The school's teaching block. The duty-room break room.
The lighting was that energy-saving kind — a sickly, pallid white — falling across several empty teacups left uncleared on the table. Outside the window, the night had thickened to pitch-black; only a faint thread of lamplight leaked in from somewhere far across the schoolyard.
Sekiguchi, a young male teacher, hesitated for a moment, then finally spoke.
「This may not be the most appropriate thing for an adult to say, but — I actually believe the Slit-Mouthed Woman is real.」
Across the table, the middle-aged teacher Ando raised his head, disapproval plain on his face.
「Sekiguchi-sensei, why bring that up out of nowhere? It'd be trouble if the students overheard.」
「I'm not just saying it idly.」
Sekiguchi took out a notebook and spread it open on the low table between them.
「Over the past while, I've been quietly collecting and compiling all the things the students mentioned in passing — the rumors about the strange woman near the school gate.」
Ando-sensei frowned, but reached over and took it anyway.
It was filled with somewhat hurried handwriting — dates, class numbers, and brief descriptions.
「Look — though the objects she's holding vary from account to account, the core elements overlap far too much to dismiss.」
As Ando read through it, his expression slowly changed — from initial dismissiveness to something much more serious.
Sekiguchi's gaze grew distant, his eyes drifting inward as memory pulled at him.
「The truth is, I saw her when I was in elementary school.」
「What?」
Ando-sensei was visibly startled.
「Back then, she was just an ordinary woman — one whose face had been slashed by her boyfriend. But the rumors were already gestating. The older students excitedly told us she was a flesh-eating monster, and urged us all to throw stones at her to drive the demon away.」
Sekiguchi murmured the words quietly.
Ando-sensei's brow creased.
It wasn't any kind of exorcism. It was bullying.
They had labeled a person with a physical disfigurement as a monster, and pelted her with stones for sport.
Sekiguchi's expression was bitter as he continued.
「At the time, we all lost our reason completely — we utterly forgot that she was a human being. It was as if we'd been swept up in some kind of collective madness. And that woman — in that very moment — began, little by little, to lose her own humanity...」
Sekiguchi drew a slow, deep breath, then looked at Ando-sensei.
「Senpai, you know how it is — urban legends like this are everywhere. Adults usually just laugh them off. But for children, it's different. They don't think of it as nonsense. They genuinely believe it, and they fill in the gaps with their own imaginations, transforming a human being into the monster that lives in everyone's mouth.
When a rumor like that — one imbued with mysterious, otherworldly power — spreads from one school to the next, and eventually becomes a truth passed mouth-to-ear among children across the entire country… a monster like the Slit-Mouthed Woman becomes real.」
「Well, even granting all that, but...」
「Who's there?」
Before the words were out of his mouth, Sekiguchi's complexion changed. He snapped his gaze toward the room beyond Ando-sensei's back and called out sharply.
A silhouette had appeared outside the window in the door. Ando-sensei wheeled around at once — and caught a glimpse of a figure before it vanished.
The two men exchanged a single look, then bolted out of the break room without hesitation.
The motion-sensor lights in the corridor flickered on at their passage. In the ghastly white light, something like a shadow seemed to dart past the corner at the far end of the hall — the turning that led toward the staff room.
「Stop right there!」
Sekiguchi shouted and broke into a run. Ando followed close at his heels.
They rounded the corner — and pulled up short in surprise. The staff room door was ajar.
They pushed it open and stepped inside. The room was empty — but along the wall, one of the metal filing cabinet doors had been wrenched open, and a stack of student records was strewn across the floor.
Ando-sensei asked in astonishment: 「These are… student files? What on earth was she looking for in those?!」
Sekiguchi crouched and picked up a few sheets, scanning them — and a cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
「Ando-senpai. I just remembered something.」
A horrifying intuition was connecting several separate chambers in Sekiguchi's mind all at once.
