Kowabana 6, p.12
Kowabana 6, page 12
N apologised to me at the front gate. “I don’t know why, but I felt so sad, and I hated you so much,” she said with tears in her eyes. It no doubt had something to do with Daikon-san, so I couldn’t be angry at her.
“It’s fine. It was probably Daikon-san’s fault, not yours.”
N bowed her head, and we both went home.
After that was a nightmare.
That night I had sleep paralysis. Daikon-san stood there, watching me, only this time, it had a face. It glared at me, and I glared back. I didn’t get a wink of sleep.
When I got to school, everyone had already heard about what happened between me and N.
“Are you going out with N?” the friend I went to McDonald’s with asked me. “Are you guys, you know, doing it? Did she get pissed off because you tried to dump her?” His insensitive questions pissed me off so much I was gonna make his lunch come right back up, but I let it be. I had bigger problems.
Daikon-san was following me around everywhere. I had no energy left. It stalked me all the way to school. It peered over my shoulder during class. It hit me in the head with a ball during P.E. class.
Why wouldn’t it just leave me alone?
I passed N in the hall, but after the events of the day before, she ignored me. It hurt, but I sent her a message on LINE anyway. “Did you see Daikon-san behind me?” A short while later, I got a reply.
“Enough with that already.”
“There’s nothing there.”
…What?
She couldn’t see it anymore? I alone was cursed? I lost all hope.
I could kinda see ghosts when I was a kid, but it soon went away. I didn’t enter shrines or temples due to my religion, so that meant being cleansed was impossible. And worse, I stopped seeing N after that. She kept her distance, which meant I had to deal with it all by myself.
When the lunch bell rang, I took my lunch and sat in the toilet. You might think I’m joking, but it wasn’t so I could be alone. It was so I could talk to Daikon-san.
Yep. I went to the toilets with my lunch so I could face down some monster I didn’t understand.
I went into one of the stalls, sat on the seat, and wolfed down my lunch. I turned around, ready to face down the Daikon-san with a face. Thinking about it now, it’s obvious, but its body was kind of transparent. ‘It’s really not of this world,’ I thought.
I tried all sorts of things after that, but nothing worked. During the winter of last year some guys returning to class from lunch were scared by the sounds of “Hey!” “Say something!” “What the hell are you?” coming from the toilets. That was me. My bad.
I didn’t have much to go off, but I figured out that the Daikon-san with a face was actually different to the other one I used to see. This one was angry at something; not at me in particular, but something to do with me. And it seemed to have no intentions of doing anything to N again.
That was all I got from my efforts over many lunchtimes. It wasn’t my fault that N and myself could see it, but it had attached itself to me for some other purpose. I was greatly relieved.
I made little progress after that, however, and N continued ignoring me as well. That hurt. But I got used to that thing being around. I saw it looking at me every day, although it stopped following me to the toilets. Seemed it went out of its way to leave me alone while I was eating. It was being thoughtful to me in its own way, I thought.
It answered me with simple gestures for yes and no. It didn’t talk, but I could somehow sense its emotions. It conveyed them somehow.
Then, my cohabitation with the Daikon-san with a face suddenly ended. Several weeks must have passed since it first began. I was walking to the station through the snow when I sensed something and looked up.
Daikon-san was standing there, like it always did. The one without a face. It was unusually happy. I don’t know how, but I knew that it was really happy about something. Then, the Daikon-san with a face ran over from behind me and joined the other one.
Then they disappeared.
I had no idea what was going on. The faceless Daikon-san seemed so happy, and then the other one ran over and they disappeared. What? I stood there for a while, unable to move.
I staggered home and fell asleep. I don’t even remember what I had for dinner.
The Daikon-san with a face was gone in the morning. That must have been what Hikaru felt like when Sai disappeared in Hikaru no Go, I thought absentmindedly.
I sent N a message. “Both Daikon-sans are gone.” I didn’t get a reply.
Were those two Daikon-sans originally people? Family? Lovers? They had to have known each other, at any rate. The anger we felt from the one with a face, it possessing us, all of that was because it wanted to see the other one.
That’s what I thought, anyway.
Snow Hut Cave In
* * *
This happened during the winter holidays when I was in junior high. A lot of snow had fallen, so a friend and I made a massive snow hut. It was about two metres high and two metres wide, and we poured water on it after we’d built it so it froze solid.
Three days later, I entered the snow hut at about 8 a.m. and was lazing about when suddenly the entire thing collapsed. It was huge, so I was completely buried in snow. I tried to push it off, but I couldn’t.
A few seconds later, someone started kicking it from outside. My skin was on fire and the pressure of the snow pushing down on me hurt like crazy. It was so heavy that the weight of it pushing down on my bladder caused me to wet myself.
‘Ah, I’m gonna die,’ I thought. About a minute later, I was in so much pain that I couldn’t tell what was what anymore, and then the kicking outside stopped. At the same time, a white light appeared, and I heard someone screaming.
