In the mountains of Nagano, Japan, early summer nights would bloom with fireflies—tiny sparks adrift in the dark. My baba’s voice carried the song “Hotaru Koi,” a whisper to beckon their light. They floated like wandering stars. Lanterns of the unseen, they led me into worlds made of shimmer and shadow, where fairies whispered and dreams gathered in the folds of night. They were the first to teach me wonder, the first to guide me toward the path of a storyteller.