"There's something wrong with this baby."

When Ms. Hara (a pseudonym), an acquaintance of my mother's, got pregnant with her first child, that was the thought that struck her. She didn't know what was wrong with it herself, but the feeling was so strong she even considered getting an abortion. However, everyone dismissed it as post-partum anxiety or pregnancy blues, so she carried the baby to term, filled with a deep sense of dread. The baby was a boy, and she named him Satoshi.

Once he was born, her anxiety vanished as if it had all been a lie, and Satoshi grew up healthy and happy. But tragedy struck when Satoshi was in the fifth grade. Satoshi died after leaping into the street to shield a younger boy who was chasing a cat. For Ms. Hara, the grief was beyond words.

Though it was hard to call it a silver lining, the boy Satoshi saved—let's call him Yuta—didn't have a single scratch on him. Yet when Ms. Hara was informed of this, Yuta's parents offered neither an apology nor a word of thanks. That lack of remorse dragged Ms. Hara even deeper into the depths of despair.

The unbearable news didn't stop there. Yuta was a second-grader at the same school Satoshi had attended, and soon rumors began circulating about a major incident he had caused. Supposedly, he had tortured and killed multiple stray cats. Which meant that on the day of the accident, when he was chasing that cat, he was doing it to kill it... Realizing this made Ms. Hara feel an overwhelming, sickening ache.

"Oh, Satoshi... It seems the boy you saved wasn't a good boy after all..."

Ms. Hara wept as she spoke to Satoshi's tombstone during a visit to his grave. "The one who shouldn't have been born was Yuta." Suddenly, she felt as though she heard those words whispered in her ear. She was certain it was Satoshi's voice.

Shortly after that, Ms. Hara received a letter from Yuta's mother. "Yuta was a child who should never have been born. When I was pregnant with him, I felt in my gut that I shouldn't have this baby. The rumors about the cats are true. Yuta is the one who should have died in that accident. I am so, so sorry." That was the gist of the letter. Ms. Hara said she was chilled to the bone by the bizarre coincidence between her own pregnancy fears and those of Yuta's mother. Yuta transferred to another school soon after, and no one knows what became of him.

"I hear you write stories," Ms. Hara told me at the end of her account, her expression twisting into something horrifying, like a demon's mask. "Turn this into a story and spread it as far and wide as you can."