_OceanofPDF.com_Dance_Dance_Dance_-_Haruki_Murakami

called over one of the staff boys, and all three of us went back up to
the sixteenth floor. Just to check things out. But everything was
perfectly normal up there. All the lights were shining away, there was
no old smell, everything was the same as always, as it was supposed
to be. We went to the staff lounge and asked the guy who was there if
he knew anything about it, but he swore up and down he’d been
awake the whole time and the power hadn’t gone out. Then, just to be
sure, we walked the entire sixteenth floor from one end to the other.
Nothing was out of the ordinary. It was like I’d been bewitched or
something.
“We went back down and the manager took me into his office. I was
sure he was going to scream at me, but he didn’t even get mad. He
asked me to tell him what happened again in more detail. So I
explained everything as clearly as I could, from the beginning, right
down to those footsteps coming after me. I felt like a complete idiot. I
was sure he was going to laugh at me and say I’d dreamed the whole
thing up.
“But he didn’t laugh or anything. Instead, he looked dead serious.
Then he said: ‘You’re not to tell anyone about this.’ He spoke very
gently. ‘Something must have gone wrong, but we shouldn’t upset the
other employees, so let’s keep this completely quiet.’ And let me tell
you, this manager is not the type to speak gently. He’s ready to fly off
the handle at any second. That’s when it occurred to me—that maybe
I wasn’t the first person this happened to.”
She now sat silent.
“And you haven’t heard anybody talk about something like this?
Weird experiences, or strange happenings, or anything mysterious?
What about rumors?”
She thought it over and shook her head. “No, not that I’m aware of.
But there really is something funny about the place. The way the
manager reacted when I told him what happened and all those hushhush
conversations going on all the time. I really can’t explain any
better, but something isn’t right. It’s not at all like the hotel I worked
at before. Of course, that wasn’t such a big hotel, so things were a
little different, but this is real different. That hotel had its own ghost
story—every hotel’s probably got one—but we all could laugh at it.
Here, it’s not like that at all. Nobody laughs. So it’s even more scary.
The manager, for example, if he made a joke of it, or even if he yelled