“Y-your brother… Will he… What do you mean?”
Aya shrugged and walked back over to the rice cooker. She watched the steam rise and hit the glass lid, puffs escaping the small hole on top. It was the rice cooker my father gave me. It was probably as old as I was.
“I mean that it doesn’t matter. Nothing will happen. Nothing that will bring shame upon the family name, anyway. He’ll deal with it. He always does.” She didn’t say his name, but the way she spat the words out made me flinch.
“Do you… I mean, shouldn’t you go and see him in that case? I mean… I’m not going to pretend to understand what’s going on here, or even try to understand your family history, that’s not for me to pry. But…” I looked to the corner of the room where just a few nights earlier, I saw a shadow emerge from the darkness and try to consume Aya. “Your father died. We were the last people to see him. Shouldn’t you at least go home and check on things?”
Aya shook her head. “No. Not while he’s there. He’ll be expecting me. I can’t go. Not yet. Not until he’s gone and focused on other matters again.”
I tilted my head and opened my mouth to say something and then closed it again. Her relationship with her brother was none of my business. It wasn’t my place to get involved.
“Are you sure?” It was all I could say. Aya smiled. It was a look she had rehearsed many times. She was good at it, I had to give her that. But she wasn’t as good as me. That was a look I’d spent my life perfecting. I could spot it anywhere.
“Don’t you have to get to work?”
I looked at the clock. She was right. I was going to be late as it was. I could use the excuse that I was still sick, but the boss wasn’t going to be happy, regardless. I took a deep breath. My insides churned. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to leave Aya alone. But what choice did I have?
“Do you… need any money? To go shopping today.” Aya had nothing with her. All her belongings were back at the house.
“I’ll pay you back.”
I pulled out a few notes and pushed the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach away. Those few bills were all I had. The zeros in my bank account were swiftly dwindling. Payday wasn’t for another few weeks, and I already had several bills screaming at me in large red letters demanding my immediate attention.
“Don’t worry about it.” I smiled. “I’ll bring something home for dinner, so just grab something for lunch and a few basics, I guess.”
Aya stepped forward and placed her hands on the side of my face. She pulled me in for a kiss.
“I’ll see you when you get back from work tonight.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Tonight. I’ll see you then.”
I let out the breath I was holding as the door closed behind me.
14
“Hey, neighbour!”
I stopped at the stairs and turned around. The woman from next door came running over. I bowed politely.
“Good morning. Thank you for keeping an eye on things for me while my door was being fixed. I really appreciate it.”
She smiled and shooed her hand in the air before her. “Not at all! Is everything okay? Did they ever find out who did it?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, to be honest.”
“Man, what is going on around here lately.” She leaned forward and narrowed her eyes. “Did you hear all the fuss that took place here last night?”
I shook my head and couldn’t hide the horror from my eyes. Did we… did Aya and I make too much noise? Was that… My head was swimming, horrified at the thought that other people heard or suspected something was going on.
“N-no, I don’t know what fuss you’re talking about. What fuss? I didn’t hear any fuss.”
“Really? Well, I don’t know what to tell you, but this place is going to hell.”
I blinked a few times and tried to force a smile. “H-hell? What do you mean?”
“Well, first your door gets kicked in and your apartment robbed, and then last night the old guy on the sixth floor died.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what? Someone died?”
She nodded furiously. She’d been waiting to enthral somebody with the tale, and I was the one lucky enough to run into her first.
“Yeah, it’s so strange. I was putting the rubbish out this morning and there were police cars everywhere. Look, they’re still out there now!” She pointed outside and just like she said, there were several police cars parked on the street below.
“Well, they could be here for anything…”
She shook her head. “I heard voices upstairs, so I went up to have a look and they have the old man’s apartment cordoned off. Crime scene tape, forensic investigators, the whole shebang. I’m surprised you didn’t hear anything. It’s not like they’ve been quiet about it. I really ought to find out who I can complain to about that, actually…”
I was otherwise occupied, but I couldn’t tell her that. “I’m just a heavy sleeper, I guess. So what happened to him?”
Her eyes lit up. “So, I walked over to see what was going on and I overheard the police talking to his wife. She says that when she woke up in the morning, her husband was lying asleep next to her. She tried to wake him up, but nothing was working. She rolled him over and saw this giant bruise on his chest. Right here.” She drew a circle encompassing most of her torso. “When she touched him, it was like his rib cage collapsed in on itself. He had no pulse and was cold to the touch. He’d been gone several hours at least.”
“That’s terrible…”
“But that’s not the worst part. Seems his heart exploded. Right inside his chest. That was the only thing they could guess caused such an injury. His heart exploded right in his chest as he slept. How does that even happen?”
I opened my mouth a few times, but the words refused to form. I smiled and shook my head. “I-I honestly have no idea.”
It was the shadow. It was still here. It was happening all over again. But if Aya’s father was controlling the creature, and he was now dead, then how…? Nothing made sense. I had to run back and tell Aya, I had to warn her that the thing wasn’t gone, that it was back and it was killing again, but my neighbour was ushering me downstairs.
