It was a scorching day. I found a park with plenty of shade and took a moment to catch my breath. My job requires a lot of field work, so summer is always tough. The cicadas were loud.
As I was cooling off on a bench, a large white hat suddenly came flying toward me. "Whoa," I instinctively leaned forward and caught it. It was just human nature, I suppose. "I'm so sorry," a young woman in a white dress came running over from the direction it had come. It matched the hat.
I stood up with a smile, but then I noticed something was wrong with her. She was pale as a ghost. "Thank you so much." "Oh, sure." I handed the hat back, and she clutched it to her chest with a look of relief. But her shoulders were still trembling. "Um, is everything wrong?" "No, I'm just a little tired..." With that, she sat down on the bench, hung her head, and fell silent. Feeling a bit awkward, I returned to my spot.
The sound of cicadas filled the sky. Feeling strangely reluctant to just leave, I glanced over at her from time to time. Just as I started to shift my weight because my legs were getting sweaty, she spoke in a desperate voice, still looking down. "This hat... it was something very precious to me. Thank you." She was a strange girl, but there was a weight to her words that sounded like more than just politeness. "...But actually, I shouldn't be thanking you."
With that, she took something that looked like a disposable camera out of the shoulder bag she was carrying. "Inside here, there's a picture of me taken a year ago, wearing this hat." What on earth was she starting to talk about? Feeling increasingly uneasy, I quietly listened to her "confession." "You're not a local, are you? Can you see what the town is like? Today is the day of the festival. Ah, you can see so many banners even from here. Last year, I was wearing this exact same outfit and this hat, too. And I had a stranger take a picture of me in front of the clock tower. All by myself. I remember it. It was exactly 11:00 AM..."
She seemed to cover her face for a moment. "I thought it would work out. After all, I waited a whole year. Even if I killed that man, it would be my alibi to make sure I wouldn't get caught. Who would ever think that a disposable camera would hold just one single picture of me from a year ago? Me, smiling in front of the clock tower at exactly 11:00 AM... I couldn't possibly kill him at that time. It's a foolproof alibi. But that was on the day of the festival, a year ago. Today, a year later, at exactly 11:00 AM..." Her voice choked up. "I killed him."
I couldn't say anything; I just stayed silent. I checked my wristwatch and it was 2:30 PM. I could only feel cold sweat running down my back. "To connect the gap of a single year into a single frame of film, I had to wear this outfit and this hat. The same summer day. The same festival. The same clothes. And I had to take the picture with the exact same smile. That's why, when the hat blew away, I chased after it so desperately. Because the hat wasn't really the only reason I was chasing it..."
"But it's no good, it definitely wasn't any good. There's no way it would work out. That's why I shouldn't be thanking you." She raised the camera and peered through the viewfinder. But for some reason, she let out a sharp gasp and immediately pulled her face away. "I can still see him. It's no good. No good. I can see him... through the camera." With a drained, pale face, she trembled slightly. "He's on the other side of the lens. The man I killed just a little while ago. He'll definitely show up if I press the shutter. He'll show up. His lips were moving like this: *'There's no way it's going to work out. Such a stupid trick. You're going to pay for your sins. The sin of killing me.'*"
She went limp, almost dropping the camera. I instinctively lunged forward and caught it. It must have been human nature. After letting out a deep sigh, she said: "Thank you. Talking to a stranger finally made me feel a bit relieved. ...To think that my masterpiece of an alibi trick photograph turned out to be a ghost photo. What a silly story."
That was where we parted ways. I had been about to say, "If you're going to turn yourself in, I'll go with you," but she shook her head and said, "You were in the middle of your work, right?" In the end, I don't know how much of her story was actually true. But strangely, I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe in the dead who could be seen through a camera's viewfinder.
A self-proclaimed psychologist would probably say, "That was just living inside her own mind." But I want to believe. I want to believe in that hat that came flying toward me when there wasn't even any wind. Work, work. I hurried away from the park. Before I knew it, the sound of the cicadas had stopped.
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