It was probably an open room on the second floor of my part-time job when I was a student.
It was a bento shop, but the second floor was a break room and materials and stuff.
But nobody took a break on the second floor.
Even though there were big windows, it was dark and gloomy even in the daytime, and no one wanted to go upstairs alone to pick up materials.
Only a cute but slightly strange woman, a self-proclaimed psychic art student, who joined the company much after me, often smoked upstairs.
So I started asking her to take care of the materials that weren’t too heavy, and in return, We would allow her to have a smoke outside of her break time.
When I checked the inventory of materials in the store, I naturally included her in my group.
The rest of us were employees A and B, myself who was on shift, and the senior chief of part-time workers, for a total of five.
Employee B and her senior were delayed due to a train accident, so the three of us started working together.
I was downstairs copying a checklist or something when I heard a scream from above, so I rushed up the stairs.
Suddenly my head was soaking wet.
When I touched it, it didn’t hurt at all, but there was a lot of blood.
I was surprised, but I could hear the woman screaming, so I went upstairs anyway.
The woman was yelling something incomprehensible in the direction of the wall, and employee A was sitting down and shitting himself.
I looked in the direction the woman was pointing and saw that what I had thought was a wall was a sliding door.
Inside was a room the size of two tatami mats laid side by side, with a 2 cm pile of small dead insects.
One corner of the room was rounded off by about 30 centimeters, but there was nothing there.
The walls looked like a normal Japanese-style room at a glance, but they were painted with a mixture of soil and what looked like long black hair.
The back of the sliding door had the same look.
I was in a daze, and then my senpai, who was running late, came in.
I was covered in blood, so they called an ambulance and took me to the hospital.
When I arrived at the hospital, another employee, Mr. B, was there and said to me, “I’ll give you a paycheck and some money to visit the hospital, but pretend that you were injured when something fell from a shelf.
To be honest, I wanted the money and I didn’t want to go back to my part-time job because I was scared, so I did as he said.
The wound was not that deep, so I only needed stitches.
I was allowed to take about 2 weeks off from my part-time job, but I was really curious, so I went to take a peek on about the 10th day.
Then I found that the senior staff was there, but employee A was sick and taking a long leave of absence.
The woman said she had quit school and was going back to her parents’ house, so she and her parents came to say hello.
The woman didn’t come into the store at all, didn’t talk at all, and seemed to be in a daze because of the medication.
The store was originally an old private house that was rented at a reasonable price from the owner who was having trouble with people staying there.
Employee B didn’t know the details, but she said she was sure something would happen one day.
The woman found the sliding door and opened it, and repeatedly said, “A doll with a spinning head came out from inside.
Employee A didn’t say anything, but she was in a state of shock.
She was still in the hospital because her internal organs were weak, and she was going to leave the office probably soon at the request of her family.
When I was shown upstairs, the room had been cleaned up, the sliding doors removed, and the walls repainted.
But the atmosphere of the second floor had not changed at all.
I felt extremely bad and quit my part-time job that day.
The store was near the station where the university was located, but I never passed through there from that day until I graduated.
When I got off at that station for work a while later, I remembered something and went to check the store.
The bento shop was gone, and it had been replaced by a modern café, and to my surprise, my senior was the manager.
The bento shop went out of business shortly after I left, and was replaced by a café belonging to the same chain.
Employee B was the manager at first, and when he decided to move to a different company, he bought the rights to the shop.
When he decided to move to a different company, his seniors bought the rights to the store.
I asked him about the second floor, which I was really curious about, and he gave me a troubled, disgusted look.
He then showed me a postcard, saying, “This is probably the one she said she saw.
It was an invitation from her to an art exhibition.
It was addressed to the name of an old lunch box shop.
On the front, there was a picture of a large, flabby, white stuffed animal with its head squashed sideways in a strange way, its mouth gaping open, and its arms and legs oddly thin, as if it were dancing.
It had a picture of a large, flabby, white stuffed animal with its head squashed weirdly on the side, its mouth split open, and its limbs oddly thin, dancing.
The postcard came about two years ago.
I contacted the gallery listed on the postcard, thinking that I could not go there because it was too far away.
I contacted the gallery and was told that they had no plans to hold such an exhibition.
He put it away in a drawer, saying, “I just couldn’t throw it away.
After that, he and the senior kept in touch for a while.
In the spring of this year, he called me to tell me that he was going to return to Inaka to take care of his parents because the store was going to be rebuilt due to its age.
After that, I tried to contact him several times, but he seemed to have changed his cell phone and I couldn’t reach him.
I sent him a summer greeting card, but it was returned to me with an unknown address.
I still don’t know what happened in the end, but I won’t go there anymore.