“I think we have a serial killer in the building.”
I scoffed. “I’m sorry, what?”
She nodded as though she knew it to be true. “There’s no other explanation. Your busted in door. The old guy’s mysterious death upstairs. And just the other day I found a dead kitten outside by the trash. It’s a sign.”
I wasn’t following. “It’s a sign? A sign of what. None of those things are even vaguely related.”
She shook her head. “That’s what they want you to think. That’s how they work, you know. Serial killers. They do things you wouldn’t expect to throw you off track. They don’t want the police to catch them. They don’t want to be profiled, so they commit random acts of violence to hide their true intentions. Their true victims. Any one of us could be next. Nobody knows how their minds work, you know? But there’s no doubt in my mind that we have a serial killer on our hands. Potentially someone living in the building. You need to be careful. You especially. The killer knows your apartment now. You should maybe check it for hidden cameras or something. They might be surveilling your place as we speak. Using it as an alibi, you know?”
I didn’t know. Her story sounded even crazier than me trying to explain to her the shadow creature I’d seen.
“You realise how crazy that sounds, right?”
She smiled. “It’s supposed to sound crazy. That’s how the killer gets away with it.”
We reached the bottom steps. “Have you told the police your theory?”
“Not yet.” She shook her head. “I’m still working on it, and besides, I need to get to work. But you should be careful. There’s something not right going on here, and before you know it, we’re all going to be involved. We need to find out who it is before it’s too late.”
I forced a smile.
“Yeah, sure. It never hurts to be careful…”
“Exactly! I’ll let you know if I hear anything else.”
A police officer opened the door as I reached for the handle. I took a step back in shock. I hadn’t seen him there.
“Good morning ma’am.” The police officer smiled at both of us. “Ma’am.”
“Officer.”
“Do you mind if I ask you a few questions? It won’t take long.”
“Well actually, I just spoke to another officer upstairs before, and I really need to get to work, I’m late as it is,” my neighbour said. What was her name again? Tanaka? Tanabe? Takahashi? We’d been neighbours for several months but were never involved enough that I had to learn her name.
“It won’t take but a few more moments,” the officer said. She sighed and crossed her arms.
“Where were you last night at around midnight?”
“I was asleep. With my husband. We went to bed at 10 p.m. after watching TV.”
The officer looked at me.
“I was… also watching TV.”
“Now can we go?”
The officer scribbled something on his pad. I couldn’t let him know Aya was there, even though she was the perfect alibi. She was too closely tied to all this, and to be honest, I had no idea what was going on. My mind was already spinning at the fact that the old guy upstairs died in apparently the exact same manner Aya’s father had the day before. If it were true, that meant the shadow creature wasn’t gone. Or perhaps there was another one. I didn’t know.
“What were you watching on TV?”
“I don’t remember the name of it. They were visiting restaurants around the city and trying out different types of ramen,” my neighbour answered. The officer looked at me.
“Yeah, me too. I also watched that one.”
“I see. What time did the program end?” The officer was still looking at me.
“It ended at 10 p.m., which is when I went to bed,” my neighbour answered instead. I smiled.
“What she said.”
“I see.” The officer looked at my neighbour. “You said you went to sleep at 10 p.m. with your husband, is that correct?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Is he in the apartment still?”
“No, he left for work an hour ago.”
“And you, ma’am? Were you with anyone?”
My heart hammered in my chest. “N-no, sir. I was alone.” He scribbled in his pad.
“I see. So you have no-one to verify your whereabouts last night?”
I smiled and shook my head. “N-no. Sir. I was all alone. Watching TV. About ramen.”
He raised an eyebrow and finished writing something. “Okay, ladies. Well, I’d like both of you to stick around over the next few days in case we have any more questions.”
“Stick around?” my neighbour asked.
“Yes. A crime took place in this building last night. Until we get to the bottom of it, I’d like both of you to hang around. Just in case.”
“Is the building safe? Why should we stay here if there are several crimes taking place? Because you know, her apartment was broken into just a few days ago as well. How are you going to guarantee our safety?”
“Your apartment was broken into, ma’am?”
I hadn’t informed the police of that little matter yet. I forced another smile. My teeth were hurting from it all.
“Y-yes. Someone busted the door in, that’s all. Nothing was taken, and the door’s been fixed. It slipped my mind to inform the police, I’ve been so busy…”
The officer sized me up. “It slipped your mind?”
“Yes.”
He wrote something in his notepad. “You say nothing was taken?”
“No. Not that I’ve noticed.”
“Why do you think your apartment was targeted?”
I shrugged. “I really don’t know. Maybe it was a case of mistaken identity. Maybe they were looking for something valuable and when they got in they couldn’t find anything. I don’t know.”
He nodded, mulling things over. “Okay. Well, I may have more questions for you later. Do you mind if I ask which apartment you’re in?”
