Water Moon

Samantha Sotto Yambao’s novel Water Moon is a work of magical realism published in 2025. Set primarily in Tokyo, Japan, Water Moon follows the main character, Hana, as she searches for meaning, purpose, and happiness after assuming control of her family’s magical pawnshop business. The novel uses the third-person point of view and incorporates elements of fantasy, adventure, and realism to explore themes relating to happiness, freedom, and life’s inherent conflicts.

This guide refers to the 2025 Penguin Random House hardback edition.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of death and substance use.

Plot Summary

Twenty-one-year-old Hana wakes up the morning after her father, Toshio, retires, passing her family’s pawnshop business over to her. When Hana goes downstairs, she discovers that the shop has been ransacked. She enters the shop’s vault and is horrified to see that someone released one of the precious, glowing birds from its cage.

At the pawnshop (which usually appears to clients as a ramen restaurant), Hana and Toshio’s clients can exchange the choices they regret for peace of mind. These choices take the form of luminescent birds. According to the rules of Hana’s world, she and her father must keep the birds safe or risk death. The Shiikuin—rotting, “soulless” creatures who administer justice in Hana’s world—apprehend and kill those who break these laws. Setting choices free or stealing them for oneself is forbidden.

Hana fears that the Shiikuin will soon come after Toshio for freeing one of the choices. However, the shop’s disorder is curious to her. In addition, she doubts that her father would have left her world to enter the opposite world on the other side of the pawnshop door. (The pawnshop clients come from the “real” world, which isn’t magical or governed by the same rules.) Even if a thief broke in and stole the missing choice, Hana doesn’t think Toshio would chase them into the other world to retrieve it because entering this world also means death.

A new client named Keishin enters the pawnshop and offers to help Hana. She’s skeptical but feels drawn to him. She explains that her father is missing and that she thinks he’s in trouble. Keishin insists on helping her find Toshio since he’s intrigued by Hana and reluctant to return to his life as a physicist in the real world anyway.

Hana and Keishin jump into a pond that transports them to a temple. There, they learn that Toshio is seeking Hana’s mother, Chiyo. When Hana was a baby, Chiyo stole a choice. Hana has grown up believing that the Shiikuin killed her for this crime. With the help of various magical and supernatural guides, however, she and Keishin discover that Chiyo is alive. Instead of killing her, the Shiikuin sentenced her to a life of longing—a fate worse than death.

As Hana and Keishin continue seeking clues to Toshio and Chiyo’s whereabouts, they run from the Shiikuin. Keishin is horrified by these cruel, ugly creatures and begs Hana to leave her world and come start a life with him in his world. Hana insists that this is impossible. When she was a child, her body was tattooed with the map of her destiny. She believes that she has no choice but to follow this map and accept her fate. Over time, however, she becomes increasingly attached to Keishin. She fears letting him go yet is terrified that her world will kill him. Meanwhile, she’s betrothed to a man named Haruto. Haruto is kind and gentle and helps point Hana and Keishin to the subterranean field where her parents are hiding. When he sees Hana and Keishin together, he urges Hana to accept her feelings for Keishin despite her duty to him. Hana feels conflicted but ultimately lets Haruto go.

Hana and Keishin find the field and encounter Toshio and Chiyo. While there, they discover many new truths about their world and their lives. Chiyo was consigned to this field because it’s where all “soulless” children are buried. The choices that Hana’s family gets from pawnshop clients are pieces of the clients’ souls—fragments that they then give the children to make them “normal.” However, if they don’t obtain enough choices, the children remain “soulless” and are exiled to the field. They don’t grow up but eventually turn into the monstrous Shiikuin who rule Hana’s world with fear and brutality. Upon learning this, Keishin suggests that Hana stop collecting choices and end the Shiikuin cycle of violence. He insists that the children are beautiful and good no matter how different they might seem when they’re born.

When the Shiikuin appear in the field, Hana and Keishin flee, leaving Toshio and Chiyo behind. Toshio has only a year to live and would rather spend it with Chiyo anyway. Hana and Keishin finally make it to safety. After they return to the pawnshop, however, they decide to part ways.

Hana and Keishin spend the next five years apart. For an entire year, Keishin visits the ramen shop regularly, hoping that someday he’ll open the door and find himself back at the pawnshop. One day, at the ramen shop, he encounters his estranged mother, and they renew their relationship. Several years later, Keishin runs into Hana at the airport. Hana informs him that she closed the pawnshop and righted the injustices of her world. She has come to Keishin’s world for good. They embrace, profess their love, and decide to be together forever.