Bought a used printer in Akihabara. It printed a face.

I wasn't going to post this but it's been six-plus years and I still think about it.

So I was in college and needed a printer for assignments. Went wandering around Akihabara with a friend on a weekend and stumbled into this secondhand computer shop. Found a black-and-white laser printer for 9,800 yen. Printers were actually hard to come by back then, it looked almost new, still had warranty on it. I grabbed it immediately. Lucky find, right.

Got back to my apartment and installed the drivers, started a test print. I went to the bathroom. My friend stayed behind watching Shōten on TV.

And that's when he noticed something was wrong.

A test print is like, two pages max. But the printer just. kept. going. Didn't stop until it had burned through every single sheet of paper we had loaded. No error message on the screen. Nothing.

My friend looked at the printed pages and SCREAMED.

Every single sheet had a woman's face on it. Blurry outline, but you could clearly make out the hair, the eyes, the mouth, all printed dark, staring straight at you. And here's the thing that really got me: each page was slightly different. Like the expression kept shifting.

I was freaked out but I tried again, printed a normal text file. Came out totally fine. No issues.

And then, while we were standing there confused, the printer just started up on its own and printed one more page.

It said: "Why are you throwing me away?"

My friend wanted to return it immediately but the shop was already closed. We decided to go back the next day. Neither of us wanted that thing in my apartment overnight though, so I bribed my friend with dinner and we lugged it over to our university club room to leave it there until morning.

Next day I go to the club room to pick it up and one of the younger members meets me at the door with this uncomfortable look on their face.

"Senpai... did you sleep here last night?"

Apparently there was a notice stuck to the club room door from the student council. "Please do not sleep overnight in club rooms."

I told them to ask around if anyone knew what happened, then took the printer back to the shop. The staff tested it and said it was working fine. No return. So I just blurted out "fine then buy it back from me" and sold it for 3,000 yen. Just wanted it gone.

When I got back to the club room, the younger member caught me and finished the story.

None of our club members had slept there that night.

So they went back to the student council to say that, and the council person told them what actually happened:

"The security guard was doing his rounds and heard a woman moaning from your club room. He tried to get in to warn whoever was inside but the door was locked and the lights were off. He knocked but nobody answered so he just left."

The guard assumed it was students hooking up and reported it to the student council. The club member told them it was probably an intruder. In the end that's how it got filed, as an intruder incident, and they just replaced the club room door and called it done.

But like.

What actually happened in that room that night.

And if I'd left that printer in my own apartment instead...