Welcome to the Playground
There are places where fear is not discovered, but practiced. Recorded. Passed from hand to hand until it outlives the moment that created it. Images circulate without origin, stripped of context, replayed late at night until repetition hardens them into truth. This story begins with one such recording.
What it shows is unclear. What it suggests is much worse.
Inspiration for tonight’s story came to me while watching a rental movie by renown Japanese horror director 白石晃士 (SHIRAISHI KOUJI). The above scene is cut from—
“戦慄怪奇ファイルコワすぎ！FILE-01
Horrifying Mystery File - Too Scary! FILE-01.”
The actress played her part well, to the point where I became convinced she was after me, too. Here is my own interpretation.
Please enjoy.
“So, am I supposed to believe she is what killed Shinji Yamada?”
Officer Hattori paused the tape at the one-minute-thirty mark, and the woman on-screen froze mid‑step. She flickered in half-lit daylight and hummed at the threshold of hearing. Static dusted the image like ash. He then turned from the monitor, giving the room authority, and faced the pair sitting opposite. For form’s sake, he reviewed the crime-scene reports once more, the materials Osaka bureau forwarded to his Tokyo branch. Brushing over a list of objects found at the scene, Hattori noted candles, salt residue—sodium chloride, kitchen grade, no additives. Long black hair recovered from locations in Yamada’s apartment, none of it matching any known database. No signs of forced entry. No defensive wounds consistent with an attack.
Yet one had happened.
He slid the final envelope from the folder and stopped breathing. The crime-scene photos. He was used to seeing evil’s wake—knife wounds, blunt force trauma, bodies altered by panic or rage. Familiar patterns. Familiar intentions. But Yamada’s injuries were different. The first set showed what Livestream recorded. Candles burned low, wax pooling like tears. The salt circle remained intact. There was no sign of a struggle. No overturned furniture. The room looked almost reverent.
But the images of the aftermath truly shocked him. Yamada’s face— no longer there. Cut and reshaped with manic repetition, his wounds overlapped until no feature could be identified. Scissors, the report indicated. Some slashing. Some hacking. But most were precise cuts, again and again. Eyes, mouth, nose: all mashed to a single ruined surface, as if someone had attempted to carve him past recognition. Hattori felt his stomach tighten. He flipped to the next photo and immediately wished he hadn’t.
Blood marked the room in thin, directional lines—dragged outward, then back again—suggesting movement where none should have been possible. The forensic note confirmed another mystery for investigators: no defensive wounds. No attempt to flee. No evidence that the victim had even raised his hands. As if a command to stay still had been hung over Yamada. That was enough for Hattori, and he closed the folder. For the first time in years, he did not feel the comfort of procedure. No motive fit the report. Whoever—or whatever—acted with rage beyond murder.
After a calming pause, Hattori went to the suspect’s statements. It described a first meeting with the deceased, their proposed documentary, and a week spent chasing a woman whom no one could confirm existed. The account ended, perhaps deliberately, before the night in question. After he was done, he was back to his natural self. He set the folders down carefully and stated, “This tells me how you all met, but not how Yamada died.”
The pair knew something, something the police were missing. He watched them closely, trained eyes hunting for the smallest of fractures, already considering his next play. Thirty years of work told him the older man wouldn’t talk the moment he walked in. A known paranormal YouTuber by the name of Mori sat down rigidly, arms crossed, and stayed that way. But Emi, the woman beside him, was a different matter. She never lifted her face after breaking into tears once questioning began. Hattori concluded the woman was easier to break. Trembling fingers gave her away, and all he had to do was push the consequences harder.
“Alright, I’ll admit it,” he said, shifting tone. The cheap coffee between the two men had gone untouched. “With no DNA matches at Yamada’s apartment, the two of you may dodge prison. But still, being tied to a homicide like this, well, I’d say it’s its own punishment. You both should think hard about how your reputations will survive this. Sponsors turn away. Audiences disappear. Who wants to watch two suspected killers?”
Mori, in a brown jacket, still recovering from the morning rain, shifted in the sterile chair. He murmured something like, “We had nothing to do with it.”
“Well, Yamada disagreed,” Hattori replied sharply. “He spoke of you both in his last Livestream, told his audience that what he was doing was all your idea. It was right after lighting the candles.”
“Candles?”
Did Officer Hattori just catch something? The word slipped out too quickly, and he could have sworn a glint of nervousness in Mori’s eye. He made a note—habit, not suspicion—and continued, “Yes, six of them. Arranged around his room. He was kneeling in a circle of salt, too.”
Lowering his head, what Mori said next wasn’t lost on Hattori, who wrote it down, too. “That idiot actually went through with it.” Realizing his mistake, he scrambled to change the subject. “Look, officer. We didn’t kill Yamada, that’s all there is to it. If you’ve got nothing to pin on us… then just let—”
“The slit-mouthed woman.” Emi’s thin voice cut through the room, silencing it. For the first time, Mori’s face turned bone-white. Emi rose from beneath her hands, facing Officer Hattori with teary eyes. Something in her delicate voice had given way. It was noticeable within her, even under duress. “Kuchisake-onna. That’s the woman in the video, and the one who killed Yamada, I’m certain of it.” She then turned away, almost ashamed of the words she repeated. “The slit-mouthed woman.”
