When S-san was in high school she heard this story from her homeroom teacher.
The teacher had just started teaching at a new school and there had been a suicide. The person who died wasn't a student or even a teacher, but a young woman who was part of the school administration. She didn't know what circumstances led to it, but it was discovered after school one day that she had hanged herself in an empty classroom.
The teacher who had discovered her ran into the staff room, then everyone ran back to the classroom and quickly got her down, but unfortunately she was not breathing. Maybe with medical treatment she could be resuscitated. Either way, it was decided an ambulance should be called, so one teacher ran out of the classroom to find a telephone. The teachers who stayed in the room laid her out on the floor, but her hands and feet had already become cold.
They wanted to find something to cover her with. They needed to contact her parents. They had to divert students away from the area so they didn't peek into the room. Everyone split up to take care of the various tasks, and the teacher was the one left in the classroom to keep watch over the body.
It turned out being alone with a dead body in the classroom was unbearably scary. The teacher had known the woman while she had been alive, so it was difficult to look at her corpse. Nothing but “death” was being thrust before her eyes and she couldn't take it anymore. She put her palms together and excused herself from the room. She shut the door and stood in the hallway in front of the classroom.
She hoped someone would return soon. She hoped the ambulance would arrive. Feeling impatient, she looked at the schoolyard through the window in the hallway. With dusk encroaching on the schoolyard, the students were participating in their after-school club activities. It hadn't been long since the beginning of the school year. The movements of the students looked like an extension of play, and they were truly enjoying themselves.
The dead administrator had only graduated high school last year, and she had just become employed by the school that spring. Her age wasn't much different from the students carrying on outside. While she was thinking about this and looking out the window, she heard the sound of the classroom door opening behind her.
She was startled but could not turn around. The glass of the hallway window was right in front of the teacher's eyes. Normally she would have expected to be able to see what was behind her reflected in the glass, but the western sun was shining directly at her so it was too bright to see. She could only tell that the door was open. Too afraid she might see anything else reflected in the glass, she forced herself to focus on looking at the schoolyard instead. Then, from behind, two hands placed themselves on her shoulders.
She could not bring herself to find out who it was. The teacher intently watched the schoolyard and the children playing there. The teacher just stood there a while with the hands softly resting on her shoulders. She couldn't hear any sounds of breathing. There were no sounds at all or even the feeling that someone was there. The only thing she felt was the cold touch of the hands gently resting on her shoulders.
The hands stayed resting there until the sound of the returning teachers' footsteps approached, watching out the window together with the teacher.