A Hole in the Fence

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Imaichō, Nara

(Translated and Arranged by Saya)

One hot summer day, I was walking down a street flanked by old houses, when I noticed a hole in the wooden fence of one of the houses. 

Curiosity made me peep through it, and I saw a beautiful woman who was having a bath in a wooden washtub. 

“Wow! Do some people still have a bath in a garden like that, in this day and age?”

Tarai (盥 Wooden Washtub)

A woman having a bath in a washtub 

An old house with a garden 

I nearly drew back in surprise, but stopped when suddenly a terrifying scene unfolded before me. 

A young man had no sooner stormed out of the house than he stabbed the woman’s chest with a knife he was holding! 

I screamed in spite of myself, and the man turned around. 

Our eyes met! Just as I felt my blood run cold, someone tapped on my shoulder. 

“Hey, boy! What are you doing there?” 

It was an old man. When I told him what I had just seen, his eyes widened. 

“A murder, you say? Haha! Impossible! That house behind the fence is my house, and I have lived alone in there for many years. If you doubt my words, why don’t you come in and check it out for yourself?” 

The old man amicably allowed me to enter the garden, and just as he had said, there were no dead body of the woman, or the young man or the washtub filled with water. 

“But you know, that’s so strange… An incident that was similar to what you claim to have seen did actually happen in this house, many decades ago. 

An adulterous wife was once knifed to death by a jealous husband. 

If what you’ve told me was true, then you’ve witnessed a murder which happened in the distant past. 

I would be very interested in hearing more about what you saw.” 

It seemed like the old man loved to gossip a lot. 

Smiling good-naturedly, he said: 

“Now I’ll go get you some cold mugi-cha (Note: 麦茶 Barley tea). Come inside and wait there,” and he disappeared into the house. 

Mugi-cha

While waiting, I peeped through the hole again from “the other side” and what appeared before me this time was a scene of me lying in a pool of blood with the old man standing next to me, holding a kitchen knife in his hand. 

What was being shown to me was the “future.” 

I understood everything clearly in a flash of a second, and ran away at full speed from the house. 

The jealous husband was alive and continued to live alone — in the very house where he murdered his wife.