It was nighttime. I had been drinking at a younger club member's house, and a little past one in the morning, I said, "See you," straddled my bicycle, and headed home alone. The streets I passed through were sparsely populated. People in the dark, whose faces I couldn't make out, were all uniformly carrying white bags. Convenience store bags, probably. It’s a town with many students. There's only one kind of place people would be walking around out here at this hour, far from the downtown area. On my way back, I began mapping out in my head which convenience store I should stop by. But even though it was my own mind, thick sheets of paper were clumsily folded inside, and I struggled to unfold them properly. I must have been drunk after all. I saw a red light and hit the brakes. It was an intersection. Not a single car was in sight, but it wasn't flashing yellow. The traffic light seemed to be running on a normal cycle. It was a single-lane road in each direction; at this time of night, flashing yellow all around would have made more sense. Muttering such things to myself, I still got off my bicycle and waited for the light to change. I was a student with a notoriously poor regard for the law. Normally, whether it was a red light or a car was bearing down on me, if I judged it was safe, I’d cross. But at that moment, alcohol had simplified my mind. Red means stop. Green means go. ...What did yellow mean again? Oh well. As I stood there, almost dozing off, I noticed the red symbol on the pedestrian crossing light suddenly vanish, and I thought, *Ah, I have to go.* At that moment, without any warning, someone passed right by me. *Huh?* Was there someone else here? Thinking that, I looked ahead. Only white and black striped shadows, faintly illuminated by the streetlamp, stretched across the road. There was no sign of anyone anywhere. So where had whoever passed me gone? As I blankly faced forward, the pedestrian signal caught my eye. A sliver of ice was inserted into my sluggish brain, and my senses suddenly cleared. A chill... An unpleasant sensation ran down the back of my neck. Then, like a flashback, something I had heard before flashed through my mind. That's right. It was a story I had heard from Shisho. ◆ That day, Kanako-san and I were having lunch at a hamburger shop in the city. We had taken a seat by the window on the second floor, looking down at the people passing by, chatting about whatever crossed our minds, when Kanako-san suddenly stared off toward the right in the distance and tilted her head. "Huh?" "What is it?" I peeked out through the floor-to-ceiling glass window, but nothing seemed particularly unusual. "Over there, by the traffic light. There's someone standing there." Prompted by her words, I looked closer and saw a single person standing near the far crosswalk. Let me say that again: *When I looked closely*—meaning, only when I strained my eyes could I see them. Just glancing casually, I hadn't been able to make them out. That person. "There's a ghost," Kanako-san murmured absentmindedly, chewing on the straw sticking out of her cola cup. I was impressed she noticed from this distance. As I watched intently, the person standing at the crosswalk showed no sign of moving at all. The light changed, and pedestrians began walking all at once, but that figure alone remained standing in place. A new group of people gathered in front of the crosswalk, and the light turned green again, repeating the same scene. Over and over. "What are they doing over there, I wonder?" "Who knows what they're doing." "Hey." "What?" Kanako-san suddenly turned her face toward me. "Go over there and ask them." "Huh?" Just as she removed her mouth from the straw, she pointed her index finger straight at me from the hand holding the cup. "I said, go over there right now and ask what they're doing." "Oh..." Reluctantly, I stood up. Kanako-san looked back out the window, rummaging through a piece of half-cooled French fry with her fingertips. I left my drink and half-eaten burger behind, walked down the stairs alone, and stepped outside the hamburger shop. When I climbed the stairs back up and returned, Kanako-san was looking out the window in the exact same pose. When I sat down, my burger somehow looked smaller. As I picked it up and stared at it, she asked, "How was it?" "Well. Apparently, they're waiting for the traffic light." "The light? It's turned green multiple times, hasn't it?" "Well, you know how pedestrian signals have a green mark of a person walking, and a red mark of a person standing straight?" "Yeah." "They said theirs isn't that." "Huh?" "Well, you see... their legs..." "Because they don't have any?"
Shisho frowned in exasperation. "Yes. They said the signal hasn't changed to the mark that lets them proceed, so they're just waiting..." "As if there's a traffic light for ghosts!" *Are you an idiot?* Shisho tapped the table. "So is that guy planning to wait there forever?" "Who knows. Probably." I looked past the window and saw that the figure was still standing rigidly at the crosswalk. All alone, separated from the people walking by. "Is that guy newly dead, I wonder?" "Who knows. Probably." I gazed at the tiny bite marks left on the golden-brown buns of the burger, which somehow looked smaller than before. Kanako-san muttered something, then finally raised her head and opened her mouth. "No matter how you look at it, can someone go through life like that?" Her tone sounded angry. *How should I know?* Kanako-san suddenly stood up. "I'm going to give them a lecture." And without listening to my protests, she briskly walked down the stairs. Left behind, I let out a sigh and tried to scavenge the food from the opposite seat. Not a single piece of French fry remained. When Kanako-san returned, she looked a bit displeased. "How was it?" From what I could see from this window, while Kanako-san was making gestures and saying something in front of the crosswalk, the figure had simply vanished. More than the fact that a human being had vanished in broad daylight, pedestrians were casting eerie, creeped-out glances at a woman yelling alone in an empty space. To begin with, nobody other than us could see them. That earnest ghost. "No good. They got scared and disappeared." "Probably because you weren't nice about it." "I didn't yell at them or anything. I just taught them." "Taught them what?" At that, Shisho looked surprised at how unexpectedly light her cola cup felt, grinned, and said, "How to cross the street." Then, adding "for ghosts," she placed the empty cup on the table. ◆ I'm shivering. The back of my neck. *Thump, thump, thump...* My heart was beating fast. That rhythm pumped blood mixed with alcohol throughout my body. Yet my mind was sobering up from the intoxication. A nighttime intersection illuminated only by streetlamps. The crosswalk signal had just changed, and the garish red 'STOP' sign—painfully vivid even in the dark—had just vanished. Yet I couldn't move. I couldn't start walking. The traffic light remained dark. Not just the red, but the green as well. Both lights stayed completely unlit. It wasn't just for pedestrians. The traffic lights for cars were also dark, their inorganic shapes looming dimly out of the darkness. It was a scene in the middle of the night as if time had stopped. Only an invisible presence was crossing the empty crosswalk. I mustn't follow it. That much I knew. I had heard the rumors. If all the traffic lights in the city go dark at night, you must not move. Because it's the hour when things that are not human pass by... That rumor supposedly started going around a few years ago. It was a relatively new rumor. But it spread in an instant. From mouth to mouth, from ear to ear. Supporting the handlebars of my bicycle, I stood rigidly still in a world without color or sound. Until the presence vanished to the other side of the crosswalk. Meanwhile, I mapped out my mind. I hallucinated every alleyway spreading out like a web through the nocturnal city. An invisible rumor flowed slowly through them, alongside a soundless whisper. When I finally snapped back to reality, I noticed the blue pedestrian symbol was illuminated. Headlights like the eyes of a giant cat were approaching from the distance, decelerating. As I placed my foot on the pedal, I gasped, seized by the chilling sense that on the other side of the dimly lit crosswalk, someone invisible was already waiting there.
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