As her story went on, Hirona grew more and more agitated, and she was practically sobbing by the time she finished. Toshihiko was feeling pretty uptight, too. The tall woman the girl had seen was probably his mysterious stalker. And the grinding noise, that could have been the sound he’d heard in the surveillance footage. She really had been after Mirei that day, not him.
Infidelity was a strange thing. The wronged party often didn’t resent the person who’d cheated on them as much as the person their partner had cheated with. This stalker seemed to fit that pattern. And in her case, that resentment made her violent and unpredictable.
“You think maybe I saw a ghost or something?” Hirona asked, her voice quivering. “Have I been cursed?”
“I don’t think so,” Toshihiko replied bluntly.
Her story definitely had an uncanny quality to it. And with everything he knew about the supernatural, Toshihiko did believe there were some things conventional knowledge couldn’t explain. When he thought about the situation rationally, however, he realized it was a little too soon to label the stalker as a ghost.
Points like Mirei being asleep, the front door being locked, and the tall woman having an “inhuman” face—they were all curious. There was no denying that. But calling them supernatural would just be forcing fragments of information to fit a pattern without looking at the bigger picture. That said, he wasn’t ready to completely dismiss Hirona’s experience as a dream or hallucination like her family had.
The one thing he could say for sure was that the woman stalking him was far more dangerous, aggressive, and resourceful than he’d given her credit for.
“Thanks for telling me all this. You’re going to be fine, Ushijima.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because it was only Nakamura who was being targeted. That strange lady hasn’t come back to harass you again, has she?”
Hirona nodded stiffly. Toshihiko went on.
“I think I’m the one she really wants. So I don’t want you to be seen with me. It’s too dangerous. Just in case, can you call your parents and get them to pick you up?”
“Yeah. My dad ought to be able to come.”
“Good. I’ll tell the police as well, but you don’t need to get involved with this any more than you already have. I know you must be worried about your friend, but she wouldn’t want you putting yourself in danger. Think of how sad she’d be if she knew.”
“Personally, I think Mirei’s more the type to be like, ‘Why are you fine when all this crazy stuff’s happening to me? No fair!’”
Hirona smiled for the first time that day. She contacted her father, and after a little while, he arrived to take her home. She still looked somewhat shaken up, but she no longer had the desperate look in her eyes as when she’d called out to Toshihiko at the entrance.
Glancing at his watch, Toshihiko realized it was already past ten PM. He locked up the cram school and began his commute home, but his mind kept going back to Hirona’s story. The uncanny elements weighed heavily on his mind. He didn’t feel that clingy gaze on him now, but what if…?
He hailed a passing taxi and got in. It would be more expensive, but he really didn’t feel like traveling by train today. He was so scared that he couldn’t even bring himself to look out the window on the way back. He kept thinking about the letters. Ever since the day of the accident, the strange letters had stopped coming. Presumably, that was because the stalker had become too obsessed with Mirei to focus on writing to him.
By the time the taxi dropped him off, Toshihiko still hadn’t come to any new conclusions. As he was taking his door key out of his bag, something fell at his feet. Looking carefully at the door under the light of the sensor, he could make out traces of some kind of sticky, glue-like substance. He had a bad feeling about this.
Something was stuck to the door. Probably one of that crazy woman’s letters. He really didn’t want to look down and find out what. When he finally did, his nostrils were assaulted by a foul odor. It was sort of rusty… No, less metallic, more raw. Like it had come from something organic.
There on the ground, sticking to his shoe, was a used menstrual pad, covered in dark patches of dried blood.