They say the children living in that apartment building lose their minds.
It was built six years ago in , during a wave of new construction, when they carved out half a mountain to make more room.
Though it was outside the city, the location was only a ten-minute drive away, and all the rooms were filled as soon as construction finished.
The multibuilding apartment complex contained over a thousand units and had its own park, making it feel like a small village. The new construction was a strange sight next to the old houses nearby, which were still inhabited by local residents.
Most of the apartments’ tenants were families looking to raise their children away from the city, and soon the mothers had formed a little community, meeting up in the park with their young children and visiting neighbors for tea during the day.
A’s family moved in as soon as the buildings went up.
There was A, who was a housewife; her husband; their ten-year-old daughter, B; and their cat. Each morning, her husband would head out to work and B would leave for school, while A would spend her day attending to housework and chatting with the other mothers outside, building their community.
Then, some months after their move, A realized something.
B had started acting strangely.
She’d always misbehaved now and then, just like any kid her age. But after they moved, things changed. She started behaving oddly, doing things like purposefully stepping on their cat’s tail or squeezing tomatoes at the supermarket. A would scold B, and she’d nod along attentively, only to start up the behavior again later. A wasn’t sure what to do about it.
She talked it over with her husband, and they decided to keep an eye on their daughter, figuring the cause was just stress from the new environment. Then one day, she casually mentioned her troubles to some of the other mothers. When she did, those with children near B’s age started voicing the same complaints.
After moving to the apartment, the other children had also begun doing things they’d never done before—such as capturing butterflies and removing their wings before covering them in sand; dropping flowerpots from balconies; and kicking strollers with little babies in them.
At that, A remembered a recent incident where she’d scolded some elementary school–aged children who were ripping up flowers from the apartment’s flower beds and tossing them on the ground.
The group of mothers began to suspect there was a problem at their children’s new school. All the kids went to the same elementary school, after all, and they spent a lot of time there.
The school had been built long before to serve the local children. When the apartments were constructed, it was renovated and more teachers were hired to accommodate the influx of students. As a result, the student body was composed of both local children and kids from the apartment complex.
During a parent-visitation day, A and the other mothers asked one of the teachers if the students were engaged in any mischief or pranks at school. The teacher assured them nothing like that happened, then thought for a moment before telling them about a secret game that only the apartment kids played.
They wouldn’t let local kids join in, and a few of them had come to the teacher crying about being excluded. It had caused some concern among the faculty.
That afternoon, A asked B about the game when she came home from school. B hesitated at first, but after swearing A to secrecy, she described it to her.
The game was called Masshiro-san, or Mister White.
B didn’t know who started it. But every kid in the apartment complex played. Adults and local kids weren’t allowed to join. It was a secret, just among the apartment kids. Masshiro-san was like tag. The game usually started with four to six people, but there was no set rule for the number of players.
First, the kids separated into boys and girls. The boys played rock-paper-scissors, and the loser became Masshiro-san. While the boys were doing that, the girls would run away. The boy representing Masshiro-san chased after the girls and tried to capture one. The other boys helped him by telling him where the girls were or by blocking them as they tried to get away. But only Masshiro-san was allowed to touch the girls.
When Masshiro-san managed to capture a girl, he would request a sacrifice.
The form of the sacrifice varied. It could be an eraser, or a pair of socks, or something else. But the girl had to give Masshiro-san something. She couldn’t refuse, because otherwise something scary would happen.
The game ended when the captured girl handed over the sacrifice. It kept going until the sacrifice was handed over, even if it took hours or days. During that time, no one talked to the girl.
When she heard all this, A felt uneasy. It hardly sounded like a game children would play.
That evening, as her family slept, A heard the front door close. She and her husband slept in the same room, so it had to be B, who had gotten her own bedroom after the move.
A walked into the hall to find B taking off her shoes at the front door. She seemed to have just come back home.
A confronted her about what she had been doing out in the middle of the night, and B said that she had gone to hand over the sacrifice. When A asked who she had gone to see, B said only, “Masshiro-san.” A pressed her about the sacrifice, and B muttered, “Mike,” the name of their cat.
In the living room, a flower vase lay near a small pool of blood, wet fur stuck to its surface.
A’s family decided to move soon afterward.