Junji Ito Wiki
Advertisement

Chapter four of Mimi no Kaidan.

Plot

Mimi goes for a seaside vacation with her friends, and has the foreboding feeling that something will happen again. She falls asleep in the car and wakes up to see a rotting corpse outside the window, however, it disappears and no one else can see it. 

Mimi and Naoto argue over whether what she saw was real; but a waitress at the cafe on the shore tells them it was probably real and that ghosts appear on the beach at night. Their friend Furusawa falls for the waitress and flirts with her. Another friend, Tanaka, takes several pictures of Furusawa and the waitress in the sea together. The waitress says that she is able to see ghosts and warns Furusawa to be careful, because of something she can see all around him. However, she won't tell him what; and just goes back to work. 

That night, Furusawa inexplicably runs out into the sea and almost drowns. The others manage to save him. He tells them that a teacher came up to the car and begged him to help her save the drowning children. He insists the children are still out there; but no one else can see anything. Furusawa screams as he sees more and more children's bodies floating to the surface.  

The others think he's having a psychotic break and lock him in the car but, by morning, he's missing. He is eventually found dead in the sea. Before the others go home, they meet the waitress, who tells them that a class of primary school children did indeed drown out on the beach a while ago and their ghosts haunt the shore. 

Tanaka develops the photos he took of the trip, one of which shows Furusawa in the sea, surrounded by the ghosts of dozens of children clinging to him and drowning in the waves around him. All of their faces are contorted in abject terror. Mimi and Naoto ask why some of the negatives are missing and there are no pictures of Furusawa with the waitress. Tanaka refuses to talk about it or say what he saw in the pictures. Mimi wonders, if he held onto such a horrifying picture of Furusawa, what could have been in the photos with the waitress.

Advertisement