The clock clicked one by one, and it was just after 5:50 a.m. The night's chill still lay in the air, and the morning sun had not yet risen to dispel the darkness of the night.
Kinoshita Sachiko sat huddled on the mat in front of the door, nervously and fearfully catching every movement outside.
This is a condominium in a busy area of Tokyo, where security is tight, and the charges are frequent and expensive, so it's reasonable to think that the residents don't need to be at the door at five o'clock every day, terrified and alert as if they've seen a ghost.
That's true.
-She really saw a ghost.
It began the year after Kinoshita Sachiko moved into the apartment, when she got a new neighbor, an unmarried couple who were so close and loving that one could read the other's words without speaking, and there was a deep intimacy in the way they carried themselves.
When they came to visit, the man was a gentleman and the woman was a lovely woman, a perfect match, and Kinoshita Sachiko was so impressed that she still recalls the way Ms. Suzuki bent her eyes and handed her a visiting gift, so vividly that her green eyes seemed to be sparkling with happiness.
Since the two lovers had settled here mainly because of their proximity to work, they only appeared at the apartment on weekdays, and most of the time they would go out on dates after work and then return home hand in hand, and she hardly ever met Kinoshita Sachiko's, and had only run into them three or four times in the nearly one year since she became a neighbor.
She was as impressed by the first meeting as she was by the last.
At that time, Mr. Ichijō seemed to be away on business for a few days, and the only person who came and went from the apartment was Ms. Suzuki, who didn't seem to need to work overtime, and left work much earlier than Kinoshita Sachiko, and who was so cheerful that she came to visit the first day of her stay alone, bringing sushi that she had made with her own hands.
The sushi was so rich and must have taken a long time to make that Kinoshita Sachiko got another glimpse of the class status of the lovers, and decided that either the man was a rich man's son or a rich woman's daughter, or both.
So a few days later, when she finds a large puddle of water on her neighbor's doorstep, she hesitantly knocks on the door to see if the young lady has had some trouble with her cooking and needs help cleaning up the mess.
But there was no answer.
Kinoshita Sachiko stayed at the door for ten minutes, but the usual warm and unassuming Ms. Suzuki didn't respond, and there was a heavy silence inside the door, except for a little bit of water spilling out of the doorway from time to time, which brought out a pale pink blood stain.
...
Kinoshita Sachiko finally saw Ms. Suzuki after the apartment manager broke down the door. She was lying stiffly in the living room, her short, light-colored hair that used to look like chestnuts in the sunlight was hanging down on the carpet, the ends of her hair were faded from the blood stains, and her once-vibrant green eyes were open and out of focus, the corners of her lips were at an upward angle, and she had one hand clenched in vain, as if she were gripping something, and hung limply to one side, with a red hole in her forehead.
Blood was spreading on the carpet underneath her, coloring the cute animals on the carpet a bit hideous, there were traces of dragging on the carpet, and there was a puddle of blood in the doorway.
According to the apartment manager's judgment, it must have been a home invasion robbery or something like that, and the visitor shot Ms. Suzuki the moment she opened the door, so she didn't even have time to take back her smile before she collapsed, and the murderer must have been trying to delay the discovery of the body by using water to clean up the bloodstains on the doorway.
The police, who arrived after the incident, agreed with this theory and asked Kinoshita Sachiko if she knew who the neighbor had a grudge against.
Kinoshita Sachiko did not know, but from the moment she saw the body, she was so shocked that she watched the police come and go, watched Mr. Ichijō, who had been notified of the incident, come back, and drank two cups of hot water under the police's supervision, that she broke out in a fever that night.
The fever lasted for seven or eight days, leaving her weak in bed and sleeping constantly, but it was actually a good thing that she happened to be lucky enough to escape the Great Purge...
Kinoshita Sachiko shuddered at the thought of the 'Great Purge', and hastened to divert her attention to less horrifying thoughts.
Unfortunate in every sense of the word, Ms. Suzuki was pitied and lamented by Kinoshita Sachiko, whose bright smile and cold floors flashed in front of her eyes almost every day of her days of unconsciousness.
But soon that pity was replaced by a horror so distorted that it lost its voice: Ms. Suzuki had returned.
It was a weekend, not many people were alive in the apartment, Kinoshita Sachiko was the only one left on the whole floor, she was eating dry bread on her bed, counting her food stash pitifully when she heard a knock on the door, and moved cautiously and fearfully to the door, intending to look through the cat's eye to see who it was.
Then she saw Ms. Suzuki.
Ms. Suzuki was wearing the same dress she always wore when she first moved in, and it didn't match the cold weather. She was hugging her arms, and seemed to realize that someone was behind the cat's eye, so she smiled brightly at the cat's eye, just as lively and cute as the first time she saw her.
Her face reddened, and curving her brightly colored lips, she opened her mouth to speak with some embarrassment, "Ms. Kinoshita, are you there?"
"I seemed to be in a hurry when I came out and forgot my key...I don't know why, but I can't reach my husband on my cell phone..."
"Excuse me, can you lend me your cell phone?"
After the cat's eye distortion, the harmless, bright smile became horrifying, and Kinoshita Sachiko stared blankly at the cat's eye as Ms. Suzuki's mouth opened and closed.
She was not wearing lipstick, her lips were a normal light red, and under the glare of the light and the distortion of the cat's eyes, her mouth opened and closed with white teeth and a red tongue showing, just like the light-colored blood that had spilled out of the doorway that day.
...
That day, Kinoshita Sachiko, who had fainted with a scream, was woken up by someone, and opened her eyes weakly, first looking for Ms. Suzuki, only to be relieved when she found no one, and then noticing that the person who had woken her up was actually Mr. Ichijō.
After a long time, Mr. Ichijōwas once again a gentleman, looking gentle and like a normal human being, offering some shocking gifts, politely apologizing and thanking Ms. Suzuki for borrowing the phone, and promising to remember to reserve the key next time so as not to bother the neighbors again.
That's not the point.
Kinoshita Sachiko thought, as her ear against the door suddenly heard an electric current and checked the time, realizing that it was already six o'clock and her cheeks immediately tightened.
Every day at six o'clock, the dead Ms. Suzuki would miraculously 'come back from the dead' to bring terror or relief to the living.
It was a frightening event for Kinoshita Sachiko, who stood up holding the door and quietly looked out.
The long incandescent light in the corridor was flickering on and off, and with it the corridor was clear and black at the same time, and between the light and the darkness there was gradually something more, like a TV with a blurred screen, each time between the blurring and the clearing of the picture there was an incoherence.
The light flickered rapidly, and in the sound of a loud electric current, it began to stabilize again, flickering slowly.
When the light came on again, a slender figure stood at the end of the corridor.
She stood still, dark from top to bottom, like a mannequin or a lifeless framed photograph.
As the lights flickered, the blackness of the figure faded, revealing pale skin, a blue uniform, short brown hair, red lips, white teeth and green eyes.
Suzuki Sonoko was still standing still, as if the network latency was too high, and it was only after a few more light flashes that she moved slowly and stiffly, pulling on a smile and taking one step at a time.
In just a few short steps, she went from stiff to lively, and then came back to her senses completely, looking around blankly, "...Hey?"
"What is this place?"