Chapter 12: Article Publication

Rena let the article sit for three days.

Letting an article sit before publication was her habit. Immediately after an interview, the voices of the witnesses feel too close. The atmosphere of the location remains in one's body, and even coincidences seem to hold meaning. After leaving it for a few days, the excess heat fades. The weak parts, the parts that are too assertive, and the parts where the desire to scare the reader takes precedence become visible.

She had intended to do the same this time.

However, even after three days, the heat of the article did not fade.

Rather, it felt as if the article alone was quietly becoming damp inside Rena's room.

The title had already been decided.

On the night before publication, there was a call from Keigo Kiryu. He was an editor at a major publishing house who handled articles on crime history and local culture, and he had helped Rena several times when she hit a wall with materials she couldn't reach. It was a relationship that smelled a bit too much of work to be dismissed with the word 'lover'.

'That headline is strong,' Keigo said. 'A strong headline moves people. Some will even go looking for scary things.'

'Are you talking about summoning a supernatural entity?'

'I'm talking about the humans.'

Rena remained silent. His way of putting it was more realistic than superstition, and for that reason, it stuck in her ears.

'The Slit-Mouthed Woman Runs Through Water'

The main text was structured in three parts. The first part contained photos and testimonies from the snack bar 'Mizudori'. The second part covered the rumors that spread around Mizushiro Elementary School in 1979. The third part covered the hospital, the brothers' testimonies, and the possibility of a woman traveling through reflective surfaces.

Rena revised the text many times to avoid making definitive statements.

She did not write, 'It appeared.'

She wrote, 'It is said to have appeared.'

She did not write, 'It was the Slit-Mouthed Woman.'

She wrote, 'It was spoken of in connection with the existing image of the Slit-Mouthed Woman.'

She absolutely did not write, 'The patient is the cause.'

I dedicated a section to the prejudice against hospitals and patients. Back in 1979, windows with iron bars instilled fear in children. However, that fear does not justify turning actual patients into monsters. Rather, this rumor embodies the cruelty of a child's society that seeks comfort by blaming someone for what it does not understand.

I also included Sawai's words.

Please do not turn the patients into monsters.

However, please do not turn that woman back into a mere human, either.

Rena hesitated over that final sentence.

If she published the article, the rumor would spread. She would be re-disseminating the supernatural phenomenon. She would be delivering a small local rumor to readers across the country. How much difference is there between a school break in 1979 and modern social media?

Is it not just a difference in speed?

Children used to carry rumors by word of mouth. Newspapers and weekly magazines added details and spread them nationwide. In the modern era, individual articles and social media posts do the same thing. Someone writes a headline, someone quotes it, and someone attaches an image. The rumor gets dressed up by the fingertips that press the share button.

There was also the option not to publish.

Rena thought about it seriously. She could keep the photos of the envelope, organize the testimonies, and end it as a personal record. If she did that, she could at least avoid becoming the starting point for a new rumor.

But if she didn't publish it, perhaps only the old prejudices would remain.

The woman who escaped from the hospital.

The patient who was a monster.

Perhaps only such simple stories would continue to be told. Sawai's anger, the pain in the siblings' memories, Nogami's work light, and the reflection on the water would all disappear without reaching anyone.

Rena knew that this was a convenient excuse for herself.

She certainly had a desire to write an article that would attract attention. If she gave the old Slit-Mouthed Woman a new angle—that she "runs through the water"—it would be read. An article that gets read becomes work. She was not reporting solely out of good intentions.

That is why she paused for a long time before the publish button.

While paused, she wrote a final note.

This article does not assert the existence of a supernatural phenomenon. Rather, it is a record that tracks how such phenomena take shape through people's narratives. When readers pass this story on to someone else, that very act of transmission may become part of a new rumor.

After finishing writing, she gave a bitter smile.

It was weak for a warning. It was closer to a temptation.

At 9:14 PM, Rena published the article.

