This is a story I heard from Shisho.
It was the summer of my second year in college. It was a very windy day. Even while I was indoors, the window glass kept rattling incessantly. I checked outside multiple times thinking a storm was brewing, but the sky was clear. "What strange weather," I thought as I went about my day. Then, I received a phone call from an upperclassman named Kanako-san, asking me to meet her. When I stepped outside, a strong wind slammed into my face. As I rode my bicycle through the city, the howling sound of the wind tormented my ears. The skirts of the women walking on the street were nearly blown up, and watching them frantically try to hold them down with both hands was a pleasant sight, but having dust and whatever else was kicked up from the ground blast into my face was thoroughly irritating. *Ugh,* it took my breath away. The wind direction was completely erratic, blowing from here one moment and from there the next. Was a typhoon approaching? I didn't recall seeing anything about it in the newspaper. I didn't think the weather forecast mentioned it either... Lost in these thoughts, I found myself arriving at my destination before I even realized it. An old bench stood inside a small park in a residential area, and a woman wearing a long-billed baseball cap pulled down low was sitting on it with one knee drawn up. She was reading a paperback book. The pages she had opened were flapping wildly in the wind, and she clicked her tongue while pinning them down with her finger. "Oh, you're here." Noticing me, Kanako-san raised her head. She had a cool appearance, wearing a t-shirt, a light jacket, and hot pants. "Well, let's go." She shoved the thin paperback into the back pocket of her hot pants and stood up. She was my mentor in the occult path. She also worked part-time at an investigative agency called the Ogawa Investigation Office, taking on requests specifically related to "ghosts." Today, she said, we were going to visit a client to hear about their situation. And I held the magnificent title of being an assistant, positioned one step beneath my mentor—who was herself a part-time investigator at a tiny detective agency that mostly handled sub-subcontracted odd jobs. I couldn't recall my work ever being particularly useful, but I still received a sparrow's tear of a part-time wage. I'd never asked about the exact amount, but I wondered if Shisho herself received something closer to the tears of a hawk or an owl.
"This way." Holding a piece of half-suji paper with a hand-drawn map, we advanced through the residential area and soon arrived at a two-story apartment building with a fancy-sounding name. When I knocked on the door of a room in the middle of the first floor, a woman with a downcast expression cautiously peered out. "Hello there." Seeing Shisho's professional sales smile, the woman looked somewhat relieved and undid the chain lock. Then, she timidly ushered us inside. The woman, whose name was Ukita-san, was a student attending a local university. Since she was a junior, her age was somewhere between mine and Shisho's. In fact, Ukita-san had previously consulted Shisho through the Ogawa Investigation Office regarding an incident involving a mysterious lost item, and through that connection, she had requested her by name this time as well. No wonder Shisho was dressed so casually. Even without this, we were practically masquerading as shady "self-proclaimed psychics," so going to an official, paid client meeting in clothes far too casual—as if to proudly announce, "I'm just doing a part-time gig"—was bound to leave a bad impression. At least on a first meeting. Though Shisho seemed completely oblivious, she actually had a decent grasp of TPO for these situations. "So, what happened this time?" Gathering around a round table placed on the living room carpet, Shisho prompted Ukita-san to speak. It was a 1LDK apartment geared toward students, but despite the abundance of furniture, the room itself was remarkably well-organized and felt quite spacious. The room was overflowing with values diametrically opposed to Shisho's rundown apartment.
"Well..." Summarizing what Ukita-san haltingly shared, the story went like this:
Three years ago, she joined the drama club upon entering university. Ever since high school, she loved not just watching plays but acting in them herself, and the reason she chose the local university was precisely because it had a drama club. Because it was an established club with a track record of regular performances, the number of members was large, and during her freshman year, she rarely got assigned any roles. However, thanks to attending practices earnestly without getting discouraged, she began getting fairly good roles around the summer of her sophomore year.
