Toshihiko received a message from Miyoshi saying that the results of his experiment were ready. He’d have to go and see him again soon, but he wasn’t feeling up to it. Ever since Rumi had given him the “protective” talisman, the number of supernatural attacks on him had actually increased.
He had gone into a café alone but was brought three glasses of water. He had been driving in his car listening to music, when a woman’s scream came over the radio. Something had bumped into him while he’d been out walking at night and knocked him down, but when he looked around, there was nothing there.
Little incidents like that, the kind you might hear of in any urban legend, were bad enough, but the letters had also started coming again. He hadn’t read through them very thoroughly, but the animosity seemed to have eased up, and they were now mostly just filled with the sender’s delusions about the happy life she and Toshihiko were going to live together.
After he’d built up a backlog of them, he made copies and sent them to the police, though he knew this was nothing more than a gesture at this point. The effort only wore down his fragile nerves even more. Maybe there was some power contained within the letters that was acting on him, like the kind that had hurt Rumi after she tore up one of the notes. This wasn’t the kind of thing he could ask someone else to check, so he had to do it himself.
He’d gotten in touch with Rumi and told her that, as much as he appreciated her giving it to him, the talisman didn’t seem to be doing a very good job.
“But nothing serious has happened, has it? Have you been injured? Have you seen this woman in person yourself? You haven’t, right? There it is. The talisman is working as intended.”
He hadn’t expected the little paper charm to solve all his problems, but this still felt underwhelming. He hadn’t seen any new apparitions, but that didn’t mean he was in the clear. These hallucinations and strange incidents were still stressful, even if they weren’t resulting in physical injury.
“If something happens, let me know the time and place it occurs. If you’re able to record any sounds, send a copy to me.”
After that, he started keeping a kind of incident log. Sending one each and every day had drained him even further, though.
The worst thing was when he’d started hearing the grinding noise at work.
At first, he’d thought a student was restlessly tapping their foot or something. He turned around to call them out on it, but all the kids were working hard copying notes from the whiteboard. All except one, who was slumped face down on her desk. Toshihiko was about to speak up when he realized something: He didn’t recognize her.
His class only contained twenty-some kids, and he knew them all by face and name. But this girl, her long black hair spilling over every inch of her desk, was a stranger. The grinding sound was getting louder. The girl slowly raised her head. Toshihiko tried to turn away, but for some reason, he couldn’t move like he wanted to. He caught a glimpse of her thin lips…a slender nose… In just a few moments, he’d see her eyes… It was then that he regained control of his body, and he stumbled backward onto the floor.
The students gave him a weird look and asked if he was all right. He said he was fine and stood up, but the girl with the long hair was gone. Trying to convince himself that he’d just imagined it, he turned back to the board. The moment he did, the grinding started again, louder than ever. After that, he lost the heart to teach a proper lesson. He’d simply handed out some worksheets and had called it a day.
From that point on, Toshihiko kept hearing the grinding noise. It was so bad that he was afraid to turn around and look at the students. Midori even had to admonish him, saying that everyone thought there’d been something off about him lately. She hounded him to the point that seeing her face made him feel ill. He somehow managed to get through it, apologizing and giving some feeble excuse. But he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep this up.
In the midst of all this, Miyoshi’s message was like a shining beacon of hope. With the system the man had developed and its frightening accuracy, they’d be able to confirm beyond all doubt that Midori really was the one behind this. Toshihiko would show it to the police, of course, but he’d also confront Midori herself. Faced with definitive evidence, she would have to back down.
Rumi had said talking things out was unlikely to solve the conflict, and Toshihiko agreed with her. However, he was beyond the point of thinking about the situation calmly and rationally. He was desperate enough that he had to believe it would change something.
On the train on the way over, he had trouble breathing. After looking around to check no one was watching, he pulled down his mask and took some deep breaths.
“Excuse me…”
Apparently, he hadn’t been careful enough. A woman was calling out to him. Toshihiko would have ignored her, but it was hard to do that when she was staring at him head-on.
“Yes, what is it?”
He tried to sound as cold and standoffish as possible. But something was wrong. The lady’s voice was shaking. Not because she was nervous or afraid—it sounded like she was holding back laughter. Her thick lipstick was smudged, going a little over the edges of her lips.
“Well, I… Heh-heh… It’s just…”
She broke into a loud peal of laughter. Something was definitely not right here. She was a tall woman who looked to be in her late twenties. She wore a feminine one-piece dress, and aside from the thick makeup, there was nothing especially strange about her. But she was cackling so loud that even words like guffawing wouldn’t do it justice. And no one else on the train seemed to notice or care. Toshihiko’s unease was rapidly turning into terror. Why was a woman going crazy with laughter not attracting any attention?
“You’re being fooled.”
She pointed at him and laughed again.
“You’re being fooled, and you don’t even know it! You’re clueless!”
Still cackling, she brought her face close to his.
Krsh, krsh, krsh…
The noise was right next to his ears.
“You really are—”
Her face was so close that her red, red mouth seemed to fill his entire view. There was the sound of something ripping. Toshihiko instinctively screwed his eyes shut.
The next thing he knew, an announcement was playing. He furtively cast his eyes about but didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The other passengers seemed just as impassive as before. He thought back to what Rumi had said. She had seen the mark of a curse on him coming from a tall woman with black hair. Was that whom she meant?
The only tall woman with black hair in his immediate circle was Midori. He’d been certain she had to be the mysterious stalker. She was quite a bit taller than Toshihiko and had a slender build. She fit the bill in terms of pure physique. But he’d gotten a clear view of this woman’s face just now, and she looked nothing like Midori. Could she have been some kind of psychic manifestation? The curse itself in physical form? Midori had classic, understated features, but this woman’s makeup lent her a much flashier appearance. Did she represent a hidden desire to stand out more?
Toshihiko took a breath and prepared to get off the train. Scraps of paper were lying at his feet. It was the remains of the talisman Rumi had given him.