The Reservoir

It was the autumn of my first year in university. Around that time, I felt the spiritual awareness I’d always had slowly leaking out and expanding its domain. I felt a mixture of fear and a strange, bone-shaking thrill. It was as if encountering something stronger sharpened my senses through sheer resonance. There was definitely that kind of relationship between him and me. It was akin to iron becoming magnetized upon touching a magnet. He pulled me upward like that, and to prevent me from being overwhelmed by that bizarre sensation, he gave me one subject after another to process. I saw many unbelievable things. I lost count of how many times I was put in danger during those moments. Back then, everything he did seemed like reckless behavior done just for kicks. Yet at the same time, in his occasionally glimpsed lonely profile, I felt I caught a glimpse of a solitary true self, seeking a companion to share that strange sensation with. Even now that we can no longer meet, at a dusk-lit intersection, in front of a TV screen, or under the light of a late-night convenience store, the face of that person I recall at random moments is always dark and heavy. Even knowing it’s selfish sentimentality, at times like that, I feel a deep sadness, as if I’ve lost something precious. "A ghost at the reservoir?" Seeming entirely unamused, he sat cross-legged and swayed his body back and forth, side to side. That was the Master's habit. Not very refined. When did I start calling him "Master"? There was no one on the occult path I could match him in. Yet, I wasn't entirely in awe of him either. It was a delicate term, hovering somewhere between respect and belittlement. "Yes. When you pass by there in the evening or at night, it's sometimes standing there."

That day, I was visiting the Master’s place. It was a rundown apartment whose age was scary to even ask about, and the rent was seemingly around 10,000 yen. From the built-in kitchen in the room, the hissing sound of barley tea boiling could be heard. "Was there a reservoir anywhere nearby?" "Well, it's a bit far. It's on my way back from my part-time job." Maybe because of the daylight on the way there, I had never run into it. "It’s about the size of ten high school pools, surrounded by dirt slopes, with a fence running all around it. When you're pedaling a bicycle, the reservoir is down below the road, so on the way there I always tend to get close to the fence and pass by looking at the water's surface. It's a pretty high fence, but on the way back, it sometimes appears on this side—the road side." At first, I thought it was a person and tried to give it a wide berth. However, the unpleasant sensation the moment I crossed it was the same unique feeling I had experienced many times before. It wore something like a black hood over its head, making it impossible to tell if it was a man or a woman. Only, a puddle of water always formed at its feet, and water dripped steadily from the hem of the hood. Even on sunny days. *You shouldn't get involved.* That was an intuition I should have trusted, but I wasn't obedient enough to change my route. Ever since then, I made sure to always walk on the opposite side of the road on my way back from work. That said, it was a narrow, single-lane road, so whether I liked it or not, I ended up passing it with a sideways glance. It was hardly a pleasant feeling. I had had the opportunistic idea of siccing the Master on it, but apparently, it wasn't a topic that struck a chord with him. Saying "do something about it" honestly would have been pathetic.

Feeling slightly disappointed, the moment I added that about one in three times it would appear on this side, the swaying of the Master’s body stopped dead. "What did you say?" "No, like I said, sometimes it's on this side of the fence, and sometimes it's on the other. Its positioning." The Master tilted his head and said, "Hee-eeh." I had the irrelevant thought that it sounded like the pinyin for Chinese we were learning in university. Was it the fourth tone? The one that goes down and then up. "To a spirit without physical substance, obstacles like fences don't matter whether they're there or not. So you might think whether it's on this side or the other doesn't make much difference, but... Precisely because they lack physical substance, being 'inside' or 'outside' is an irreversible element. Especially for spirits bound to a place." That's why they're called earth-bound spirits. The Master finally seemed interested, and his tone rose. "There's something there." Instead of swaying his body, his habit of touching beneath his left eye surfaced. There was a faint scar there. For some reason, it seemed to itch a little when he got excited. I didn't know what caused the scar. Noticing me staring intently at him, the Master joked, "Will you take me as your bride?" Anyway, it was decided that we would go to that reservoir once night fell. However, for me, knowing it was unfolding just as expected didn't mean I could blindly rejoice. I felt like some nameless, eerie presence was beginning to drift from the story of the reservoir's ghost.

