This is a story I heard from my mentor. It was the spring of my second year in university. On a holiday afternoon, Kanako-san and I came to a certain community center. It was a one-story building, not very large. We had simply been told by the director of the private detective agency where I worked part-time to go and listen to some stories, so we arrived without any special preparation, relying solely on a map we’d been handed. A woman in her fifties greeted us. She showed us into a traditional Japanese-style room about ten tatami mats in size, accessed immediately through sliding paper doors from the entrance. It was a community center used for neighborhood gatherings, and the woman, named Kamata-san, seemed to manage the keys. Her husband served as the neighborhood district leader, and she herself was the head of the local women's association. It likely meant she came from a prominent, influential family in the area. Kamata-san wore a troubled look on her slender face as she finally broached the subject: a ghost story tied to the community center. "A disturbing voice?" "Yes." Nodding at Kanako-san's words, Kamata-san let her gaze wander uncomfortably around the room. I instinctively followed her gaze, but found nothing out of the ordinary. According to what we were told, for quite some time now, a voice belonging to no one in particular had been heard from nowhere inside the center. Bad enough in the middle of the day, but at night the community center took on an eerie, lifeless atmosphere. To be left entirely alone, cleaning up, only to hear a voice from a room where no one should be—you can only imagine how terrifying that must be. What had once been nothing more than a whispered, secret rumor had, perhaps due to the recent occult boom, started taking on a life of its own among the local children. It had morphed into terrifying ghost stories: *"If the ghost's voice speaks to you, you'll be killed if you don't reply,"* or conversely, *"If you do answer, you'll be dragged down beneath the floorboards."* It became a fad for the kids to hide in the shadows and try to scare each other, to the point where faint-hearted children actually began fainting, causing enough of a commotion to require an ambulance. "Didn't you have a temple priest or a Shinto official perform a purification?" When Kanako-san asked this, Kamata-san gave a vague, reluctant, "Ah, well."
From that reaction, I gathered the subtext: *even after having a purification done, the supernatural occurrences didn't stop.* Kanako-san probably thought the same. Otherwise, a story like this wouldn't have been brought to a small detective agency—even if it did feature a somewhat well-known, standout girl in the industry who had solved numerous cases involving ghosts. "Since when has this rumor existed?" "Let's see... twenty, no, maybe twenty-five years ago, this community center was completely rebuilt. I wonder if it was there even before that." Kamata-san tilted her head as she said this. Which meant the rumor had existed for so long that nobody knew its exact origin. "Have you ever heard the voice yourself, Kamata-san?" Looking startled and stiffening up, Kamata-san gave a vague nod. "Is it just a voice? Has anyone ever seen a figure?" "I... I haven't seen anything myself." She hesitated. *Rumors of people seeing something are going around.* That was how I interpreted it. However, since the main rumor was undoubtedly about "hearing a disturbing voice," any rumor about "seeing something" had even lower credibility. "Let us take a look around." Kanako-san stood up, gave the immediate surroundings a casual glance, and slid open the paper doors. Leaving the Japanese-style room, she walked through the community center with a serious expression. A slightly smaller room, a restroom, a kitchen. A storage room packed with festival lanterns and props. There was no second floor, so we ran out of places to inspect in no time at all. As I followed her around, I kept my antennas up for any sense of wrongness, but I didn't feel anything in particular. However, Kanako-san possessed a far higher ability to perceive such anomalies than I did—so much so that I called her my mentor out of sheer awe. That same mentor of mine now wore a difficult expression, staring intently up at the ceiling of the hallway. I looked up with her, but saw only wavy wood grain; nothing seemed strange at all. Just as I was about to say, "What's wrong?", she stopped me with a gesture of her hand. "I feel like I can hear something, but I can't quite put my finger on it." I strained my ears. But I heard nothing.
