Things might get a bit dicey this time.

That was the thought making rounds in my mind as we took our first snow-laden steps into the old house. The faint winter light trickled in through the rips in the translucent paper panes covering the windows, giving the dilapidated hallway a somber atmosphere. 

After trekking through a seasonally dead forest covered by last night’s snowfall, even the smallest relief from the biting cold was welcoming. Still, the broken windows lining the tight hallway and the smell of old, moldy wood reminded me of just how preposterous this situation was.

It’s so cold. My feet hurt. This place is falling apart. Ah, I want to go home so bad.

In stark contrast to my disposition, the short girl right in front of me seemed to be in particularly high spirits. With each confident step she took, the ruined building creaked in response, as if complaining about the intruders.

I thought about how my life decisions led to this situation, and a long-overdue sigh escaped my mouth.

“What am I even doing here?” I asked in a hushed voice.

It was a rhetorical question, but the girl had heard me somehow, and was taking my words at face value. She stopped dead in her tracks and turned back to face me with a frown.

“You were the one you insisted on coming, remember? I would have been just fine on my own.”

“You really thought I’d let you come to this haunted house alone? You might just get yourself killed by one of those ghosts you’re hunting.”

My words clearly hit a nerve with her.

“We’re not here for the ghosts. Or did you forget everything I told you?

“As if I could ever forget a single word you said,” I responded, feigning confidence.

“Really?” Ayumi’s expression seemed doubtful. “Then refresh my memory. This silence is starting to be a bit too much for my taste,” she said as she turned on her flashlight and continued deeper into the building.

From her tone, she probably meant for this little exchange to make me look like a fool, get a few laughs in, and lighten up the mood. Unfortunately for her, I’m not oblivious enough to fall for her tricks.

Yet, here I was, sneaking through broken windows into a house that was all but a ruin on a frigid winter evening. Ironic.

Anyway, to answer the girl’s question. Since a few years ago, the country has been plagued with sightings of what could only be called supernatural incidents. Ghosts, apparitions, poltergeists, UFOs, the whole shebang. Our town was no exception. This house in particular has been in a state of ruin for as long as I can remember, and naturally, it attracted the attention of many a ghosthunter.

However, Ayumi wasn’t after any old ghosts. Oh no. She was after a specific subset of apparitions, one who caused people to see a strange light and faint on the spot.

Yes, that’s right. We came here precisely because of those darn lights. Not for the ghosts and other crap believed to be haunting this place.

But apparently, that still wasn’t the right answer.

With a stomp, she whipped around to face me again; the tatami mat floor made a worrisome groaning response. “Nhgn… S-Some lights? That’s super vague! At least call them by their name! They saw an angel! And just a few hours ago, at that. This is our freshest lead yet! Where’s your passion?!”

“You have enough passion for both of us. I’m here to make sure you don’t do anything dangerous.”

Or stupid. Those usually come hand in hand with you.

“I know that…” She adjusted her hairpin, which was about to fall off due to her careless stomping, and continued walking. “I was just hoping you were starting to enjoy hunting for angels with me.”

“Yeah, that isn’t happening any time soon.”

Ayumi sighed and walked deeper into the dilapidated building without a word. With a swish of her hand, she opened a nearby sliding door.

“Takkun, this is the first room we need to investigate,” she said, her emerald-green eyes shining with glee.

This room used to be covered in tatami mats, but they had rotted away or had been ripped over the decades, exposing the wood below. Nothing of value left inside. But that didn’t demote Ayumi, who still had her trademark dazzling smile plastered all over her face. She rummaged through her bag and took out an old-fashioned notebook and pencil. “Record a decent enough video while I look around for clues. And make it all shaky and stuff. Adds to the atmosphere.”

Resigned, I did as ordered.

Ayumi and I investigated the entire minka for a good while. We turned over every object, even going so far as to lift the few tatami mats that were left, without finding anything substantial. Honestly, I can't say I wasn’t a bit disappointed. This place was supposedly more cursed than an abandoned road-side love hotel, but we weren’t seeing anything unusual. That begged the question as to what exactly this so-called “curse” was in the first place.

“The rumors say that the husband brought people into a secret room, then tortured and killed them,” Ayumi responded.

“Yikes. I hope that’s not true.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

“Perhaps it is, perhaps not. What we do know for sure is that the tenants had some complaints: furniture moving on its own, blood dripping from walls... You know, the usual stuff.”

You call that the usual stuff?

“But while I was investigating the case, something caught my attention. The latest visitors have seen other mysterious events not related to that story. For example disturbances to electronic devices, and the hallways being dark despite light coming through the windows. Or a wall you can walk through.”

“That sounds suspiciously like a secret door to me.”

Ayumi replied to my comment with narrowed eyes. “Not that, silly. It’s an actual solid wall that you can walk through as if it was air. The speculation going around is that a door once stood there, but it was removed by someone… or something.”

Please don’t say something with a straight face.

