One Sleepless Night, I Wrote a Ghost Story—Another Creative Path That Began in My Sixties—

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night.

When I was young, a drink would help me sleep, and I didn't mind a bit of fatigue. But in my sixties, there are nights when I wake up for no reason and simply cannot fall back asleep.

At such times, a thought occurred to me.

What if I went out to take out the trash right now?

Two in the morning.

An apartment building with no one around.

A silent trash collection area.

What if someone were there?

From that casual imagination, a ghost story was born.

When I was young, I was on the side of reading ghost stories.

I liked scary stories, but I never thought about writing them myself.

However, things are different lately.

I make music with AI.

I write novels.

I write ghost stories.

It is a bit strange even to me.

I thought that as I reached the second half of my life, new things would decrease.

But in reality, it was the opposite.

The things I loved as a child are returning in different forms.

This 'Woman Who Takes Out the Trash' is one of them.

A woman at a late-night trash collection point, opening trash bags one by one to check their contents.

And the next morning, an old photograph is found.

Even I, after finishing writing it, thought about that woman for a while.

What was she looking for?

Was she really looking for something?

Or was she confirming something else?

I didn't write the answer.

Because a ghost story loses its power the moment you explain it.

Recently, I also make music.

I write novels, too.

I write on note as well.

What they all have in common is that the goal is not to provide a 'correct answer'.

To have someone imagine just a little bit.

To have them see the scenery just a little bit.

Perhaps that is what creation is, after all.

I never thought I would be writing ghost stories in my sixties.

But life sometimes betrays our expectations.

That is why it is interesting.

This time, I would like to share a short ghost story born from such a night.

"At the Trash Collection Point"

That night, I just couldn't fall asleep.

It wasn't that I had drunk too much, nor did I have any important work waiting for me the next day. Once I had woken up, I simply couldn't find my way back to sleep. Every time I tossed and turned, the futon would rustle faintly, and by the time that sound faded, another would catch my ear. The low rumble of trucks on the distant main road and the sound of water running in some room sounded strangely clear in the silence of the night.

When I looked at the smartphone by my pillow, it was just past two in the morning. The white light of the LCD screen illuminated the dark bedroom, and I quickly turned the screen face down. The more I thought about how I had to sleep, the more alert my mind became, and I felt as if the numbers of the time were etched behind my closed eyelids.

I gave up and got out of the futon.

As I drank a cup of barley tea in the kitchen and leaned against the sink, looking out at the dark room, my eyes fell on the trash bag left by the entrance. Remembering that tomorrow was trash collection day, I thought that if I couldn't sleep anyway, I might as well take it out now. It would make my morning a few minutes easier. It seemed that for such a small reason, one could find a motive to start moving in the middle of the night.

When I carried the trash bag out the front door, the shared corridor looked like a completely different place than it did during the day. The lights, spaced at equal intervals, were white and cold, illuminating the floor and walls in an inorganic way. Even though it was a place bustling with children's voices and residents coming and going during the day, now only my own footsteps stretched out quietly.

While waiting for the elevator, I found myself gazing down the hallway. Every door was closed, and the row of mailboxes and the path leading to the bicycle parking area were all hushed. While I felt a little relieved to confirm that no one was there, I also realized that this relief was somewhat similar to a sense of loneliness.

When I went down to the first floor and passed through the entrance, a lukewarm night breeze brushed against my cheeks. Cars were lined up in the parking lot, but there was no sign of anyone, and almost all the lights in the windows were out. It felt as if the entire building had sunk into a deep sleep, and I was the only one walking through it.

The trash collection area is in the corner of the parking lot.

It's a place that feels like nothing during the day, but it had a strangely different impression when I came in the middle of the night. Only the area reached by the light of the streetlamp was dimly lit, and beyond that, it was submerged in darkness. I stopped in front of the sliding door and instinctively looked around.

There shouldn't be anyone there.

I think that.

But at the same time, the thought also occurs to me: I would hate it if someone were there.

It was precisely because I knew there was no one around that my imagination began to run wild on its own.

When I put my hand on the handle, the metal was cold from absorbing the night air.

The moment I opened the sliding door, damp air flowed out. The smell of food waste and wet cardboard mingled, and the heaviness peculiar to a closed-off space clung to the back of my nose.

And there, beyond that smell, was a human figure.

It was a woman.

She was crouching in front of the piled-up trash bags, opening the mouths of the bags one by one.

I stopped in my tracks right there.

The woman does not look at me. As if she hadn't heard the sound of the sliding door, she unties the opening of a bag, brings her face close to it, and peers inside for a while as if confirming something. Eventually, she shakes her head slightly, closes the bag, and reaches for the next one without hesitation.

Her movements were strangely meticulous.

She didn't seem to care about the dirt on the surface of the bags or the spots where kitchen waste juices had seeped through. She was only looking at what was inside. She looked less like someone searching for something and more like someone going around confirming that what she was looking for wasn't there.

A faded cardigan and a black skirt. Her hair, which reached her shoulders, wasn't messy, but it lacked luster and barely reflected the light from the streetlamp. While watching her back, I realized I was standing there frozen, still holding my own trash bag.

I thought about going home.

But that, too, felt strange.

This was the apartment building where I lived, and she might be a resident as well.

Even as I thought this, my throat felt strangely dry.

“Excuse me...”

When I called out, the woman's hands stopped.

Slowly, her face turned toward me.

I couldn't see her expression. Her face was just sunken in darkness, and I couldn't even tell where her eyes were. Yet, I knew for certain that I was being watched.

“Are you looking for something?”

My voice was sucked into the damp air.

The woman didn't answer.

In the back of the trash area, a plastic bag rustled faintly, and the smell of damp concrete mingled with the odor of kitchen waste. The woman remained motionless, facing me, and that silence felt strangely long.

Eventually, the woman stood up.

And without saying a word, she began to walk away.

I reflexively stepped aside.

The moment we passed each other, a scent different from the smell of the trash brushed past my nose. It was the smell of dry dust and old futons, like when you open a closet that has been kept closed for a long time.

When I instinctively turned around, the woman was already walking into the darkness.

I heard no footsteps.

I hurriedly set down the trash bag and closed the sliding door. As the sound of metal scraping echoed, I felt as if something that had been taut until then had finally unraveled.

The next morning.

Leaving the apartment with a groggy head, I stopped in front of the trash collection area.

A photograph had been dropped beside the entrance.

Thinking it was an advertisement or something similar, I picked it up and found myself unable to move for a while. With a white shoreline in the background, my sister and I from childhood were standing side by side. The moment I saw those smiles, it felt as if a long-forgotten time was rising from the depths of my heart, along with the summer sun and the scent of the tide.

It was a photograph that had gone missing about ten years ago.

The morning breeze blew, and the edge of the photo fluttered slightly. I turned it over out of curiosity, but nothing was written on it. Only a dark, smudge-like fingerprint remained on the edge.

I tucked the photo into my pocket and looked at the trash collection area one more time. The sliding door was closed, bathed in the morning light just as it had been the night before. A grade schooler on their way to school walked in the distance, and I heard the sound of a balcony window opening in one of the rooms.

Nothing had changed.

Many years have passed since then.

I still have the photograph with me.

In the end, I don't know what happened that night. But even now, whenever I go to take out the trash at night, I sometimes remember that woman.

#LifeReignited
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#60s
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#TheWomanWhoDiscardsTrash
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