I could tell my mentor was starting to concentrate all her nerves. Her expression vanished, and she stopped moving entirely. I held my breath and watched over her. Kamata-san stood awkwardly in the background, looking uneasy. My mentor's presence flickered. It was an illusion, as if she were wavering and might disappear right from that spot. Frightened, I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I should tap her shoulder to pull her back to reality. "I don't know." Suddenly, she snapped back. I felt a slight sense of relief at her voice. In the end, we decided to wait and see until nightfall, the time when most people claimed to have encountered the anomaly. Looking half-convinced and half-troubled, Kamata-san left the keys with us, said, "I leave the rest to you," and departed. It was a little past three in the afternoon. There were no particular plans to use the community center today, so my mentor and I settled into the quiet interior. Since we had just finished exploring, we had nothing to do for the time being. We turned on an old-fashioned television in the Japanese-style room right by the entrance and watched a rather uninteresting travel program. "What on earth do you suppose a 'disturbing voice' is?" I muttered this, and my mentor—who had laid out several zabuton cushions and was lying down on them—lifted her head. "I hope it's a ghost." "I hope it's a ghost, too." While agreeing, I harbored doubts because we couldn't feel any presence other than our own. Even my mentor, who possessed an unusually strong spiritual sense, had said, "I can't quite put my finger on it." If some kind of spiritual entity was nesting here, it had to be weak and puny. As for the wonderful experiences mentioned in the rumors—such as *"If it speaks to you, you'll be killed unless you reply"* or *"If you do answer, you'll be dragged down beneath the floorboards"*—we were definitely not going to get anything like that. Sighing, I got up to use the restroom. As I stepped into the hallway, the floor creaked with a sharp *creak*, echoing against the walls and ceilings of the unnecessarily large community center. Perhaps due to soundproofing, sounds from the outside didn't echo much inside. Ah, I see. That must be why internal sounds echoed so loudly, making people fixate on even the slightest noise. I returned from the restroom and sprawled out in front of the television once again. Time just ticked away. The ticking of the wall clock—*tick, tick, tick, tick*—echoed with uncomfortable loudness only in the moments when the television fell silent.
I brought some Kashiwa-mochi from the kitchen—which Kamata-san had given us permission to eat—into the Japanese-style room, and ate them along with some tea I had brewed myself. "This is good." "It really is." Eventually, evening arrived, draining the light from the small windows. Before I knew it, I had dozed off. I had the feeling my mentor had said something. The impressions of the tatami mats were pressed into my cheek, stinging slightly as I peeled my face away. My half-awakened brain tried to process the words. Ah, right. *"Are you ready yet?"* That was what had been said. I sat up and looked around. My mentor was lying face down in front of the television, sleeping like the dead. Huh? Wasn't that my mentor? Then who on earth was it? The moment I thought that, I heard it again. This time, clearly. *"Are you ready yet?"* I stood up and braced myself. Where did that come from? I couldn't tell. I only felt the aftertaste of those words drift from the room toward the hallway, passing right through the sliding paper doors. There were only my mentor and me in this Japanese-style room. At least, there should have been. So this was it. The rumors. Tense, I placed my hand on the paper door. I slid it open just an inch and peered out with only my head. The hallway was already dark and utterly silent. Beyond the curtain of darkness, I couldn't sense a human presence at all. That very absence was precisely why such an eerie atmosphere pressed so heavily against me. I gently closed the paper door and looked back into the room. My mentor was still asleep. I knelt down and shook her awake. She stirred and muttered in an annoyed voice, "I don't want to see anything except ghosts." "The problem is that we *can't* see anything." Without hesitation, I slapped the seat of her white stretch pants.
