Oh, sure. I’ll take an iced coffee, too.
I haven’t spoken with F in a long time, so I was surprised when he reached out to me about this. Yes. It seems like he’s still freelancing.
This is an interview for the monthly magazine , right? Oh, it’s no longer monthly?
Is that editor guy not coming today? Oh, it’s been ten years, so I don’t remember his name… That’s it—it was K.
Huh? He quit? You don’t say…
But anyway, why are you doing a follow-up interview for such an old story? I heard they never even published the article on my graduation research.
No, no, I’m not upset. That exorcist K introduced me to back then saved my life.
If it wasn’t for his help, I wouldn’t be here now, ten years later. Next year, I’m going to be a father. Can you believe it?
But, well, see… I probably shouldn’t be saying this to someone I’m meeting for the first time, but honestly, I wouldn’t have agreed if it wasn’t F who asked.
K was kind of rude back then… Oh, no, no, no, don’t apologize. You had nothing to do with it. And I know that kind of behavior is probably normal in his line of work.
I was desperate at the time. I’d experienced something truly terrifying. K offering to introduce me to an exorcist felt like a godsend. But to K, of course, I was just another person he had to work to get the story.
He pressed me on whether any of it had actually happened, hinting I might be lying to get attention. Then he said it wouldn’t be interesting for his readers as it was and asked if it would be all right to embellish this or that part of the story. I didn’t appreciate him treating such a horrific experience as fodder for entertainment, and it kind of upset me.
But—and I guess this should be obvious—if the scary stories in magazines like that are true, they must have all been horrible experiences for the ones going through them. I imagine people covering stuff like that get jaded after a while.
Ever since it happened to me, I’ve stayed away from anything horror-related.
Oh, I’m not saying that everyone who writes about that stuff is like K, of course. I can tell you’re taking me seriously. So please forget about what I just said.
Yes, that’s right. This all happened after the interview.
Exactly. I agreed to share my story in exchange for an introduction to an exorcist, or whatever they’re called.
I don’t really know much about that kind of thing, but K referred me to a temple near Tama that had a good reputation for handling the supernatural.
When I spoke to the priest there, I remember he sighed in resignation.
I frantically explained how my graduation research had caused that strange woman to appear at my apartment. I told him that I planned to move soon for a job, and that I wanted him to do whatever it took to make sure she didn’t follow me.
The priest said he didn’t sense any woman connected to me, so she most likely wasn’t after me anymore.
But he warned me she had probably invited something even worse into my life, and that I might be in grave danger.
I immediately requested an exorcism, but the priest said my case wasn’t that simple.
Purification rituals can dispel regular spirits, but something more powerful was haunting me. He said that in Shinto terms, it was something close to a god.
According to him, humans have no power over such entities, and a purification ritual would have no effect. He told me there was nothing he could do.
I’m embarrassed to admit it, but when I heard that, I began to cry. I begged him to help me.
Was my only option to simply wait until whatever it was killed me?
He looked deeply conflicted, but in the face of my pleading, he eventually sank into thought. After a while, he said this:
“Adopt some living creature and start taking care of it. I can’t say for certain if that’s really the best way, though. After that, you must decide what to do on your own.”
Ready to try anything, I stopped by a pet shop on my way home.
I hadn’t ever owned a pet before, so I asked the staff to recommend something suitable for a beginner. Eventually, I decided on some Japanese rice fish.
The employee suggested keeping small shrimp with them. Did you know they’re good companion pets? When red cherry shrimp share a tank with Japanese rice fish, the shrimp eat any leftover food and keep the water clean.
In the end, I bought some fish, shrimp, rocks, and a little tank and went home.
A few days later, ready to start my first job, I moved out of student housing and into a cheap apartment for single people. The fish came with me, of course.
That’s right. Nothing happened. I had followed the priest’s advice, so I assumed the fish were protecting me from any evil spirits.
I think it was about a month after I started my new job.
