It was the winter of my first year in university. Back then, I was obsessed with the internet, which I’d only just discovered, and I spent all my time on a local occult forum. The board was quite active, and offline meetups were held frequently. Most of the time, though, these gatherings just involved drinking at izakayas, swapping rumors and ghost stories for fun. Even though the official theme was supposed to be "Let's Talk About Black Magic," only a tiny handful of core members actually practiced what they preached. As for me, I had zero desire to study murky arts like black magic; I was simply in it to enjoy the vaguely occult atmosphere.
One day, after an offline meetup at our usual izakaya, a few of us gathered at the apartment of Colo, one of the forum’s central members, for an after-party. The mood earlier in the evening had been thoroughly ruined because a sleazy-looking guy who was attending a meetup for the first time kept relentlessly hitting on a female member who used the handle Kyosuke. She finally snapped and went home alone, leaving everyone awkward and subdued. So, the regulars decided to reconvene somewhere else just among ourselves.
As we sat around Colo’s apartment lazily drinking cheap beer we’d picked up at a store, the conversation naturally drifted toward the supernatural. There were five of us in total, including me. Naturally, since we were all people who loved that kind of stuff, it was fun—though when you think about it, it’s pretty remarkable that we could gather so many times and still have fresh material to share.
In particular, a woman named Sawada and a man named Yamashita were absolute treasure troves of ghost stories. Sawada worked as a nurse. While she didn't have many personal experiences of her own, she had collected quite a few terrifying tales tied to hospitals, and her fragile, hesitant way of speaking amplified the fear far beyond what was necessary. Yamashita was in his late thirties and the oldest among us. Whether it was because he was strongly spiritually attuned or not, he had an absurd number of personal experiences. Even though the other members often teased him, saying "at least half of that is BS," he sometimes spoke with such an eerie sense of realism that people couldn't help but respect him.
That night, we went around taking turns: Sawada told a hospital story, a female member named Mikacchi shared something from her childhood, and then Yamashita had a turn. Out of all of them, the one that left the strongest impression was a quiet, mumbled story from Yamashita: "When I get really tired, human faces start looking like they only come in four patterns."
***
I was getting pretty sleepy, and Mikacchi had been elbowing me, telling me, "Don't you fall asleep," but the sharp *pop* of a canned beer tab pulling open cleared my head a little.
"I-I mean... when I get tired, human faces start looking like they only fall into four patterns," Yamashita began timidly, pulling his mouth away from his beer can.
"What's that supposed to mean? Four patterns? What about all the other faces?" Even though she had to be at least ten years younger than him, Mikacchi used informal speech with pretty much anyone she’d even barely met.
"I mean, every single human being ends up looking like one of those four faces." "Huh? No way, that's impossible." "W-Well, that's just how they look to *me*..." Looking cornered, he started to clam up, so I stopped Mikacchi and urged him to continue.
"Though, I suppose it's only when I'm really, really exhausted. Like, when I'm walking outside while dead tired, the faces of the people passing by gradually start looking the same, and I can't... I can't tell them apart." "Well, duh, that's 'cause you're exhausted," Mikacchi cut in, and thinking she'd said something hilarious, she started cracking up all by herself. "Shut up, forget it," Yamashita snapped, his eyes narrowing sharply. He had an eccentric side to him, and I’d always thought of him as a bit difficult to deal with.
Sawada covered Mikacchi’s mouth and smoothly steered the conversation back on track. Once it was interrupted like that, I couldn't help but be intensely curious.
"It's not that I can't tell them apart *at all*," Yamashita continued cautiously. "Like, this person and that person might look the same, but the person right next to them has a completely different face. And th-there are four patterns of that in total. You can't tell people apart *within* the same pattern, so if an acquaintance happens to be in that group, I won't even recognize them."
It was a strange story. Just like Mikacchi said, he must have been seriously exhausted.
