Wataru had several friends among the kids who lived in their building, and they rode the same bus to kindergarten. Kuniko, too, made friends among the circle of mothers in the complex. One of the women she came to know was married to the manager of a local real estate agency. Because of this, she was well informed about all the local properties. One day, their conversation had drifted to the topic of that “terrible eyesore” next to the revered Mihashi Shrine.
“Remember how the temple grounds used to be so large? Well, I guess it was hard to maintain all of that. So, once when they were refurbishing one of the old shrines, they sold off some of their empty acreage. That’s where that building is standing.”
The company that had bought the land and begun construction of the building was a rental office place called Daimatsu Properties, headquartered in downtown Tokyo. It managed properties throughout the metropolitan area, and while attracting a shrine’s business spoke well of the company’s pedigree, it wasn’t particularly large. In fact, from the sound of it, the whole operation was run by one man with the stuffy-sounding name of Saburo Daimatsu.
Wataru’s family lived on the eastern side of Tokyo, or “Old Tokyo,” as the locals called it. Years ago it had been little more than a string of factories, but the quick commute to the city center (only thirty minutes or so) made it attractive to residents. Over the past ten years, apartment buildings had sprung up like mushrooms after the rain. With the coming of the apartments and the people who lived in them, the face of the town changed. To long-term residents like the real estate agent’s wife, their little borough was like a poor girl who had suddenly married into wealth. “Oh, it’s the same old town,” she would say, “but now it’s all dressed up for a cocktail party.”
Wataru’s father was born in the countryside of Chiba, and his mother came from Odawara, a coastal town to the west. Being recent imports themselves, neither of them completely understood how the locals felt, but they did sense the town’s vitality. It was an easy place to live, and it was only getting better. A quick glance at real estate advertisements confirmed that property values were rising. The price tags on all the new apartment buildings jostling up against each other were comparable to those in other more established parts of town. For Daimatsu Properties, it must’ve seemed like a great idea to buy the land next to Mihashi Shrine. Apparently, Mr. Daimatsu had paid quite a bundle for it.
“Now, with its neighbor being a shrine and all, they couldn’t rent the building out to just anyone. The area is zoned for industry, but it’s right up against a residential zone,” Kuniko told them at the dinner table, repeating what she had heard from the real estate agent’s wife. “Still, they went around to a lot of potential tenants: a coffee shop, a beauty parlor, a cram school. They were going to make the upper floors into rental apartments. Until…”
Days after the building’s steel frame had gone up, the first contractor on the job went bankrupt. Daimatsu Properties quickly began a search for another contractor to pick up where they left off, but since starting that kind of work halfway through is much more difficult and costly than starting from scratch, it was hard for the company to find a deal. After a two-month delay, they finally found a new contractor to resume construction. Thus the blue tarps changed for the first time.
“So this new place came, and they got started, and then…”
Unbelievably, after only a few months, the new contractor, too, went bankrupt.
“As you can imagine, Mr. Daimatsu was in quite a fix, and went dashing about looking for another contractor. He finally found a small one interested in the property. In fact, just like Daimatsu Properties, this new contractor was basically a one-man operation.”
It was the last job he ever took. Three days after the paperwork was signed, the third contractor died of a stroke.
Kuniko shook her head. “Such a small operation couldn’t run without its foreman, and there was no one to take his place. There was a son, but he was still in college. Ultimately, the contract was voided, and so the building still stands, unfinished.”
Walking by the building on his way to school every day, even Wataru could clearly see the signs of deterioration on the abandoned edifice. The concrete had dried out and begun to flake at the corners. Exposed steel struts were stained gray by the rain. Inconsiderate passers-by had thrown garbage at the base of the tarps, and stray dogs and cats had taken to using the building grounds as a litter box.
One day in early spring, a strong wind blew off one of the tarps, exposing a steel support post and a steel staircase and landing on the second floor. This was the only part of the building interior visible from the outside. If the ghost had been seen anywhere, that was the place.
Whose ghost was it supposed to be, anyway, Wataru wondered. If it was an old man, then, based on what he knew of the story of the site’s construction, maybe it was the ghost of the third contractor who had died from a stroke just after taking on the project. But why would he be wearing a hooded cloak? Wataru couldn’t imagine the foreman of a building contractor walking around dressed like that. Even if, for argument’s sake, the man had owned a favorite hooded coat, and now wore it as he haunted the empty halls of the building, that still didn’t explain why he was haunting it in the first place. Was he concerned about the progress of construction? Did he regret having died unable to fulfill his contractual obligation? It seemed a little dry, for a ghost story. And, if he was in the construction business, surely he would realize that rumors of a haunting would drive away other potential contractors, making things even worse for Mr. Daimatsu, the very client he had promised to help.
Wataru had thought about it all through recess, and when he got back to the classroom and found that everyone was still talking about the haunting, he gave them his opinion. That was when one of his classmates claimed she knew exactly what kind of ghost it was.
“It’s a bound spirit,” she explained with utmost seriousness. “It’s what happens when somebody dies in a car accident or something. They’re bound to the place where they died, haunting it.”
Of course, that didn’t make any sense either. The building stood on old temple grounds. There couldn’t have been a car accident there. Wataru told the girl as much.
“Then maybe somebody snuck onto the grounds and committed suicide,” she retorted. “There, their spirit wanders, as lost in death as it was in life.”
The other girls around her ooohed and aaahed in approval.
“You know,” one of her friends said, “whenever I walk by that shrine I get a weird tingling feeling down my back. Once my knees started knocking together—like I was cold, right? Even though it was warm outside.”
“Totally! I get that too,” another chimed in.
“Well, did you think to check whether there really was someone who committed suicide on the shrine grounds?” Wataru asked. “Did you ask the priest or something?”
Their faces went red.
“Don’t be stupid!”
“You can’t just ask something like that!”
“I don’t even want to go near the place.”
Wataru continued, doggedly. “But then you’ll never know the facts, will you?”
The first girl pursed her lips in a pout. “Look, the place is haunted, all right? And that means there’s a bound spirit there. Those should be facts enough for you. You know, this is why everyone says you’re so lame, Mitani! Why do you always have to argue about everything?”
“Yeah! Make fun of ghosts, and one of them will end up cursing you!”
“You deserve it too, creep!”
Satisfied, the girls went back to their desks, laughing as they went. Wataru sat quietly in his chair. He was in shock. He was right, he knew he was. What they were saying made no sense. But how could he hope to win when his mind went blank whenever they called him things like “lame” and “creep.” The words stuck into him like sharp knives.