"Ow, dammit!" The very instant my mentor sat up, speaking roughly: *"Are you ready yet?"* The question dropped down from nowhere. Both of our movements froze involuntarily. We darted our eyes around the room, but there was no visible abnormality. What is this? What's going to happen next? I thought, listening to the pounding of my heart: *Thud, thud, thud.* What did the rumor say? About answering. Was answering the correct choice, or was staying silent the correct choice? The proper response to *"Are you ready yet?"* is... "Mentor." When I glanced sideways, she gave me a single word: "Shut up." We stayed still, tense, until the unearthly aftertaste of that voice drifted through the air like a pulled thread, gliding smoothly before vanishing on the other side of the wall where the television sat. The other side of that wall should have been the outdoors. I let out a breath, realizing for the first time that I had been holding it. Without a moment's delay, my mentor sprang to her feet and started running. She ran out into the hallway, turning on lights one by one: the restroom, the kitchen, the storage room, and the other small room. We searched everywhere, but no third party other than ourselves was hiding anywhere. When we returned to the entrance and checked the door, it remained locked just as we had left it. I looked at my wristwatch: a little past eight at night. I had thought I only dozed off for a brief moment, yet so much time had passed. "What on earth was that just now?" When I asked hesitantly, my mentor shook her head. "It spoke words, but I felt nothing human in them. I have a feeling it's different from a regular spirit. Though I wouldn't call it a tsukumogami, either..." I tried to recall the tone of the voice that had spoken those words, *"Are you ready yet?"* Was it a man or a woman? And were they young or old? But it was no use. If it were a sound that had traveled by vibrating the air, it certainly should have remained in my memory. Instead, it was as if that voice had resonated directly inside our brains—completely different rules. It felt elusive, like trying to remember auditory hallucinations. Useless details evaporated moment by moment, leaving only the pure meaning of the words—*"Are you ready yet?"*—engraved into the back of my mind. Remembering how the aftertaste seemed to vanish through the wall just moments ago, my eyes drifted toward the entrance door.
My mentor nodded as well, stepped down from the entryway, and slipped her feet into her shoes. When we opened the door and stepped outside, the heavy night air clung to our eyes—which had grown accustomed to the indoor light—like a thick, black curtain. Located in a quiet residential area lined with old houses, the community center's grounds were quite spacious, leaving a bit of distance between the entrance and the street out front. As we walked down the gravel path, I noticed a dark figure walking toward us. "Is something wrong?" A perplexed expression was illuminated by the light of a streetlamp at the edge of the property. Kamata-san was standing there, holding a tray in both hands. Feeling relieved, I started to say, "Ah, actually," but my mentor stopped me. "There's something I'd like to ask you. Do you have a moment?" "Oh, um, yes." Kamata-san opened the entrance door and set the tray down. It held six rice balls wrapped in plastic wrap and what looked like deli side dishes in a Tupperware container. It seemed she had brought us a midnight snack. "So, nobody has actually seen the figure, right?" "Eh, ah, the rumors? Well, not really. Just that a voice is heard. Everyone says that." "Have you ever heard it yourself?" "Well... it might just be my imagination, but..." *"Are you ready yet?"* At my mentor's words, Kamata-san flinched, her shoulders jerking. Just as I thought. "The rumors said something about what happens if you answer, or what happens if you don't, but has anyone actually—" Right as she said that, we heard it again. The voice, asking *"Are you ready yet?"*—coming from nowhere, and heading toward nowhere. Yet this time, along with that voice, I felt a different kind of presence intensify. It was the slightest sense of wrongness, but it stroked the back of my neck with a chill, causing my mentor to react in a split second. She bolted from the entrance and started running. She rounded the left side of the community center, hugging the exterior wall. Scurrying past a spot where several bicycles had been abandoned, she headed toward the far right rear of the property as viewed from the front entrance. While the area near the brick wall at the edge of the property was gravel, the ground right next to the community center was paved with concrete. Against that wall stood two propane gas cylinders. I recognized the small window. I retraced the layout of the community center in my head. This was right behind the kitchen.
My mentor dropped to her hands and knees on the concrete-paved ground by the wall. She looked like she was trying to spot a crawling ant. Yet her gaze was focused far, far beneath the surface of the ground. "Something... is buried here." Staring intensely at the concrete pavement, my mentor muttered those words. I stopped a short distance away, holding my breath as I watched the scene unfold. Kamata-san finally caught up, asking, "What's wrong?" with a frightened expression. My mentor completely ignored her voice, staring at the ground as if licking it with her eyes. Eventually, she lifted her upper body and said, "Something is buried here." While I had only sensed a vague presence coming from this direction, my mentor seemed to have successfully pinpointed the exact spot. "What do you mean by 'something'?" "That's what I want to find out. What is underneath this? Isn't there a basement or something?" Kamata-san tilted her head, then asserted firmly, "There's no such thing." And indeed, that made sense. A basement had no business being in an ordinary, single-story community center. Furthermore, our exploration of the interior had revealed no entryway leading to anything resembling a basement. When she added that there wasn't even anything like a small storage cellar, my mentor fell deep into thought. "Then, a septic tank?" A fleeting realization struck me, but I remembered when I used the restroom earlier that it was a standard flush toilet. Wait, even with flush toilets, could there be cases where waste was stored in a septic tank rather than the public sewage system? "The septic tank..." Just as Kamata-san was about to answer, we saw the beam of a flashlight swaying as it approached from the front. "What's all this commotion?" Perhaps a neighbor? A thin man in his fifties walked over with a tense expression. Behind him walked a woman who appeared to be his wife. "Um..." As Kamata-san hesitated over how to explain things, My mentor, paying her no mind, turned directly to the thin man and asked, "Is there a septic tank underneath this?" Looking perplexed, the man answered immediately, "No." He continued, "Public sewage lines were connected a while ago."
