Chapter 16: The Woman who asked Question.
I gestured toward the low table.
"Please, sit. I'll prepare tea."
Aiko nodded and settled onto the floor, her legs crossed, her notebook placed beside her. She looked around the room as I moved to the kitchen, her eyes scanning the low table, the drawn curtains, the wooden bird on the windowsill. I watched her from the corner of my eye.
She seemed curious but not judgmental. Her gaze lingered on the bird for a moment, then moved on.
I filled the kettle and set it on the stove. The familiar sounds of the kitchen filled the small space, the hiss of the flame, the soft clink of ceramic cups. I gathered the tea leaves, the small tin I had bought from the market.
Aiko's voice came from the other room.
"This is a nice house," she said. "Very peaceful."
"Thank you," I called back. "It's small, but it suits me."
"Have you lived here long?"
"A few months."
"Long enough to get to know the village?"
I paused. "Long enough to know some things."
The kettle began to whistle. I poured the water over the tea leaves and carried the tray back to the low table. I set a cup in front of Aiko, then sat across from her.
She wrapped her hands around the cup, letting the warmth seep into her palms. She took a sip, then nodded appreciatively.
"Good tea," she said.
"Thank you."
We sat in comfortable silence for a moment. The evening light was fading outside, casting long shadows across the floor.
Then Aiko spoke again.
"I should introduce myself properly," she said. "My name is Aiko Matsumoto. I'm a paranormal researcher. I've been doing this for about five years now." She gestured vaguely. "I work with a small team. Takeshi handles the audio and visual equipment. Kenji specializes in EMF readings and environmental data. We've investigated everything from abandoned hospitals to mountain shrines."
I nodded. "That sounds like interesting work."
"It is. Sometimes it's boring, just static and old buildings. But sometimes..." She paused. "Sometimes we find things we can't explain."
I watched her. She seemed genuine, not like someone who was trying to sell me a story, but like someone who genuinely believed in what she was doing.
"What do you normally investigate?" I asked. "What kind of things?"
She tilted her head. "All kinds. Ghosts, mostly. But also local legends, folklore, unexplained phenomena. We follow the rumors and see where they lead. Sometimes they lead nowhere. Sometimes they lead somewhere unexpected."
"And this village?" I asked. "What led you here?"
She smiled. "The story. The one about the shrine, the disappearances, the children. It was too detailed to ignore. Too specific." She leaned forward slightly. "When I read it, I knew I had to come."
I felt a familiar tightness in my chest. The story she was describing, I knew it. I had read it too. But most of it are made up.
But I said nothing.
Aiko continued. "We've already visited a few locations. The bonfire site. The forest paths. We're planning to go up to the shrine tomorrow."
I felt my breath catch. "The shrine?"
"Yes. The old one on the mountain." She looked at me. "Have you been there…?."
I didn't answer. The question hung in the air between us.
Aiko's voice softened. "I'm not trying to pry. I just... I think you might know more than you're saying."
I looked at her. At her open face. At the curiosity in her eyes.
I thought about the shrine. The hidden rope. The fresh rice. The footprints that vanished.
I thought about Hinata. The blankness in her eyes. The words she had spoken.
And I knew, I couldn't tell her everything. Not yet.
I took a sip of tea, then set the cup down.
"How did you hear about this village?" I asked. "The rumor you mentioned. Where did it start?"
Aiko reached for her tablet, open an app, then turned it toward me. On the screen was a video platform, one I recognized. The channel name was familiar too.
"This is our channel," she said. "We post our investigations here. Usually we get a few thousand views, nothing too big. But a few weeks ago, one of our videos went viral."
She scrolled down. The video thumbnail showed a dark building, a forest, a title that read: "Abandoned Village: What We Found in the Mountains."
I looked at it. I didn't recognize the location. But the format was familiar, the same kind of content that spread quickly online, the kind that attracted attention and speculation.
"Someone wrote something about this village," Aiko continued. “We didn't know about Ubunores until we read that.”
She opened another page. A list. She read from it.
"Children disappeared here."
"Children sometimes died without an obvious cause."
"People heard children singing at night."
"There was an abandoned shrine on the mountain."
"Strange things happened around the bonfire."
I listened quietly.
Some of the claims were true.
Children had disappeared. Hinata had been gone for three days. The singing at night was real, I had heard it myself. The shrine existed. The bonfire site existed.
But other claims were wildly exaggerated.
No one had mentioned curses or possessions or ghostly figures. No one had claimed that the village was haunted in the dramatic way these stories often implied. The rumors had been distorted, shaped by the internet into something larger and more frightening than reality.
"The post, which started the rumour," I said carefully. "Do you know who wrote it?"
Aiko shook her head. "It was posted anonymously. No credit, no information. Just the pos." She paused. "It seemed like someone who had visited the village and wanted to warn others."
I felt my chest tighten.
I knew who had posted it.
Kiri.
She had always been the one who couldn't leave a question alone.
