Chapter 33: Faintly

The locksmith picked up his tool bag. Together with Ma En and the manager, he stepped into the elevator; moments later they reached the thirteenth floor and stood before Ma En's unit. Ma En had taken some precautionary measures, so at a glance the door appeared undamaged, sealed tight. The locksmith stepped forward and gave it a casual pull. It didn't budge.

"Huh?" He couldn't help the sound of surprise. He pulled harder. The door seemed to loosen slightly, but still wouldn't open. He turned back to Ma En and the manager, pointing at the door, speechless.

The manager shifted her gaze to Ma En too — half astonished, half baffled.

Under both their stares, Ma En set down the wood carving, stepped past the locksmith, grabbed the handle, and shoved hard — then pulled. A clanging racket erupted from behind the door. He pulled again. This time it swung open easily, exposing the lock mechanism embedded in the door to the manager and the locksmith.

When the two got a clear look, the manager still couldn't tell what was wrong. But the locksmith was already clicking his tongue in disbelief.

"No way — that's impossible!"

"What is it?" The manager looked at him, bewildered. He'd already crossed to the lock in three quick strides, examining it from every angle.

"Damaged from the inside," he murmured, half to himself. "And it's secondary damage." He ran his hand around the lock housing. "This section's been bent into an S-shape. Not from the same direction." Then, as if reconstructing the scene in his head, he turned to Ma En. "...After the lock broke, did you pry it?"

Ma En shrugged. Hirota-san had witnessed the whole thing with her own eyes, but he wasn't about to tell this locksmith he'd bent it barehanded. He could feel, though, the locksmith's gaze flicker briefly to his hands — a flash of suspicion.

"Can't be right." The locksmith talked to himself again. "Must be mistaken."

"What is it?" the manager pressed.

"It's... look, even if I told you, you wouldn't believe me. Forget it — it's kind of scary." The locksmith hesitated, then shook his head.

"Spit it out! Not telling us is scarier." The manager was getting annoyed.

The locksmith scratched his head with a pained look, glanced at the manager, then said: "I thought someone bent this lock barehanded — either before or after the damage."

The manager's expression froze for half a second. "Excuse me?"

"Like I said, I must be wrong. What kind of person could bend a lock like this with their bare hands? Had to be pried with a tool." The locksmith cut the topic short himself, turning to Ma En. "I'll swap in a new one right away. The door panel's got some damage too — nothing serious, doesn't need structural repair, but it'll need repainting. You want to handle that yourself, or have us do it?"

"I'll do it myself. Just tell me what materials I need." Ma En answered without hesitation.

"Right." The locksmith read the bluntness instantly and dropped all mention of cost.

Ma En's reason for refusing, of course, wasn't what the locksmith assumed. The room genuinely contained things he couldn't let anyone see. Without pressing necessity, he didn't intend to let anyone inside. Having the locksmith over at all already felt like a risk — even if he'd unexpectedly gleaned some useful intelligence from the man, he still felt he should be more cautious. If he could do something himself, he would. If apartment regulations didn't require it, he'd have changed the lock on his own.

The locksmith said nothing more. He undid his backpack, grabbed his tools, and got to work. Taking advantage of the time, Ma En asked the manager about the rest of the thirteenth floor's tenants.

He hadn't asked before only because they hadn't been close enough. Pressing too early would have aroused suspicion and annoyance. The relationship now — built on the wood carving, the money, the tea, and the three of them discussing Room 4 together — should be sufficient. Even so, the manager certainly wouldn't reveal everything she knew about each tenant. She took privacy seriously in her line of work. Hirota-san had mentioned in conversation that when issues arose, the manager typically staggered her timing, inviting tenants down to her room to talk in private.

Rooms 1 and 2 were ordinary families — whole households living together. Both families' children were either in high school or university by now, well past their rebellious years. They'd never prank a stranger. In everyday encounters, they were polite — "well-bred" was the word that came to mind. Neither family was especially wealthy, but their units were among the largest in the building, and the rent was correspondingly high. Being able to afford that, combined with their daily habits and dress, suggested families that were doing more than fine.

By and large, the manager didn't find anything strange about either household.

Room 3's tenant, though, gave even her some trouble.

"This might sound improper, but running into him can genuinely be frightening." The manager smiled ruefully, lowering her voice. "He rarely goes out. When he comes to pay rent, he always picks odd hours. And his health seems like it's never been good..." She glanced toward Room 3's tightly shut door and stopped herself. Probably worried the tenant was eavesdropping behind it. Seeing her constrained expression, Ma En was sure of it.

"I've met him once. He doesn't seem like a bad person. He's been here a long time, hasn't he?" Ma En offered, trying to put her at ease.

"Probably..." The manager counted on her fingers. "Over ten years. He'd know more about Room 4 than anyone in this building. But the fact that he knows all about it and hasn't moved away should prove the room isn't actually the problem — it's just that the people who come to rent it are always a little..." She caught herself, realizing she'd just swept Ma En up in the generalization. "Ah — sorry, I don't mean you, Ma En-san." She apologized repeatedly.

Ma En didn't take offense. Strictly speaking, he was an unusual tenant himself.

"Room 5 was actually purchased a long time ago. It'll never be rented out," the manager continued, changing the subject. "As far as I know, it was reserved before the apartment building was even finished. It's also the only unit in the whole building that was sold outright instead of leased. The buyer seems to have negotiated directly with the owner — probably someone he knew. But who exactly, I'm not sure. And in all these years... at least during my time as manager, the buyer has never once come by. When Room 4 had its incidents, the police must have contacted that person — but I don't know the details."

