“Wooow, it’s soooo big!”
When Madoka Shinohara saw the house, she couldn’t help but shout.
Madoka was a fifth grader whose short chestnut-brown hair and large eyes were her trademarks.
It was early afternoon on a Sunday, and Madoka had just moved into a house with her family. Their new home stood all on its own without sharing any walls with neighbors. It also had a white wall, a garden lined with trees, and even an iron gate at its entrance. It was all unfamiliar to Madoka, who had lived in a condo until then.
“It’s an old building, but the previous owners took good care of it, so it’s nice inside,” Madoka’s dad told her as he pulled bags from the trunk of the car.
“You’ve got a nice, big room, too, Madoka,” her mom also said while getting out from the passenger side.
“Can I go look?”
“Of course. Your room is the farthest one on the second floor.”
“Got it!”
Once Madoka was inside, she ran up the stairs to the second floor, where she discovered two rooms. After she walked a bit down the hall, she found one more. This was probably the room at the end of the hall her mom had told her about.
Thrilled, she opened the door.
“Whoa!”
When she saw the room, she couldn’t help but exclaim in surprise again. It was even bigger and nicer than her mom had made it seem.
The room was spacious, and instead of being a traditional Japanese style, it looked more Western. Her things had already been moved into the room, and even her familiar bed and desk were there waiting for her.
“So this is my room starting today!”
The window was gigantic and south facing, so bright sunshine spilled into the room and illuminated it. Madoka’s old room only had a tiny window that looked out onto the condo building next door, so she’d never gotten any sun and had to turn on her lights even during the day.
She hadn’t liked that room and always complained about it to her parents. It seemed as though that had all paid off, and they’d picked out a house with tons of natural light.
“I think I’m going to enjoy this room!”
She grinned—she was already fond of it.
“That’s good, Madoka.”
“Yurika!”
Madoka dashed over to her little sister, who had stopped in front of her door at some point. Yurika was cradling her precious teddy bear as she stared at her older sister.
“Do you like our new house, Yurika?”
“Uh-huh!” Yurika replied enthusiastically. “I love it. We’re still going to be friends even while we’re here, right?”
“Of course we will be!” A smile popped onto Madoka’s face. “You’re my adorable little sister, after all. We’re gonna be besties, just like we’ve always been.”
Yurika gave another energetic “Uh-huh!” in reply.
The next day.
Madoka started going to her new school. She was in the fifth grade and ended up in classroom number three. She wasn’t sure she’d have friends after transferring, but those fears were put to rest even before lunch break started.
Hardly any kids ever transferred to the school, so all her classmates naturally gathered around her.
Madoka also really liked talking to people. Because of her bright personality, she could even chat easily with people she’d never met before. Thanks to that, when she ate lunch, she was already fast friends with two of her classmates, Momoka and Ai.
“Hey, Madoka, do you like urban legends?”
After the three of them had pushed their seats together to eat, Momoka casually asked Madoka that question.
“Urban legends? Um, I don’t dislike them. I don’t know much about them, though.”
“Oh, really?” Ai and Momoka both said simultaneously after Madoka replied.
“So, lately, urban legends have been all the rage around school. Do you know about the wriggler, Madoka?” Momoka asked.
Madoka didn’t, so she answered honestly, “No.”
“The wriggler is this white human-shaped thing that wiggles around in rice paddies. These three sixth graders in another town happened to come across it. If you see the wriggler, that means you’ll get attacked. Supposedly, all those girls got attacked by the wriggler and were never heard from again.”
“They were what?” Madoka stopped eating and stared at Momoka. “Is that really true?”
“I dunno, but one of my study hall friends knows someone who lives in that town and told her about it. Apparently, they also saw the faceless kid there.”
“A kid without a face? Is that another urban legend?”
“That’s right. The kid is supposed to be a little boy who wears a hood, but he hasn’t got eyes, a nose, or a mouth. Apparently, if you see him, weird things will start happening to you. Those girls saw him, so that’s why they saw the wriggler.”
Madoka couldn’t believe any of what Momoka was saying, but then she started to think maybe things like that really could happen…
“But none of that happened in this town, right?”
