This is a story about an apartment in Kyoto where I lived for just a brief moment, eleven years ago. I was a student at the time, and I stretched my budget a little to rent a place with its own bathroom and toilet. A friend had told me, "If you want to bring girls home, sharing a bath and toilet is a total disaster," which is why I chose it.
On my very first day after moving in, while washing my hair in the bath, I happened to glance at the mirror and saw a woman reflected in it. She was crouching down right behind me, staring intently at my face through the mirror. I was paralyzed, unable to turn around or even scream, but when I managed to reach my hand backward, I touched her clothes. She seemed to have a physical form, but that didn't make it any less terrifying. Eventually, she stood up, opened the door, and left the bathroom.
After getting out of the bath, I checked the front door, but it was locked. However, the window latch was unlocked. I searched the room as well, but there was nowhere anyone could possibly hide. That day, because the tactile feel of touching her and her mannerisms as she left felt so human, I thought maybe someone had broken in through the window.
The next day, despite locking both the door and the window before getting into the bath, the woman appeared again. Just like yesterday, she stared at me for a while, then opened the door and walked out. During all this, I was once again completely unable to move. Panicking, I rushed out of the bathroom to check the locks, but both the door and the window were securely locked. Trembling with fear, I immediately called the landlord.
The landlord listened to my story and said, "I've never heard anything like that before..." but then added, "The previous tenant of that room committed suicide." About three months after moving in, the tenant had jumped off the roof of a school building. Hearing that, I had a sudden hunch, but the landlord told me that the previous tenant was a male. Feeling creeped out, I asked to move out. He told me that if I left within a month, my security deposit would be fully refunded, so I quickly searched for a new place and decided to move out a week later.
During that time, perhaps because I didn't use the apartment's bath, I didn't see the woman's figure even once. With the move decided, I was packing up my things—though most of them were still packed in cardboard boxes—when I noticed for the first time that there was a short chest of drawers in the lower part of the closet. Protruding from the gap between the top of that chest and the ceiling of the closet was a photo shop envelope. Inside were twenty-five photographs and a single amulet talisman.
Every single photo was a picture of the bathroom mirror. No one was in the pictures other than the man holding the camera. However, halfway through the stack, the door behind him was open. It was just a collection of photos like that, but suddenly a chill ran down my spine.
If the person who took those photos was the previous tenant who committed suicide, why did he take pictures like that? What was he actually trying to capture? Thinking about things like that made me so uneasy I couldn't bear to stay a second longer. I put the photos back where I found them and frantically fled the room. Since then, I have never had another occult experience.
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