I love scary stories—listening to them, reading them, watching them, I enjoy it all. Back then, I was particularly obsessed with going to dinner meetups—what people nowadays call "offlines" or in-person meetups—for horror fans. Sharing a meal and chatting about a shared passion with like-minded people... there is nothing better. This is the story of why I stopped going to those meetups altogether.

The group I belonged to held casual get-togethers whenever people had free time. About twenty to thirty people would show up each time, and while it was mostly the same familiar faces, there were always a few new ones. That day, one newcomer stood out in particular. Even though it was a casual, private dinner, there was a man there wearing a full suit.

Well, some people just wear suits as their everyday clothes, so I didn't think too much of it at first. What caught my attention more was how terribly pale and sickly he looked. I found myself making unnecessary assumptions: Maybe he works for some exploitative black company and is so overworked he didn't even have time to change out of his suit? Regardless, he piqued my interest, and I kept an eye out for a chance to talk to him.

The chance came soon enough. Once the dinner got underway, the man came over and sat right next to me. I took the opportunity to strike up a conversation.

"Nice to meet you. I'm ▲▲ [my handle]," I said. "▲▲? That's an unusual name." "Oh, no, it's not my real name. It's just my account handle for this group. What's yours?" "Account handle...? Ah, I don't have one, so you can just call me by my real name, K."

I wondered why he had come if he wasn't even part of the online group, but since we were all there to have fun, I didn't press the issue.

"By the way, why are you wearing a suit?" I asked. "...It's kind of a long story. Would you mind listening?" With that preface, the man began to tell his tale.

"I had a girlfriend I'd been dating since our school days. It's a bit embarrassing to brag like this, but she was truly a wonderful woman. Her name was M. She was kind to everyone, drop-dead gorgeous, and had the most adorable smile. A woman's smile can give you energy, but hers was special. She was extremely popular, so I'm sure I wasn't the only one who felt that way. We kept dating after entering the workforce, and we both started thinking about marriage...

"We shared a passion for movies, so that day, we went to see a popular film together. The theater was on the third floor of a large building, so we took the elevator up. I know, we were young, we should've just taken the stairs, right? Man, I really wish we had taken the stairs...

"Besides the two of us, another man stepped into the elevator at the same time. And then something strange happened.

"The man shoved his way right between me and M, pushing me off toward the corner of the elevator. While I was standing there in shock, thinking What the hell?, the guy spoke to M.

"'Long time no see, M. Do you remember me?'

"I was bewildered by the sudden intrusion, but M looked even more bewildered than I was. Which makes sense—the situation was far from normal. The man just kept talking on his own.

"'Ah, it's fine if you don't remember! Yeah, the fact that I'm the only one who remembers just shows how strong my feelings are. I'm S. We went to the same school from preschool all the way through middle school.'

"After a pause upon hearing the name S, M seemed to recall who he was, but that still didn't explain what he was doing. When M answered, 'S... I remember you, but... what is this?', the guy named S said something absolutely insane.

"'M, I've come for you. Marry me.'

"I lost my temper instantly. 'Who the hell do you think you are?!' I grabbed S by the collar and confronted him. S just said, 'Who are you supposed to be? I liked M first. You came after. So I win.'

"It made zero sense, right? I realized it was a waste of time to even engage with him. I pulled M close, stepped out of the elevator, and walked away. As we left, the guy named S was shouting nonsense behind us like, 'I'll definitely come for you!'

"Obviously, we were in no mood for a movie, so we drove back home and talked it over. I said, 'What is with that guy?!' M replied, 'S... It's true we were in the same schools for a long time. But it was just a coincidence. He was quiet, totally forgettable, and we barely ever interacted...' I could tell M was shaking. Who wouldn't be? At any rate, I decided we needed to keep an eye out for this S guy and stay on high alert.

"The next morning, M and I gave each other our usual encouraging words before getting out of bed and heading off to work. Just as I was about to arrive at my office, my phone rang. It was M.

"'K, help me! S is at my office!'

"I had felt a bad omen all along, but I never imagined things would escalate so fast. This was literally the day after yesterday's incident. Right outside my office building, I turned around and rushed straight to M.

"I met M at a convenience store nearby. She was pale as a sheet—it broke my heart to see her like that. 'Where's S?' I asked. She told me he was waiting outside her office building. When I headed over there, sure enough, he was there. The moment I saw S, I couldn't hold back my rage, and I stormed right up to him.

"'Hey! What the hell is your problem?! Knock it off already!!' I screamed at the top of my lungs during the morning commute, drawing stares from passersby. But I didn't care. S just said, 'I told you, I came for M. I love M, and I've loved her far longer than you have. I've been watching her the whole time. M belongs to me.'

"The next instant, S was flying through the air and hitting the pavement. I had punched him. I was so consumed by fury that I barely realized what I'd done. People around us held me back, and the police were called. In the end, I escaped with just a stern warning from the cops, but... M and I took the rest of the day off work. As S was leaving, he said it again: 'I'll come for you.' We trembled, realizing we had gotten mixed up with someone who was completely insane.