I began seeing something strange. It took the form of a little boy.
I’d see him standing way off in the distance as I walked around town. I could tell he wasn’t a living human. He looked like an ordinary elementary school kid in shorts and a T-shirt, but—how can I put it?—no one ever noticed him. It was like no one recognized that he existed, like I was the only one who could perceive him.
Sometimes he’d appear amid a crowd of people, or in the shadow of a telephone pole. One time, I even saw him standing on the roof of a building opposite my window at work.
He always looked at me with a blank stare, his head tilted like he had something he wanted to ask.
Yes, I was terrified. I’d never seen a ghost before. I’d heard about the woman, but I never actually saw her. Naturally, I called the temple for advice, and the priest said I’d be fine so long as I kept caring for another living creature. He didn’t say anything else.
The boy never did anything to me. He only ever stared at me from a distance, so I decided to pretend he wasn’t there.
When I was doing my graduation research, I’d spoken with someone who had a good sixth sense, and he’d told me it was usually best to ignore them, so that’s exactly what I did.
Then one night, I came back home from work as usual.
I always remove my socks as soon as I get home. That night, I took them off and tossed them into the washing machine, then I walked through my one-room apartment, past the fish tank.
Something felt weird under my feet, so I looked down. The floor was wet, and I had stepped on more than just water.
It was one of the little shrimp.
Had it already been dead? Or did I kill it when I stepped on it? I wasn’t sure.
There was a big pool of water on the floor. Half the contents of the tank had spilled out, and the remaining fish and shrimp were swimming around frantically in the leftover space.
There hadn’t been any earthquakes, and I couldn’t figure out why all that water was on the floor.
Maybe my clothes had caught on the tank as I was leaving that morning, causing the water to splash out, and the little shrimp had gotten caught up in the spill.
I felt bad. The shrimp might be small, but it was still a living creature. So I prayed over it.
Looking back now, I think it all started that night.
The boy continued to stare at me from afar.
A month later, one of the fish died.
I woke up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom and found it floating in the toilet bowl.
At that point, I could no longer write it off as a coincidence.
But there were still lots of fish and shrimp left in the tank.
Nothing happened for a couple of months, but I still saw the boy.
One evening, I went to get dinner from the convenience store.
On my way back, I noticed the boy off in the distance.
He was standing in the middle of the road, head tilted under a streetlight.
I started to turn away, ready to ignore him as usual.
That’s when he suddenly started running.
Straight toward me, feet smacking the pavement.
His face remained blank, but his head wobbled around as he ran.
Now that I think about it, he hadn’t been tilting his head at all. He simply couldn’t hold it up straight.
I ran home as fast as I could.
Thankfully, the convenience store was really close, and I hadn’t locked the door when I went out.
I flung it open and ran inside. Then, just as I locked the bolt behind me, it started.
THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD THUD
He hammered wildly on the door.
He hadn’t looked strong enough to pound that hard.
The flimsy door of my cheap apartment rattled horribly.
Just as I was thinking it would break if he kept beating on it, the sound suddenly stopped.
I stood there for some time, frozen to the spot.
A while later, still terrified, I cracked the door open to peek outside, but no one was there.
Instead, I found a large dead gecko, probably squished by the door.
The fish and shrimp in my apartment were still doing well, swimming around in the tank.
Later, I decided to shell out the money for an apartment that allowed any kind of pet.
Once I’d moved, I adopted another animal.
I got a hamster.
About a year later, it went into hibernation and never woke up.
Then I got a parakeet.
It lived for almost three years, but eventually, it slammed itself into a window, broke a wing, and died.
Then I got married, and we bought a house.
Last year, the cat we’d owned for six years vomited up blood and died.
My wife was really sad.
We have a dog now. A golden retriever puppy.
The boy? Yes. I still see him. He’s actually right there, on the other side of the street through that window. He’s looking this way. What, you can’t see him? Of course not. Ha-ha.