"So, what kind of faces are they?" Sawada leaned forward, looking thoroughly intrigued. "The thing is, when I'm not tired, I c-can't picture them clearly in my head at all. How should I put this... Ahhh, i-it's so hard to explain."
***
"Can't you draw them or something?" Colo spoke up for the first time in a while. "I can't." "Do these four patterns have anything to do with whether someone has a 'soy sauce' face or a 'saucetoo' face? Oh, and what was the other one? Tanuki faces and fox faces, too." At my question, Yamashita shook his head. "I-It doesn't seem related. Their original faces don't seem to matter."
Their original faces don't matter? Then how on earth are they divided into four patterns? "Four types... maybe blood types?" "Oh, maybe. Type A, B, O, and AB—four patterns." For a second, I thought, *Ah, that makes sense,* but when you think about it, there's no way you can tell a stranger's blood type just by passing them on the street. Sure enough, Yamashita shook his head again. "Well, let's see. There are two patterns for men and women, right? Maybe he's dividing them by chubby and a bit thin? Once you get tired, your brain gets too lazy, so individual recognition gets all sloppy," Mikacchi decided, nodding to herself.
Then, Yamashita said something surprising. "I d-don't think it has anything to do with men or women, either. I-I can't tell the difference between men and women, either." "Huh?" Mikacchi let out a weird sound. "You can't even tell men and women apart? What kind of faces are those?" "L-Look, that's why it's hard to explain, but anyway, it's four patterns that aren't like that. Th-Th-Though, to be precise, you can usually tell gender by clothes or hairstyles."
Faces where you can't even tell if they're a man or a woman—what kind of faces are those? I tried to imagine it, but flat, blank masks like something out of a horror movie popped into my head, sending a slightly sickening jolt through me.
"But if I get even more tired, hairstyles, face shapes, body types, and—worse of all—even their clothes start looking the same, to where I completely lose track of who is who."
I felt a chill. The thought of being left all alone in a world like that sent a sickening shiver crawling down my spine. "B-But even then... there are still only four patterns."
***
Noticing his canned beer was empty, Yamashita clicked his tongue. "Which one am I? Who am I with?" Sawada pointed at herself. Yamashita pointed at Colo and me, and then named a few other occult forum members who weren't even present. "Hey, how come I'm the only one left out?" Mikacchi leaned forward with a disgruntled look. She seemed pretty drunk. "M-More than half of them are in Sawada's group." Apparently, there was a disparity in the "population" of these four patterns. To make the conversation easier to follow, we decided to name the four patterns A, B, C, and D in descending order of frequency. According to Yamashita, more than half belonged to A, half of that remaining group to B, half of *that* to C, and D was extremely rare.
"Which one am I?" Pounded by Mikacchi, Yamashita struggled for an answer. "W-Well, you still look normal right now, and I don't usually run into acquaintances when I'm that tired..." He mumbled as if trying to recall, and after a while, finally squeezed out the reply: "Probably C." "What's that supposed to mean?" she muttered, though she looked somewhat relieved that she hadn't gotten D, which was supposedly the rarest.
After that, rather than trying to unravel the mystery of "why human faces look like only four patterns"—completely driven by sheer curiosity instead—we started shouting out the names of celebrities on TV one after another, forcibly dragging answers out of him about which group they belonged to, and getting overly emotional over the results.
"Hey, my C group is nothing but ugly people. What's the deal?" "It's just a coincidence. Weren't there handsome actors in there, too?" "The women are all hideous!" "Calling actresses and female announcers ugly left and right is a bit much. What's your criteria even?" "Come to think of it, B seems to be full of beauties." "Group A feels like a total mishmash. It has no personality—zero personality."
***
As we laughed off these kinds of remarks, everyone gradually began to realize something. Just as I picked up on the mood and was about to bring it up, Sawada spoke before I could.
"...What about D?"
Not a single person belonging to group D had come up yet. Even though we had rattled off a pretty substantial number of celebrities and acquaintances.