"After that, S started stalking M everywhere she went. Peace is such a fleeting thing. The insidious part was that S would let M see him, but he never said a word or approached her. He just made sure he was visible. That's what made it so nasty. If an actual assault had occurred—though that would have been terrible in its own right—the police could have intervened. But as things stood, he could easily claim he just happened to be there, so he couldn't be charged with a crime. Yet he was unmistakably making his presence known to M. Since S appeared wherever she went, M eventually stopped leaving the house, developed severe neurosis, and lost her smile entirely.

"Even after she became a recluse, S's onslaught didn't stop. Somehow he got hold of M's phone number, and he would call whenever he had free time. Naturally, we blocked his number, but the guy had an absurd amount of phone numbers. Every time we blocked one, he'd call from a brand-new number. It was endless. In the end, M had no choice but to cancel her cell phone service altogether.

"Just when we thought that might stop it, mail started arriving at M's apartment instead. Every single day, passion-filled love letters arrived alongside eleven photos of M spanning from her childhood. Some were pictures from her youth that only her family should have owned, while others were secretly taken photos from various periods of her life. And always eleven photos... which happened to be the month of M's birthday.

"M fell apart visibly. Since she couldn't leave the house, she ended up quitting her job. I was the only person she had to lean on—and the only person she could lash out at—so even though I loved her, our relationship became incredibly painful. As a side note, M had lost her family in tragic accidents and was completely alone in the world.

"As for me, S's sheer persistence almost began to awe me. Those photos were things you couldn't possibly possess unless you had truly loved M for years. I started wondering if maybe my own love for M was shallow by comparison. And deep down, I even started thinking... Maybe it's M's fault for being so popular? ...I know, I was awful.

"Pushed to the brink, we made the decision to dig into who S really was. But the more we investigated, the more elusive he proved to be.

"He had no friends to speak of, and no record of ever having held a job. He hadn't stood out in sports or academics, and when we asked M's old classmates, they said he was so faint and forgettable that they didn't even remember him. S's parents were wealthy and lived in a large house. He was supposedly the middle child of three, but when we visited his family home, his parents stubbornly insisted, 'We don't know anyone by that name,' refusing to give us the time of day. Unlike M, he actually had a family, yet I had never seen anyone so entirely alone. I couldn't help but feel a sliver of sympathy for him.

"And then came that night. To clear our heads, I took M out for a walk in the evening air. Suddenly, S appeared right in front of us. 'Aaaagh!' M screamed. I tried to talk to S. 'Why don't we end this already?' I said.

"S said, 'End it how?' K said, '...I'm stepping aside.' That was it—my one and only decision. M started flailing at me, shouting, 'You're lying! You can't be serious! You're abandoning me?!' I had no idea what to do. Then S spoke up. 'Why don't you use this?'

"I looked at S, and he was holding a kitchen knife. S said, 'You just have to kill me with this. Here.' Saying that, he handed the knife to me.

"I must have been driven past my breaking point too. Oh, that's all it takes? Thinking that, I lunged forward at S. I felt a sudden warmth on my hands. In that instant, S collapsed to the ground.

"S was rushed away in an ambulance, but he died. I was arrested on the spot for murder and ended up serving time in prison.

"During visitation at the prison, people who cared about me came to visit. Including M, of course. During one visit, M muttered quietly:

"'S... he still comes to see me.'

"...What? S was supposed to be dead and gone from this world... At the time, I didn't understand what M meant.

"Having served my sentence, I was finally released, and the first place I went was M's apartment. Holding onto the words M had said a few days prior—'I'll make your favorite, ginger pork, and be waiting for you'—I rushed over, barely able to contain my anticipation. And the moment I opened the door, what filled my eyes... was M, hanging by her neck.

"On the table was a cold plate of ginger pork and a letter from M. In the letter, she wrote of her love and gratitude toward me. And she wrote that S was appearing frequently as a ghost—that it still wasn't over.

"Overcome with despair, I jumped from the roof of the building and died. The reason I'm wearing a suit is so that whenever I meet M again, I'll be ready to propose to her on the spot."

I had been listening to the man in the suit for quite a long time, yet strangely, it felt like it had all passed in an instant. Glancing sideways at me while I sat there in a daze, the man in the suit said, "Well, I'll be off now," and walked out of the restaurant. Feeling utterly lightheaded, I spent the rest of the night after the meetup in a hazy, surreal float until I finally got back home.

A few days later, while posting comments to the group to share the story of the man in the suit, I noticed something odd.

"A man in a suit? Was there someone like that?" "▲▲, you were completely spaced out the whole time, and you didn't reply when we talked to you—it was actually kind of creepy..." "We thought maybe you were in a bad mood, so everyone was walking on eggshells around you."

To my horror, not only had no one heard the story, but no one had even seen a man in a suit.

They say that spirits gather where scary stories are told, so perhaps the man in the suit was drawn to us then. And as for K, who was searching everywhere believing he would meet M once he became a ghost—the fact that he still hasn't found her... does it mean M has already passed on to the peaceful afterlife? Or could it be...

Needless to say, shocked not only by the tale itself but by the realization that I had unexpectedly become a participant in a horror story of my own, I stopped attending those get-togethers. Everyone, please be extremely careful whenever you gather where scary stories are told.