Side Mirror
A story of an older colleague.
It was when my my older colleague was still living in Osaka.

This colleague was successful with his band and amassed a lot of money, so he purchased the car he had wanted for a long time. It was a used car, but much cheaper than buying a new car and the mileage was less than 5000 kilometers so it hadn't been used very much.

He had always been patient until then, but the moment he got in the car he felt as though he was ascending into heaven, and went to boast as such to a younger colleague. While outside that colleague's apartment building, gazing at the car and talking together, he saw something flicker in the side mirror.
'What the?' he thought, and looked around the vicinity but there was nothing.

Although he thought it was suspicious he didn't pay it too much attention, and it gradually came to reveal a silhouette. A woman. A woman with long black hair was looking downward...

However, although she was reflected in the mirror, when he searched around the car there was no woman or anything else.

He asked his junior, who also said he didn't see such a thing. He wanted to get a better look while it was still daytime, so he tried approaching in such a way that he wouldn't be reflected in the side mirror. The woman, looking downward with no expression, was there and motionless. As he got closer to her face, the woman abruptly lifted her head and disappeared with a broad grin like she was laughing. My older colleague suddenly welled up with fright, but left there to go up to his junior's room anyway, and talked about the woman he saw over and over again.

Once his bad feeling dissipated it was just about time to return home so he went outside. His parked car wasn't there. He immediately contacted the police, but they told him they wouldn't be able to find his car.

At the same time, my colleague who put in that complaint about theft was mumbling while gazing at the empty parking space, 'Ahh but, I think it's good that I can't ride in that one...'
<Coach's Time>
Now, Isshi, I have a special lecture again. The side mirror of a car is not just a simple mirror, but it's there so you'll be able to see behind the car from the driver's seat. To say it another way, it can't be seen except from the driver's seat, so the mirror's surface wouldn't be seen from the front of the car or the side of the car. And also if you're standing behind the car, you wouldn't easily see the driver's seat, or rather the car's interior. Therefore, as he was standing beside the car, I think it's odd that he would've seen a woman. I think it's not because of the mirror at all. For argument's sake, let's say your older colleague was seen by the woman in the side mirror. However, the more he'd look in that mirror, he'd see himself reflected upon its surface... you'd expect. In other words, would he be hiding the figure of the woman with his own face...? Keeping in mind the properties of the side mirror and the position of your older colleague, there was no woman reflected in the mirror, but isn't this a story of a "woman in the mirror"? (To make it easier to understand, you should think of the side mirror as a picture on a monitor.)  Of course this is a story that stresses the importance of "he saw" to the bitter end. You wrote it several times, but because a ghost story is a painting、you need to write things that are seen as they would be seen. Incidentally, I have one more thing to write. At the end, is "the car wasn't there" a mystery? Or is it an "incident" (theft)? You need to pay attention to how they're related. Because "The car wasn't there" and "The car disappeared" are falsely similar, aren't they? A ghost story is a world of being inducted into a state of mind, so you don't have to write it exactly as you heard it.

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