“My hair has finally grown out.”
A stroked the lengthy strands, dyed light brown and grown long enough to run down her back.
She’d last cut her hair after she and her ex-boyfriend split up. I asked her if it was a symbolic way to break with her past, but she shook her head.
“No, I’m not that type of person. I actually didn’t want to cut it.”
And with that, she started telling me her story.
About two years ago, A was in her third year of university and dating a guy she’d met in her school’s tennis club.
They had been together since their first year and got along well. Sometimes, they’d even go on trips with friends from the club.
“We’d party all night long almost every day back then. We were pretty wild.”
One day, A was spending a typical night drinking at a friend’s house.
“It was me, my boyfriend, and two other people. We were all super drunk, and somebody suggested we tell scary stories.”
They took turns sharing the typical sort of spooky tales everyone’s heard from somewhere or other. Helped along by the alcohol, everyone got really into it.
But after a few rounds, they had exhausted their cache and moved on to the subject of Kokkuri-san, a game where someone writes down all fifty phonetic kana on a slip of paper and uses it like a Ouija board.
“We all reminisced about gathering after class in elementary school and playing the game. Apparently, some regions in Japan call it by a different name. My boyfriend’s hometown calls it Cupid-san, but it’s essentially the same thing.”
Since the group was discussing it, someone proposed trying it out. But it would require a paper with all fifty kana, and no one was sober enough to write them all out. The inebriated group’s enthusiasm started to wane.
“One of my friends noticed the change in mood and decided to tell another story. This one was about a game that had been popular at an elementary school they briefly attended as a kid. It was easy to do and didn’t require any preparation.”
Their parents had moved frequently for work, so they’d changed schools often. When they were in third and fourth grade, they’d attended a school in , and the game had been popular there.
“It was called Mashiro-sama, and it’s really easy. You just stand up, raise both hands above your head, then repeat ‘Mashiro-sama, Mashiro-sama, come on over’ while jumping in place three times. That’s it. When you’re done, Mashiro-sama will supposedly tell you your future.”
But if Ouija boards, for example, communicate by moving the planchette, how do you receive Mashiro-sama’s message?
“I asked my friend, but they said they didn’t know. The whole thing was really vague. But apparently, some of the kids at their school loved the game.”
But at the time, A’s group was bored and looking for something to do, so they weren’t that worried about the details.
“My boyfriend volunteered first. He staggered up, swaying as he jumped. He said, ‘Mashiro-sama, Mashiro-sama, come on over.’ He looked so funny that we all burst out laughing. Seeing that, he handed me his phone and asked me to record him doing it again so he could post it on social media. After taking the video, I handed him back his phone, and he immediately uploaded it.”
A watched her boyfriend blankly as he fiddled with his phone. Then, all of a sudden, he gasped.
“Someone liked the video less than five seconds after I uploaded it. I don’t even know the account.”
A checked her boyfriend’s screen and saw a single account name in the list of likes.
“They used the default avatar, the one that just looks like a silhouette. The space for their name was blank, and the username was a random jumble of meaningless numbers.”
The account contained no posts, had zero followers, and was only following her boyfriend.
A found this creepy, but her boyfriend seemed unfazed.
Naturally, Mashiro-sama delivered no prophecy, so the group moved on to the next topic. Eventually, the party came to an end, and they headed home.
“It all started after that. The weird account would like everything my boyfriend posted, no matter what. For example, he’d post a picture of me when we were out on a date. I care about how I look in pictures, so I’d check his wall from my phone, and that account would have already liked it, even though he’d just posted it. That’s creepy, right? I told him to block the person several times, but he seemed to enjoy getting the free likes and didn’t see any problem with it…”
The account didn’t seem to prefer any specific kind of picture or video—it simply liked every single post her boyfriend made.
A secretly began to suspect something was happening behind her back.
“I thought he might be cheating on me, and that the woman was using a throwaway account to stalk him. She probably figured liking all his posts would put pressure on our relationship, since we both checked his account. I assumed he knew and that was why he wouldn’t block her.”
About a month later, A’s suspicions intensified.
“My boyfriend became a little distant. He didn’t seem to enjoy our time together as much, and I began to feel like he wasn’t there in the moment with me anymore. I asked him if I’d done something to upset him, but he denied it. It made me sad to think he might not be interested in me anymore.”
One night, A stayed over at her boyfriend’s house.
He was distant that night, too, so they turned on the TV for background noise to hide the awkwardness, then fiddled with their phones before going to bed early.
Late that night, A woke up to the mattress squeaking.
“I realized my boyfriend had gotten up and left the bed. I was half conscious and figured he’d just gone to the bathroom, so I went back to sleep.”
The next time she woke up, his side of the bed was still empty.
“I checked my phone, and it was three in the morning. I didn’t know when he’d gotten out of bed, but it felt like a fair amount of time had passed.”
She wondered where he could be and debated going to look for him. Then a faint voice reached her from the hallway.
“I heard this low muttering. It sounded like he was talking with somebody.”