afterward, I was treated to dinner cooked by the Master, and it was a horrific affair. To begin with, he just boiled 500 grams of 100-yen pasta noodles and sprinkled some unknown furikake he got as a free sample on top—hardly something you could call cooking. When I asked, "Do you eat this every day?", he gave a dubious reply: "I'm on a diet right now." With rent that cheap, I couldn't help but wonder what on earth he was spending his money on. He finished eating in a flash, and perhaps intending to bloat his stomach with water, he chugged barley tea and seemed to need the bathroom. "I'll use the restroom too," I said, leaving the room as the Master returned and we swapped places. In an apartment of this class, the toilet is usually shared, but for some reason, this place had a private one. However, it had the flaw of requiring you to step outside from the front entrance to get to it. It presumptuously was a Western-style toilet, but it was made of toy-like plastic. Indeed, if you weren't on a diet, it felt like construction that would shatter someday. Lifting the toilet seat to relieve myself, I briefly let my thoughts wander to how much I wouldn't want to go outside in winter, given the lingering chill of mid-autumn. When I returned, the Master was throwing on his jacket and stood up, saying, "Well, let's go." "It looks like it's going to rain." "Yeah. Let's take the car." By the time we piled into the Master's tiny Kei car, day had completely turned to night. And less than a hundred meters after we started driving, raindrops began to pelt the windshield. "Let's listen to Junji Inagawa."

A raspy voice poured out from the car stereo. The Master completely regarded Junji Inagawa as a joke, and when his mood tended to sink, his usual routine was to go for a drive while listening to those ghost stories with a chuckle. At that time, I wasn't jaded enough to laugh at Junji Inagawa yet. I grew quiet in the passenger seat, feeling a slight thrill at the description of the supernatural through his unique tone. The car drove on through the continuing rain, and eventually approached the road with the reservoir. The Master shifted down into second gear, proceeding slowly with the roughly two-meter-high fence on his left. The sound of rain splashing against the car windows and hood, along with the squeaking of the wipers rubbing against the glass, echoed uncomfortably loud, and I started to feel a bit insecure. "Is that it?" At the Master's voice, I raised my gaze and saw a shadowy figure beyond the raindrops reflecting in the headlights. As we got closer, I realized it was on the other side of the fence. There were no houses nearby, no pedestrians. A figure standing alone in the reservoir in the rain, especially at night, could not possibly be a normal human being. At least, not in the world I knew well. The car advanced, slowing down even further. And when we came within ten meters, the unexpected happened. That figure, completely wrapped in a hood, raised its right hand. As if to say, "Give me a ride." I was momentarily confused by a gesture so familiar in the world I knew, and the thought that followed was the utterly natural human psychology that we had to give it a ride. If someone was in trouble in the rain, wouldn't you give them a lift, even if you weren't a taxi? The moment I voiced that seemingly correct notion, it was instantly snuffed out by the Master's single word.

"That thing is dangerous." It was a tense voice. After a split second of hesitation over whether to step on the clutch and back up, the Master's foot slammed the accelerator all the way to the floor. My breath caught from the acceleration that pressed me back into the seat, and my heart skipped a beat. "What is it?" Just as I managed to say that much, I caught a brief glimpse of the black, hooded figure standing on the other side of the fence with its right hand still raised through the passenger-side window, and it instantly flew away behind us. For some reason, I felt like I had made eye contact with someone whose face I couldn't even see. "Why would someone soaking wet and at their wit's end be on the other side of the fence? That's not a human!" Such words burst from the Master's mouth. The fence was high. Barbed wire topped it as well. And to prevent people from trespassing into the reservoir, the single entrance was firmly locked with a padlock. There certainly couldn't be anyone wanting a ride on the other side of that. Such obvious reasoning was dulled, and if I had been alone, I would have undoubtedly fallen prey to that opening in my mind. With a chilling thought, I had no choice but to stare blankly ahead. However, I immediately pulled myself together and looked back. Beyond the rear window was closed off in deep darkness, and I could see nothing more. The moment I thought that, an indescribable chill ran down my spine, and my gaze slowly fell to the back seat. The surface looked wet with water and faintly shiny. The ghost story of the wet woman—where a woman suddenly vanishes from inside a car—flashed through my mind, and my thoughts drifted momentarily to whether what I had read very recently was a story by Shusaku Endo, but I snapped back to reality by the reflex-like scream of my own voice. "We didn't give anyone a ride!"

