Stealing Glances shortscarystories

Note: I translated this story; I did not write it. The original is available here. All credit goes to the original author, Kowabana user Mamenosuke.

My aunt died recently. She was young -- only in her forties -- so her death was quite sudden. Well, I tell people she "died suddenly" -- the truth is she committed suicide.

To all appearances, my aunt seemed like a kind, gentle woman, but the reality is that she was vicious and spiteful by nature. As a result, at the time of her death, she had no close relations besides myself, and the task of sorting through her worldly possessions fell to me.

It happened when I was going through her bedroom. In the closet I came across a large quantity of college notebooks. I couldn't really tell the volumes from different eras apart, but at first glance they looked like diaries... I removed them from their resting place. All in all, they amounted to nearly 50 volumes.

"My, Auntie, you certainly were diligent!" I muttered to myself, opening the volume nearest to hand. I noted the date written in it, about a week before her death. This was the most recent one, then.

There was no deep meaning to what I was doing; I was just killing time. Maybe I was tired from sorting through all of my aunt's things and just using this as an excuse to take a rest.

"What the..."

I realized quickly that this was not a diary. Instead, it seemed my aunt had painstakingly written out a register of every complaint and small resentment she had ever felt. The fact that her neighborhood's trash pickup day was Friday instead of Tuesday. Her coworker who consistently came in looking sloppy. A thoughtless remark from a relative. And so on and so on. Things that went wrong were never left to be forgotten the day they happened, but were methodically added to her book of grudges.

Without thinking I gave a bitter little smile. And she had always kept such a positive look on her face! You really never know what someone else is thinking deep down.

I flipped through the pages until I reached the end of the last volume. As I read through it, a chill ran down my spine.

"At my funeral, my niece told everyone who would listen that 'Auntie only seemed nice from the outside.'"

"My niece volunteered to sort through my things and came to my house. It's about to be torn down, so she stormed in without even taking her shoes off."

"My niece pretended she wanted to help out by organizing my possessions, but she really wants to look for hidden valuables in my house. The proof is that she took the bankbook and signature stamp that I had hidden in the refrigerator and put them in her pocket."

"My niece is stealing glances at my private notebooks. I absolutely cannot forgive this."

Submitted July 28, 2015 at 02:26AM by Delgarus http://ift.tt/1KurPXX shortscarystories