"Then, before the sewage lines were connected?" "Before they were connected?" After a moment of trying to remember, the man pointed toward the front. "There was a septic tank, but it was right beside the entrance." Come to think of it, the restroom was located immediately to the left upon entering through the front door. The septic tank must have been buried on that front side. My mentor fell into thought again, muttering something under her breath. Before we knew it, the man's wife had disappeared. I had a premonition because I saw her make some gestures toward Kamata-san, and sure enough, a few moments later, the sound of several footsteps reached our ears. "Is this person a psychic?" Came an unreserved voice. A plump middle-aged woman approached with a look of intense curiosity. It seemed Kamata-san, the head of the women's association, hadn't been acting entirely on her own accord or making covert requests to our detective agency behind everyone's back. With a blatantly displeased look on her face, my mentor turned back toward the growing crowd of locals and asked again: "When was this community center rebuilt?" It was the same question she had asked Kamata-san. Several people exchanged glances, and based on the memory that it coincided with the birth of a certain fellow who was graduating university this year, they arrived at a conclusion: *"Twenty-two years ago."* "Before that rebuilding, were there any rumors about a disturbing voice?" Murmurs rippled through the crowd. Looking uneasy, one of them said, "I think there were." It had existed even before the rebuilding? Does that mean we shouldn't get hung up on the current structure of the community center? When my mentor asked, "Then, where was the septic tank located before the rebuilding?", an answer came immediately. "The location of the restroom hasn't changed, so it was still right beside the front entrance." "Well, even before that time is fine—is there anything you can remember that might be buried underneath this ground?" The crowd murmured as they began discussing amongst themselves. Before long, more people had gathered. A child's figure appeared near the front, but was quickly pulled away by a woman who looked to be their mother. This is starting to turn into a big deal. Staying quietly behind my mentor, I watched the situation unfold with complicated feelings—a mix of uneasiness and growing excitement.
As a result of several rounds of back-and-forth conversation, we learned that decades ago, before this community center was built, the land had been used as a material storage yard for a neighborhood construction company. An elderly man who used to help out at that construction company happened to be in the crowd, and he stated clearly: "I don't think anything was ever buried underground." Hearing him state this so plainly with an honest demeanor made it feel like we had hit a dead end, but my mentor's next question completely changed the atmosphere. "Were there any rumors about a disturbing voice back when this was a storage yard?" The elderly man's eyes widened in shock. Then, as if realizing an important fact for the first time, he was left speechless. "...There were." *What?!* Sounds of astonishment rose from the surrounding crowd. "No, now that you mention it, I remember. There definitely were. That's right. Yoshimitsu-san said he heard it too, and he was terrified." He himself seemed to realize for the first time how the current rumors tied into his own experiences from youth, and his cheeks flushed. "What kind of voice did you hear?" my mentor pressed on. The elderly man mumbled, "Well, *I* didn't hear it myself, but..." before explaining that a ghost-like story—*“At night, you can hear the sound of children playing”*—had spread among the workers back then. What on earth is this? This goes way beyond the rebuilding of the community center. Just how far back does this go? As my heart raced over where the story was heading, my mentor pressed further. "What was here before it was a storage yard?" To this question, no one was able to give an immediate answer. Eventually, a woman of about sixty timidly raised her hand and said, "If I recall, it was the Matsubara family's estate." At those words, voices chimed in: *"Ah, come to think of it..."* However, no one directly knew the situation from back then. It had to be a very old story. Someone said, "Well, we're gonna have to go bring our old folks over here," and left the area looking strangely amused.
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