She had seen enough to know something was wrong.
And now she had brought strangers to the village.
And I couldn't tell Aiko that.
Not yet.
"I see," I said. My voice was calm. Controlled. "So you came here to verify the claims."
Aiko nodded. "We came to find the truth. Whatever that truth might be."
She looked at me. Her eyes were earnest, curious.
"What do you think?" she asked. "What is the truth about this village?"
I looked at her.
I thought about the shrine. The hidden rope. The fresh rice. The footprints that vanished.
I thought about Hinata. Her blank eyes. The words she had spoken. The way she had smiled at me on the mountain as if I was a stranger.
The plea for forgiveness on the weathered ema.
I set down my cup.
"I don't know," I said. "I am new here."
Aiko studied me for a moment. Then she nodded.
"Then maybe we can help each other," she said. "We share what we find. You tell us what you know."
I hesitated.
Then I nodded.
"Alright," I said. "Let’s me think about it."
The conversation had become easier now. The evening was quiet. And Aiko's presence was somehow calming, she asked questions without demanding answers, she listened without judging.
My curiosity got the better of me.
"Have you ever actually seen a ghost?" I asked.
Aiko smiled. "That's the question everyone asks." She paused, considering. "I've seen things I couldn't explain. Shadows that moved when nothing was there. Voices that seemed to come from empty rooms. Cold spots that appeared and disappeared without reason."
"But have you ever seen a ghost? A real one?"
She tilted her head. "I've seen things I couldn't explain," she repeated. "Whether they were ghosts... I don't know. I don't think anyone really knows."
I leaned forward. "Are curses real?"
Her smile widened. "You're full of questions tonight."
"I'm curious."
"I can tell." She set down her cup. "I don't know if curses are real. I've seen things that people called curses. I've seen patterns that seemed too deliberate to be coincidence. But I've also seen people convince themselves that something was a curse when it was just ordinary bad luck."
"Have you ever been possessed?"
She laughed. "No. And I've never seen anyone who was genuinely possessed. I've seen people who believed they were possessed. I've seen people who acted in ways they couldn't explain. But possession..." She shook her head. "That's a heavy word. I don't use it lightly."
"Have you ever captured a ghost on camera?"
"Captured?" She laughed again. "We've captured images we couldn't explain. Orbs. Shadows. Mist that didn't move like normal mist. But proof?" She shrugged. "Proof is harder. Cameras can be fooled. So can our eyes."
I was quiet for a moment. Then I asked: "What about UFOs?"
Aiko laughed outright. "Not my area. We stick to the ground."
I smiled. I couldn't help it.
She continued. "Our team investigates many unusual claims. But we don't automatically believe everything we encounter. We have a philosophy: investigate first. Decide what happened afterward."
I nodded. "That makes sense."
"It keeps us honest," she said. "And it keeps us from getting fooled."
I looked at her. She seemed genuine, not like someone who was trying to sell me a story, but like someone who genuinely believed in what she was doing.
"Have you visited any famous haunted places?" I asked.
Aiko nodded. "A few. We've been to abandoned hospitals, old prisons, mountain shrines, and a castle or two."
"And what did you find?"
She shrugged. "It depends. Some places were genuinely unsettling. The kind of place where the air feels wrong, even in broad daylight. Some places were elaborate hoaxes; someone had set things up to make the place seem haunted."
"And the rest?"
She paused. "Some had perfectly ordinary explanations. Drafty windows. Creaky floors. Animals in the walls. Things that seem supernatural until you look closer."
"What about the ones that didn't?"
She met my eyes. "A few incidents remained unexplained. We had no idea what caused them. We had no explanation at all."
I felt a chill run down my spine.
"Did you ever work with television networks?" I asked. "Are you sponsored?"
She laughed. "Not really. Sometimes we appear on shows. Sometimes they reach out to us. But we're not full-time TV people. We make money in other ways."
She counted on her fingers. "Video revenue from our platform. Sponsorships from a few equipment companies. Donations from people who follow our work." She paused. "And sometimes paid investigations. Private clients who want us to look into something specific."
"Private clients?"
"Families who think their house is haunted. Business owners who want to verify local legends. People who want to know what's real and what's not."
I nodded. It made them feel genuine, not like mysterious supernatural experts, but like real people doing a job.
"Have you ever found anything that convinced you?" I asked. "Anything that made you believe?"
Aiko was quiet for a long moment.
"Yes," she said. "Once. A few years ago. We were investigating an old house in the mountains. We heard a child's voice. Clear as day. We had our recorders on. We caught it. The voice didn't sound like anyone in the house. There was no one else there."
She looked at me.
"I still don't know what it was. But I know what I heard."
I didn't say anything.
The conversation had been light, but I felt the weight of the evening pressing down on me. The tea was cooling in my cup. The shadows had grown longer. And the questions I had been holding back finally rose to the surface.
I set down my cup.
"What do you actually want from this village?"
