Relaying Column: What the Supernatural Wears – The Shifting Fashion of the "Slit-Mouthed Woman" (Yuji Miyazaki)

……Gagagagagagagaaaaa gagagaaaaa gagagagagagaga……

It was the year before I entered elementary school when I first heard that sound. On a muggy midnight, wrapped in a towel blanket that had become as stiff as a studless tire from too much washing, I heard the sound of my grandmother's sewing machine coming from the detached house next to the main house.

The reason I was startled by the sound was not solely because my grandmother was operating the sewing machine at midnight. It was because my grandmother had already passed away. Nobody else in the family operated the sewing machine besides my deceased grandmother. That’s why it was left in the detached house, which had turned into a storage shed. When I heard the sound of the sewing machine from the detached house, I felt as if my grandmother had come to visit the house momentarily and was sending me some kind of signal; instead of fear, I felt a sense of reassurance and soon drifted back to sleep within the faint sounds of the machine.