Majo no Tabitabi - Volume 15 - Chapter 1.35

CHAPTER 1 STORY 35

Am I Pretty?

“Saya. When I say ‘summer,’ do you know what that means?”

“Well, that can only mean one thing, Elaina. Summer means the ocean—”

“That’s right, ghost stories.”

“Uh, no, the ocean—”

“Ghost stories, that’s right. Yes indeed.”

Elaina rapidly set up some candles on the table, then turned to me and said enthusiastically, “And so let’s tell some ghost stories today.”

Normally, I would gladly leap at the chance to do just about anything as long as Elaina invited me to, but in this particular instance, I screwed up my face in a grimace beside the enthusiastic Elaina.

“I’m not really one of those witches who is very good at telling ghost stories, you know.”

“Now, this is something that really happened to a friend of a friend of mine—”

“Ah, hang on… Elaina, are you ignoring me?”

“Of course, when it’s summertime, you always want to tell stories that will send a shiver down your spine, isn’t that right?”

“I can’t really handle spine-tingling stories.”

“Saya, do you know the story of the scary manjuu?”

“That’s the story where someone tries to harass a man who says he’s afraid of manjuu by giving him manjuu to scare him, right? I think the punchline was that the man was actually lying because he wanted to eat manjuu, though.”

“That’s right.”

“So what about it?”

“I bet when you say you can’t handle spine-tingling stories, you’re basically doing it for the same reason as that man did.”

“Wrong.”

“Well, setting that aside, this is something that really happened to a friend of a friend of mine—”

“So I take it that you intend to force me to listen to your story anyway, Elaina?”

Sitting in front of the gently flickering candles, Elaina wore a bewitching smile as she presented the following ghost story to me.

One evening, a woman walking down a back alley in a certain country felt a strange presence behind her.

Someone somewhere is watching me—that’s what she felt. Every time she took a step forward through the darkness, she heard the clonk, clonk of heavy footsteps echo through the night.

The only footsteps she was hearing were her own. Even when she got up her nerve and turned around to look, the only thing behind her was a dark alleyway. There wasn’t anyone there.

Still, she had the feeling that somewhere, someone was watching her. But the feeling was all she had. Once she had that worry on her mind, she could no longer pay attention to anything else.

The woman started feeling like everything was some suspicious creature waiting to attack her in the dark, from her own shadow as she walked along, to the clouds roiling ominously in the sky, to even her own reflection in the windows she passed.

But she kept walking, pretending to be calm.

“……”

Then, before too long, she saw another woman wearing a coat walking toward her from the direction she was headed. Clonk, clonk—her heels struck the cobblestones. The woman was brimming with a mysterious aura. She was hanging her head low and had a scarf wound around her mouth so that nothing was visible below her eyes. The little bit of her skin that was visible was shockingly white, and her figure, illuminated by the moonlight, looked almost translucent.

The first woman was afraid.

It was the height of summer, you see.

So wearing a coat was extremely out of season—

Before long, the two women passed by each other.

So as not to make eye contact with the eerie woman, the first woman lowered her head in the same manner and tried to slip past her.

But—

“Hey, you.”

The stranger tightly gripped the woman’s shoulder. Startled, she looked up, and the eerie woman’s face was right next to hers.

The woman was terrified.

It was at that point that she remembered something. She recalled an extremely famous ghost story. Someone was walking alone at night when a lone woman came from the opposite direction. That woman was grotesque, a creepy, uncanny creature whose mouth had been cut open all the way up to her ears.

Night after night, she appeared before people walking alone and asked them one question.

“Am I pretty…?”

And so just like the story—

—the woman unwound the scarf that had been covering her mouth.

The scarf gently fell onto the ground.

“Uh, ah…”

The first woman began to tremble.

She looked at the other woman before her eyes. The grotesque creature that had removed its scarf was, to her surprise, a very beautiful young lady with ash-gray hair. Her mouth wasn’t slashed at all. The weirdest thing about her was that she was supercute. Who on earth could she have been?

That’s right, it’s—

“Wait just a minute, please.”

“Sure. What’s the matter?”

Elaina was in the middle of her story, but I called for a time-out.

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

“What was that story just now?”

I thought it was going to be a scary story, but then Elaina showed up.

“The punchline is that I’m the supposedly grotesque creature. To put it even more simply, it’s a story about how I’m pretty.”

“……”

“So what did you think?”

“It turned into a story that had me shaking for a different reason…”

It was just like in the story about scary manjuu that Elaina herself had brought up earlier.

“Well, in the end, my beauty was the most frightening thing, huh? You got me, you got me.”

It wasn’t a scary story or really much of a story at all.

……

I thought I was ready, but she still got me.

“I was sure you were going to tell me an incredibly scary story, one that would leave me trembling…”

I breathed a sigh of relief. I can’t handle scary stories.

Actually—

“What about that story was supposed to be scary, Elaina…?”

I was relieved, but at the same time, I was a little disappointed.

Elaina looked at me in my disappointment and let out a little chuckle.

“Let me see…”

She blew out the candles and said—

“My beauty, I suppose…”

Not long after that, Elaina left my room. She had suddenly shown up that afternoon and then left after only telling just one scary story, so I really didn’t understand what was going on with her that day! If I’d gotten the chance, I would have liked to ask her about having lunch together or something, but…

Such thoughts were circling around my mind when—

“Saya. Hello.”

—Elaina appeared again. Acting as if it was the first time we had seen each other that day, she tilted her head and asked, “Saya, have you had lunch already? If you haven’t, how about eating with me now?”

And so—

“Gladly, so long as you don’t tell any more weird stories like earlier,” I agreed.

To which Elaina asked quizzically, “Earlier…? Weird stories…? What are you talking about?”

Then, looking at me very, very curiously, she said, “But I was in my room reading a book until just a minute ago…”

[Publication Information] GA Novels Published Fair

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[Author Comments]

I think this is a little different from a supernatural encounter, but I myself have also had some strange experiences. For example, one day, back when I was a student, I was gazing vacantly out the window when I heard footsteps approaching me from behind, and when I turned around to see who it could be, no one was there. Well, although it’s not like that experience became the basis for me writing this story or anything.