Aiko's expression shifted. The lightness faded from her face. She closed her notebook slowly, her fingers resting on the cover.
She looked at me.
"We want to know what happened here."
I waited.
She continued, her voice quieter now. "We aren't interested only in ghosts. We're interested in the pattern. Children disappearing. Children dying. People hearing voices at night. And the abandoned shrine on the mountain."
I felt my breath catch at the last words.
My expression must have changed, because Aiko's eyes sharpened.
"You know something about the shrine," she said.
It wasn't a question.
I looked away.
"I've been there," I said quietly. "I've seen things there."
Aiko leaned forward. "What kind of things?"
I thought about the hidden rope. The scattered shide. The fresh rice in the offering bowl. The footprints that vanished on solid stone. The weathered ema with its faded plea.
"Things I can't explain," I said. "Things the villagers won't talk about."
Aiko was quiet for a moment. Then she nodded slowly.
"That's why we're here," she said. "Not to scare anyone. Not to exploit the village. We want to understand the pattern. We want to know why these things keep happening."
She paused.
"And we think you might be able to help us."
I looked at her. At her earnest face. At the notebook she had closed, the questions she had held back.
The investigator leaned back. Her eyes were steady, unblinking.
"Why are you trying to hide the village's secrets?"
The question caught me off guard. I felt my shoulders tense.
"I'm not hiding anything," I said. "I only came here recently. I don't know this village's history. I don't know what happened here."
Aiko watched me carefully. She didn't accuse me of lying. Her expression was calm, curious, the expression of someone who was used to reading people.
"That's exactly why I'm asking," she said.
I remained silent.
She continued. "You're not from here. You have no stake in protecting the village's reputation. And yet…" She paused. "You haven't told me everything. I can see it in your face. You know more than you're saying."
I looked away. The drawn curtains. The shadows on the floor.
"I'm not trying to hide anything," I said again. "I just don't know what to believe."
Aiko nodded slowly.
"That's fair," she said. "But if you want me to help you understand what's happening here, I need you to be honest with me."
I met her eyes.
"I'll try," I said.
She smiled. It was a small smile, but it was genuine.
"Good," she said. "That's all I ask."
Aiko was quiet for a moment. Then she asked:
"Why did you come here?"
I hesitated.
The question was simple. But the answer was complicated.
"I came here to escape," I said slowly. "The city. The noise. The pressure. I needed somewhere quiet. Somewhere I could breathe."
"And you found that here?"
I thought about it. The quiet mornings. The rice pot. The sound of Hinata's broom on the stone path.
"Yes," I said. "I found that here."
"What made you want to stay?"
I thought about Hinata. Her small hands stirring the rice. The way she had curled up on my lap and fallen asleep. The warmth of her presence, the way she had filled the empty spaces in my days.
I thought about the village. The way the mist burned off the fields in the morning. The way the light fell across the mountains in the evening. The way the silence felt like a blanket rather than a weight.
I thought about Kiri. Her laughter. Her warmth. The way she had made the house feel like a home.
I didn't reveal everything. I couldn't. But I gave her enough.
"There's a girl," I said. "Hinata. She started coming to my house every morning. She helped with the rice. She swept the path. She made me feel less alone."
Aiko listened.
"The village itself," I continued. "It's strange. But it's also peaceful. There's something about it that makes me want to stay. Even though I don't understand it."
I paused.
"I think... I've been running for a long time. I didn't realize it until I stopped."
Aiko studied me for a long moment.
Then she nodded.
"I understand," she said. "More than you might think."
She didn't press further.
She simply let the silence settle between us.
And for the first time in a long time, I felt like someone understood.
The conversation continued until evening.
Finally, Aiko stood.
"I should get going," she said. "It's getting late, and I need to meet up with the others."
I glanced toward the window.
The sky was darkening. The village was settling into its usual nighttime stillness. The lanterns had not yet been lit.
I felt a familiar unease settle in my chest.
Aiko noticed. She paused, her bag half-slung over her shoulder.
"Is something wrong?"
I shook my head. Then I said:
"You should stay here tonight."
She blinked. "Here?"
I nodded. "It's safer."
She looked at me, her brow furrowed. She didn't understand. How could she? She hadn't seen what I had seen. She hadn't heard the singing. She didn't know about the old man, or the children, or the things that moved in the dark.
I didn't explain.
I didn't tell her that people were not supposed to be outside after dark. I didn't tell her about the children's singing, the voices that drifted through the night like a warning. I didn't tell her about the old man and the hands pressing against his skin. I didn't tell her what I had seen at the shrine.
Instead, I simply said:
"It's safer."
Aiko looked at me for a long moment. Her eyes searched my face, looking for something I couldn't name.
Then slowly, she set her bag down.
"Okay," she said. "I'll stay."
She sat back down on the floor.
The night settled around us.
And I didn't tell her the real reason I had asked her to stay.
I didn't tell her that I was afraid.
Not for myself.
For her.
What will happen next...
Next time, same time, same place.
