A Lonely Fairy Tale

Once, I read a book that said: “Growing up means realizing that the world doesn’t belong to you alone.” When we’re babies, the whole world is ours. We only need to cry loudly to get whatever we want. Later, we come to understand that life is all about losing things. Even what we have now is only temporary. But we’re so afraid of losing things, and so deeply rooted in the habits of infancy, that even as we learn to compromise, we can’t help wanting to possess things, and we grieve terribly when we lose them. When we finally understand that the only thing in this world that belongs to us is ourselves, we become utterly lonely. The stories in the Lonely Fairy Tales series are deeply sorrowful and obscure. They are all stories about loss. The Lonely Fairy Tales series has finally come to an end. The process took me about eight years. I completed the earliest story, “Thorn Flower,” when I was in high school. Those of you who liked reading Cartoon King may have noticed that this story was adapted from the comic of the same name by Yang Daoliang. I’m really sorry for using it without asking Mr. Yang, but the story fits so well into the series as a whole that I didn’t want to remove it. “The Foolish Traveler” was also adapted from a comic, inspired by a story Momiji tells in Fruits Basket. The inspiration for “Lonely Fairy Tales” came from a short story I read in high school. I can’t remember the plot at all now, but I think there may have been some similarities. I can’t remember anymore, especially since I didn’t finish this story until eight years later, in 2008. I made up all the other stories myself. They were certainly inspired by other things, but they no longer have much to do with the original works, so I won’t explain them here. This is my own explanation of all the stories in the Lonely Fairy Tales series. Please be kind and don’t accuse me of plagiarism. Thank you. Premise: