Yaso Saijo wrote a poem, “Tomino’s Hell,” after losing his family during World War I, Maene whispers. Maene thinks the poem is a curse. You’re afraid of Maene, she is the eldest in your middle school dormitory, and you know the poem exists to kill whomever reads it aloud, and yet you listen. The ceiling fan whirls, the wind beyond your pane-less window is silent. To hear means you will be cursed too, she says. Yet she begins: Elder sister vomited blood, younger sister vomited fire and the cute Tomino vomited glass beads. Tomino Fell into Hell alone. Maene thinks she’s speaking, her lips move, tongue flicks, but you can’t hear a thing. Later, she finishes off and doesn’t stop moving her vermilion mouth, flicking her ox-blood tongue. She descends the wooden steps, farther and farther, floating down to where Tomino went: to the lowest levels of Buddhist hell, reserved for those, who like Maene and Tomino, have murdered their parents.
If you report what you saw the next morning, it will be called middle-grade hallucinating.
When visiting your aunt during the Summer break, you fall for a traditional Japanese okappa doll, that adorns one shelf especially made for it. You long to touch it, but you’re told it belongs to Kikuko, the little girl who died of cold. Told not to disturb it. But, you tiptoe into the room again when your aunt’s busy with guests, grab the doll, put it in your sling bag, and leave before anyone notices. Twelve days later, you bury it in the hostel’s backyard. You can’t blame your aunt if all over your body you’d had scratch marks appear, or if you were having nightmares that you were being treated for bite marks. You can’t tell your friends about the okappa doll, or what you saw, though you remember seeing the doll’s baby teeth emerge, and you can swear the hair grew in those twelve days, hair so black, it was the darkness of the underworld.
If you go to the priest expecting to confess and be healed, your narrative account will be put under unintelligent behavior.
Various American words are heard, the floor to ceiling glass of the Nagasaki internet café passes them around, but you don’t turn to see. These are words meant to distract you, provoke an instant reaction, on a precise canvas of space and time. Most unsuitable to repetition, others only sequels to the original. Remind yourself you’re now in University, let the pause give way to static hum. For the sake of sanity, wait for your screen to turn red. Gaze as the black letters pop-up, asking: “あなたは〜好きですか?” (Do you like ~?) and more letters appear: until it reads: “あなたは赤い部屋が好きですか?” (Do you like the red room?) Watch the list of names as they start to roll down — victims of Girl A — who was stabbed by her classmate. Regardless of the scream knotting in your throat, read your name right there. Last thing, imagine in horror: the blood splattered room you have been sharing in Sasebo.
If you believe what you just experienced, it must be true. Elsewhere, it is business as usual.
If you haven’t heard of Toire no Hanako-san, don’t bother. Just don’t. If the restroom of the youth hostel is on the third floor, hold your pee. If you must use the toilet, don’t knock on the third stall. If you do, knock exactly three times. If you must, ask: “Hanako, soko ni imasu ka,” (“Hanako, are you there?”), but just don’t wait for an answer. If you do wait, the door will slowly creak open to reveal little Hanako in a red skirt, a traditional-styled bun. If you’re still reading, you must remember not to forget this: That Hanako grabs her victim and drags them into the toilet, never to be seen again.
If it appears in the papers tomorrow, it will be called a fatal accident, one in which the victim, a girl of eighteen, university student, slipped and fell in the toilet.
***
