This is a story I heard from Shisho. In the middle of a Saturday afternoon, I opened the door of a public telephone booth in a corner of the downtown shopping district and stepped inside. As the folding door closed, I felt a shift in air pressure against my skin. At the same time, the bustling noise of the crowd outside was suddenly cut off, forcibly plunging me into a lonely solitude. The vague anxiety of being completely by myself. Especially with the awareness that I was now inside a telephone booth rumored to be a secret haunted spot, which only amplified that indescribable unease. Of course, the dark of night would be scarier, but this daytime enclosed space was unsettling enough in its own right.
To fulfill my given mission, I looked at the memo pad fixed beside the green payphone. The memo pad had a hole punched in its shoulder, tied with a string threaded through it to a metal fitting at the bottom of the payphone. I untied the string and picked up the memo pad. Though a few pages had been torn out, when I flipped through it, every single page was covered in dense scribbles. I nodded, took out my wallet, and inserted a telephone card into the slot. "Let's see..." Checking my memory, I dialed the number of my part-time job. *"...Hello, Ogawa Investigation Agency."* That voice belonged to Hattori-san. "Ah, excuse me, it's me. Is Kanako-san there?" *"...You mean Nakao-san?"* "Ah, sorry. Yes."
Both my senior, Kanako-san, and I used pseudonyms for work, but there were many times I almost accidentally called her by her real name even in front of clients. I tried my best to use our fake names while working at the Ogawa Investigation Agency, but honestly, I wasn't very thorough about it. However, Hattori-san occasionally brought it up with sarcastic jabs. Hattori-san never cracked a smile, so I couldn't tell if she was just being sarcastic or genuinely angry, which made her terrifying. *"I'll transfer you."* The hold music came on. It was "The Ride of the Valkyries." It always ended at the intro, never letting me hear the main melody. It should kick into the heroic main line after about twenty-five seconds, but—*“It’s me,”* see? Just as the quietly starting intro was building up, the hold was lifted.
*How's it going?* "I've got it. I'm heading back now." *Good work. Don't forget the ballpoint pen either.* Hearing that, I searched with my hand, but it wasn't anywhere near where the memo pad had been placed. Thinking someone might have stolen it, I found it lying on the floor. After picking it up, I said, "Well, I'll be right there," and put the receiver back. When I pushed the door open, with a cracking sound like it was breaking, the change in air pressure and the noisy bustle of the outside world rushed back in. In that instant, my solitude was effortlessly cured, and feeling somewhat let down, I stepped out under the sun.
It was the spring of my second year in university. I walked quickly down a street slightly away from the downtown area, chose one of the lined-up multi-tenant commercial buildings, and climbed the stairs. On the third floor of that building was my part-time workplace, a detective agency called the Ogawa Investigation Agency. When I knocked on the door and went inside, a clacking sound echoed through the quiet room. Several desks were lined up beyond some potted foliage, and I could see the faces of two people. "Good work." Kanako-san, my co-worker and my master in the ways of the occult, was looking at a magazine with her feet propped up unenthusiastically on her desk. "..." The other person, Hattori-san, who had been typing away on a word processor, glanced at me for a split second, then dropped her eyes back to the display as if she had lost all interest. Her gaze was cold, as always. An unpleasant atmosphere hung in the air.
Although we shared the same part-time status, Hattori-san was Director Ogawa's actual, primary assistant. In contrast, Shisho and I were irregulars, only called in when there was a specific kind of special request. During weird and sometimes absurd cases that were mocked behind our backs as "ghosts" in the local detective agency industry—meaning incidents involving psychic phenomena. From the perspective of Hattori-san, who had nothing to do with sixth sense stuff, what Shisho did probably just seemed shady, a cowardly tactic of fooling clients with smooth talk to make it look like things were solved. Since Hattori-san was naturally taciturn, I had no idea what she was actually thinking, but there was no doubt she didn't get along with Shisho. "Got the memo?" Shisho put down her magazine and extended her right hand expectantly.
I took the memo pad and ballpoint pen I had just retrieved from the phone booth out of my pocket and placed them on the desk. "Ho-ho." Shisho leaned forward and began flipping through the memo pad on the desk. Lines ran chaotically across every page, leaving behind various scribbles. There were geometric shapes with multiple triangles overlapping, continuous loops of circles, a reasonably well-drawn face of Doraemon, and a drawing of a cute little chef that had been scribbled out and erased in frustration... Along with various other sketches that had lost all form. Watching Shisho gaze at the memos while letting out an appreciative sigh, I finally spoke up. "What is all that?" "Yeah." She gave a vague reply without even lifting her face.
