I don't usually drink, but yesterday I bumped into an old friend by chance, so we decided to go grab a few.

Old friends are great.

No matter how old you get, chatting with a friend takes your heart right back to your youth.

My friend and I went to my favorite bar and drank way too much.

That was a mistake.

Before I knew it, I was lying on the floor in my entryway, fast asleep. It was morning.

My head was pounding. I felt sick to my stomach.

Crap. I drank way too much.

I called out to my wife, who was supposed to be home: "Hey! Could you bring me some water?" There was no answer. She must be out.

She was usually home in the morning.

What a cold-hearted woman, going out and leaving her beloved husband asleep in the entryway.

Still, I really overdid it. I couldn't remember how I got home. It had been a long time since I drank this much.

Oh well, I couldn't help it. I hadn't seen an old friend in ages. Of course we were going to drink until dawn.

It was great catching up with him. With...

Wait, what?

As I tried to recall yesterday's events, I realized something was wrong inside me.

Who was "he"?

Who was the friend I drank with yesterday?

It's common enough to drink too much and forget what happened.

But I'd never forgotten who I was drinking with.

I'd never drank that much.

Yet no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't remember who the friend was.

I couldn't even picture a face.

How could that be? No matter how much I drank, still...

As I was thinking about this, my wife came home.

"Oh? You're up?"

My wife spoke flatly the moment she saw me.

She didn't seem particularly concerned.

"Yeah. Just now. But leaving me passed out in the entryway was a bit much, don't you think? You could at least have covered me with a blanket."

When I said that, my wife gave me a puzzled look.

"Oh? Your friend said he would carry you to bed."

"My friend?"

"Yes. He brought you home this morning, dead drunk. I had errands to run this morning and was wondering what to do, but he said he'd make sure you got to bed, so I left you with him..."

What? That friend of mine had come all the way inside my house?

Well, that made things easy. I just had to ask my wife what kind of guy he was.

"Hey, what did he look like?"

"Huh? What do you mean, what did he look like? He's your friend, isn't he?"

A fair question. Still, I had to ask.

"Just tell me. What kind of guy was he?"

"What kind of guy... Well... Huh?"

My wife tilted her head.

"That's strange... It just happened a moment ago, but I can't remember his face. I know I looked at him and talked to him, though..."

A chill ran down my spine.

Just like me. She couldn't remember the man.

It was one thing for me, completely wasted, but it made no sense for my sober wife not to remember.

Who on earth was that man?

I decided to trace my movements from yesterday.

First, I checked my smartphone.

We must have exchanged messages when we met up.

Where to meet, arriving in ten minutes, something like that. There should be texts or call logs.

Yet no matter how thoroughly I checked, there was no record of anything like that.

This was getting seriously bizarre. Then how had he and I arranged to meet?

No, why had we ended up drinking together in the first place?

Did I run into him in the city by chance?

Did he contact me out of the blue?

I couldn't remember.

Was there any other clue?

I decided to call a neighbor I knew.

That neighbor always swept around his house in the morning.

He might have seen me coming home early this morning.

"Oh? Are you alright now? You looked pretty drunk when you came back this morning, so I was worried."

As soon as the call connected, I got the answer I was hoping for.

He had seen me coming home drunk.

This was moving along nicely.

"Yeah. I drank a bit too much. But I'm fine now."

"That's good to hear. But don't drink too much. If something happens, help won't come right away, you know."

Well, my wife would find me and do something, cold-hearted though she was.

I started to argue back, but stopped. Now wasn't the time for that.

"I wanted to ask you something. There was a guy with me, right? I wanted to ask about him."

When I asked, I got an unexpected response.

"Huh? Someone with you? What are you talking about?"

"No, there was a man with me when I came home this morning, wasn't there?"

"What are you talking about? You were all by yourself."

Huh? My mind went completely blank.

"You were stumbling around pretty badly, but you came back alone. Hey, are you okay? Were you seeing things?"

"No, that can't be..."

I couldn't firmly deny it.

After all, I couldn't remember his face. I couldn't say for sure it wasn't a hallucination.

No, but my wife had seen him too.

It wasn't a hallucination.

Then what was it?

I searched for other clues.

Checking my wallet, I found a receipt from yesterday's date.

