This is a story about a guy named Tomoya from my college days. He’d party every single night, barely showed up to class, handed in blank exams, and didn't give a damn about failing. He was pretty wild, but he had a bright, easygoing personality, so he was popular with both guys and girls.

He was always down for anything—his default stance was to accept every single invitation. Whenever I told him, "You'd really tag along anywhere at any time, wouldn't you?"

"It's a waste not to have fun while you still can," he'd say.

I remember him answering so nonchalantly. Hearing that, I actually thought he had a point (laughs).

It was during the summer break of our sophomore year. After a group of us grabbed some food, one guy suggested going to a haunted spot. Even though it was past midnight, all five of us there—myself included—were totally up for it. Except Tomoya. He was the only one who wouldn't nod along. The guy who would usually be the first to jump at the idea just stood there with a dark expression on his face.

"Come on, Tomoya, you're coming too."

The guy who brought it up called out to him, but Tomoya kept insisting he wasn't going. Even when we teased him—"What, are you chicken?"—he stubbornly refused, saying, "It's not that. I'm just not going." His refusal started to rain on everyone's parade. When the biggest mood-maker won't come, the mood naturally sours. Then, one of the guys asked him:

"Wait, are you bad with ghost stuff or something?"

"...It's not that."

"Then why won't you come?"

After a short pause, Tomoya looked around at all of us and spoke up.

"I'm only telling you guys this, but..."

He gave that solemn preface, then continued.

"Look, I'm not asking you to believe me or anything. You don't have to."

He beat around the bush for a bit before finally coming out with it.

"The truth is... one of my friends from elementary school died after going to a haunted spot..."

Back when Tomoya was in fifth grade, he had a close friend named Yuya.

Yuya was just as wild and reckless as Tomoya. One day, Yuya brought back a rumor he’d heard about a haunted spot in the neighboring school district. Supposedly, a few years prior, the homeowner had set fire to the house in a murder-suicide with his family. It sounded like a typical urban legend, but Yuya invited Tomoya to check it out after school. Driven by morbid curiosity, Tomoya immediately agreed, and the two set off after class that day.

"It took us maybe a little under an hour on foot as kids? We walked quite a bit, but we got there without getting lost at all."

The rumor was that the spot was right behind the city’s general hospital, and sure enough, it was right there. A barricade marked 'KEEP OUT' blocked the gate to a sprawling property, and beyond it stood a house that could only be described as a mansion. True to the story of the fire, parts of it were charred and burnt away, but the structure of the house remained largely intact. Even to two fearless young boys, it radiated a deeply eerie atmosphere.

They should have just satisfied themselves with seeing it and gone home, but upper-elementary boys always want a heroic story to brag about. Tomoya couldn't remember which of them suggested it first, but they decided to go inside and explore. Given how uncanny the place was, they even joked about whether ghosts might pop out even in broad daylight.

As they walked along the barricade looking for an entrance, they found a section that had been pushed aside. Likely left that way by someone who had trespassed before, they slipped through the gap onto the property, and the oppressive atmosphere hit them instantly. Looking at it from the inside was completely different from looking at it from the outside. The yard was overgrown with weeds as tall as they were, blocking their view ahead. The concrete walkway was cracked with weeds sprouting through. Walking up to the house, the charred building looked truly sinister. Standing right in front of it, they asked each other, 'What do we do? Go inside?' Tomoya reached out to turn the pull door handle, and found it unlocked.

"Alright! Let's go in!"

Steeling their resolve, they opened the door. Inside, everything was pitch-black with soot. Seeing nothing but solid black as far as the eye could see, they instantly regretted stepping inside.

A hallway stretched straight ahead from the entrance, with a door on the left and right, and an open door at the far end. Immediately to the left of the entrance was a staircase, and the ceiling opened up into an atrium. Looking directly up, they could see the sky through a massive hole in the roof.

But here’s where it gets creepy: Tomoya said that the sky visible through that hole in the roof was blood-red. It was a clear, sunny day, so the sky outside was blue, but looking up through the atrium from inside the house, it was pure red. Not an orange-tinged sunset red, but a deep, vibrant red—no other word fit it. I couldn't help asking, "Is that even possible?" but Tomoya insisted it was true.

As he and Yuya were freaking out about the weird sky, a noise came from the back of the hallway. The end of the hallway was likely the living room, and a sound like something dropping echoed from inside. Right after that, a clattering noise came from the second floor. "Wait... is someone here?" They both braced themselves.

...And as they held their breath and listened, loud, thumping footsteps started echoing from the back of the hallway and from the second floor. Not just one or two people, but multiple pairs of feet running. At the time, they were still optimistic, thinking maybe other kids had come to test their courage just like them and were messing around.

"Looks like somebody got here before us."

Almost the instant Yuya spoke those words, the frantic thumping of feet from the second floor and the back hallway escalated into a deafening roar. It was way too many footsteps to be just a few people—so many that it was impossible to tell how many there were. As they froze in shock at the sudden commotion, they saw human figures closing in on them from the hallway and the second floor. Innumerable black figures were charging toward them at terrifying speed, matching the frantic footsteps. Shrieking, the two boys sprinted out the front door.

