It was the winter of my second year in college. As I was pedaling my bicycle in the early afternoon and passing in front of a kindergarten, a familiar silhouette caught my eye. Someone was standing near a low wall painted with white paint, staring intently at the other side. Since it was near the apartment where I lived, I thought it couldn't be, but it was indeed my master in the occult arts. How on earth can I describe the sight of a man in his mid-twenties, staring single-mindedly at children playing in the playground? Realizing he hadn't noticed me, I stopped my bicycle around a corner to observe him. Before long, a teacher seemed to spot him, and he hurried back toward me, muttering excuses like, "It's not what you think," from a distance where no one could possibly hear. The moment our eyes met, he made a truly magnificent look of embarrassment and said, "It's not what you think." Then, saying "It's really not" one more time, he hid himself on the other side of the walled corner. I followed his lead and retreated there as well. "I was just looking at that child." He pointed to the far side of the playground, but I couldn't see well from here. "That girl by the blue tire, drawing pictures on the ground." Even stretching my neck, angles involving trees and walls got in the way, and I couldn't figure it out at all. Above all, there was nothing wrong with it. When I asked, "How long have you been watching?" he casually replied, "Hmm, about a month," making me want to back away even more. "Is she really that cute?" I thought I had chosen my words carefully, but he made a displeased face and said, "If you ask me whether she's cute, the answer is yes, but adding 'that' really rubs me the wrong way."
"A month ago, the first thing that stopped me wasn't that girl, but a bizarre object right next to her." The expression "object" felt somehow unsettling. "It was obviously not of this world, but the girl recognized it and showed no signs of fear. The other children and teachers didn't even seem to see it." That girl, he said, always played by herself. She was never invited to play in the sandbox, nor was she teased by the other children. She just endlessly drew pictures all by herself. She kept at it until the time her parents came to pick her up. "Even after the other children go home, that girl's parents don't show up for a long time. Just as it's getting dark, a young mother finally arrives, but how should I put it, she's not a normal parent. She doesn't look at the girl's face, and the way she pulls her by the hand is like yanking up weeds growing in the ground. Abuse? Well, there are no marks on the parts visible through her clothes, but who knows." It was an unpleasant story. But since this extraordinary occult fanatic was so obsessed, it must have been a serious matter. "Do you know what an imaginary companion is?" I had heard of it. "Well, simply put, it's a characteristic hallucination of early childhood. It's a phenomenon where an imaginary friend is created inside the head. But children lack the power to recognize illusions as illusions, and they treat them as if they were real friends, which can sometimes perplex the adults around them. Once they acquire a certain degree of social skills to build human relationships, it naturally disappears."
I had experience with that myself. Though I didn't remember it, according to my parents, "You used to talk to Kamen Rider." That was still on the cute side. If a child gave their imaginary friend a common name like "Yu-chan" and told their parents, who couldn't see anyone, "Yu-chan says she's going home now," it would creep any parent out. I leaned forward again and peeked into the kindergarten yard. They seemed to divide age groups by the color of their hats. Near the blue tire, I could see a red hat. Red hats apparently belonged to the oldest class. Straining my eyes, I could only make out a hairstyle that looked like pigtails. The bizarre object the Master mentioned was not visible. However, the fact that this man with extraordinary spiritual powers could see it meant it wasn't just an imaginary friend. "No, I don't think it's a spirit. It has a creepy way of appearing, but it's probably her own kind of imaginary companion. I don't really know why I managed to see it too. Perhaps my antenna is picking up what her sensory organs are capturing in real time, like crossed wires... That girl might grow up to have an intense mediumistic constitution." With that, the Master gazed at the kindergarten child with affectionate eyes. Even when I stretched my neck until it felt like it would cramp, I couldn't find anything around her except the silhouette of the little girl. A group playing tag ran past the front of the tire and trampled right over the area where the girl was drawing.