Just before pressing the publish button, she received one more message from Keigo: 'If you're going to stop, now is the time.' Rena did not reply. The desire to be stopped and the desire not to be stopped existed within her with equal intensity.

For the first hour, the reaction was quiet.

A few regular readers left comments. The photos are eerie. The Showa-era rural vibe is good. It was good that it touched on prejudices against psychiatric hospitals. It was the usual kind of reaction.

Two hours later, a ghost story account shared the article.

'A local testimony that the Slit-Mouthed Woman moves through the reflections in rice paddies. Quite scary.'

From there, it started to grow rapidly.

By the time it was past midnight, the article's view count was ten times the usual. Quote posts increased. The toilet window in the photo of the snack bar was enlarged, circled in red, brightness adjusted, and analyzed. Someone said, 'There's a face here,' and someone else said, 'No, that's just a reflection behind the photographer.'

By morning, the first sighting post appeared.

'After reading this article, I saw something like a white mask reflected in the black screen of my smartphone.'

Just jumping on the bandwagon, Rena thought.

Next, a photo of a train window was posted. Inside the train at night, the passengers' faces are reflected in the glass. Behind them, there is something like a white mask. The image quality is poor. It could easily be edited. The comment section was noisy.

'It appeared.'

'Fake.'

'Too scary.'

'Is this a Slit-Mouthed Woman revival?'

'Does it come through windows even if there's no water?'

In the afternoon, a photo of a car's rearview mirror appeared.

A rural road in the evening. A white dot in the mirror. The poster wrote, 'There was no one in the backseat.'

By night, a clip from a security camera had surfaced.

The entrance of a convenience store. In the glass of the automatic door, there was a shadow that looked like a woman in a mask. On the actual floor, there was no one.

Rena tried to determine its authenticity.

Most of it was just bandwagoning. Image manipulation, misidentification, intentional staging. She knew that on social media, the scarier something was, the more it proliferated.

However, multiple posts, which should have had no contact with one another, contained the same phrasing.

"It wasn't running."

"It followed at the same speed inside the screen."

When Rena saw those two sentences, her fingertips went cold.

Jun's testimony was in the second half of the article. If you read it, you could imitate it. So, it wouldn't be strange for the same expression to appear.

But the first two posts had appeared only about ten minutes after the article was published. It was highly likely they had posted after only looking at the photo, before reading the full text. Moreover, one person claimed they hadn't even opened the link to the article.

Of course, that could also be a lie.

I hope it is a lie, Rena thought.

The view count continued to climb.

In the comments section, old memories began to gather. There was a woman in a mask in the hospital window in my town, too. I heard about it on the way home from cram school. I was told to say pomade. I brought home tortoise-shell candy. It was a red coat. It was a white coat. They were three sisters. It was a woman who had a botched plastic surgery. It was a woman whose mouth was slit by her husband.

Slit-mouthed women from all over the country were flowing into the water surface of the article.

As Rena watched the screen, she was witnessing the moment a rumor put on clothes.

In classrooms in 1979, children dressed the woman in red. On modern social media, anonymous posters were giving the woman new ways to travel. Black smartphone screens, train windows, security cameras, car mirrors. Even without water, if it reflects, it comes. Someone writes that, and someone else nods.

Rumors only keep what is accepted.

And what remains becomes the setting.

At 11:00 PM, images began to arrive in Rena's mailbox. They were tips from readers. Attached files, social media links, videos. The subject lines were lined with "I saw it," "Is this," "Is it real?," and "Please delete it."

Rena opened them one by one.

Most of them showed nothing. White dots that you could only see if you tried. Smudges on the window. Reflections of people's faces. Passersby wearing masks.

However, one photo closed the moment she opened it.

It was a photo of the bathroom mirror. The photographer's own face was not visible. The faucet, the white sink, the edge of the mirror. Deep in the mirror, there was a reflection like an even smaller mirror, and inside that was a white mask.

The subject line was short.

"If I don't answer, will you stay forever?"

Rena did not reply.

If she replied, she would be participating in the other person's narrative. She realized she had thought that, and it sent a chill down her spine.

