Garlic

Based on an episode of "Tales from the Unusual."

A housewife (played by Ikue Sakakibara) realizes while making curry that she forgot to buy garlic. She runs to the neighborhood greengrocer to buy some, but the storeowner is out. Remembering she left a pot on the fire, she panics and ends up taking the garlic without paying. However, consumed by guilt, she decides not to use it and hides it on a shelf.

From the next day on, the burden of her shoplifting makes her paranoid that everyone is watching her. She desperately tries to throw the garlic away to destroy the evidence, but every attempt fails: when she tries to sneak it into someone else's trash, she gets caught by a notoriously nosy housewife; when she tries to toss it into the back of a delivery truck, the driver stares right at her. Nothing goes her way, and she only ends up drawing more attention from the neighborhood.

Driven to desperation, she digs a hole in a park in the middle of the night to bury the garlic, but she is spotted by someone walking a dog. She just laughs it off awkwardly. The next day, a police officer comes to her door. "Did you bury it?" Resigned, she admits to it. The moment she does, handcuffs are abruptly slapped onto her wrists, leaving her in shock.

The dog owner from the night before had grown suspicious and called the police. Upon investigation, parts of a dismembered body were supposedly discovered at the spot.

A horde of reporters is waiting outside her front door. Panicking at being framed, she shouts, "No! What I buried was... it was just a clove of garlic I took from the greengrocer!"

Silence. But just as she lets out a sigh of relief, the situation explodes into an even greater frenzy than before. Extra editions of newspapers featuring the arrested housewife's photo are printed and distributed, and TV networks broadcast a special live segment of the greengrocer weeping tears of joy as he is "reunited" with the garlic.

Guarded by a heavy escort of police officers, she is led away, screaming, "Why?! Why is this happening over garlic?!"