【Japanese Horror】The Hundred Horror Tales — Episode 22: The Note That Wasn’t Mine | Haunted Kaidan Tales
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Episode 22 – “The Note That Wasn’t Mine| Haunted Kaidan Tales” (Full Text)
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Episode 22 –The Note That Wasn’t Mine
After Sōma finished speaking, one of the candles went out.
— fuu.
With that small breath, the shadows in the room deepened just a little.
The four remaining flames swayed quietly.
No one spoke right away.
It didn’t feel like the story had ended.
It felt as though something was still lingering in the air.
Aoi sat hugging her knees, staring at the tip of the flame.
Sōma said nothing.
He kept his eyes on the candle.
Whether he was thinking, or trying not to think at all, no one could tell.
“…Hey.”
It was Aoi who broke the silence.
“About that story.”
Sōma slowly turned toward her.
“That road… it’s normal during the day, right?
Nothing scary. Nothing strange.”
“…Yeah,” he answered.
“In the daytime, it’s just a road.
Nothing unusual about it.”
“I see…”
Aoi nodded faintly.
Normal during the day.
Nothing there.
Hearing that, something surfaced in her mind.
“So… do you think something strange can stay behind
in a place that looks completely normal?”
No one answered immediately.
Miwa and Shūji simply watched her.
The silence felt like permission.
“There was something like that at my school,” Aoi said.
She took a small breath.
“It’s about a lost item.”
She paused.
“But the thing is—
it didn’t belong to anyone.”
ここから葵の語り（一人称）
The elementary school I go to has an old music room.
It’s at the very end of the building,
and even during the day it feels a little dim.
We mostly use the newer music room now,
so we only enter the old one for choir practice or cleaning duty.
“And one day, after school…”
That day, my class was assigned to clean the music room.
We wiped the desks, swept the floor, erased the board,
and checked for anything left behind.
Just the usual routine.
“It was under one of the lockers.”
I held my hands out to show its shape.
“A recorder.”
Black. The ordinary kind.
No case. No name sticker.
“At first, I thought someone from the previous class had forgotten it.”
So after cleaning, I brought it to the music teacher.
She took it in her hand and frowned slightly.
“That class should have had all theirs…”
“The spare count matches too…”
She peered inside the holes, turned it over.
“There’s no name on it either.”
In the end, even she didn’t know whose it was.
“Well, I’ll keep it here for now,” she said,
and put it into the lost-and-found box.
At that time,
I didn’t think it was scary at all.
Someone had just forgotten it.
Sooner or later, they’d come back for it.
That’s what I thought.
“…But.”
The next day. And the day after that.
The recorder was still there.
Not inside the lost-and-found box.
Each time,
it was in a different place.
In front of the blackboard.
On top of the piano.
As if—
someone had used it.
At first, it was the sound.
That day, we were cleaning the music room again.
Nothing special. Just the usual after-school duty.
We wiped the desks.
Swept the floor.
The broom made a soft shh, shh sound.
Chairs scraped against the floor with sharp, unpleasant squeaks.
An ordinary afternoon.
An ordinary music room.
Or at least, it should have been.
I was erasing the blackboard when it happened.
Pi.
A small sound.
So small I almost thought I imagined it.
But it lingered in my ears.
I stopped moving.
“…Did you hear that?”
One of the girls in my group looked at me, annoyed.
“Hear what?”
“Like… a sound.
A pi.”
Everyone paused for a second.
Then they shook their heads.
“I didn’t hear anything.”
“Maybe it’s the wind.”
Maybe.
The music room is full of sounds.
The windows rattling.
Footsteps in the hallway.
Voices from other classrooms.
It could have been anything.
“It’s probably nothing,” I said.
And we kept cleaning.
But it didn’t stop.
While we were working, I heard it again.
Pi.
Pi… pi.
Short.
Like someone blowing gently into something.
Every time it happened, I looked around.
No one reacted.
“Why do you keep stopping?”
“Hurry up.”
I forced myself to move.
It’s nothing.
It has to be nothing.
When we finished and started checking the room before leaving,
I couldn’t stop myself from looking.
On top of the piano—
the recorder was there.
Not inside the lost-and-found box.
Not where I had seen it the day before.
Just sitting there.
As if it had been placed carefully.
“…It’s there again.”
I didn’t mean to say it out loud.
“What?” someone asked.
“Nothing.”
I stepped closer.
I didn’t touch it.
But the holes—
they looked damp.
As if someone had just been blowing into it.
And then—
Pi.
This time it was clear.
Right beside me.
I flinched and stepped back.
“Did you hear that?!”
“Hear what?”
My friend had already put on her backpack.
“Come on, let’s go.”
No one was looking at the recorder.
No one seemed bothered.
Only me.
I stood there for a moment longer.
And just before leaving the room,
I turned around.
The recorder hadn’t moved.
But somehow—
it felt like it was facing me.
As if it were waiting.
The next time I entered the music room was a few days later.
It wasn’t cleaning duty that day.
It was music class.
It was bright.
Sunlight came through the windows.
Much brighter than before.
Because of what had happened,
I didn’t want to go in.
But I told myself it would be fine.