She was already starting to believe.

At 1:00 AM, a short post was left in the article's comment section.

The account name was a meaningless string of characters, almost blank.

"Pretty"

That was all.

A few seconds later, the same account posted again.

"Even this"

Rena deleted the comment from the management screen.

The comment she had supposedly deleted was immediately spread via screenshots.

The rumors were no longer contained within Rena's article.

Changes in the comment section

On the third day of publication, the atmosphere in the comment section changed.

On the first day, the reactions were mostly that it was scary, nostalgic, or that the photos were eerie. By the second day, there was an increase in verification and bandwagoning. By the third day, people started mixing in their own consultations.

“Ever since I read this article, I can’t look at the mirror in the bathroom.”

“I heard the same story when I was a child. In my area, it wasn’t a river, but an irrigation canal.”

“My mother used to tell me not to look back when near water.”

“Is it really okay to be entertained by a story about a hospital like this?”

When she saw that last comment, Reina stared at the screen for a long time.

That was the very question she herself had grappled with before publishing. She wanted it to be read as a ghost story. But she didn’t want to hurt anyone by making them afraid. She wanted to pursue the supernatural. But she didn’t want to exploit real hospitals or patients.

She had intended for the article to explain that precarious balance.

However, most readers only took away the conclusion. Running through the water. Appearing on the screen. If you don’t answer, it follows you. Only those intense parts were extracted. Warnings come too late. Ethics cannot keep up with the spread.

Reina wondered whether to temporarily close the comment section.

If she closed it, readers would just talk elsewhere. If she kept it open, it would at least be within her sight. But being within her sight also meant that she would become the receptacle for the rumors.

That night, she added a postscript to the end of the article.

“When discussing this story, please do not associate it with any real medical institutions or individuals. Talking about fear is different from turning someone into a monster.”

The postscript was shared by a certain number of readers.

At the same time, another reader quoted it like this:

“So, does that mean there’s someone who shouldn’t be turned into a monster?”

Reina closed her eyes in front of the screen.

Words do not behave as the writer intends.

Ghost stories are especially like that. Denials, warnings, and supplements all become ingredients. Just as children took school notices as “proof that it’s really dangerous,” modern readers take warnings as “proof that something is being hidden.”

Reina knew that structure.

She knew, and she published it.

That fact had begun to quietly corner her.

Bandwagoning and the Real Thing

Rena sorted the submissions into three boxes.

The first was obvious bandwagoning. Photos of friends wearing white masks standing in front of mirrors, women who looked AI-generated, clips from old movies. Things meant only to scare. These were easy to spot.

The second was misidentification. Smudges on windows, light reflections, passersby wearing masks, shadows of curtains. The people involved were genuinely scared, but these things could be explained. These had to be handled carefully. If you laughed, the other person would become stubborn. If you denied it too strongly, they would conversely think you were hiding something.

The third was the most troublesome.

Things that might be explainable, but not immediately.

There was something white only at the edge of the screen, and the submitter's testimony matched the timestamp of the image. No traces of editing could be found. However, there was no basis to call it real, either. As an investigator, she had no choice but to put it on hold. Holding back was honest, but it left the readers unsatisfied.

Ghost stories hate being put on hold.

Real or fake?

Was it there, or was it not?

The more readers rush for an answer, the easier it is for them to participate in rumors. This is because rumors provide the shape of an answer in advance. It was a white mask. It was in the reflection. It ran through the water. By saying things like that, vague anxiety becomes a story.

Rena looked back at the images she had put in the third box.

Among them, there was one she simply could not delete.

It was a window of a night train. The submitter's face was not visible. Instead, the straps and seats of the train car were reflected in the dark window. The woman in the white mask looked as if she were superimposed not on the inside of the car, but on the darkness outside the window.

The accompanying text was short.

“She stayed in the same position the whole time until the station where I got off.”

Rena ended up saving that post.

The moment she saved it, she felt as if she had created another path for herself.

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