Golden Plum

— How much truth do you think it has?   — You'll have to be more specific.   — The rumour about the plum. Does it even exist?   — Oh, that's an old story, I wouldn't put much trust in it. Besides, if we could become kami just by growing a tree, we would all be farmers, wouldn't we?   — I suppose so. By the way, what are you eating?

There is an old folk tale that runs in the countryside and changes throughout the year. It tells of a fruit that any ordinary fruit tree may bear, except that it is coated in gold, glowing in the sunlight of a nascent day. Should a mortal take a bite of the fruit before the second light of the day, they would be granted the powers of a kami and ascend to the heaven. However, once the window has passed, the entire tree withers in a few moments and no plant will ever grow in its place.

With the travels of the rumour, the tree and fruit evolved. The most common occurrence is that of a plum grown atop a lonely hill. In some versions of the tale, there is a gardener tasked with looking over an orchard in which once a year a golden plum would bloom. Depending on who you ask, the gardener is a regular human or a terrifying monster, not a kami or an oni, but something else entirely, the warden guarding the gate between two entirely different worlds.

While it is regarded as an amusing story by most, some people set out to find the rumoured tree. As far as the world knows, such food is a pipe dream, but at the same time kami are not known to boast about how they came to be.