Once upon a time there were two brothers, the elder was Kane and the younger was Cho. The elder brother was honest and a very good man. Cho was dishonest and stingy.
However the younger brother was rich and lived the life of luxury when compared to the elder poor brother.
It so happened that Kane went to Cho’s house and asked for some loan of seed rice and some silkworm’s eggs. The elder brother could not buy the seed rice and silkworm’s eggs because Kane had no no money and the last season was not good for him.
Cho, instead of honoring his brother’s request, gave some worm-eaten musty rice and some dead eggs to his brother.
Kane did not suspect that his brother would play a trick on him and worked with the musty rice and the dead eggs like he would do with good seeds and good silkworm eggs.
Something very strange happened. The work of the elder brother borne fruit and the silkworms grew wonderfully well that season.
Cho was very angry when he heard this. He went to Kane’s house. When Cho found that Kane was not at his house Cho took a knife and killed all the silkworms in Kane’s house.
Cho went back to his house and he made sure that nobody knew that he had done this act.
Kane came back home and he was shocked on seeing the state of his silkworms. He did not know how this had happened but he tried to feed the silkworms with mulberry leaves as before, in an attempt to revive it.
Kane was shocked because now he had twice the number of silkworms and the silk that the silkworms spun was twice as much as Kane had expected.
Adapted from Japanese Folktales
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