All this stuff with the wriggler and faceless kid had happened in some place she’d never been to. As long as they didn’t appear where she was, she had nothing to be frightened of, but this time Ai spoke up.
“Yeah, the wriggler and faceless kid were somewhere else, but we’ve got our own urban legend here, too.”
“What is it?”
Her curiosity got the better of her, and Madoka had to ask. Ai’s expression became serious, and she scooched her face right up to Madoka’s.
“So this one’s called The Red Crayon, and it’s about a certain cursed house in town. One day, a family moved in, and supposedly, they found a red crayon inside it. Nobody in the family had crayons, though, so they had no idea where it’d come from. Then later, on another day, they found a hidden room in the house, and they decided to check it out. And you know what they found there? All the walls had this little kid’s creepy writing all over them, and it said, ‘Let Mommy out, let Mommy out, let Mommy out…’ And all of it was written in red crayon.”
Madoka felt a shiver go down her spine.
When Ai saw that her new friend was spooked, she snickered under her breath.
“Looks like you’re kind of a scaredy-cat, Madoka. Nobody knows which house it was, though, and it might not even be true, so don’t be so afraid.”
“Yeah, urban legends are just stories people tell. Also, we should hurry up and finish eating.”
Momoka was snickering, too, though.
“Y-you’re right,” Madoka said as she laughed nervously. She felt embarrassed as she realized she’d let the silly story frighten her a little too much.
Urban legends are just stories. None of that’s going to happen to me, Madoka thought, and she started eating her lunch again.
But just days later, Madoka had a strange encounter of her own…
That night, Madoka had a hard time sleeping.
She was in bed with her eyes shut tight, but for some reason, her mind was wide awake.
I have school tomorrow, so I need to sleep soon…
But the more Madoka thought that, the less sleepy she felt. She opened her eyes to check what time it was.
Right then, she heard something.
Aaaahhh!
It was a girl’s scream, and it had come from outside her room.
“What was that?!”
Madoka scrambled out of bed in surprise.
According to her clock, it was past two o’clock in the morning.
She strained her ears to listen, but the whole house was silent again, and she didn’t hear the girl’s voice a second time.
“What was that just now?”
Even though she was scared, she opened her door and peered into the hallway.
But no one was there, and it was pitch-black.
Madoka picked up the flashlight left in the hallway for emergencies and lit up her surroundings.
I don’t see anyone here…
She tried shining the flashlight all over the hall, but she didn’t see anything out of the ordinary.
Maybe I was half-asleep and imagined it?
Madoka stood alone in the hallway and tilted her head quizzically.
The next morning.
When Madoka came out of her room, Yurika was standing in the hall. She was wearing her usual red dress and tightly holding her precious teddy bear in her arms.
Maybe the scream I heard last night was Yurika’s?
Madoka decided to ask her about it.
“Say, Yurika, did you scream last night?”
When Madoka asked her sister that, Yurika shook her head.
“I didn’t. I was asleep the whole night,” she answered.
“Gotcha…”
But Madoka was sure the scream she’d heard had come from a little girl, and Yurika was the only other little girl in their house.
When Madoka got downstairs, she asked her parents, who were already eating breakfast, about the sound. Neither of them had shouted, and they hadn’t heard anything during the night.
“If it was really that loud, we would have woken up, too,” her dad told her.
“That’s right,” her mother said. “You must have dreamed it. You were probably tired from your first day at a new school.”
“I guess…,” Madoka said. Even though she wasn’t fully convinced, she still assumed that must have been it.
But then a few days passed…
…and Madoka had another strange encounter…
On that day, when Madoka came home from school, she decided to head up to her room on the second floor to put her bag down before going to the living room for a snack.
“Huh?”
As she was headed up the stairs, she found something on the ground right in front of the steps. She stared at it, wondering what it could be.
It was a red crayon.
It seemed well used and was already half gone.
“What’s this doing here?”
Madoka picked up the crayon without thinking much of it and noticed that Yurika was peering down at her from the second-floor hallway.
“Hey, Yurika, is this your crayon?” Madoka looked up at her sister and asked, but Yurika just shook her head vigorously no.
“It’s not mine,” her little sister said.
“Oh, right. You don’t draw.”