At my words, the Master also tilted his head and glanced briefly at the back seat. Then, pulling a rag from the dashboard, he tossed it to me and said, "Wipe that up." I was about to be dumbfounded, but my reason reacted instantly. I leaned the seat forward and, handling it as if touching a hazardous object, wiped the water off the back seat. After catching the Master's nod, I manually rolled down the window with the crank. begrudging even the time it took to open, I threw the rag out into the open through the narrow gap. My heart was still pounding. I rubbed the small amount of moisture on my hand against the thigh of my jeans as if it were something abhorrent. The car had already emerged onto a wide road with oncoming traffic. Still, the unpleasant feeling wouldn't vanish. Perhaps because my palpitations had quickened, the car's windshield began to fog up. "This is getting pretty intense." The Master's tone had already returned to normal. However, looking at where his words were directed, my heart screamed once again. Handprint marks emerged all across the windshield. Not on the outside. The wipers were moving. They were on the inside. If you stroke the inside of the windshield, skin oils get left behind, so nothing is visible at first, but the moment it starts to fog up, the shapes can emerge. That exact thing was happening right now. Yet, once again, we hadn't given anyone a ride. Not the reservoir's ghost. Wiping away the palm prints covering the front glass with his own sleeve, the Master said, "I wonder if I shouldn't have thrown away that rag after all."

From the car stereo, Junji Inagawa's saliva-swallowing voice could be heard. Even to me, who wasn't really listening, I knew this was the buildup before the punchline. I still couldn't laugh. I didn't think it was pathetic. The feeling of fear is the self-defense instinct itself. Yet at the same time, part of me felt a comfort in that terror. The Master glanced over at me and said, "You're smiling, you know." I simply answered, "Yes." We parted ways for the night after that. I believed the Master when he said, "It doesn't look like it followed us," and even I could tell that much.

Three or four days later, I received a summons from the Master. It was past 10 PM. I headed to the Master's apartment by bicycle and knocked on the door. "It's open," came the voice. "I know," I replied as I opened the door. For some reason, the Master never locked his door. "There's this word called crime prevention. Do you know it?" I sighed as I stepped inside the room. Saying "crime prevention," the Master pointed to a metal bat leaning against the wall. He was someone who got various things wrong, but it wasn't worth pointing out anymore. When I asked, "How much was the rent here again?", he replied, "10,000 yen a month." It was already a cheap apartment, but because it was a notorious property where an unnatural death had occurred in this room, it was discounted even further. "That reservoir—someone actually drowned there." The Master really was on par with a private detective when it came to digging up things like this. According to him, a few years ago at that reservoir, a young mother committed suicide by drowning herself along with her newborn baby. First, she submerged the baby in the water to kill it, and then she stuffed her clothes with the baby and stones so she wouldn't float back up, went to a spot where she couldn't touch the bottom, and drowned herself.

"So that's the mother's ghost?" "Probably." Then why did it wander out? "Maybe because she didn't want to die." The Master said: She didn't want to die, yet she had driven herself to believe she had to. The weights used to suppress that desire of not wanting to die were the corpse of the baby stuffed into her clothes and the stones. And even after death, those serve as shackles keeping her wandering in this world... "Whether the fence is inside or outside—that's because of that ambivalent instability. The right hand asking for a ride, and the position inside the fence saying you mustn't ride." "So if we had given it a ride, would she have attained Nirvana?" "Who knows. Maybe you'll find out if you give her a ride..." Why were the Master's words so seductive? I already understood the purpose of being summoned tonight. "Shall we go, then?" The Master stood up, grabbing his car keys and the metal bat. "No matter how you look at it, having that if we get stopped by the police is bad," I said, to which the Master joked, "Don't I look like a baseball fan?" and countered, "Try saying that while looking in the mirror." Still feeling like that wasn't the point at all, I pressed further, "What use is it anyway?" To which he gave the simple answer: "Crime prevention." Whatever, fine. Anything goes. I resigned myself and climbed into the Master's car. It wasn't raining today.

