F-0038 Diary kept at a photo shop where the reprints sometimes came out one print over

(Said to be a copy of the shop’s notebook. The stretches between dates were skipped in the copying.)

June 18 - Rain

Kitahara-san’s reprints: twelve ordered, thirteen came out. Thought I had miscounted, but against the negatives the last print has no frame. A photo of a sitting room. No one in it. I assumed a mix-in from the lab and set the envelope aside, but when Kitahara-san came to collect, they said this is our sitting room. Can tell by the pattern on the floor cushions. No one in the family remembers taking it, they say. They said it gave them the creeps and they did not want it, so I took it back and put it in the drawer under the register. Called the lab. Nothing on their end.

July 2 - Clear

Looked at Kitahara-san’s print again. The sitting room. Two teacups on the low table. No one there. What is wrong is the height: it looks down from about the lintel. You do not get that holding a camera. Not without setting up a stepladder.

October 26 - Cloudy

A second one. Iida-san’s kitchen. Iida-san laughed and said, a spirit photograph, eh, has something shown up in it? Nothing has shown up. Just the sink and the back door. A ghost I could still make sense of. That nothing shows up is, if anything, the worse thing. This time I think it is the height of the inside of the closet. At night, after closing the shop, I sat on the middle shelf of our own closet and slid the door open a crack. It made exactly that picture. I shut it and stopped.

April 8 - Clear

I had settled on the idea that it only happens with reprints, and today that broke. Yamamoto-san’s develop-and-print order: a thirty-six-exposure roll, thirty-seven prints. A thirty-six roll can go to thirty-seven depending on how the film was loaded, so at first I thought nothing of it. Counting the negatives stopped my hand. The frames end at exactly thirty-six. The thirty-seventh frame is nowhere. This one went from developing through our own machine, so I cannot lay it on the lab either. What is pictured is a hallway. In Yamamoto-san’s newly built house. The height is wrong again: it looks down from around the ceiling access hatch. Half a year since the house went up, and they say it has never once been opened.

April 20 - Clear

I took our own negatives from last year’s sports day, noted down the frame numbers, and put them through as a reprint order. Asked for ten, got ten back; felt let down. Three days of that, and on the fourth try there was one extra. What was pictured is the inside of the shop. This desk at the register. The notebook lying open. The height, I think, is around the shrine shelf above the register. It does not show me writing. It is just the shop with no one in it. This diary is in the picture.

May 9 - Rain

I have stopped inspecting. I count them, and whatever is over goes into the envelope and gets handed across as it is. It is other people’s houses. I have a feeling that looking is what gets you remembered. I did badly by Kitahara-san, the year before last. That one print is still in the drawer under the register.

May 16 - Clear

Notice that the lab’s pickup day moves to Friday. Print prices going up too, they say. Write out a sign for the counter.