「One of the Slit-Mouthed Woman's known weaknesses is hair cream — but why? The standard explanation is that the surgeon used cheap hair wax during her cosmetic surgery. But what if… what if she was pregnant at the time? Pregnant women can become acutely sensitive to certain smells. The rumors about the Slit-Mouthed Woman abruptly vanished for a period — could it be that she went away to give birth? There have been theories and whispers along those lines before.」
Ando-sensei sucked in a sharp breath: 「You — you're saying...」
「Is it possible — that the Slit-Mouthed Woman has come here looking for someone? Looking for her child?」
Sekiguchi held up one of the student records.
At that very instant — from the shadows of the storage cabinet in the corner, a figure erupted at terrifying speed!
She made no move to attack Sekiguchi or Ando. She hurled herself straight toward the staff room door!
「Ah!」
Ando-sensei stumbled back a step in shock.
「Wait!」
Sekiguchi reacted a fraction faster and lunged to intercept her.
But the Slit-Mouthed Woman was too fast. She twisted sideways and sliced through the gap between the two men in an instant, vanishing into the dim corridor beyond.
「After her!」
Sekiguchi clenched his teeth and gave chase at once.
「Sekiguchi-sensei!」
Ando-sensei stood rooted to the spot, still shaking — a suffocating aura of terror wrapped around him — before he gathered himself and stumbled after them.
The two men swept their torches through the corridor as they ran, but the Slit-Mouthed Woman had dissolved into the darkness as though she had never been there at all, leaving not a trace.
Then, without warning — from behind the door of a small room off the hallway, used as a storage closet, came a dull thud, like something knocking against the inside of a cabinet.
Sekiguchi's chest clenched. He made a quick silencing gesture to Ando, then softened his footsteps, crept slowly to the door of that preparation room, drew a deep breath — and threw it open with a shout.
「Who's in there——!」
Before the echo died, a chorus of startled screams rang out from inside.
Five small faces stared back at them in the dim light, wide with terror — three girls and two boys, all looking to be from the upper grades.
They were huddled under a table and crammed into the corners. When they saw that the figure holding the torch was Sekiguchi-sensei, the tension went out of them in one collective exhale.
「Sensei...」 A girl with her hair tied back in a ponytail clutched at her chest, her face still a mask of shock. 「You nearly gave us heart attacks!」
Sekiguchi swept a quick look around the room, confirming the Slit-Mouthed Woman was nowhere inside, before the knot in his own chest eased even slightly. He reached over and switched the light on.
But his brow immediately drew together.
「You lot — why are you still at school at this hour? Don't you know the area's been dangerous lately?」
One of the boys, who had the air of being the bolder one of the group, thrust his chin up with a defiant look: 「Sensei's a coward who couldn't protect any of us — so we came to take the Slit-Mouthed Woman down ourselves...」
「...Slit-Mouthed Woman...Sensei...」
The words died before he could finish. The flush of excitement on the boy's face froze in an instant — as though some invisible hand had closed around his throat.
His eyes went wide and locked, riveted to something directly behind Sekiguchi and Ando. Tears came without any warning, streaming down his face, which fear had twisted out of all recognition.
「She's… behind you...」
His voice had changed — light, hollow, trembling.
And in almost the same instant——
Whoosh——
A gust of cold air poured in from the dim corridor with no warning at all, flooding the room.
Above them, the old lightbulb — already a sickly, dim yellow — let out a sharp, crackling buzz. The light convulsed and flickered violently, stretching every shadow in the room long and wild, flinging them in jagged, clawing shapes across the walls and floor.
In that single, frozen heartbeat, the faces of the other four children went white with a horror that had no name. Each of them locked in place, unable to move — the screams caught fast in their throats, as though every soul in the room had been snatched away at once.
Sekiguchi and Ando stood rigid, rooted where they stood.
Something like a physical cold pressed itself against the skin of their backs, crawling upward along the line of their spines inch by inch. Their arms felt as though they had been frozen solid — too heavy to lift. A cold sweat soaked through the fabric of their shirts in an instant.
____
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