It was a receipt for drinks at my usual bar from last night.

Looking at it, a considerable amount of alcohol had been ordered.

This wasn't an amount for one person.

It was proof I had been drinking with someone.

I decided to go to the bar. I was on good terms with the bartender there.

"Welcome. Thanks for coming today too. You drank quite a bit yesterday. Are you feeling alright? Huh? Was someone with you? No, you were drinking quietly by yourself. You were drinking at a much faster pace than usual, though."

Again. Again, they said no one was there.

What was going on?

Who on earth was that man?

I investigated various things after that.

In the end, though, I couldn't figure out anything.

Could that have been a ghost or something?

I was just starting to think that.

A news story aired on TV about a man who had gone missing decades ago and was finally found. That man was found in an abandoned house in the town next to where I live. The moment a photo of the discovered man appeared, I let out a gasp.

It was him. The man who claimed to be my old friend and appeared before me.

Yet the man wasn't my friend after all.

A total stranger.

I had mistaken a complete stranger for my friend.

"Hey! Come here! The man who carried me home is on TV!"

I called out to my wife, who was supposed to be home, but got no reply. Was she out?

According to the news, the man had suddenly gone missing 25 years ago, when he was a high school student.

He had told his parents he was going out for a bit, and was never seen again.

His remains had turned to skeleton in the abandoned house. They said he had been dead for at least ten years.

In other words, the person I met half a year ago was indeed a ghost.

He had been in that abandoned house all this time without anyone finding him, and perhaps he approached me because he wanted to be found.

Going out of his way to make me think he was my friend.

What a nuisance.

I didn't have any friends. I was a lonely man.

He made me see the illusion that I had a friend. What a guy.

No, that was fine now.

More importantly...

I had let a ghost into my house. Was this okay? Was I cursed or something?

The next day, I decided to tell the bartender about what happened. The bartender was a person with many connections. He might know someone familiar with the occult.

"What? You're saying the fake friend you mentioned was a man who went missing and died a long time ago?"

The bartender was quite surprised.

"Yeah, it's true. You know about the body found nearby, right?"

"I saw it on the news. So that person was haunting you? It's hard to believe, though."

"Well, yeah. But this is real. So here's the thing: I let him into my house. I'm worried I might be cursed. Do you know anyone who knows about the occult?"

The bartender looked troubled.

"Well, I like to think I have a lot of connections, but I'm really not knowledgeable in that area. Still, to think something like that happened so close to home... I hope the other person hasn't come back to haunt you too."

Huh? The other person?

"The other person? What do you mean?"

"The person who was found. It was two people, right? A man and a woman."

"Two people? No, it was just one, right? That's what the news said yesterday afternoon."

"I see. You haven't watched the news since then, have you? The information was updated after that. Another person was found in the same location. They were skeletal as well. Apparently, the other person was a woman."

Was that so? I had walked away from the TV the moment that man's face appeared, so I didn't know.

The bartender pulled out his smartphone, tapped it briefly, and showed me the screen.

"These are the two of them. Are you alright? The woman hasn't approached you too, has she?"

I looked at the screen.

It was just as the bartender said. Two people had been found.

Photos of the two were displayed.

One was the man who approached me claiming to be my friend. The other was...

The moment I saw that other person, I bolted out of the bar.

No way. There was no way.

This had to be some kind of mistake. There was no way this could be happening.

Thinking that, however, every single strange feeling I had experienced up until now came to mind.

Why I had been left alone in the entryway until noon. Why that man was invisible to everyone except me and one other person.

As one anomaly after another surfaced, I kept telling myself, no, no, no.

Eventually, I arrived home.

I tried to say the name of my beloved family member, my wife.

But I couldn't say it. Not because I was out of breath from running.

I couldn't remember. My wife's name.

Not just her name. I couldn't remember how I had spent my time with her.

I thought we had been together all this time, but I couldn't recall even a fragment.

The only thing I could remember was her face. Because I had just seen it.

The other person who had gone missing. That was the woman who was supposed to be my wife.

I realized it. I never had a wife in the first place.

Just as the person I thought was my friend was a stranger who went missing and died,

the person I thought was my wife was also a stranger who had gone missing.

I had been alone all along. I thought I had gotten used to that solitude.

It had been shattered.

I was cursed.