“3B. Now can I go?” my neighbour said without hesitation. The officer nodded, and she put a hand on my shoulder. “Remember what I said. You be careful today, okay?” I nodded and she walked outside, eyeing the police cars as she passed by.
“And you, ma’am?”
“3C…” I said. “But I live alone. There’s no-one up there right now.”
“3C…” he repeated and wrote it down. “And what was your name again?”
“S-sato. Sato Megu.”
“Sato Megu…” He wrote my name down and closed his notepad. “Well, Ms Sato, if we have any further questions we’ll be contacting you shortly.”
I nodded. “Can I… Can I go to work now?”
“Of course. Sorry for keeping you.”
I ran out the door and looked back. The officer was watching me leave. I ran around the corner, my heart pounding wildly. I had no way of contacting Aya. I prayed that she wouldn’t run into any police officers when she left the apartment later that day.
15
It was a struggle to keep my mind on the job. I was the only one there. The boss said he had to go out to run some errands, and I was in charge of the store while he was gone. “So don’t fuck anything up.”
Piles of boxes were stacked to the roof in the back room. He never bothered to put the stock out while I was off sick. I was gone one day and he hadn’t bothered to get anyone else in, and hadn’t bothered to do any work himself. The shelves were bare; just the basics were out and several products were gone entirely. I sighed. I picked up a box and made my way into the aisles.
Someone died in my apartment building. Aya’s father died the day before that. I got to my knees and started unpacking the box. The hair on the back of my neck stood on end. I looked around, but I was alone. All alone. Nobody but me and some packets of chili flavoured chips. I shoved them onto the rack and stood up. I looked over the tops of the aisles.
“Hello?”
The doorbell was silent. I was alone, so why did I feel like someone else was in the store with me? I got back on my knees and haphazardly shoved more packets onto the shelf. Not my cleanest job, but I didn’t care. I dismantled the box and returned it to the back room.
My heart jumped.
There was something in the corner.
I clenched the box even tighter.
“Hello? Sir?”
It wasn’t the boss. He wouldn’t hide. He would let me know, very loudly, just where he was and what he was unhappy with. I wanted to call Aya. I wanted to run from the building and get away from whatever was haunting it. But I took a step forward, and then another, and then another.
There was nothing there.
“What the hell?” I was tired. That was all. So much had happened over the last few days, and my normally quiet life had been turned upside down. So much crazy shit. Unbelievable shit. I grabbed a can of coffee from one of the boxes and downed it. I was supposed to pay for it, but looking at the stacks of boxes piled in every nook and cranny of the room, boxes that should have been unpacked the day before, I didn’t care. The boss could deal with one less can of coffee. I’d seen him taking food from the stock himself before. Sure, he was the boss, he could do what he wanted, but this time he could cover a single can for me as well. A single can of coffee. More than he’d ever done for me the entire time I’d been working there.
I wheeled a few more boxes out and restocked the bread and pastries. The doorbell tinkled, and I served an old lady her bread and magazines and went back to the pastry aisle. A box was gone.
“Okay, seriously, what the fuck?”
I brought four boxes out. I was looking at three. I was still the only person in the store, and the old lady most certainly had not walked outside with a box under her arms. I looked around the corner, in the other aisles, back by the register, but no
thing. It was just gone.
“The camera!” The idea hit me like a bullet. The surveillance camera in the corner filmed most of the store, and the monitor was in the back room. It could be rewound. I slammed the door behind me and sat down.
“How the hell do I use this thing?”
I got goosebumps. I flicked my eyes to the corner of the room, but there was nothing there. There was never anything there. Nothing that I could see, anyway. I grabbed the mouse and moved it around, looking for the rewind function.
“Bingo.”
I rewound the footage a few minutes, just long enough to see the old woman come in. I was in the bread aisle, and there were four boxes there…
No. Wait. There weren’t. There were only three.
“What…”
I stacked four boxes. I counted them out loud as I put them on the trolley. Not one, not two, and not three. Four. I counted four boxes.
Yet the footage showed three. I rewound again. I walked out of the back room and stopped before the bread. There were three boxes on the trolley.
Was I going insane? What was going on? I leaned back in the chair and looked around the room. Suddenly everything felt foreign. Out of place. Like I walked into the right store, but at the wrong time. I was alone, but I wasn’t the only thing there.
“What the hell?” I fell off the chair and scrambled back until I hit the wall. The screen was dark. No, not the screen. Something on the screen. In the corner, by the boxes stacked in front of the bread.
It was the shadow.
I scrambled to my feet and locked the door. I looked around for something to block it and jammed the chair under the handle. I grabbed my phone with shaking hands and started to dial. I stopped. Who was I going to call? Aya didn’t have a phone on her, and I didn’t have a home phone. I couldn’t call the police. What was I supposed to tell them? Hey, so, there’s a shadow outside. Could you come and get rid of it for me, please? That was a quick trip to the loony bin.
The boss. He was the only person I could call. But that was a worse option than the police. A quick trip to the unemployment line, which sounded attractive, but not terribly practical. No, I couldn’t call him. I’d never hear the end of it.
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