Rules:You just continue the story. Say ‘I’m next’ before you post.Wait two posts before posting another. No endings (if possible) . Nothing other than stories (@_KoBa , I’ll forgive you ) .At least 20 words per post. I’ll start:
There was a poor family, who made a living by selling ginger. But, the youngest son, Shingo hates the smell of them. He ran into the woods to escape the torturing smell of ginger.
Edit: Inspired by @PiggyStardust 's grandpa thread. But you imagine.And continue.
Edit No.2: You can find some names in the stories related to some users in this forum.
One day, a storm came and Shingo found himself trapped under a wide-leaf tree. Hours after hours, the rain wouldn’t stop. Shingo began to feel hunger pangs for good, but each time he stepped out below the tree heavy, sharp raindrops would fall on his skin and make him cower back.
As the night fell, sad thoughts entered his mind: “Why nobody is looking for me? Why isn’t my family here to help me? Maybe they feel better now, that I’m not there to complain about the ginger smell all day…”
(I firmly believe emoji add to the written language and thus I use them as part of text).
As the night went on, Shingo’s hunger grew until it became unbearable. He was about to venture in the rain when he heard a voice singing in the distance. It was an old woman carrying a covered cart who, seeing the young boy under the tree, stopped and looked at him, smiling calmly. Shingo, too hungry to remember proper good manners, immediately exclaimed “Please, old woman, if you have food in that cart, let me have some, because I’m starving”.
The woman kept looking at him, then she turned to the cart and uncovered it. Shingo felt sick as the pungent smell of ginger reached him. The woman, noticing his disgust, covered the cart again.
“How can you expect a tree to protect you without roots to make it stand?” she asked. “Roots are life”.
“What to do? I am so hungry, that I could eat anything, but ginger?” Shingo decided to jump over his shadow and try it for the very first time in his life. To his great surprise the taste was wonderful. Why haven’t I tried this before?
He started a bar. It was called, " The ginger bar. "He sold homemade ginger drinks. To his surprise, everyone loved it and he soon became rich.
He went back home to meet his parents only to find out the house was gone…
Shingo found a river where his house used to be. When he asked for information he was told that the rain had flooded the entire area the night he had gone away, creating a ginger-smelling river called Ginger River. Hurt and desperate, Shingo thought back at what the old lady had told him. “Roots are life”. Determined to find his parents, he started following the Ginger River downstream.
May I suggest something? Since we can’t always tell who is writing and this needs to have some continuity, I say when a post is done (and ONLY when the last post is done, no placeholders for the future) the next person writes a placeholder “I’m next” or something and then edit it to write their part.
Little did Shingo know that his family had actually gone up the river, to an ancient burial site to pray for his soul, since they thought him lost in the flood.
In the same caravan, lost among the crowd, an old lady was pushing her cart… Her eyes shot from time to time to Shingo’s family, other times looking over a group of orphans with an unreadable expression.
(Edited.) Shingo walked back to his bar , hoping to find a town. He collapsed, too tired to continue his search for his journey. When he woke up, he found a Go board next to him.
There was a paper note on it. It wrote: “Use me wisely.” He soon learned how to play go from Mark, a go teacher who offered go lessons. Soon, he learned how to play go.
Mark saw how quickly Shingo progressed, and offered him a spot at the OGS () Go club. Mark told him that the club was founded by the great and noble anoek, with help from his longtime friend, topazg. (I’m not going to go too deep here). Shingo also learned of the existence of the OGF (Online Go Forum), a place where Go players from everywhere gathered.
Still Shingo could never forget his deep and regretful pain that his family had left him in the woods. At the same time, he couldn’t shake a feeling of shame for having eventually become successful by the same thing that made him run away from his family time and time again.
Go was a band-aid for his heart; after a long day, he pondered alone in the dark, thinking over the phrase the old lady had said: “roots are life”.
[Meta] We have to be careful about not becoming too self-referential. I was tempted to write in that ShinGo created a story telling game thread in those forums …
I’ll take the next one.
So from what I recollect about Shingo, he went downstream and came back after his Go adventures with no information about his family (btw, nice move @Gia, you did what Lynch did at the end of Twin peaks season 2 ).
Meanwhile, at the burial site, Shingo’s family prayed at the shrine for his soul. One of the orphans, who looked surprisingly similar to Shingo, burst into an espression of disgust after smelling the ginger from the woman’s cart. Shingo’s family, noticing his reaction, thought the orphan was Shingo’s reincarnation and decided to bring him to their new home, a fishing hut by the Ginger River. Little did they care about the warnings coming from the old woman who, for the first time in her life, had stopped smiling.
I’ll go next.
Meanwhile, Shingo, practiced go for two years and quickly became one of the best players at OGS. He was awarded many trophies. While Shingo was having lots of fun playing go, he still wanted to find his family. He decided to continue down the Ginger River, this time with confidence. He came to the end of the Ginger River where there was a big lake. There were many villages around the lake. He asked each village if they had seen his parents but no one had saw them.
Little did he know that his path to success brought him further and further away from his family. Following the awards didn’t leave any thought of maybe following a different road after all this time.
As his family, stuck with grief in an attempt to redeem themselves, they never considered getting a new start; they thought that staying in Ginger River with a “new” Shingo would make everything OK.
Two ends of the same tangled web, they refused to face a new possibility, and the distance between them grew longer; and colder.
The old woman was sceptical and worried.
I’ll go.
At the fishing hut the new Shingo had started revealing his true colours. He didn’t like Ginger River and its smell and his adoptive parents were forced to buy expensive food to keep him healthy. He was lazy and didn’t help around, making his parents’ toils even harsher.
A year passed, then two, three. The old woman was never seen smiling again. One day, she saw that most of her ginger roots were rotting. She caught a sparrow and tied a ginger root to its foot, then she let it fly away. When the sparrow saw its eggs had been replaced by a cuckoo, it flew towards the lake by which Shingo had stopped.
I’m next. Meanwhile, Shingo remembered the mysterious note left on the go board. He started examining the go board. Then, he played a tsumego and in one eye, he saw an image of a person. Soon, that person he saw knocked on his door, and just borrowed some vinegar.
He soon realized he could see the future using that board.
) .At least 20 words per post. I’ll start:
) Go club. Mark told him that the club was founded by the great and noble anoek, with help from his longtime friend, topazg. (I’m not going to go too deep here). Shingo also learned of the existence of the OGF (Online Go Forum), a place where Go players from everywhere gathered.
).