Now in her junior year, this was meant to be her final challenge before the autumn approached—a time when she would inevitably enter a semi-retired state due to job hunting, whether she wanted to or not. However, days continued where she couldn't secure leading roles as she had hoped, partly because the number of talented underclassmen was increasing. It wasn't just because of the underclassmen; it was also because there were several seniors who, despite supposedly being retired, were putting their lives on the line for theater, completely ignoring job hunting. None of them were amazing enough to be scouted by major theater troupes like those in the city, but they were people who wanted to keep testing their own limits by joining some small theater troupe, even while working part-time. She couldn't imitate them, but in a way, she felt their lives were enviable. And then, exactly three weeks ago, the drama club's three-day summer performance, held by renting a cultural hall, came to an end. Among her peers, some were still motivated for the autumn just like her, while for others, this marked their complete retirement. Driven by the increasingly early start of job hunting, a consensus was forming among juniors that this summer performance served as their graduation show. However, the biggest problem for her was a certain male senior who, without having secured a job, was stubbornly lingering on in the club. He was usually not a very noticeable person, and in that summer performance, he was merely a supporting actor with only a handful of lines. Yet, he shocked everyone by announcing that he would join a theater troupe in the city after graduation. No one had expected him to continue acting. At the same time, he claimed that as a milestone, he would be retiring from the drama club. That man had confessed his feelings to her after the summer performance. He said he had always loved her. Though vaguely, she had felt his clinging gaze upon her even during regular practices, and whenever she turned to look, he would hurriedly avert his eyes. Such things had happened repeatedly. It was always unpleasant. It felt creepy. Even if that man was suddenly claiming he loved her now, her answer was already decided. When she turned him down clearly, he seemed shocked, but after hanging his head for a while, he slowly lifted it like a snake raising its hood and said something chilling. "Please give me your hair." Along with the movement of his mouth, his head bobbed up and down as if repeating a nod.
"At least, as a memento." That was what he said. She wasn't exaggerating when she said she was terrified. "No thank you. Hair is a woman's life," she tried to brush it off jokingly at first, but realizing she couldn't talk her way out of it, she eventually cried out, "Please stop." The man showed no sign of being intimidated and repeated the same words. Then, with a pleading gesture, he added, "Just a single strand is fine." She blurted out, "Please, seriously stop," and fled the scene, but he didn't pursue her. Yet, before she could even feel relieved, every time she met him at the university from then on, he begged her for hair. "Please give me your hair," he said with a sticky voice. She consulted a senior male friend of his, but the senior just brushed it off as if it didn't matter, saying, "What's the big deal? It's just a strand of hair." Meanwhile, a senior female friend told her: "It's useless. Once that guy gets an idea in his head, he's insanely persistent. Well, but hair isn't so bad, right? He's got a creepy vibe, but he doesn't have the guts to escalate beyond that." Apparently, he had hit on a female classmate in the drama club in the past as well. Back then, she hadn't given him the time of day either, but unfazed, he had relentlessly and persistently kept hitting on her until the classmate finally quit the club. Even then, however, he hadn't resorted to stalker-like behavior such as going to her house or acting violently. Having heard such stories from multiple people, and thinking that since this time the guy was retiring from the drama club anyway, if it could all end with just some hair, then so be it. She began to think: *As long as that's all it takes...* Then one night, when she turned off the TV before going to bed, a sudden wave of helplessness washed over her amid the silence, and she decided, "Alright, I'll give him my hair tomorrow." However, the moment she actually picked up the scissors and reached out her other hand to select and grab a single strand of hair, she was struck by the sensation that she was literally cutting away something precious. Why should she, the one-sided victim, have to go this far? As she thought this, a boiling wave of anger welled up inside her.
