It was the spring of my first year in university. On a day off, I went out into the city alone and bought various small items I needed for living by myself. After paying at the register, I looked for a restroom, thinking I might stop by a bookstore on my way home. Guided by the male and female signs hanging from the ceiling, I wandered around the floor until I finally spotted the last arrow in a corner. After turning the corner, I found a hallway enclosed by flat, plain walls, and after taking a few more turns, there was completely no sign of people by the time I reached the restroom. The bustling, unique noise of the department store had faded somewhere far away, and my own footsteps echoed strangely loud. Suddenly, I remembered a story I had heard from my Shisho. "The restroom on the fourth floor of that department store? It's haunted." Coming from my mentor in the occult, he certainly wasn't talking about cockroaches or anything like that. Mentally confirming that I was currently on the fourth floor, I thought, "Good, perfect. I'll go check it out." If I remember correctly, Shisho's story went on like this: "In the fourth-floor handicap stall, even though you know you're completely alone, you can hear a voice nearby. That voice is so quiet you can't make out what it's saying at all. Looking around frantically won't help. Think about what you need to do in order to hear a quiet sound." My heart started racing. As I walked down the corridor, right before the wall embedded with the men's and women's signs, there was a door with a wheelchair symbol on it. It was the accessible stall. It was my first time ever going inside.
Pulling the cream-colored handle sideways, the door slid open smoothly without requiring much effort. The lights flashed on instantly—it seemed to be motion-activated. I stepped inside, let go of the door, and it closed shut on its own. The interior was bigger than I expected. It was completely different from a regular toilet stall. Straight ahead from the entrance was a Western-style toilet bowl, and on the right side was a sink. Looking at the mirror mounted above that sink, I felt a slight sense of unease. Even though I was standing directly in front of the mirror, I couldn't see my face. I could only see my chest. Looking closer, I saw that the mirror was tilted forward. I see—it seemed designed so that someone in a wheelchair could face it squarely from a lower position. Facing my faceless self in the mirror, I felt sick to my stomach, as if the person reflected there was a total stranger. I looked away from the mirror and approached the toilet bowl. Grab bars were attached to the wall, and on the side away from the wall, a sturdy-looking pipe extended up from the floor. Putting my full weight into it, I grabbed the handrail and the pipe with both hands and spun my body around. With a plop, I lowered myself onto the toilet seat. It was quiet. Only the vibration of the running ventilation fan reached me. Just because a place was a haunted spot didn't mean something would happen every single time. Especially in such a brightly lit stall, and in broad daylight to boot. Feeling both disappointed and somewhat relieved, I pulled down my pants and took care of business. Which button is the flush button? Searching along the wall, a red button caught my eye. I stopped myself just in time before pressing it. "Emergency Call" Those words were written on it.
That was close. It seemed to be an emergency call button. I almost wanted to complain about them placing it in such a confusing spot, but after thinking about it for a moment, it made sense. Since it was a button for sudden health emergencies, it had to be within easy reach and in a conspicuous place. I found the "Flush" button near it and pressed it down. I heard the rushing sound of water flushing, and then quiet time returned once more. However... The moment I tried to stand up, my ears caught some kind of anomaly. ...Mutter... mutter... mutter... I could hear some kind of tiny voice. In an instant, the air changed. It became heavy and sticky. Without moving my head, I scanned the room with just my eyes. The ceiling, lighting, ventilation fan, door, sink, mirror, walls, handrail, floor. Nothing had changed. Sound cannot be seen with the eyes. The whispering sound of someone muttering—mutter, mutter—continued. I wanted to escape from here. Yet, my legs were paralyzed. And even more than my paralyzed legs, I wanted to know the identity of that voice. "Looking around frantically won't help." Shisho's words flashed through my mind. I thought. The image of someone's mouth moving. The image of hearing something through earphones. The image of hearing it from the countless holes in a radio speaker. That's right. Sounds always come from "holes."