“Because of those details, I’ve had my eyes on this place for some time now. That last report was the final straw. Seeing lights and fainting for no reason is a clear sign ‘angels’ were here. Why though, I have no idea.”

“Maybe they felt some kinship with the ghosts?”

Ayumi’s glare made me feel like I had just uttered the most barbaric of offenses.

Joking even a little about this absurd urban legend around Ayumi was a terrible idea. I should have known better. She was so serious about it at that point that it had become an obsession like no other. And field trips like these, where she—well, we—went looking for them, were like her lifeblood.

Unsurprisingly, we didn’t find anything out of the ordinary inside the mansion. Despite exploring every nook and cranny of the place, it was evident that, if something had happened here, it had been destroyed by time. No blood on the walls, no weird spooky noises, nothing. There was not a trace of evil to be found in this residence.

As for that famous wall…

“It’s completely solid!” Ayumi exclaimed after she examined the hallway it was supposedly in.

“Hmph. No surprises there.”

The girl scrunched up her nose and grumbled.

“Well, that was the last thing to look at. What a shame. This was another dead-end. No evidence of angels either, as usual.”

Ayumi called this ‘paranormal journalism’. I called it what it truly was: a waste of time. After all, there was a 99% chance she would find nothing of value during these investigations—and even if she lucked out, it was hard to relate to the supernatural in any way.

Having taken enough videos of the innocuous wall to last a lifetime, I leaned on it to prove that, once and for all, that it was solid.

“Can I suggest something?”

Ayumi looked at me with her gaze sharp as a knife. “I have a feeling I know what you’re going to say, but go ahead.”

“Maybe—just maybe—these people are making it up or remembering things incorrectly. This is the, what, thirtieth or so time we’ve followed these rumors about weird lights, and we always come out empty-handed.”

In response, Ayumi stomped the floor with surprising force. The entire house groaned as if being awakened from a long slumber.  She has some scary strength despite her size.

“That’s what’s so frustrating! They could at least leave some sort of dubious hint behind, but it’s always the same. Nothing!”

Why would they leave any hints behind? That would ruin their entire mystique. If they exist, that is.

“I concede some people may be lying or making it up, but there’s no way all these similar reports coming from all over are a coincidence,” she concluded.

“I bet that you and others writing about it leads to more people thinking they fainted because of these lights. That’s how urban legends start in the first place.”

Ayumi mumbled, but I couldn’t quite hear what she had said. Deep down, she knew I was right. But even after so many years of this back and forth, she still wouldn’t budge an inch.

Thus, a moment of tense silence fell upon us. Surprisingly, it was the crestfallen Ayumi who had broken it first.

“Well, we’ve explored every nook and cranny of this mansion. I guess it’s time to go back.”

Instead of making her exit the way we came in, she instead took a shortcut through a room we had never crossed before. The mistake made her not check if the floor was safe to walk on or not.

And that’s when it happened.

The rotten wood floor beneath Ayumi collapsed in the blink of an eye. Before I even had time to realize what was happening, I rushed to grab the girl’s hand.

“T-Takkun!”

Her legs were dangling over the open hole. The only things stopping her from falling were my hands grabbing her left hand and her right gripping the rim of the pit.

“Grhh! Just grab on tight!”

Thankfully, Ayumi was a very petite girl, so even my sofa-trained muscles were enough to pull her back to relative safety.

“Are you alright?”

“Yeah… I think so,” she said with a haggard voice. “Damn, my skirt and blazer got ripped. Guess I’ll have to get new ones. But I’m fine!”

She flashed a smile, but her face was paler than I’d ever seen her.

“Darn it. I knew we shouldn’t have come here. This was too dangerous,” I said.

“Well, you gotta take some risk in this line of—” Her speech was interrupted by another loud cracking noise coming from somewhere.

That doesn’t sound good.

“We shouldn’t be here any longer.”

For once, Ayumi agreed with me. “Yeah. Let’s get out of here.”

We raced out of the dilapidated building as fast as we could, as more and more frightening noises came from all around us. We managed to leave the same way we came, but as we put some distance between us and the building…

“Woah!”

I turned around as the loudest noise yet bombarded my ears. Before my very eyes, the tiled roof of the mansion collapsed.

If we had been inside, we would have been toast.

Ayumi stood there, speechless, for a couple of seconds.

Even this should be enough to get some sense into her, no?

“Well, that was a closed one, wasn’t it? Maybe the angels thought we were getting too close and tried to eliminate us? Ahahah!”

There really is no saving this girl.

While Ayumi was already making her way down the hill, I stopped despite myself; a nagging thought overcame the desire to get back home as soon as possible.

I glanced back at the minka peeking over the wall and pondered for a moment. 

Did something supernatural happen here?

Could those angels actually exist?

“Takkun, what’s wrong?”

Ayumi’s intense voice brought me back to reality.

Such silly thoughts.

I mentally slapped myself for being idiotic. Afterwards, I trailed my friend through the woods and back to civilization.