Hearing that, Yamashita froze for a second, a look of dread crossing his face as he hesitated. Stared at intently by everyone, he finally spoke up timidly. "N-Not among people I know."
The room went quiet. An unpleasant silence. "Just how rare is that? People in group D must be getting completely iced out." Mikacchi said it in a light tone, but her trailing words dissolved into the empty air, leaving a bizarre aftertaste.
"So, where do you see people from group D?" I asked timidly. Yamashita’s face tightened, his gaze darting restlessly up and down behind his glasses. "O-O-On the street, and stuff."
Why would he phrase it like that? Why couldn't he just say it straight? If he didn't, it started to feel... genuinely scary. "And..." He hesitated, showing reluctance. Everyone watched him with a strangely tense expression.
He half-unconsciously reached for a nearby empty beer can, looked momentarily surprised at how light it was, and then slowly opened his mouth. "Inside a room, and stuff."
A chill ran down my spine. *Inside a room?* If he meant there were a very small number of people with group D faces mixed among the countless strangers passing by on the street, I could picture that. But... *inside a room?* It made no sense. I couldn't picture the context at all.
***
Everyone’s eyes were glued to Yamashita’s words and actions. "It's only when I'm really, really tired, but... the other day, when I was about to take a bath and opened the door to the washroom... there someone was, standing in the tub before the water was even drawn."
*Huh? What does that mean? What does that mean?* Sawada muttered under her breath. "I-I don't know who it is. A face I can't tell apart. A face I've seen a few times—the rarest one." And there she stood, Yamashita continued with a strange, half-smiling expression. "When I just closed the door, it stayed completely quiet, and when I opened it after a little while, no one was there... And then, another time, when I came home dead tired in the middle of the night, closed the front door, locked it, took off my shoes, and was about to go inside... I suddenly felt like looking back. So I turned around, and the front door was half open, and... that D face was peeking in. When I tried to get closer, it shut immediately, and when I checked the knob, it was still locked."
Nobody could speak. "You live alone, right?" Colo asked, as if to confirm.
It was a ghost story. Before we even realized it. Because it had snuck up on us through a curveball, we hadn't been braced for it. My heart was pounding. "Are they... living humans?" Sawada asked, terrified.
Even though I got the strong impression it wasn't of this world, the idea of it being a living human somehow felt even scarier. Having its appearance clearly visible, yet having no idea who it was—and appearing in impossible places... If it was terrifying for us just to hear about it, the person actually seeing it without being able to recognize its true identity must have been deeply unnerving.
***
Yamashita suddenly forced a bright voice and started egging us on: "Next, next. Let's move on to the next story." He didn't seem to want to talk about it too deeply.
And so we looped back to our usual, run-of-the-mill ghost stories, but the reason everyone somehow lacked enthusiasm was probably because that unsettling conversation about the four face patterns was still strangely lingering in our minds. In some corner of my brain, I couldn't shake off thoughts of that unidentifiable presence—the one lumped together under the shared "D" face inside an exhausted Yamashita's head.
Eventually, everyone drank more and grew quieter, and before I knew it, I was being shaken awake by Mikacchi. It seemed I’d fallen asleep. Even though the clock had passed midnight, Mikacchi and Colo shook me, saying, "Let's go do mirror divination."
"Let me wash my face first," I said, standing up and looking around the room, but Yamashita and Sawada were gone. "They said they were tired and went home," Mikacchi said in a mocking tone, exhaling boozy breath into the room.
From that day on, Yamashita never showed up at another meetup. Posts from him on the online bulletin board also virtually disappeared.
One night, out of sudden curiosity, I wondered when Yamashita's very last post had been made, so I checked. It was about five days ago. Counting backward from the timestamp, it had been a little over two weeks since we heard that story at Colo's apartment.
When I saw the content, my scrolling mouse froze. *Huh?* An unpleasant feeling crawled down my spine. Was there a post like this? I didn't remember it.
> *D is increasing.*
Just a single line reply. It didn't mesh with the conversations of the other members before or after it. The phrase "it's blending in" felt painfully accurate.