I dropped my gaze to the floor. Right in the middle of the tiles, a silver drain cover was fitted in place. I stood up from the toilet seat, crouched down, and peered into the drain. The inside was dark. Underneath the shadow of my own body blocking the light, I couldn't see a thing. ...Mutter... mutter... mutter... The whispering was coming from down below. I put my hands on the tiles and pressed my ear against the drain. Staring at the plain white wall straight ahead, my mind focused entirely downward as I strained to listen. ............Mutter............mutter............ It was far away. I couldn't make it out. Even further away than before. Without being able to make out a single thing, the sound eventually faded away. I raised my body and squatted right there. What was that? The eerie phenomenon had gone away without anything happening. No, I wasn't even sure if it had been an eerie phenomenon in the first place. I had just heard a tiny voice—no, a sound. At that moment, a flash of inspiration struck my head. I pressed the "Flush" button once more. The sound of water rushing echoed, and eventually, that sequence of sounds subsided as well. Then, I heard it. ...Mutter... mutter... mutter... I pressed my ear against the drain once again. This time, I could clearly feel the flow of air deep inside my ear.
I didn't know how the mechanism worked, but whenever the water for flushing the toilet ran, whether due to vibration or water pressure, sounds like this could be heard from the drain. What nonsense. The tension drained from my shoulders. Shisho wasn't all that great if he couldn't even figure out such a simple punchline. Thinking about that, laughter welled up inside me. I recalled his serious expression when he told me this bathroom story, and it seemed comical. Come to think of it, he said something strange at the very end. If I recall correctly... "Don't use your dominant ear. Because your dominant ear is an ear that evolved to hear real-world sounds. Whenever you hear sounds that don't belong to this world, it's always with your opposite ear." How ridiculous. Shisho's bluffing was losing its touch. A faint smile on my lips, I reached up and touched my left earlobe. Until now, I had naturally pressed my right ear close to the drain without giving it a second thought. I had never really thought about it, but the right must have been my dominant ear. But so what if I listened with my left? Driven by a desire to make a fool of Shisho, I placed both hands on the floor tiles once more. It was the exact same posture as before. Leaning my body forward from the doorway, I was crawling on the floor. The drain was right in the middle of the stall. There wasn't enough space to crawl further back because of the toilet bowl. The moment I smoothly directed my left ear toward the floor, an indescribable chill ran down my spine. What is this? My knees, pressed against the tiles, trembled. Yet I couldn't stop. My head drew closer to the silver drain cover, and my left ear pressed tightly against the hole.
It was different from before. There was a clear difference between the right and the left. Why hadn't I noticed something like this? My heart contracted painfully, sending needle-like chills spreading across my entire body. Right now, there was no wall in front of me. That plain white wall that had been there when I pressed my right ear against the drain was no longer there. Right in front of me, as I tried to listen with my left ear, was a narrow gap between the base of the sink and the floor. Deep within that gap, where not even a mop could fit, out of the darkness where light couldn't reach, someone's pupils were peering out. Dark, glowing eyeballs were definitely looking right at me. ...Mutter... mutter... mutter... My left ear caught the whispering. A voice crawling up from the deep bottom of the earth. Before those tiny words could form a complete sentence, I sprang up, threw open the door, and tumbled outside. The moment I burst through the door, my peripheral vision caught the mirror above the sink. The faceless me. Was that really me? I started running without even looking back. I made a few turns around the corners. When I emerged onto the floor, the various noisy, characteristic sounds of the department store rushed into my ears. Cold sweat slid down my chest. The sight I had just witnessed was burned into my mind and wouldn't leave. Standing next to a bench by the wall, I felt a chilling sense of relief. Perhaps, in the time between seeing those eyes in the gap of the floor and fleeing that stall, if I had thought for even a second, "What if this door won't open?", that door surely wouldn't have opened. That was the eerie thought I was left with. I couldn't stop such imaginations from bubbling up.
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