All I knew was the rumor that if you stayed inside that phone booth alone, you might feel an invisible hand tap your shoulder, be struck by a sudden intense chill, or have your ankles grabbed. And today was the third day since Shisho had sneaked a memo pad and pen into that phone booth, disguised them as standard equipment, and left them there, sending me to retrieve them. As for the retrieved memo pad, though a few pages had been torn out—presumably to jot down the business mentioned over the phone—most of it had turned into a sketchbook of scribbles. "It's unconscious," Shisho said, opening her mouth without taking her eyes off the memos. "When humans pick up a pen while on the phone, they jot down the contents of the call, things associated with it, or things that pop into their heads at that moment, completely unrelated or otherwise. Most of the time, they're meaningless doodles. Looking back at them later, you might find patterns left behind that you don't even remember drawing yourself." Suddenly, Shisho opened the memo pad and thrust it in front of me. "This is a phenomenon that occurred in that unconscious state." I swallowed hard at her strangely pressurized words.
On the memo pad, something like a mushroom was drawn small, crossed out with messy lines. "This too." She flipped a few pages and opened it up forcefully once more. Someone's face with a bob-cut hairstyle was drawn, but the line cut off midway, perhaps because she gave up. "And this." My heart skipped a beat. On a different page, something like a head was drawn with a completely different stroke than before. A bob-cut head. No face was drawn. Just the outline of the head. "A... a girl." "Right." Shisho grinned. I instinctively took the memo pad and looked at the mushroom-like drawing from earlier. Hair. Upon closer inspection, it was clearly drawn as hair, not a mushroom. As I anxiously flipped through the pages, several more of those bob-cut hairstyles appeared.
Coincidence? The frequency was far too high for that. What was the probability that an unspecified number of passersby who entered the phone booth and unconsciously gripped a pen would happen to draw the exact same thing? And if it wasn't a coincidence, what on earth was drawn there... Swallowing hard, I looked at Shisho. However, she just gave a breezy smile and picked up the memo pad by its edge. "I pretty much get it, so I'm done." With that, she tossed the memo pad into her desk drawer and picked up her magazine again. She started tracing the pages from where she had left off reading. Even though she had been acting excited just a moment ago, she had completely lost interest. This hot-and-cold nature was one of Shisho's defining traits. Amidst this exchange, the sound of Hattori-san typing on her keyboard quietly echoed through the office, and I suddenly remembered where I was.
"What time was it again?" I asked. Without looking away from her magazine, Shisho pointed at the wall. A whiteboard hung there, with the words "1:30 PM, Client" scribbled in marker under the columns for "Director" and "Nakao." That time was almost here. "Oh, come to think of it, where's the Director?" "Right down there. Waiting at the Boston." Ah, right. I remembered. Today's client was a young woman, and she had probably hesitated to step right into a detective agency located in such a sketchy multi-tenant building. I could understand the feeling. So, they were planning to first meet the Director at "Boston," a coffee shop on the first floor of the building. After chatting a bit there and putting her mind at ease, they would invite her up to the office—that must have been the plan.
Ogawa-san, the director of this small-scale detective agency, was quite laid-back and adult-like in his fashion sense, but he was good-natured and had a personality that put first-time clients at ease. "Ah, crap. Did we run out of tea?" Shisho suddenly stood up and scurried toward the kitchen. Then came a rattling sound. It looked like she was rummaging through a drawer. Despite her high-handed behavior, Shisho somehow naturally took charge of serving coffee and tea in this office. She wasn't the type to act on stereotypes like "because she's a woman," so perhaps this was just an unexpected side of her. As I wryly smiled at the clatter that sounded like she was turning the kitchen upside down, Hattori-san stopped typing and muttered under her breath. "She's not suited for this job." Since it was rare for Hattori-san to initiate conversation with us, I almost looked around for a second to see if anyone else was in the room, but it seemed she had indeed intended for me to hear it.
"For a detective," she added, before Hattori-san resumed typing at a steady rhythm. Even though my master had been insulted, for some reason, I didn't feel angry. I only thought it strange that Hattori-san would bring something like that up now of all times. "But Hattori-san has worked with her before, right? I think she's amazing." I offered a counterargument, just in case. To be sure, since Shisho specialized in occult-related requests, she inevitably had to use methods distinct from standard detective work, but the flashes of insight and reasoning she displayed here and there should have been more than enough to show she wasn't just a mediocre detective. Hattori-san, who had looked like she was ignoring my explanation, abruptly stopped typing again, adjusted her glasses, and said in a flat tone. "There's no such thing as a job suited for a master detective." "Huh?"
Just as I was about to ask what that meant, a voice called out, "Found it!", and Shisho poked her head out of the kitchen holding a crushed package of instant green tea. "Am I in time? Am I in time? Safe?" Shisho repeated this as she looked toward the entrance door. Footsteps could be heard coming up the stairs. The request for which Shisho and her tag-along me had been summoned. In other words, a bizarre, eerie event that ordinary people couldn't solve was about to open the door and walk right in.
