Ghost Stories From Japan Episode 54 : My girlfriend calling me from a pay phone

This was 10 years ago.

At the time, I was dating a woman.

Let's call her Maki, and I was living alone in an apartment at the time.

On weekends, after work, Maki would come to my room to stay over, and on Mondays we would go to work together from my room.

It was a rainy Friday.

I was in my room waiting for Maki to arrive.

Usually she would arrive by 7:00 pm, prepare dinner, and we would eat dinner together, but... she never showed up.

I was worried that she might have had an accident, so I called her cell phone several times, but it was disconnected because it was not turned on.

I was so worried that I went to search the area.

Maki lived at home, and her parents and I know each other.

I called her home from my cell phone looking for her outside.

Her mother answered the phone and asked if something was wrong, so I told her that I had called because I was worried because she had not come to my place yet, and she told me that she had not come home too.

I kept looking for her in the rain, but could not find Maki in the end.

I went home with a faint hope that she might have come to my apartment at the wrong time.

I had given Maki a duplicate key, so that she could enter even if I was not home.

However, my hopes were dashed and she did not come to the apartment.

I was lying down and fell asleep before I knew it, when I was suddenly awakened by the sound of my cell phone ringing.

I looked at my cell phone, and saw that it was from a pay phone.

I picked up the phone without thinking.

Then I heard the sound of heavy rain and a woman's voice saying, "Help me," and the phone went dead.

I couldn't sleep that night, and when the next day came, I received a call from the police around noon, and they wanted me to come to the police station.

I had no idea what that meant, but I went to the police station.

I was taken to the mortuary.

There I found Maki, who had been stabbed multiple times and died.

Her parents and I were briefed by the police about the incident.

Maki was on her way to my apartment when she was attacked.

They told me that they had not yet found the killer, the murder weapon, and Maki's cell phone.

I was about to go insane with the suddenness of the event.

I was going to propose to Maki that day.

I had been told that I was going to be transferred to another city, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to propose to her and get married.

I became lethargic and went home and fell asleep in my bed.

I didn't know how many hours I slept.

Suddenly, in the middle of the night, my cell phone rang, and it was a pay phone again.

When I answered it, I heard the same loud sound of rain as last night, and a woman's voice was asking for help.

I told her to stop playing tricks on me, hung up the phone, and went back to sleep.

I decided to go to work on Monday.

I chose to work, because I felt like I would go crazy if I stayed home.

I was trying to forget about the bad things by working.

I spent my days working late and coming home.

During that time, I continued to receive calls to my cell phone from a pay phone late at night, I heard the same sound of rain, and mysterious prank calls from a woman's voice saying, "help me".

It seemed that the investigation into her murder was having difficulty moving forward.

It must have been about a month later.

As usual, I was getting calls to my cell phone late at night.

I wondered what the phone call was about, but this time I noticed something strange when I casually opened the curtains.

It was not raining outside.

I felt a strange stirring in my heart, so I asked to the woman, "where are you ?"

The woman replied, "Central Park."

I further noticed that the woman's voice sounded like Maki.

I took my cell phone and went to the park, the park was about a 10-minute walk away.

I looked at the pay phone in a dimly lit area of the park, and saw a woman inside.

It was Maki.

She was pointing toward the woods with tears in her eyes.

Then she said, "I'm sorry," and disappeared.

I immediately called the police, and I begged them to search the woods where she had pointed.

Then, her cell phone and the murder weapon, a knife, which had not been found, were hidden and were taken by the police.

Since the murder weapon and other items were found with my statement, they initially suspected me as the murderer.

But the murderer's fingerprints were found on the murder weapon and Maki's cell phone, and the case was solved.

The murderer was a colleague of her who had been stalking Maki,and he had been following her obsessively.

I had never heard such a thing from Maki, so I was surprised.

After the case was solved, at the funeral, Maki's parents told me that they wanted me to find a new woman and be happy for their daughter.

They also told me not to visit her grave, I think it was probably they didn't want to disturb my life after this, from their consideration.

And that mysterious phone calls from pay phones had stopped too.