***
I looked at older replies, but four days prior to that, he had just been dropping harmless, agreeable remarks into the members' conversation. Going back even further just took me to before that fateful meetup.
"D is increasing." I muttered, staring at the bulletin board with its black background. My chair creaked softly. "D," of course, referred to one of those four face patterns that Yamashita claimed to see. The kind of entity that appeared in impossible ways—standing in an empty bathroom, or peering in through a locked door. What on earth did it mean for *that* to increase?
D was supposed to be rare in terms of frequency. Even compared to C, which was the second-rarest, D seemed to have a significantly lower impression. For *that* to increase meant... did it mean people who used to look like A, B, or C had somehow started looking like face D?
Feeling creeped out, I turned my neck and glanced sideways at the desktop mirror. My usual face was reflected there. Would Yamashita look at this and see some kind of masked face indistinguishable from anyone else? My face was supposed to be A. Was it still A now?
I leaned in close to the mirror, staring hard to see if anything had changed about my face. For some reason, the skin around my eyes looked puffy. I stretched and pressed the palms of my hands against my eyelids. What kind of face was Yamashita seeing? I tried to imagine a face that belonged to everyone and no one at all, but no matter what, I couldn't shake the feeling that it resembled someone I knew.
Two days after that, while I was sitting around blankly after dinner, my PHS rang. Since I didn't recognize the number, I just answered with a "Hello?" and heard a voice say, *"Thank you goodness. You're there."* It was Sawada.
Outside of our occasional meetups, we had almost zero contact. Calling me out of the blue like this—wasn't this the first time?
***
*"Are you looking at the bulletin board?"* "No." Answering that, I operated my browser to pull up the occult forum page. *"About two hours ago."* Prompted by that, I checked the latest replies, and Yamashita's handle was right there.
> *D is increasing.*
It was the exact same content as the post I'd seen before. But it carried an even more unnameable, eerie creepiness than the first time.
There had been another post by Yamashita just a little before that one.
> *Scary*
Leaving behind just those two words, Yamashita had vanished. I got goosebumps, sensing that something was happening. *"I've been calling his house, but he won't answer. His cell phone, either."* "Please calm down. It'll be fine." Sawada's voice had a desperate ring to it, so I tried to speak as slowly as possible. *"I noticed the post that said 'Scary' and called right away. But he wouldn't pick up, and when I kept redialing, that post—'D is increasing'—showed up."*
A post made while she was calling his phone? If that was true, it didn't make sense. It would mean he was ignoring calls while sitting right at home. Or maybe he was using a computer somewhere else? *"I want to go check his place. Will you come with me?"* "Right now?" *"Yeah. I'm kind of scared."*
I wondered why it had to be me, but when I thought about it, the forum regulars really didn't have many guys, and with Yamashita involved, that pretty much left only me. "What about Kyosuke?" I tossed out the name of a female member who seemed more reliable than me, but she replied, *"She seems to be at work."*
I guess I had no choice but to go.
***
I would have preferred to just laze around at home, but I could understand Sawada's anxiety. Something was genuinely off. Reluctantly, I agreed to tag along and hung up.
Since I didn't know where Yamashita lived, I headed toward the convenience store Sawada had designated. Pedaling my bike, I desperately tried to brush aside the uneasy premonition gripping my chest, but the phrase *"D is increasing"* kept looping endlessly inside my head, forcing me to muster every last ounce of courage I had.
Finding Sawada standing on the parking curb of the convenience store and stretching, I called out to her. "It's just a little further ahead." Following Sawada as she spoke, I walked while pushing my bicycle. We slipped down a quiet nighttime promenade, walked under the lonely, flickering streetlights, and eventually spotted a two-story apartment building. "It's the very last one on the right, on the first floor," she said in a tense voice, pulling out her cell phone and hitting the redial button.
She held it to her ear for a while, but eventually gave up and lowered her arm. "He's still not picking up." We exchanged glances—
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