Bursting out of the entryway, they ran back the way they came at full speed. The distance from the house to the gate was about twenty to thirty meters, but with the weeds growing wild, they couldn't see the exit. Tomoya said it was sheer terror, unlike anything he’d ever felt. He ran without even daring to look back. Though it was only twenty or thirty meters, he finally reached the barricade he had slipped through earlier. Just as he found the gap and was about to climb out, he realized Yuya wasn't behind him. He looked back and saw Yuya about to be swallowed up by a swarm of black figures. Even though Tomoya wanted to help, going back into that horror wasn't an option. He squeezed out to safety first.

"Yuya! Over here! Hurry!"

Even as Tomoya screamed, Yuya didn't move toward him. It wasn't that he wouldn't—he couldn't. Countless black figures were relentlessly surrounding and driving Yuya into a corner. He couldn't tell the exact number, but there were around fifteen of them. As Tomoya panicked, torn between running back to save him or fetching help—

"Kid, what's wrong?"

An unfamiliar middle-aged man called out to him. When Tomoya stammered that his friend was being chased by strange shadows, the man looked onto the property. Apparently, the man couldn't see any figures, but he saw Yuya thrashing around like he was out of his mind. Pale-faced, the man climbed over the barricade to rescue Yuya. He dragged back the frantically struggling boy, but Yuya was in a state that was anything but normal. (By the way, Tomoya said those black figures followed them all the way to the barricade.)

"It hurts! It's hot! It's so hot! It burns!"

Once rescued, Yuya writhed on the ground in agony. The man called an ambulance immediately, and Yuya was rushed to the hospital. Long story short, his life wasn't in danger at the time. Although he kept screaming that he was burning, he didn't have any burns—just minor scrapes from falling and small cuts from the weeds. The doctor concluded that he had just hallucinated the pain due to extreme panic.

His physical injuries were minor, but Yuya had zero memory of the event. He couldn't remember anything from the moment they entered the house onward. Of course, both of them got chewed out big time by their parents afterward.

A little while later, their class went on a school trip to an outdoor camp. Tomoya and Yuya were in the same group, so they spent the whole trip together. Doing the usual stuff—cooking rice in mess kits, making curry, singing and dancing around the campfire. But at one point, Tomoya noticed something off about Yuya. Yuya was staring blankly into the campfire. Wondering if something was wrong, Tomoya and another friend called out to him. Suddenly, Yuya's eyes rolled back in his head and he collapsed. The girls nearby all screamed at once. The teachers carried him into a bungalow to rest, and even then, he kept muttering 'It's hot, it's hot' like he was delirious. After resting for a bit, Yuya went back to normal, but again, he had no memory of what happened, asking things like, 'Why was I sleeping?'

"So anyway. The camp trip ended without any more issues, but after that, Yuya stopped coming to school. And the reason he stopped coming... his house completely burned down in a fire. Everyone died. The very day after we got back from camp."

Everyone standing there froze. How could that happen? That’s way too dark to just be a coincidence.

Tomoya insisted he was dead serious and kept going. The whole class was eventually informed of Yuya's death. He was a great kid, so everyone was devastated, and Tomoya said he was completely crushed losing his best friend.

About two weeks later, just as the classroom atmosphere was starting to get used to Yuya's absence, the kids in charge of the class newsletter brought back the developed photos from the school trip. Everyone started looking through them, and there was Yuya in one of the prints. It was a photo of them making curry, showing Yuya stirring the pot. He’d been alive just a little while ago... The kids looking at the pictures had been chatting cheerfully at first, but slowly grew somber.

Just as the mood turned solemn—

"What... is this?"

One of the kids looking at the photos noticed something and spoke up. They said there was a strange black human-like shadow caught in the picture with Yuya. Sure enough, though subtle, black shadowy figures appeared across multiple photos. As the boys started whispering, "Is this a spirit photo?", someone blurted out—

"Dude, look at this one!"

someone yelled.

That crazy photo was a class group picture with the campfire in the background. Standing right behind Yuya were countless clearly visible hands, reaching out as if trying to drag him straight into the flames.

And in yet another photo, Yuya was the only person printed pitch-black, looking as if his entire body had been burned to a crisp.

"I think... he was already taken when those photos were taken."

Tomoya muttered softly as he wrapped up his story.

"So yeah. I know firsthand that you shouldn't go to places like that so recklessly. That's why I'm passing."

Hearing that, none of us had any desire left to visit a haunted spot, so we called it a night. Later on, when I asked Tomoya to elaborate on the story, he said the spot had actually been famous in his hometown. During high school, he talked to a guy from that school district, but all the rumors—that a rich guy lived there, or a foreigner lived there—were completely unreliable. He said the house has since been demolished. Even now, though, sightings of a child's shadow and ghosts are said to be constant over there.

By the time he finished speaking, there wasn't a single person left who wanted to go anywhere near a haunted spot. And that's his story.