The Graveyard Apartment

by Mariko Koike

An ancient cemetery, right in the middle of the city. It was just as the man from the real estate agency had said in his obviously rehearsed pitch: “This area is no longer merely a place where the dead find their final resting place. Instead, it is being transformed into a haven where the living can relax and enjoy themselves.” Whatever you say, Misao had thought sourly. The graveyard was directly in front of the apartment, with only a narrow driveway between them. If Misao stood on the balcony, craned her neck, and peered off to the left, she could see the Buddhist temple with its lustrous black-tiled roof, and the tall, spooky-looking smokestack of the nearby crematorium soaring into the sky. When the trees were bare, it was hard to ignore the fact that the apartment looked out on a cemetery and a perpetually active cremation facility, but when summer rolled around and all the trees were lushly leafed out, surely it would be possible to forget about that unsettling proximity.