Item #: SCP-2687-JP
Object Class: Safe
Special Containment Procedures: The building containing SCP-2687-JP has been acquired by the Foundation, and closed under the “Dilapidated building” cover story. Once a month, staff in charge are to send D-class personnel to carry out mandatory item check-2687-JP, checking the condition of SCP-2687-JP and of room 203.
Description: SCP-2687-JP is the hanging body of Shinada Kōta, found in room 203 of █████ apartment building, ██ city, ██ prefecture. The towel used for the hanging and the ceiling it’s tied to are unable to be destroyed, and the bonds towel-ceiling and towel-body are fastened tight by an unknown universal truth, making the body’s transfer impossible. Furthermore, SCP-2687-JP does not decompose.
Any person who directly or indirectly sees SCP-2687 will consider SCP-2687 to be amusing. However, any person who sees SCP-2687 will not have their ethical or moral senses warped by this.
Experiment Record-2687-JP
Subject: D-3534
Person in charge: Researcher Washioka
Summary: D-3534 is to visually come into contact with SCP-2687-JP. It must be considered that D-3534 had a negative view regarding human death. Also, researcher Washioka can only receive audio feed as to not be affected by SCP-2687-JP.
[Record Start]
Washioka: Alright, D-3534, please enter the room.
D-3534: Okay.
[D-3534 enters room 203]
D-3534: [Burst out into laughter] I… Pfft. Dead… It’s a dead body, haha!
Washioka: Anything about the body?
D-3534: [Chuckling] There’s… There’s a hanging body. Ufff… [5 minutes of silence] Ok, I think I’m over it.
Washioka: A hanged body? What’s funny about that?
D-3534: What do you mean ‘what’s funny’? The fact that he’s just hanging here is funny enough. And his eyes are popping out a little and… Pfft. Man, you’ll get it once you see it.
Washioka: But that person is dead, you know? You were on death row, and really regretted killing people… You aren’t the kind of person who would laugh at someone dying.
D-3534: Ahhh, I get that. Ehhhh. I wouldn’t normally laugh if I saw a dead body. I know this isn’t right. How that thought disappears just like that is quite interesting. I really can’t stop grinning.
Washioka: I see. So what’s the difference between the body you’re looking at and other bodies?
D-3534: The only difference is whether they’re funny or not. But that’s not what you’re asking, no?
Washioka: … So… If you were in another apartment building that looked the same, in another room with the exact same design, staring at a hanged body in the exact same condition… Would you laugh at that?
D-3534: No, of course not. Someone would be dead then.
Washioka: Someone is dead right in front of you.
D-3534: Well, yeah, but… Huh?
Washioka: Did something happen?
D-3534: There’s a… There’s a letter. It’s in the body’s… Pfft, inside one of its pockets. A suicide note, maybe?
Washioka: Suicide note? D-3534, please point the camera towards its content.
D-3534: Okay. [Removes the letter from SCP-2687’s pants pocket and points the camera towards it] Err, this will probably work. It does look like a suicide note. [Quiet laugh] Wrote a suicide note then killed yourself…
Washioka: Thank you. Please put the suicide note where you found it, then leave the room.
D-3534: OKay [Puts the letter back into SCP-2687’s pants pocket] Ah… Ok, gimme a couple seconds to just… Pfft, hahaha!
[Record End]
PS: Following the interview, several non-anomalous cadavers were shown to D-3534. Each case was met with a negative reaction, D-3534 not laughing at any.
Document Record-2687-JP
Summary: The document below was discovered during Experiment-2687-JP, and recorded by D-3534. Appears to have been handwritten by Shinada Kōta.
If you’re reading this, then I guess I’m not a part of this world anymore. (Sorry. I just wanted to write that) I wrote this suicide note for the sake of the police, so that they know why I decided to kill myself. If you’re not with the police, please just skip all the content and just read the last part. Police officers can start reading from where I left the ◎ mark. You can give it a read if you’re not busy.
※To the police: This is a suicide, and there’s no criminal nature behind it. This is not a murder made to look like a suicide. I took my own life. There’s no one else at blame. I think you have other things to do, so prioritize that.
From this point on, I’ll talk about myself
I, Shinada Kōta, was the kind of asocial student that would sleep during recess, and when we needed to “form pairs” would end up alone. The kind of shit asocial guy who’d have everyone look at him whenever he did anything, so I just blended into the background quietly, so as to not cause any trouble. Frankly, the relationships between positive people looked annoying, so I didn’t really mind it. (It did affect me when I was forgotten during an excursion) In short, nothing really changes whether he is there or not. I had a quiet voice, I didn’t have the energy to do my assignments, my grades were in the bottom half of class… I’m sure my teacher would have thought that about me.
It’s a sudden change of theme, but I used to think life was extremely important. This might seem obvious to you, but please, continue reading. When I was in elementary school, I would be careful not to step on ants while walking outside, and I didn’t even kill cockcoraches or mosquitos. That being said, it wasn’t to the point that I didn’t eat meat, and I understood that it was necessary for them to be exterminated to protect the crops that we eat.
In the end, children can be brutal. I was removing weeds outside, when I found an ant’s nest. I was watching them carry stuff and the like, thinking about how cure they were. Then, three really energetic kids appeared. One of them had a hose to water the plants with. Then they saw the ant’s nest. Only one thing could have happened after.
