Toono!!!!! Well, I never wondered but now I know--Toono can be weird even when she's writing a non-bizarre setting. Go figure.
Stuff I've seen by Toono before has been really strange, but oddly upbeat. Like this one where a gift of fish to eat turns out to be a mermaid; it eats earthworms and doesn't talk, but is so beautiful they can't kill it . . . and then the next gift is ordinary looking little fish that all start saying "Don't eat me!" Or another one where Rapunzel, instead of a prince, gets visited by a couple of kids, and then once she gets an interest in the outside world and puts out a ladder, gets calls from a small witch, a yakult salesman, a newspaper salesman, an insurance guy, a bible thumper . . . (those are stories from "Kaoru-san no Kikyou"). You never know what you're going to get from Toono-sensei, but it's usually well worth finding out.