“Emi, stop,” Mori came in sharp, bursting from his repose. “You know what we agreed—”
“FUCK our viewers!” Emi cried out. On the edge of tears again, her fractured voice startled even her, “I’m living with a seventy-year-old mother. Hearing I’ve been taken to the police will kill her. Please, Mori, just tell him what he wants to know.”
Hattori exhaled slowly.
Overthe years of service, he’d heard all manner of confessions—real ones, false ones, half-formed ones born from fear, or guilt. But this felt different. He switched from the pair to the woman on the TV screen and back again. “You mean the legend? A ghost killed Yamada.”
Hesitating, Mori took a deep breath and then agreed with the officer. “You’ve heard of her, then?”
Hattori racked his brain for a memory. The turn in the interrogation had him on the back foot. “Am I pretty? Am I pretty? That's what the slit-mouthed woman goes around asking.”
“That’s a general version, but yeah.” Mori added, “If your answer is no, she’ll kill you on the spot. If you say yes, then she makes art out of your face. Turns you into a walking Picasso for the final moments of your life. Pretty much, you’re dead either way.”
“Are you telling me she’s our suspect?” Hattori asked, not believing the words coming from his lips. “It’s got to be a hoax.”
“I thought so, too. Still do, in a way.”
“But, Minato station has never received any reports of a woman mutilating people on their streets, not since I’ve worked here.”
Mori pointed to the TV on pause. “Well, she’s real, according to Yamada. You’ve just played the tape that brought us together. He must’ve recorded it a month or two ago. A two-bit YouTuber with barely five hundred subscribers emailed me one day, practically begging to collaborate. “Hunt for the slit-mouthed woman”, what’s to lose?” he said. I could smell a hoax the moment we played it, still do, but viewers always want weird crap like that to keep them entertained. Never did find her.”
“We stayed in town for a week, asking everyone we could.” Emi added quietly, “The homeless had the most to say, but never anything concrete. This… ghost doesn’t seem to be as indiscriminate as the legend says. I mean, the worst she’s done is terrify people.”
“We heard she’s searching. Her former lover, you see, from when she was alive. On top of those pretty questions, people around here have been asked— Are you my lover? If you say no, she chases them away. Shaken, but alive.”
“So what happened next?” Hattori waited. The silence stretched, and he noted the time automatically.
“By the weekend, our deadline was upon us, but we still had nothing usable. What a waste of a trip. No footage. No sightings. Just hair.”
Hattori said nothing, but flipped to a page in the file discreetly. The forensic note stared back at him. Origin undetermined. No follicular tissue.
“All we could recover were locks of long, black hair. Supposedly left at her sighted locations.”
“And what was Yamada doing in all this?”
“He lost it. Once I told him we were leaving, that asshole accused me of sabotaging his YouTube career. Wrecked one of my cameras, too. I could have killed him myself.” Mori’s jaw tightened. “Despite what you think of me, I did feel sorry for the guy. He reminded me of my younger days. So, I left him with a parting gift, instructions for a summoning ritual. Have you ever heard about the prayer to Open the Nameless Gate?”
“No.” Hattori felt the familiar tightening behind his eyes—the sensation of a case stepping outside its own boundaries. “What kind of ritual is it?”
“Something we came across years ago. You’re supposed to do it at 12:00 a.m. By placing a mirror upright on a table, six candles around the room, then prepare two cups, one with water, and one with sake. In front of the mirror, place four small stones: two picked from the west and two from the east of your home. Then sit in front of the mirror so your reflection is centered. Clasp your hands in front of your chest and close your eyes to repeat the following sequence 14 times. The name of the person you want to summon, the name of the person they're searching for, and the address of the place you’re performing the prayer. And when you open your eyes, it’s said that the deceased will appear.
“You ever performed this ritual yourselves?”
“We’ve tried it on our channel, but it was fake,” Emi said, looking to Mori for confirmation. “It was too scary to go through with the real thing. So, we mixed up the wording. It was just for show.”
“I just wanted to cheer him up before we left, nothing more.” Mori then explained, “My guess is it actually worked, though not in the way we all expected.”
Hattori closed the folder. There was no field for that sort of conclusion. No code. No form. “There’s more?”
Emi concluded their story, almost a confession at this point. “We researched properly once we got back to Tokyo. Not on forums—archives. Old accounts. The slit‑mouthed woman isn’t searching for love.” She closed her eyes in regret. “She’s searching for the man she wants to punish. Her revenge, for a horrid life and a violent death—”
“So, her lover killed her, and she’s looking for revenge? And Yamada pretended to be that same man.” Hattori said, trying to get a grip on events.
“Yeah,” Mori replied. “It looks like she found him.”
Neither of them spoke.
Hattori rewound the tape and watched again, for longer than necessary, and noticed the woman did not cast a shadow in the daylight.
It was the first time he did not write that down.
There was nowhere to put it.