That was it. It didn't have to be her own hair. As long as it was the same length, there was no way anyone could tell whose it was anyway. The moment she thought that, her eyes landed on a Japanese doll displayed on top of her wardrobe. Bought for her by her parents when she was a child, it was still her favorite, and she had even brought it along to her off-campus lodging. It was in great condition, neatly dressed in a beautiful kimono she had once dreamed of wearing herself. When she gently touched its hair, a smooth texture brushed the pads of her fingers. Her parents had once told her that real human hair was plugged in strand by strand. This would work... Thinking this, she applied pressure to her pinched fingertips, and a single, long, glossy strand of hair pulled free. Looking at the root, naturally, there was no hair follicle attached, but that man hadn't said he wanted something "plucked out with a root." After a brief thought, she used scissors to trim the rootless end a little. That made it identical to a cut strand of hair, and since the length was slightly longer than her own, it was just right. Even the subtle shade of black looked almost identical to hers. And naturally so—her parents had chosen and bought a doll whose hair color and sheen closely resembled hers. The next day, she handed the hair to the man, wrapped in a handkerchief. "I'll let you have the handkerchief too, so please leave me alone from now on," she said. He nodded more obediently than she expected and smiled happily, saying, "Thank you." That parting smile was also disgusting. It felt like she was standing in front of a frog or a reptile. Perhaps it was the psychology of hating even the monk's robes, but without looking back, she walked away at a brisk pace. She wanted to forget everything.
Several days passed, and the man completely stopped appearing around her. When the person's face wasn't right in front of you, humans are wonderfully pragmatic. Since there had been no real harm done, she gradually began to feel that maybe he wasn't such a bad guy after all. And thinking about the upcoming autumn performance—the first show after losing some of her main cast members—her mood naturally shifted. Then one night, while she was watching TV in her room as usual, it happened. Just as a variety show ended and she was glancing at the eleven o'clock news, a tremendous sound suddenly echoed through her room. The impact sound of some hard furniture being shattered.
Her heart felt like it was about to leap out of her chest. Panicking, she held her breath and cast her gaze around the room, searching for whatever was out of place. She wondered if something had fallen from the wardrobe or a shelf, but there was no trace of anything like that on the floor. And above all, it wasn't the gentle sound of an object falling from a height of just two meters or so. It was a more violent, spine-chilling sound of destruction. With that, the room fell silent again, and only the newscaster's voice leaked out from the television. Enveloped by an unfathomable dread, she scanned the room looking for the source of that sound, and her eyes finally landed on it. The doll. The Japanese doll on top of the wardrobe. Dressed in a vividly patterned kimono, with long, straight-cut black hair... At that instant, she was struck by a chill as if her entire body was being pierced by needles. She believed she had screamed. The doll had no face. No, the place where its face had been was smashed to pieces, completely unrecognizable. It looked as though it had been struck with all its might using a massive hammer. Failing into the illusion that it was she who had suffered that fate, she just kept on screaming.
Ukita-san finished speaking and crossed her arms, hugging her shoulders. She was trembling so much that it was pitiful to watch. "Hair, huh?" Shisho muttered quietly. It was a terrifying story. If she had handed over her own hair... Just thinking about it made it even more frightening. Why did she have to go through something like that? The absurdity of it left me slightly confused. At that moment, what popped into my head was the *Ushitsu no Koku Mairi* (The Hour of the Ox Curse). A curse ritual where the hair of a hated opponent is embedded into a straw doll and nailed into a sacred tree at a shrine in the middle of the night using a five-inch spike. By treating the straw doll as the target's body and burying a part of the human body like hair inside it, it creates a spatial connection between the doll and the target themselves— a Japanese traditional curse fusing sympathetic magic and contagious magic. Yet, I felt a bizarre horror in the fact that that very first strike was a chilling blow that left the face completely unrecognizable.
