.

Later, in the dining hall of the hotel’s restaurant, Tomo’s lifeless body was being analyzed—his death announced by the piercing scream of the Filipino hostess. His fingers clutched a room key, stiff with rigor mortis. The bruises on his limbs mirrored the puncture points on a waraningyō doll found gripped in the hand of a still-possessed female staff member. One pin in the head. One in each arm. One in every limb. As if the curse had methodically tried to tear him apart—limb by limb, lie by lie.

The police, baffled. The staff terrified. Guests whispering, checking out early. Local reporters hovering beyond the gate. Even the cherry blossoms seemed to recoil.

And Nakai, pacing his office, sweating.

Because he knew the curse wasn’t his anymore. It was alive. It was choosing.

When night fell, and the power flickered, Nakai stared at the old registry book on his desk. Something strange.

His name.

Written in Room 205.

He didn’t write it.

He hadn’t checked in.

The walls groaned. The dog, in the lobby, began to howl.

And in Room 219, Haruki sat alone with his grief and a noose made from curtain cords. But before the chair could tip, a sudden gust of wind opened the window—and in the shimmer of air, two figures appeared.

Marie.

And Shion.

Their hands outstretched.

The curse had rules. But love had its own.

[Next: Head Master Of Ningyō]