"Let's listen to Junji Inagawa." A night drive really called for this BGM after all. It seemed I was already being brainwashed. "Those handprints. On the windshield. There were two kinds, weren't there?" "Huh?" "Never mind if you didn't notice." Was the Master calmly distinguishing the shapes of the handprints that appeared on the glass even under that abnormal situation? "What do you mean by that...?" I asked, but the Master's laughter—caught up in the groove of Junji's talk—talked right over me, and it was left brush aside.

The car sped down the exact same road as before, beginning its approach to the reservoir via the same route. Visibility was good tonight. The moon was out. He began decelerating from the same spot, operating the steering wheel slowly as he muttered, "I wonder if it'll appear today." It was there. The black hood. A fragile, otherworldly presence, darker even than the night shadows. That figure was once again inside the fence. And its right hand was raised. The tension mounted. The car stopped right in front of it, and the Master got out with the engine still running. I hurriedly unbuckled my seatbelt as well. The Master stood facing the black shadow through the bars of the fence. A metal bat in his hand. The moon in the sky. "Want a ride?" It sounded so blunt and clumsy, but I could tell from his trembling voice that the Master was nervous in his own way. The sound of something heavy dropping onto the dirt echoed.

At the feet of the hood, a black stone fell, mixed with dripping water. Its right hand remained raised. Treating a spirit that had once fled as an opponent—just getting close to it was one thing, but telling it to get into a car was sheer insanity. The falling of stones from the black figure stopped. There was a blank space of time, as if the wind had lulled. But the next moment, just as the surface of the reservoir rippled, something small and black crawled up from the water onto the slope, and in the blink of an eye, it wrapped around the feet of the black-hooded shadow from behind. Right before my breath-held eyes, the black shadow was dragged along the slope, pulled toward the reservoir. The raised right hand was thrust forward straight toward us, as if begging for help. And soundlessly, the shadow was dragged down into the dark water. When I realized it, only faint ripples remained pale under the moonlight. Silence descended. We approached the fence, clinging to it. However, before our eyes, nothing was amiss; the quiet scenery of a nocturnal reservoir simply spread out beneath the moonlight. My lungs felt like they had suddenly shrunk. Breathing was difficult. Eventually, the Master opened his mouth. "The handprints on the windshield—there were two kinds: a large hand and a small hand. The smaller one was probably the baby's, who was killed first in the murder-suicide. That baby is holding the mother's soul back from leaving this world. Even after death, fulfilling that role as a weight." At the Master's words, the image of the small black thing I saw earlier flashed through my mind, looking very much like the shape of an infant. Then, were those two forever bound to this reservoir?

The Master turned away from the fence and walked back to the car. I followed him, my legs trembling. We got in, and the Master started the engine. The car turned around and headed back the way we came. Neither of us spoke for a while. The silence inside the car was heavy, filled only with the sound of the engine and the tires on the asphalt. "Master." I finally broke the silence. "Hm?" "What happened to them now?" The Master looked straight ahead, his expression unreadable in the dim light of the dashboard. "Who knows. Maybe they're still waiting for someone to give them a ride." His voice was flat, yet it sent a fresh shudder through me. I looked out the side window into the dark night. The reservoir was already far behind us, but I couldn't shake the feeling that those two figures were still standing there, waiting in the rain. "Is it better not to go back there?" I asked. The Master let out a short, dry laugh. "Well. If you want to find out what happens when you actually let them in, we can always go back." I swallowed hard and turned my eyes back to the front. The road stretched on endlessly into the darkness. And I knew deep down that I would never forget the cold sensation of that night, nor the handprints on the windshield.