“What happened!?”
I was glad the snow had caved in during the morning, because my father was on his way to work when he noticed it.
“Something was kicking the snow in, I thought I was gonna die,” I said.
“There was something filthy and black on top of the snow,” my father replied. He alerted the police, just in case, but according to him, the thing was just standing there. They checked the remains of the hut after they got me out and discovered bare footprints left in the snow…
Human Horrors
This is My Apartment
* * *
This happened when I was living alone in Tokyo. I’d just moved there to look for work, and I lived in a tiny rental apartment on the second floor. The apartment building was in the middle of the residential area, but after a short walk you could reach the main street with lots of restaurants and convenience stores. When the real estate showed me it, I fell in love instantly, and I signed that contract that very same day.
It all happened about two months after I moved in. It was a weekend night, and I was at home watching TV when I heard the sound of a key rattling around at my front door.
‘A thief?’ was the first thought that came to mind. I quickly turned the TV down and pretended not to be home. Thankfully, the door was locked, and the chain was also on, so if it was a random thief, they should have given up quickly and moved on.
But against my hopes, the person didn’t leave. They continued rattling the handle and then started yanking on it as hard as they could. It was a little brazen to be a thief, and a little rude to be banging on someone’s door so loudly as well. The person wasn’t right in the head.
“Who’s there? Stop banging on the door!”
Unable to stand it any longer, I called out, and for a moment the sounds stopped. Then the rattling started again.
“Stop it! I’m calling the police!”
“Open up! This is my apartment!”
“Huh? Who are you? You’ve got the wrong room.”
“Open up! This is my apartment! My apartment!”
It was a man. He didn’t sound irritated as much as he sounded confused. He kept repeating “this is my apartment” while yanking on the door handle. The sound got louder, and then I heard what sounded like something solid scratching on the door.
I panicked. For the last two months I’d paid rent and everything on this room, it was my apartment. I’d been to see the landlord who lived nearby, so there was no mistake about it.
“This is my apartment!” I screamed. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the police!”
Finally the banging stopped, and it seemed like the person on the other side of the door left. I was relieved that it was quiet again, but I continued listening closely, trying to confirm whether the person really did leave or not.
Five minutes passed, and after confirming that the guy was gone, I nervously approached the door and looked through the peep hole…
An intense smell permeated through the door. It smelled just like human waste! The smell of shit was coming through the other side of the door!
I snapped. I called my boyfriend in tears and told him to come over right away. At first he hesitated, but he soon realised that I wasn’t joking and quickly came over.
Thankfully he only lived a 10-minute drive away. I stared out the window in a daze, when finally I saw his car pull in, and then the buzzer rang. I confirmed it was him through both the intercom and the peep hole. No doubt about it. It was my boyfriend. I nervously opened the door.
“I’m here, but… what’s this? What the hell happened to your door…?”
I looked outside at the door… I had no words for the terrible sight before me.
Faeces had been smeared all over the door, and it was covered in scratches. The area around the doorknob was the worst, and it looked like something hard had been shoved into the keyhole. In the end, we called the police and notified the landlord, and there was quite a large fuss over it.
I moved out not long after. I really liked the apartment and didn’t want to move, but amongst all the mess on the door, I noticed something had been carved into it, and it sent shivers down my spine.
The scratches spelt something.
This Is My Apartment.
Countryside Crematorium
* * *
This is a story I heard from my uncle in junior high. It took place several decades ago, so quite a while back now.
At the time, my uncle was a local government employee for a small town of about 10,000 people. I grew up in that same town myself until I was 18.
Anyway, to the north of the town there are mountains, and the south is full of plains. There aren’t many people, so the entire town is one big rural landscape. Most people live at the foot of the mountains, and there’s also a local crematorium there as well.
The one thing that stands out from the crematorium is its massive chimney. Whenever smoke billows out of it, the villagers realise that somebody must have died recently. Of course, it’s a tiny countryside town, so whenever someone dies, people naturally want to know more. There’s not a lot to do for fun, so the villagers take perhaps too much of an interest in other people’s formal affairs. My uncle said that people would often come to his office and ask, “So who died yesterday?”
This all took place long ago, so they didn’t have the same ideas of privacy or the protection of information like we do now. The local government workers would freely tell everything they knew. As such, whenever people informed the government about a death and got a license to use the crematorium, rumours would quickly spread that so and so from this particular area had died.
The people who lived close to the crematorium were especially accurate with their information. Whenever one of them mentioned that “so and so just died,” a few days later people would see smoke coming from that big chimney and realise that they were right, someone had died. And if smoke billowed without rumours of someone’s death beforehand, they would rush to find out who.
Then one day, something strange happened. Although nobody had heard any rumours of a death, smoke billowed out of the crematorium’s chimney. At first the villagers tried to make sense of it. “Perhaps they’re cleaning it,” they thought. “Maybe they’re installing a new machine and they’re testing it out.” Yet over the next six months, there were six times that villagers saw smoke billowing from the chimney without any news of a death. No death notices had been delivered to the local government office either. No matter how they looked at it, something was odd.