"What happened after that?" Prompted by Shisho, Ukita-san slowly opened her mouth. "Nothing." Nothing else happened that night, she said. Unable to bear leaving the smashed doll as it was, she had a close female friend throw it away for her. She had been too terrified to step foot outside her house, but through that friend, she heard that the man hadn't shown up at the university either. She felt like she was going crazy just thinking about what would happen if he realized that what she had given him was a doll's hair. *I wish I could just pretend I'm dead,* she had thought. She had even let those words slip to her friend. If word reached him that she had died, she thought maybe he would be satisfied and everything would finally end. As she spoke, tears welled up in Ukita-san's eyes. "What do you want me to do?" Shisho asked in a tone that could almost be described as cold. In the tightly sealed room, only the faint airflow generated by the air conditioner crawled across the floor. "Save me." A trembling voice broke the silence. Shisho only said, "Got it."
Shisho and I immediately visited the home of Ukita-san's friend who lived nearby—the woman who had been asked to throw away the doll. According to her story, the doll's face area was indeed smashed in, warped as if beaten ruthlessly with a giant hammer. She said she had her boyfriend drive her to transport that doll and throw it away in a distant mountain. "You didn't burn it?" Shisho said it would have been better to burn it. The friend was in the same drama club as Ukita-san, had served as an organizer during a training camp in the past, and still had the roster they made back then. The man's name was on it, along with his address. "Soga Takehiro, huh?" Shisho noted down the address and left the friend's house. Soga's apartment was on the outskirts of the city, and I hoisted Shisho onto the back of my bicycle and headed straight there.
The apartment was easy to find. When we knocked on the door, which lacked a nameplate, a bearded man emerged from the neighboring room and said, "He moved out." "When?" Scratching his chin, he replied, "Four or five days ago." Confirming that the student who had lived here was indeed named Soga, we pressed further, asking where the landlord was so we could find out his new address. In response, the neighbor told us: "The landlord was grumbling, saying, 'He called out of nowhere on the day of the move saying he was leaving, and vanished without even telling me his new address, even though we still have to deal with the security deposit.'"
Four or five days ago. Right around the time of the doll incident. That coincidence began to give me a bad feeling. After thanking him and leaving the apartment, we headed straight to a stamp shop in the city. It was a shop Shisho had once sent me on an errand to. Shisho browsed the ready-made name seals lined up in the store and bought one reading "Soga." It was cheap, but she made sure to get a proper receipt. Since the addressee was listed as "To Whom It May Concern," I could vaguely guess what we were about to do next.
Leaving the stamp shop, our next destination was, as expected, the city hall. Shisho peeked into the citizen affairs counter from the entrance and told me, "Go get a resident certificate application form." When I did as I was told, she then pushed a ballpoint pen into my hand in the shadow of the building and made me fill out the "Power of Attorney" section of the application form. Naturally, the principal was listed as "Soga Takehiro." Stamping it with the newly bought seal, she said, "Wait here," and walked toward the citizen affairs counter. I was impressed by how accustomed she looked to the process, feeling the true vibe of a detective agency investigator. Above all, the biggest surprise was when a portable ink pad appeared from her pocket. I had seen her have it before, but it seemed she always carried it around just in case something like this happened. *She's really deep into this world,* I thought. Yet, I also felt that even that resourcefulness was just one facet of her relentless vitality.
After waiting for a while, she returned with a gloomy expression. When I asked, "How did it go?" she replied: "No good. He hadn't transferred his resident registry here in the first place. Judging by how he vanished, there was a high possibility he hadn't submitted a moving-out notification either. If I could've just pulled the resident record from the apartment he was living in, I would've found his family register and previous address, giving us some options." Saying this, Shisho started walking out of city hall. "Should we track down the landlord and squeeze his pre-move address out of him?" "Nah, that'd be tough. The fact that he didn't transfer his resident registration to this city probably means his address was left back at his parents' house far away. Just a hunch, but I feel like Soga is still in this town. So even if we track down his parents' place, it's sketchy whether we'd be able to trace his whereabouts. Well, on the flip side, if he's gone back to his parents' house, there probably won't be any actual harm done. For now, what we need to do is assume the worst-case scenario and move quickly." In that case, our only option was to snoop around the university and the drama club crew, right? Shisho muttered with annoyance. If Soga was still in the neighborhood...
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