From then on, they didn’t stop, and stomped on earthworms, tore the limbs off grasshoppers, and forcibly removed the tails off lizards.
As I watched them, I gradually began wondering why did I think life was all that important. I could no longer understand the morality lesson “Life must be cherished”. Maybe it was at that point that me, a kid with different sensibilities from others, was set on becoming asocial.
◎ That being said, there was a moral lesson that I definitely agreed with. That was “If you die, someone will surely be saddened by it”. There was one person who loved me. My mother, Miyo. My mother worked hard every day to provide for me, as my father died early due to illness. The times I returned home crying because of something painful, my mother would take the time to listen to me and embrace me. She loved me, a human being, with all her heart. She truly was a good person.
You may know someone who knows. October 14th, 2023. I had returned from school, and had just gotten back home. A crowd had formed near the road outside my house for some reason. A few people turned to look at me, frowned, then walked away, but several looked at me without moving. I cautiously approached, and an awful stench immediately jumped at me. It smelled like a wound that has just been made, except many times stronger, and it indeed was just that. I held my nose and moved through the crowd, finding a reddish-brown thing. There was something white inside, or rather, more of an ochre-colored thing. It took me several seconds to realize it was blood and bones. It took several seconds more to realize I was looking at a human leg. I fearfully looked at its face, trying my hardest not to vomit.
It was that of my mother.
Both her legs were destroyed, and I could see some organs coming out her abdomen. From then on I don’t really remember what happened. What I do remember is the people around me, pulling out their smartphones and pointing them at what used to be my mother, saying this like “Wow”, “Damn…” and “Look at all that blood”.
It was a hit-and-run, and when I arrived at the scene, no one had yet called an ambulance. I later learnt that if they had arrived earlier and treated her wounds, she might have survived.
3 days later, I heard the driver responsible for the hit-and-run had been arrested. People around were saying “I’m glad he was arrested”, but I wasn’t interested at all in these news. I didn’t care whether the culprit received a death sentence or was acquitted. Whatever happened to the killer wouldn’t bring my mother back to life or bring happiness to my life.
I was understandably saddened by my mother’s death. My mother, who was the only one who loved my good-for-nothing self, the one who cared about me the most, had left this world. And yet, I didn’t shed a single tear. More than sadness, there was a sense of loss and physical fatigue. If anything, it made me happy that my classmates, who had never spoken a single word to me before, and didn’t have interest in someone like me, had begun talking with me. At this time, I recognized I was acting like a piece of shit.
I live by myself now. I lived off the money my mother left behind and allowance my uncle sent me. My uncle obviously didn’t like me. An yet, my heart was filled with an immense sense of guilt because of the money I was receiving each month. I began thinking about dropping out of high school and getting a job. My unmotivated self didn’t have enough self-confidence to confront the world being a high school dropout.
At some point, I decided to look into the case where my mother died. I wanted to know how the public had reacted to the incident. But it had just been a normal hit-and-run case, so it hadn’t attracted any interest. I could only find news sites that merely talked about the incident’s content. I scrolled down and more and more irrelevant pages appeared. Just when I was about to call it quits, I came across a page with a title that caught my attention.
[Here’s a picture of a woman whose legs became pulp after a hit-and-run lol]
It was the type of page I would avoid, fearing clicking on it would give me a virus, but by the time I thought about it, I had already clicked the link. The page that appeared on the screen had a very shady feel to it, full of sexual ads and related articles. Scrolling down the page, I suddenly saw it, something I couldn’t ever forget.
An uncensored picture of my mother, with her legs broken and her organs spilling out her abdomen.
Someone who was pointing their phone at her at that time must have posted it.
I remember being oddly calm at the time. “I see…” were the only words that I remember coming to my mind.
The article had a couple comments.
[Not as messy as I thought I’d be. Boring.]
[Wish one of her legs had come off. Ah well, points for being somewhat pretty]
[Wish you’d been more flashy than to put “lol” on it. They’re not bad tho]
To them, the body of my kind mother, who had always loved me, was nothing more than a thing they used to satisfy their curiosity. Other pages had similar articles.
It all finally clicked. One could say “If you die, someone will surely be saddened by it.”, but one could also say “If you die, someone will surely be delighted by it”.
No human being can exist without causing trouble for another human being. Sometimes someone wishes you were dead, and sometimes you wish someone else was dead. I still think that someone will be saddened by one’s death, and that it is for that someone that people live. (Of course, there are those who do live out of purely selfish desires)
But what about me? Who would think of me, who’s so intensely inconspicuous, and who’s caused nothing but trouble? Who would think me essential? Who would be saddened by my death?
Well, I won't hesitate now.
Here's where I stop talking about myself.
Now then, for both those who skipped to this part, and those who sincerely read all of this, these are my last words. Until this point, I’ve lived a life without purpose, without standing out. My suicide would only cause trouble. I’m truly sorry for that. But even then, I sincerely ask for one last selfish favor. For once, I want to be a cause for happiness. So please, everyone: This dumb and pointless life of mine; this unsatisfying and selfish death of mine;
Please laugh at it.