“Yuki-chan, Yuki-chan”.
Who is this? Is she actually calling me?

Today’s story features an iconic story of many Kaidan lover’s favourites, from Junji Inagawa.

The original story is from Junji Inagawa. He is a Kaidan legend who’s helped spread the modern Kaidan world across all of Japan.

In this podcast, I have also featured one of his stories as well in episode 2 The Long Body. So, you can check it out if you haven’t listened to that yet.

Today’s story is one of his iconic Kaidan stories that’s super popular with many Kaidan lovers. From here, I will describe “I” as Junji Inagawa himself for convenience.

↓Check out episode 2, “The Long Body”, which is also originally from Junji Inagawa!

This is a story about the daughter of a friend of mine. His daughter was grown up enough and had left college to work for a broadcaster.

Then the thing is, she wanted to live alone for some time. Because, you know, she had been with her parents all her life. Then she would be living with somebody if she got married. She didn’t want to miss this chance to be independent and feel free a bit. Well, that’s understandable, isn’t it?

So when my friend asked me, “What should I do?” I said, “Well, living on your own for a short time is fine, isn’t it? It gives you a sense of independence as well”.

Then, they started looking for a place for the daughter.

Her workplace was in Yotsuya, Tokyo, so it should be around that area. Finally, they found a nice flat. It wasn’t too far from the station and had a cosy atmosphere with a bit of nature around as well. It’s in a modern, apartment-style building.

Actually, it wasn’t that cheap in the area. Also, the windows were facing the street.

But it’s higher than the ground like 70-80 centimetres higher, so even though there was a window there, you don’t have to worry about people looking in from the outside. Plus, the windows had frosted glass, and the flat had a self-locking door, which made it even less worrisome.

So the father said yes, and they decided on that flat in the end.

Of course, the daughter was happy. She bought all sorts of cute things for the flat, like making her own castle there, and she was having a satisfying start there. This was in the early spring of that year.

And then, she was finally starting that new job.

On the first day, she came to a meeting for her orientation. They were telling her like “You are gonna do this kind of task” or “You will be working with this person”, something like that.

After all the serious stuff, they said, “It’s all done for today. So, do you wanna have a welcome drink in Izakaya?” So she had a couple of drinks with some other newbies and then went back home after.

She was going into the flat, locked the door, and put her stuff down. She knew it would be better to put the futon down on the floor to sleep, but she was too tired. Then, it was still cold as it was early spring, so there was a Kotatsu (炬燵), a Japanese low wooden table frame covered with a blanket, and a small heater installed inside. 

She put her feet in the Kotatsu and lay down on the floor. Her being drunk helped her to sleep immediately, right after.

“Yuki-chan, Yuki-chan!”

She heard a voice. It sounded like the voice of a woman.

“Yuki-chan? Yuki-chan?”

She slowly opened her eyes and checked her watch. It was after midnight.

At first, she thought, “It’s Tokyo, not the countryside. There must be some people walking the dog in the middle of the night.”

“You know dogs have human-like names these days. So the name of this dog must be Yuki-chan.”

She didn’t think about that deeply and went to sleep again a short time later.

The next morning, she went to her workplace and did some work until about noon. And in the afternoon, there was a ceremony for new employees.

After that, there was again another party with the bigger groups of the company where she met a bunch of new peo’-ple and had a lot of fun.

When she got home, it was even later than the day before. She was even more tired, so she just directly put her feet into the Kotatsu again and fell asleep.

“Yuki-chan, Yuki-chan!”

She wasn’t sure how much time had passed but woke up to the voice.

“Yuki-chan, Yuki-chan!”

She thought, “Ah, it was like this yesterday, too. Some woman is making her walk around with the dog again.”

“Yuki? Yuki-chan?”

While hearing the voice again and again, she suddenly felt something weird.

“If she’s walking the dog and the dog’s gone away, she would call out from left to right”

However, the voice came from one direction in the same way. It also sounded like coming from the street towards her room.

“Yuki-chan, Yuki-chan!”

“But I’m not Yuki. So, I have nothing to do with it.”

Even though she was not comfortable with the voice, she couldn’t resist to sleep. Then, she kept lying down and fell asleep again.

Then.., “Yuki-chan.”

She heard the voice quite close by.

“Hmm?”

She opened her eyes and looked casually at the window, and there was a person stuck to it. The upper body and hand were stuck to the window glass, and the silhouette still called out, “Yuki-chan?”.

“Oh, somebody is looking at me.” She immediately thought about that. 

But if you think about it calmly here, you could realise there was no way somebody could be there.

Do you remember that the window of the flat was 70-80 centimetres high off the ground? There was no place for anybody outside of the windows. However, she didn’t think abolut that at the time, because, you know , she was drunk and half sleeping then.

So she was thinking more like, “Why is this person looking at me? What a creep…”

It was frosted glass, so the person on the other side shouldn’t have been able to see inside. But she could tell by the silhouette. No matter how, the person was looking at her.

“Yuki-chan? Yuki-chan?” And the voice of the woman also still continued.

She decided to ignore the voice and put her face in the Kotatsu cover.

After a while…

“Yuki-chan, What do you want tomorrow?”

“Hmm?”

“Yuki-chan, What do you want tomorrow?”

She heard the woman’s voice in her room.

“Yuki-chan, What do you want tomorrow?”

Then she heard a thumping sound. The voice came closer as it sounded like the woman was sliding on the tatami floor.

“Yuki-chan, What do you want tomorrow?”

That’s when she thought this woman was not a living one. You know, the self-lock door was closed, and there was no sound of the door opening. Plus, the window being too high to look from the outside; that was also strange for a normal person in the first place.

“Oh god, what am I going to do?”

As she was thinking this,

“Yuki-chan, What do you want tomorrow?”

A knee hit me on the back.

You know, the woman was apparently looking at her from above.

“Yuki-chan, What do you want tomorrow?”

“Ugh, help me! Nanmaidabu, nanmaidabu, nanmaidabu…” She started chanting the Buddhist mantra.

Then, her face was being pushed down from the other side of the Kotatsu cover. It seems that the thing was pushing the cover with its face. She could feel the mouth around her ear. Also, felt the breath.

“Yuki-chan, What do you want tomorrow?”

“Nanmaidabu, nanmaidabu, nanmaidabu…”

She kept chanting the mantra, but even so, the face was brought closer and closer.

“Nanmaidabu, nanmaidabu, nanmaidabu…”

The futon was pushed down even stronger. And then, with the futon across her ear,

“I won’t leave even if you do that,” the voice said…

And then, she passed out there…

When she woke up, it was morning, and she panicked and ran back to her parents’ house.

When I heard this story, I decided I would do some research on it. So I went to a local Izakaya and asked people there.

Then, one of them said, “Oh, I know that apartment building.”

There used to be a house, but the older couple who lived there were burnt to death in a fire. Then, the apartment was built on the site of that old house after the accident.

But that’s it. It was the old couple who died, but there is no Yuki-chan involved. We don’t still know who or what she was…

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