Request
要求
Tokyo
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Adapted from 都市伝説japan.com
When receiving a request from a stranger to help a child, a girl provides her personal details which leads to relentless torment and helpless horror. Fresh to the bustling city life of Tokyo after moving from the countryside, a girl in her late teens accepted a part-time position in an izakaya in order to support herself while studying at university.
Upon finishing late one night, she was returning home when someone standing on the street called out to her, "Please gift me an origami crane so Kasumi-chan's heart transplant operation will be a success."
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Due to studying social welfare at university, the girl was intrigued by the odd request. After a short exchange with the person on the street, the girl discovered a young child named Kasumi was suffering a serious illness which could only be cured by a heart transplant.
Touched by the sorrow of a dying child, the girl folded an origami crane and donated it to the cause. The person on the street thanked her, and then requested she write her name, phone number, and home address in a provided notebook.
Although dubious about providing her contact details, the girl wrote the information in the notebook after spying a long list of names and contact details already written among the pages.
Several days passed before the girl received a phone call requesting she fold and donate more origami cranes for Kasumi's cause.
Having forgotten the exchange with the person on the street, the girl dismissed the call as a wrong number.
However, the caller continued to phone her every day, their voice becoming more demanding and irritated with each request.
The girl became concerned with the frequency and aggressiveness of the calls, and consulted her friends as to what to do.
They pointed out the caller was only up to mischief, and the best option was to ignore the calls.
Although she ignored the calls as advised, the caller became more insistent until it was impossible not to answer the phone.
The caller furiously demanded she send origami cranes or else she would be dooming an ill child to die.
The process repeated endlessly; a phone call screaming for cranes, the caller accusing the girl of allowing the death of a child, and declaring dozens of cranes must be folded in order to fulfill a quota.
If the girl didn't answer the phone, scathing messages would be left on her answering machine from the caller. The demand for origami cranes doubled, and then tripled to an impossible amount.
The girl eventually spoke to the phone company to change her number and report the calls to the police, but the representative explained no such calls had been registered in her call log, and the police would only tell her to ignore the caller.
As time went on, the girl's personality changed.
When her parents came to visit, they discovered she had lost a tremendous amount of weight and had trouble functioning.
Worried about their daughter, they admitted her to a mental hospital where she had no access to her phone.
As months passed, the girl became more stable, and the time finally came for her to be discharged from the hospital.
Just as she was about to leave, a stranger entering the hospital muttered to her as she passed.
The girl, mortified by what had been said, fell into a fit of screams and scratched at the nurses as they fought to sedate her.
The girl's parents, helpless to the situation, asked one of the nurses what the stranger had said. The nurse seemed as confused as the parents as she repeated the stranger's statement:
"Kasumi's dead. Let's see who makes cranes for you now that you're next."
*honesty note: the ending has been changed from the original version. In the original version, the girl made friends with another patient who had a severe eating disorder. When told she's going to be discharged, her friend said, "Now I've been able to rest from folding cranes!". The girl experienced a relapse due to the mention of cranes, and spent further time in another mental hospital.
It seemed to lack the urban legend creep factor, so the author of Hiding from Japanese Ghosts adjusted the ending for English readers.
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