The video on the DV kept playing. Maybe it was the lighting, or maybe something else, but the footage grew blurrier and blurrier, as though a dark shadow were swallowing it up.
The man's story piqued the others' interest. After they pressed him with questions, he told them about something that had happened to him.
When he was a child, his family had also kept a shrine. It stood directly opposite the living room door, draped in a thick black cloth.
Before his grandfather died, he told the family that no matter what happened after his death, they must not open the shrine. When they buried him, they were to bury the shrine inside his coffin.
After his grandfather died, the family fell out over the inheritance. Their argument quickly turned into a physical fight, and during the scuffle, the shrine was knocked over.
The adults were red-faced with anger and paid no attention to the toppled shrine. Only the young grandson, curious, took a peek inside.
Then the boy did something nobody could have expected. He called into the shrine, "Grandfather."
His voice startled the adults, who had been fighting over the inheritance. They all stared at the boy, who was crouched in front of the shrine, eyes fixed on it as though his grandfather were hiding inside.
In the countryside, people said that children could see ghosts. The adults thought the old man was angry, so they hurriedly set the shrine back in place. In the end, they followed the will, sold the old house, and buried the shrine together with the old man's ashes.
That should have been the end of it. But then the man changed the subject: on the day the old man was buried, the young grandson who had looked inside the shrine disappeared,