Hearing this, Room 5 struck Ma En as stranger than Room 3. No ordinary person would spend money buying a unit and then leave it sitting empty. If nobody had entered since the building was completed, the state of the interior was easy enough to imagine. Conversely, if the inside wasn't as grim as one might expect — that was suspicious in its own right.

"You and the other staff have never gone in either?" Ma En confirmed.

"That's right. No one has entered. Whether anyone went in before my time, I couldn't say." The manager was definitive.

"Nobody's ever opened the door out of curiosity?"

"Well... actually..." She lowered her voice again. "Just within this apartment, the earliest strange rumors weren't about Room 4 at all — they were about Room 5. But then Room 4 started having incidents, and naturally that overshadowed everything else. In the beginning, the children in the building all treated Room 5 as the haunted room. But that kind of thing — adults wouldn't go talking about it outside."

"That really does make you wonder." Ma En matched her volume. "Could you let me in to have a look?"

The manager pursed her lips, gave him a look, said nothing, and shook her head. Ma En smiled warmly at that.

"Room 6 — Hirota-san is quite the beauty. You've met." The manager's gaze drifted to Room 6, teasing now. "I saw it with my own eyes — you two went on a date last night. What kind of person she is, I hardly need to tell you."

"Yes, yes. Hirota-san is just a beautiful office worker." Ma En naturally wasn't going to tell her that on that night, Room 3's tenant had said some very strange things about Hirota Masami. He wouldn't casually suspect Hirota-san. But what Room 3's tenant had said clearly hadn't been without basis, either.

At this point, the person most likely connected to the Room 4 incidents seemed to be Room 3's tenant. But the man had lived here for years — long enough to have been present for multiple Room 4 deaths. The police absolutely could not have skipped investigating him. And yet there he still was, in Room 3. That turned every suspicious point into clouds and fog: troubling enough to notice, but vague enough to make Ma En wonder whether he'd simply gotten the wrong idea.

So — do I still need to sit down and have a proper talk with him?

Ma En turned it over in his mind. But calculating the timing, new information about his job should arrive tomorrow. Once work was confirmed, he'd need to pour most of his energy into the school position and give his life in Japan a strong start. By that reckoning, when to approach Room 3's tenant for a real conversation required more careful thought. It was still May. The Room 4 Ghost Story's "August 24th" was a long way off. The clues were beginning to surface — faintly, half-visible — but there didn't seem to be cause for urgency yet.

If something truly strange was at work, the signs would only grow more obvious as time went on.

Ma En mulled this over. His conversation with the manager gradually shifted to everyday trivia — no more talk of tenants or leases. The manager seemed relieved. She didn't appear to be the gossiping type herself, though she had considerable expertise on supermarket discounts. In passing, Ma En learned that her personal hobby was a folk dance that had originated in northern Japan — one that men danced too. When she invited him to join, her enthusiasm was formidable.

Just as Ma En was busy fending off this enthusiasm, the locksmith finally finished and called him over.

Ma En couldn't help a sigh of relief. The manager's conversational energy was genuinely hard to withstand.

"Have a look, sir. This should do it." The locksmith patted the new lock. The door panel still bore traces of wear, but from the sound of the knock, it was solid enough.

No matter what state the door was in, Ma En had done all of it himself. He had nothing to complain about. He opened and closed the door a few times, tested the lock's responsiveness and security, then signed off with the locksmith and handed over the remaining balance. On impulse, he asked: "You mentioned locks have been changed here several times. Not all Room 4, right?"

"I handled Rooms 3 and 6 myself," the locksmith answered casually. "Room 5 has a lock change on record too — a very old one. Changed once, it seems. Wasn't my job. Rooms 1 and 2 also commissioned us, but that was all interior work — their kids grew up, needed their own spaces, so we put in partition walls, loft dividers, room doors. The rooms already had contingency plans built in for those modifications. Easy work, all of it. So many years now. The kids have grown up too. I hope they're happy with how it turned out."

Afterward, Ma En didn't invite either of them inside, saying his goodbyes at the door.

The job was done. He watched the manager and the locksmith step into the elevator, then glanced at Room 3. He had a feeling that during the entire lock installation, the tenant inside had been watching — and even now, hadn't moved from behind the door. Room 3's peephole shouldn't have a line of sight to this end of the hallway, so it had to be eavesdropping. But without proof, without actually seeing what lay behind that door, Ma En didn't make a move. He picked up the wood carving, went back inside, and shut the door.

His feeling was right. Room 3's tenant was pressed flat against the door panel. The sounds escaping his mouth were barely audible — something between gasping and laughter. Beneath his tightly shut eyelids, his eyeballs rolled in their sockets; the movement was visible even through the skin. What he was thinking, no one could say. But the moment Room 4's door clicked shut, his entire body went slack. He crumpled to the floor, gulping air in great heaving breaths, his whole frame seizing as though gripped by convulsions. The eyes that finally opened were wild with terror, fixed on the ceiling, focus scattered — staring at something, listening to something, as though that direction truly held a presence.

After a while, the convulsions stilled. He was drenched in sweat. But the tight, clenched expression on his face loosened by degrees — loosened, then opened, then bloomed into a grotesque smile.

"No, no... you can't see me... can't see me... hee hee hee."