This happened about ten years ago.

Having only finished middle school, I left my backwater hometown—a place with nothing but farm fields—to look for work and moved to a slightly more developed part of the prefecture.

I was busting my ass working for crap wages without a single day off, until one day...

My boss handed me some spending money and told me to take two or three days off to go back home. I wasn't particularly eager, but I figured I'd go just to catch my breath.

The train ride to my destination was supposed to take about an hour, but for some reason, I got off one stop too early.

Being a country bumpkin who had never ridden a train before, the thought of just waiting and taking the next train to the right station didn't even cross my mind.

I figured I could just walk, so I set off without thinking much of it.

Even though this was supposed to be my old neighborhood, I suddenly had no idea where I was. As I started to panic and wander around aimlessly, I ran into a girl buying a drink from a vending machine.

Thinking this was my lucky break, I asked her for directions to the station. To my surprise, she offered to walk with me all the way there.

As we walked along, the conversation naturally turned to talking about ourselves.

She told me she went to a high school nearby and happened to be my age. She was wearing an oddly worn-out track jacket, which made me wonder if it was a hand-me-down from an older sibling.

Since it was summer, we got tired after walking for a while. When I suggested taking a break in the shade of a tree, she nodded with a strangely happy look on her face, and the two of us sat down.

I don't remember how long we stayed like that, but a silence settled over us—one that felt surprisingly comfortable.

Even though we had just met, it almost felt like we had known each other forever.

While I was lost in that peculiar feeling, she broke the silence and began telling me something.

She said she had a reason for not wanting to be at home.

Put simply, she said her father was physically abusive.

With the kind of brainless ignorance typical of a guy who barely finished middle school, I blurted out without a second thought, "Then why don't you just come live with me?"

Her eyes went wide, and she stared at me in complete surprise.

"Are you really sure? Because if you are, I want to go right now today!"

she said, tears welling up in her eyes.

We agreed that once we reached the next station, we would head straight to my apartment, and we started walking again.

As we walked, there was a bounce in her step,

and we laughed together as we talked about what our life would be like once she moved in.

But something was off. No matter how long we walked, we never reached the station.

Growing anxious, I asked her how much farther it was, and she said we were almost there. But I remembered getting off the train around noon.

Even with the long summer days, the surroundings were already glowing with the colors of sunset.

Even for the countryside, there was no way it should have taken this long to reach the next stop.

Oblivious to my growing dread, she told me that the supermarket where she worked part-time was close by, asking me to come along so she could go in and quit on the spot, her eyes sparkling with excitement.

Feeling uneasy, I went along with it anyway. Since I was getting hungry, I bought a rice ball and ate it outside.

But she didn't come back out. She was taking far too long. Needing to pee, I went into the restroom to relieve myself.

As I was washing my hands, someone began pounding violently on the restroom entrance.

It was a men's room with several urinals, designed so that anyone could just walk right in without knocking on an outer door.

Puzzled, I pushed the door open, and for some reason, a police officer was standing there.

"What on earth are you doing in a place like this?"

Snapping slightly at what seemed like a completely absurd question,

I explained everything that had happened in a sharp tone. I told him every detail, yet the officer looked totally unconvinced, a light sheen of cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.

("What in the world are you doing in an abandoned ruin like this?")

This is a true story. After that, the police gave me a ride to the station; it took about thirty minutes driving down a mountain and another twenty minutes along the road before we finally arrived.