It was probably the spring of my second year in university. The university I attended had a three-story club building housing dozens of club rooms, big and small. A certain degree of student self-governance was maintained here, creating a dream-like space open twenty-four hours a day. Since it was twenty-four hours, it truly meant twenty-four hours. You could live like the model student you were: playing Mahjong all night in the clubroom until morning, heading straight to the lecture hall, sleeping soundly through class, and then returning to the clubroom to play more Mahjong.
When you were in the club building at night, you could hear the cheers of drinking parties from all over, the sound of Mahjong tiles being shuffled, and the electronic noises of video games. Sometimes, the sound of *rakugo* storytelling would drift in from nowhere. This went on regardless of whether it was a weekday or a holiday, sometimes lasting straight through the night.
Then came a certain night. Suddenly, a piercing scream echoed through the air. I was in the middle of an endless time attack on the original Super Mario, and I scanned the room with the controller still gripped in my hands. A few of my clubmates were doing their own things. No one reacted at all. "Didn't you just hear a scream?" I asked, but an upperclassman who had been reading a manga just looked up and said, "Huh?" I couldn't even convince myself it was my imagination. It was a terrifyingly loud voice that resonated through the entire building. As proof of that, I could still feel a cold sensation around my heart, and I even had a slight case of goosebumps. I didn't miss the way an upperclassman in the corner of the room closed one eye.
At that moment, I felt like I understood what had happened. I crept up to that upperclassman and whispered, "What was that just now?" He was my occult mentor. The fact that only this person reacted meant it must have been *that* kind of thing. When he said, "You heard it?" and I nodded, he simply replied, "Ignore it, ignore it," and rolled over to go to sleep.
I was curious. Despite it being such a loud voice, it wasn't normal for some people to hear it while others couldn't. I stood up, sharpened my senses, and opened the clubroom door while searching for the direction the scream had come from. I thought my mentor might say something, but he stayed lying down without even raising his head.
I stepped out of the door and walked down the filthy hallway. The clubs were supposed to take turns cleaning it, but due to years of accumulated dust, trash, vomit, and tears, it was hopelessly stained. Although it was well past 1:00 AM, light leaked from the many clubroom doors lining both sides of the corridor, and strange shouts and laughter could be heard. Not a single person poked their head out of a door to investigate the source of the scream. I walked through this, following what felt like the lingering remnants of the scream I had certainly heard.
And the moment I stepped into a space located at the far end of a certain floor, a sensation like something crawling up my spine ran through me. It was an unusually dark corner. The ceiling light was broken. I didn't know if it had been broken to begin with or if it was related to the scream just now. Either way, a deserted hallway stretched into the darkness. The distant light and distant murmur of people shining from behind only served to accentuate the darkness and silence.
A faint ringing in my ears made my sense that "this is it" grow stronger. As I walked forward, keeping my footsteps quiet while wondering what kind of club room was around here, I noticed someone standing in front of the door at the very end of the hall.
They seemed to have noticed me as well and turned back. As I nervously approached through the dim light, I saw it was a woman with long hair, standing there with an expression that was hard to tell if it was anxious or something else. "What's wrong?" I asked in a muffled voice, and she nodded as if something made sense. She must have reacted too. Amidst the sleepless castle of boisterous noise, she was one of the few who had heard the scream. I tried to read her complexion, but the darkness prevented me from seeing her expression. "I heard it too." I said that because I wanted to confirm she was an ally. "I think it's here," a faint voice of the woman replied, and I looked at the door ahead of my gaze. There was no nameplate, so I didn't know what kind of club it was. I tried to recall the layout of the clubs in my mind, but since I had no business in this area normally, it felt hazy and wouldn't come into view. No light was leaking from the gap under the door, and the inside seemed unoccupied, but, feeling timid, I pressed my ear against the door. I heard nothing. I only faintly felt the vibration of someone jumping up and down in a distant room connected to this one. Pulling my head away from the door, I grabbed the knob, knowing it was useless. With a click, the door moved slightly. Startled, I involuntarily recoiled. It opened. It wasn't locked. This door would open. Matching my retreat, the woman also stepped back against the wall. After waiting for my heartbeat to settle, I whispered, "What should we do?" and she shook her head horizontally. Was she frightened? Yet, she made no move to leave.
Driven by a sort of sense of obligation, I approached the door once more. I put my hand on the knob and took a deep breath. The cold, heart-freezing sensation I felt when I heard that scream revived, and I swallowed hard. Just thinking that the owner of the scream, or something related to it, was on the other side of this door made my legs feel weak. "I'm going to open it," I said, as if confirming it with her. But surely, those words were meant for myself. I closed my eyes and pulled the knob. No, I thought I had closed them. But for some reason, I was opening the door wide with my eyes wide open. There was a darkness that threatened to suck me in, and at that moment, the woman behind me let out a piercing scream: "KYAAAAAA!!"
Struck by a shock that surely shortened my lifespan, I somehow still didn't let go of the doorknob. The interior was dark and I couldn't see a thing. Even though my eyes should have adjusted to the dark, I couldn't see anything—so what on earth was she screaming at? I stared intently into the darkness. I tried to step inside, but my body wouldn't move, as if rejected by some sort of magnetic field. Well, maybe I was just psyching myself out. I stayed in that posture for a while, but eventually, I tried to turn just my neck to look back. What on earth was she screaming at? At that moment, I realized something. This corner of the hallway was far too quiet. It was just as it had been when I first arrived. Not a single person in this club building came to check on her scream from just now.
In the corner of my vision, as my head stopped halfway, I could see her standing against the wall. However, her figure was growing faint, blending into the dim gloom, and right before my eyes, without a sound, what had been a person until just a moment ago was turning into a mere "presence." The image of something like an invisible hand reaching out from the darkness beyond the door popped into my head, and I let go of the doorknob and ran. I heard the sound of the door closing behind me, and I felt as though her presence had vanished inside it.
When I returned to my own clubroom, everyone was in the same posture and doing the same things as before. As I sat down clutching my chest, my mentor cracked open one eye and muttered, "I told you to ignore it," before going back to sleep. Mario had died from a time-over.
After that, I would occasionally worry about that corner at the end of the club building, sometimes peering down the hallway as I passed by. In the daytime, nothing was out of the ordinary, but on lonely nights, I would sometimes see something resembling a human shadow near that door. However, until I graduated from university, I never went near it again.
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