It was daytime.
Everyone was there.
The teacher was there.
Even if something happened,
it would end as nothing more than my imagination.
That’s what I thought as I sat down.
At first, nothing happened.
The teacher’s voice.
The sound of pages turning.
Chairs scraping softly.
The usual music room.
I started to relax.
Then the girl in front of me stood up,
and my eyes drifted toward the piano.
Beside it—
on the floor—
the recorder was lying there.
No case.
Close enough to be stepped on.
And yet, strangely,
no one noticed.
Not the teacher.
Not my classmates.
They moved as if there was nothing there.
Only I couldn’t look away.
It didn’t feel forgotten.
Even though it was on the floor,
it felt placed.
As if it belonged exactly there.
“Are you okay?”
the girl next to me whispered.
“…Yeah. It’s nothing.”
But my heart was beating too loud.
During that class,
the sound never came.
Not once.
Because of that,
I almost convinced myself I had imagined everything.
But when the class ended
and everyone began to leave—
the recorder that had been on the floor
was now beside the music stand.
No one had touched it.
At least, I hadn’t seen anyone do it.
And yet, its place had changed.
I froze.
Did it move while I wasn’t looking?
Or had it always been there?
I didn’t know.
And I didn’t want to know.
From that day on,
every time I entered the music room,
I found myself searching.
Near the piano.
Under the blackboard.
In the shadow of the music stand.
And almost always,
it was there.
Never in the center of the room.
Never where people gathered.
As if it avoided crowded places.
The sound followed a pattern too.
When voices stopped.
When everyone focused on something else.
Pi.
A very short sound.
If I tried to listen carefully, it stopped.
If I turned around, it didn’t happen.
Only I knew the timing.
Only I could tell—
now.
It became clearer each day.
So I didn’t touch it.
Even when I stood close,
I kept my hands to myself.
I tried not to think about what would happen
if I blew into it.
But I still looked.
At the dampness inside the holes.
As if someone, somewhere I couldn’t see,
had been blowing into it all along.
Eventually, I noticed something else.
Each time the sound came,
the recorder’s angle changed.
Just a little.
Very little.
Toward the people in the room.
Toward me.
After I realized that,
entering the music room felt different.
Even during the day,
it felt like night.
And still—
I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
Who was that sound for?
Who was the recorder waiting for?
And—
if the next time it sounded,
it was right in front of me—
would I really be able
to resist?
That day, I entered the music room alone after school.
I was only there to pick up something I had forgotten.
That was the only reason.
The noisy feeling of daytime was gone.
The hallway was quiet, and my footsteps echoed too loudly.
When I opened the door,
everything looked the same as always.
The piano.
The music stands.
The chairs.
And—
Right beside one of the stands,
the recorder was there.
Closer than before.
The moment I thought that—
Pi.
A short note rang out.
Closer than ever.
My heart jumped.
I held my breath.
I wanted to run.
But my body wouldn’t move.
Don’t look.
Don’t touch.
I knew that.
Yet my foot stepped forward.
I picked it up.
Light.
An ordinary recorder.
But inside the holes—
still damp.
As if someone had been blowing into it
somewhere I couldn’t see.
Pi.
This time,
the sound came from inside it.
From within the recorder.
Right next to my ear.
“…No.”
My voice trembled.
Still, I couldn’t let go.
Before I realized it,
I had lifted it to my mouth.
I was going to blow.
I knew it.
I had to stop.
But I couldn’t.
I inhaled.
And in that instant—
I was already biting down on the mouthpiece.
As if I had been waiting for it.
And then—
I began to breathe out—
When I realized it, I wasn’t in the music room anymore.
It wasn’t so much that I “came to,”
more that I was already outside.
The hallway at dusk was dim,
the sky beyond the windows stained orange.
My hands were empty.
I wasn’t holding the recorder.
But deep in my mouth,
a strange sensation remained.
The feeling of blowing into it.
I can’t remember whether a sound came out.
Only the sense that
it had sounded properly.
The next day, and the day after that,
I went to the music room as usual.
There were classes.
There was cleaning duty.
Not going wasn’t an option.
Nothing in the music room had changed.
The piano, the stands, the chairs.
Only the recorder
was nowhere to be found.
When I asked the teacher,
I was told there had never been such a lost item.
As if it had
never existed at all.
But—
During music class,
when everyone plays the recorder together,
only mine
misses a note for just a moment.
My fingers are correct.
My breath is steady.
And yet,
one note lags behind.
As if
a part of my breath
is still being used somewhere else.
After finishing the story,
Aoi slowly exhaled.
“…That’s it.”
She looked at the candle in front of her.
—fuh.
The flame went out.
And at that moment,
I thought I heard a small “pi.”
After Aoi
had completely exhaled.
The remaining candles
flickered softly,
casting their light across the room.
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The Hundred Horror Tales is an original Japanese horror anthology inspired by the tradition of Hyaku Monogatari.
Five storytellers gather around flickering candles to share chilling tales—urban legends, ghost stories, folklore, daily fears, and real encounters.
Can you endure until the last flame goes out?
Follow for more:
• Twitter: @KaidanTales
• YouTube: @HK_Tales
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