There was one more strange thing. Everyone knew the crematorium’s hours of operation. It was open from 9 in the morning till 6 in the evening. Yet they saw smoke coming from outside those hours, in the early morning and late at night, and even on days off. The nearby villagers found this awfully suspicious, and so they told my uncle about it.
He also thought it was strange, so to figure out what was going on, he arranged for the villagers who lived near the building to monitor it late at night from afar.
Then, one morning. At 5 a.m., the crematorium worker set out for work, and then a short while later, a station wagon entered the building. The villagers who were watching the scene saw the men from the station wagon drag out a coffin. They were shocked. The crematorium worker was doing secret work away from prying eyes, but what surprised them the most was the ease and familiarity with which he dealt with the shady men.
A short while later, the crematorium roared to life. A few minutes after that, the villagers heard a faint scream coming from the building. Shocked and terrified, they quickly ran home.
After that, the villagers pretended not to see anything when smoke billowed out of the crematorium chimney, and nobody dared speak of it. There are some things in this world that people are better off not knowing about.
Wall
* * *
A recent high school graduate moved to Tokyo from the countryside in order to attend university. She rented an apartment and started living alone for the first time.
Not too long after she moved in, the girl noticed there was a small hole in the apartment wall leading to the next room. Wondering what it was, the girl looked through it. Everything on the other side was red.
Maybe that apartment had red wallpaper? She looked through it again the next day, and then the day after that. It was constantly red. It was bothering her, so she contacted the landlord about it.
“Who lives in the room next to me?” she asked.
“Next to you? Ah, that person has a sickness that turns their eyes red.”
Bound
* * *
My friend was driving under a bridge somewhere in Miyazaki. It was a popular suicide spot, and right as he was passing by an old abandoned house he heard a loud thud. He stopped to see what it was, but he couldn’t find anything in or around the building. He got back in his car and went home, finding the whole thing rather strange.
A few days later he was reading the newspaper when he saw that a body had been discovered at that very same house. Someone had jumped from the bridge, hit the roof of the house and fallen through. The body bounded when it crashed into the floor and was stuck to the ceiling the whole time…
First Cooking Class
* * *
July 5
Today we had our first home economics class. Ken complained that home economics was for girls and the teacher got mad at him.
“Boys have to learn both cooking and how to sew now,” she said.
Our first class was cooking. Group One cooked rice. Group Two made miso soup. Group Three made curry. I was in Group Three.
I was nervous when I had to cut the potatoes and carrots. “Go slow so you don’t cut your hand,” the teacher said. Soon the curry was done. I was nervous while cutting the vegetables and meat, but after that was okay.
I went to the hospital after school. I told Mama that I made curry and she smiled. It’s sad at home without her, but she said she’d be home soon. I’m glad.
“I’ll bring your new sister home too.”
My sister’s name is Tomoyo. Mama’s in the hospital because she gave birth to her.
“Can Tomoyo eat curry too?” I asked.
Mama said she can when she gets bigger. I want to make lots of curry for her then.
July 8
Mama and Tomoyo came home. Papa can’t stop smiling. I wanted to make curry for them so I said so.
“Alright, that’s enough, calm down,” Papa said and wouldn’t let me do anything.
I wanted to play with Mama, but she was too busy playing with Tomoyo.
July 10
Today, Uncle Shinsuke and Aunt Kaori and Grandpa and Grandma came to visit. It was like New Year’s so I was happy. I wanted to play with Uncle Shinsuke but he wouldn’t. I asked Aunt Kaori to read me a book but she wouldn’t. Grandpa and Grandma wouldn’t play with me either. They were all playing with Tomoyo.
“Go play quietly in your room,” they all told me.
July 12
My aunt and uncle and grandparents are coming again next Sunday. They’re coming to play with Tomoyo. They won’t play with me.
“She’s so cute I could eat her!” Mama said when she was holding Tomoyo.
“Absolutely,” Papa agreed.
“Isn’t that great, Tomoyo!” Mama said.
July 18
I got up early to make curry. I cut the carrots well, but the meat was hard. It was so soft and there was blood everywhere.
“Tomoyo! Tomoyo!”
Mama was looking for Tomoyo. Everyone will be here soon. The curry is bubbling nicely.
“Tomoyo! Tomoyo!”
Tomoyo’s so cute that you could eat her.
The Laughing Woman
* * *
Last Friday, one of my colleagues named Omura died. I didn’t see for myself, but apparently he was found dead in his own apartment with ball pens shoved in both ears. His hands were clenched around the pens, so the police quickly ruled it a suicide. Everyone at work found the way he died to be suspicious, but I wasn’t terribly surprised. Still, they apparently had to do an autopsy anyway, so I imagine they did a pretty detailed investigation of his corpse. I think it’s kind of unfortunate they needed to cut him up to do that, though.