I couldn't see her expression from here, but she seemed to be quietly fixing her drawing. "So, what is that imaginary friend like? Is it still near her now?" The Master groaned a "Hmm," and then began, "How should I put it..." "It's a monster about two heads tall. Its face is that of an adult woman. Not her mother. I don't even know if she's a real person. But she probably has some kind of obsession with the girl. Her body is flat and gray, like paper clay. She has small hands and feet, but doesn't move much. She's grinning. She's swaying above the girl's drawing. Right now, she's looking at us." In an instant, I got goosebumps. I could definitely feel someone's gaze. "Usually, imaginary companions don't appear in places with a lot of other children. They tend to appear in situations where the person feels lonely. But in her case, even the space of the kindergarten seems to have become extremely personal. Right now, she appears to be completely captured by that object. Once, I tried to follow the mother who came to pick her up, but it was impossible because she had parked an expensive-looking car a little distance away," the Master said. At that moment, on the other side of the white wall, a young teacher in an apron and an elderly woman who looked like the headmistress were pointing in our direction and talking about something. Panicking, I immediately jumped on my bicycle and fled. I noticed the Master running after me, waving his hands, but I ignored him.
Even from outside the room, you can tell when the TV is on. Whether it's the sound or something else, you just know. When I asked people around me, they agreed, saying, "Ah, I know, I know," so it probably wasn't just me. That's why at that moment, I could only say I knew it because I knew it. It was the night of the day I fled from the kindergarten. Back then, I had a habit of sleeping with the lights completely off, so when I suddenly woke up, I was in pitch darkness. The familiar ceiling of my room was faintly visible. As I lay on my bed on my back, half-dreaming and spacing out, I realized that the television was on. It wasn't the TV in my room. Through the kitchen on the other side of a thin door, a television was apparently turned on. I looked in that direction, but could only faintly make out the outline of a small window on the door, and no light was visible beyond that small window. It wasn't a sound, and it wasn't a light. Yet, I knew the television was on. Of course, there was no television in the kitchen. In a half-awakened state, with a strange feeling, I slowly got up from the bed and groped my way toward the door. The idea of turning on the light didn't cross my mind. My sleepy brain probably figured it would be too glaring. I slowly placed my hand on the doorknob and pushed it open to the other side. In the dim darkness, I saw a woman's face floating in the air. No, it wasn't just a face. A comical little torso and limbs were attached to it like clay work.
It was floating weightlessly in the space where the kitchen was. At that time, I don't remember if I felt scared. Before I knew it, I was back in my own bed, waking up to the morning in my usual posture on my back. Replaying the events of the night, I was struck by a goosebump-inducing repulsiveness and shuddered with the thought, "Could I have brought it back with me?" When I went over to the Master's room in the morning and told him about it, he laughed and said, "That's impossible." "It's not a ghost. Why would someone else experience the illusions that girl is seeing in a place where the girl isn't present? You must have just had a dream." The Master rattled on with such words, and I was starting to half-believe him. Until I casually mentioned that the woman's face looked like a certain celebrity. The moment he heard that, the Master's expression changed, and he asked me to confirm the name once more. He seemed unconvinced that I had the exact same impression of the face he had been seeing. "I see, I understand," the Master said with a grin, and explained. The girl at the kindergarten also faintly resembled that celebrity's features. Which meant, in other words, she looked like his own imaginary companion. As an imaginary friend, the girl had fashioned an idealized adult projecting herself, making it a presence that was always by her side instead of a mother who didn't love her. Out of a rebellious desire not to turn out like her mother, she imagined herself growing into an adult different from her mother. And she gave it proportions suitable as a "friend"... To the Master, who casually spat out such a hypothesis, I said:
"I haven't even seen that girl's face. From that kind of distance, not at all. You know my eyesight is bad." The Master, who seemed to want to say that I associated the girl's face with that celebrity, fell silent. A little while later, he slowly raised his head and said with a serious look: "If that thing isn't an imaginary companion, but something spiritual, do you even realize what it means for it to appear in your room?" The moment I heard those words, a chill ran through my entire body. Seeing me openly terrified, the Master slapped his knee and said, "Alright, whatever we don't understand, let's just fucking kill it." I almost nodded at his unusually reliable words, but instead replied with a gesture begging him to handle it peacefully. "Just kidding." He was smiling, but I didn't know how much of it was true. "Well, let's just leave it alone. The one being possessed is that girl anyway. If you want, you can stay here for two or three days. Most things would run away from this place." He said something that sounded like a bluff, talking as if this cheap apartment was some kind of sacred ground. Still, I felt a little relieved.
In the end, that two-headed female monster never appeared before me again. Before the Master could come to a conclusion about its identity, the police were called, and he apparently never got near that kindergarten again. "The police are much scarier than ghosts," he later remarked.
Comments (-)