[The Spirit-Possessed] Series Comprehensive Thread 20 The next day, Sunday. Shisho and I had come to a certain nursery school in the city. A holiday nursery school devoid of children's voices was strangely quiet, making me feel uneasy about whether it was alright for us to be entering such a place. We were sitting in a room located midway down the first floor of the two-story building. The floor was hardwood rather than tatami mats, and warm wind and light poured in from the open glass doors on the garden side. The glass doors allowed direct access to the outside, right in front of the shoe lockers. There were five rooms in total on the first floor of the long building. Passing through the gate, the nursery entrance was immediately to your left; walking all the way to the end of that led to a straight hallway extending to the right, and further along the right side, the rooms lined up in order: the administrative office, the 4-year-old class room, the 5-year-old class room, the storage room, and the kitchen. Also, deep inside the entrance was a staircase leading up to the second floor, and the entrance shoe lockers were meant for those going upstairs. Climbing the stairs, another hallway stretched straight ahead, lined on the right side with the playroom, the 0-year-old class room, the 1-year-old class room, and the 2-year-old class room.
The nursery school grounds were rectangular, divided roughly half-and-half between the playground and the building. Directly opposite the gate was the playground side, featuring a few playground equipment pieces, a sandbox, and further back, a flowerbed and a small vegetable garden. The perimeter of the playground side was covered by a tall fence, inside of which trees were planted in a row. On the other half, the building side, the fence switched midway to a block wall, which wrapped around all the way just short of the vegetable garden. If you passed through the gate and went straight left, there was a gap between the nursery entrance and the block wall, allowing you to proceed to the back, but aside from a shed along the way, there was almost no space between the very back of the building and the block wall, ending in a dead end blocked by a fence near the back of the kitchen. Beyond that was a swimming pool. Access seemed restricted to the hallway side of the building. In terms of the grounds, it sat right next to the kitchen. That was the overview of this nursery school.
Right after arriving, Shisho asked for a guided tour of the place, and once the layout was finally settled in her mind, she had taken a seat in one of the rooms on the first floor. "So, this is the 5-year-old class room, I take it?" Shisho looked around the surrounding walls. "Yes." The woman nodded. She was Etsuko-san, a nursery teacher in her thirties who had come to the Ogawa Investigation Agency as a client. "I'm the homeroom teacher for them." Etsuko-san would normally be wearing an apron, but today she was in casual clothes. Naturally, since it was her day off. Sitting in front of me and Shisho, besides Etsuko-san, were three other women. They were introduced one by one.
"And, Asami-sensei is the homeroom teacher for the 3- and 4-year-old class next door, Yoko-sensei is for the 2-year-old class on the second floor, and Yui-sensei is for the 1-year-old class right next to it." Each of them bowed nervously. They called each other "Sensei." Coming to think of it, it brought back a nostalgic feeling as I remembered that when I used to attend nursery school myself, it had been the same. Etsuko-sensei gave off the clear impression of being reliable; her speech and movements were crisp, and she was unmistakably the leader pulling the other teachers along.
"So, this is the problematic photograph?" At Shisho's words, everyone's gaze focused on a single photograph placed on the floor. It was a picture taken from a second-floor window of the building facing the playground, capturing a strange circular pattern emerging in the middle of the rain-soaked, muddy playground. That circular pattern was about two meters in diameter. Right near it, a single female figure in an apron was photographed, with footprints extending from the building side. As they looked at the photo, I could sense the four young nursery teachers holding their breath. Shisho raised her head and spoke clearly in a tone that showed complete indifference to their tension. "Now, please give me a detailed explanation."
◆ It had happened last Friday. That day had been cloudy since morning, and the weather forecast put the chance of precipitation at 50%. A dark sky brings a dark mood. As Etsuko-sensei watched the children playing in the playground, she was thinking about the eerie events that had been happening continuously lately. In the restrooms on the first and second floors, she frequently felt the presence of something not human. Elsewhere—in the flowerbed, by the pool, and sometimes even indoors—she would occasionally catch sight of what looked like human shadows. According to rumors she heard from her seniors, the grounds of this nursery school were originally a place where the heads of criminals were exposed... Not just Etsuko-sensei, but other teachers and even the children had experienced seeing something ghost-like. At least, such rumors were being whispered earnestly. Shouldn't we have an exorcism done? Opinions like that surfaced among the teachers, but the principal wouldn't entertain the idea. "Ridiculous. It'll have a bad influence on the kids." It was dismissed with words like that. *"Besides, we're a public institution, so there's no way a budget could ever be approved for something religious like an exorcism, right?"* Given that response, Etsuko-sensei had secretly asked a municipal nursery administration official about it, but apparently, expenditures of that sort were indeed impossible.
Whether public or private, the ghosts showing up didn't care about things like that. She felt a sense of absurdity, but there was nothing she could do. *Oh, I hate this.* While lost in thought for a moment with such feelings, a light drizzle began to fall, and the children started making a fuss with squeals of excitement. She quickly ushered everyone back inside. Before long, it was time to give them lunch. As they ate their meals in their respective classrooms, the rain outside grew considerably heavier, and the wind seemed to pick up a little. Once lunchtime ended and it was naptime, the children kept trying to catch a glimpse of the outside through the gaps in the curtains and wouldn't settle down. "Alright, time to sleep now!" As she pulled the curtains—
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