On days when people feel bad, they tend to walk looking at the ground.
That’s a little less true now because of smartphones, but it was probably a common enough experience that everyone had gone through it at least once.
So at least once, everyone must have absentmindedly found themselves staring at one of these on a sidewalk or a road.
A manhole.
A gray circle you can spot anywhere if you look along the street.
A worker’s access route that could also lead down to buried water pipes and such.
Everyone knows that.
So when they looked at the round gray manhole cover sealing it shut, they must have imagined it at least once.
Imagined someone suddenly coming out of it.
Or… imagined opening the cover and going in themselves.
Of course, that wasn’t something you were likely to actually encounter in real life. To begin with, those covers weren’t light enough for just anyone to open comfortably. They usually weighed over 100 kilograms.
So normally, it stayed only in the imagination, but….
‘When something you casually imagined in everyday life actually happens in reality.’
People pay closer attention, if only for a moment, out of curiosity.
The Ghost Story I was looking for began there.
“……”
I lifted my head.
It was a dark alley.
Loud laughter, shouting, and music could be heard right nearby. The flashing lights and the noise were close enough that all I had to do…