At first our Haunted Tokyo reporter was horrified to notice his wedding band had disappeared, but now he is thankful for it.

Regular readers of this site should be familiar with our paranormal correspondent Ryo who has ventured into the most psychically charged bridges, tunnels, and other pieces of urban planning that Tokyo has to offer. Also, those who caught his haunted phone booth exposé should be aware that Ryo is married.

▼ That’s right. Sorry ladies, this one is taken.

Unfortunately, when pursuing the spirit world, you sometimes find that it comes to you.

On an otherwise ordinary day, while Ryo was waiting for a train on the platform, he was shocked to find that his wedding ring had suddenly vanished. It was literally on his finger one moment and then gone the next.

Ryo never removes his band, and expensive rings like that aren’t known to just slip off. Naturally, Ryo scoured the area looking for it and filed a report with the train station, but even after a few months it was never found.

Something about the mysterious nature in which his ring vanished made Ryo convinced that it was a direct result of him monkeying around with the spirit realm. Perhaps, some pesky poltergeists were out to sabotage his marital bliss?

To find out, Ryo located a psychic in Tokyo who claimed to have expertise in communicating with the dead. Hopefully she could shed some light on what happened to his most sentimental of accessories.

Ryo sat in the small room with his medium. She was a young woman with large eyes that widened ever so slightly as she delivered revelations, lending them even more credence. Ryo wasn’t interested in the whole rigmarole about what his dead uncle whose name begins with “M” was up to these days, so he cut to the chase and asked about his ring.

“The wedding ring appears to have sacrificed itself for you,” she said bluntly. “In order to protect you from misfortune it is now wandering somewhere in the world… Not only that, but if it weren’t for that ring, we wouldn’t be speaking to each other right now.”

That last line especially gave Ryo a chill. He wondered what it was that the ring had protected him from. Noticing the anxiety on Ryo’s face, the psychic continued.

“I do know the details, but since the crisis has been averted it is best that you don’t hear what it was,” she said as if reading his mind.

Indeed, Ryo was conflicted. The curiosity was overwhelming, but if he heard about his fate in this alternate reality, maybe it would come back to get him again. For that reason, he didn’t ask and ended his psychic session.

However, as he walked out of the building Ryo got to thinking. That ring was an important symbol of his devotion to his wife, and it had given itself up to save him. He had to know why it needed to be sacrificed. Summoning his courage, he turned around and walked back inside.

“Evil spirits set out to drag you off the platform,” began the psychic. “If luck was not on your side, a train would have come. However, the ring intervened and saved your life. Whenever the ring does return to your hand…cherish it.”

None of this was at all what Ryo was expecting to hear. He contemplated what it could have been like had these “evil spirits” succeeded in dragging him onto the tracks… He also realized that the ring saving his life was actually his marriage saving his life.

He decided not to buy a new ring but to continue searching for his former one. He owed it that much.

The ring was incidental anyway: a mere token that he acquired by committing himself to his wife. But it was that love he shared with her that saved his life on that fateful day. That love is what he owes his entire existence to…and as soon as his wife lets him back in the house and starts talking to him again, he’ll tell her that.

Photos: RocketNews24
[ Read in Japanese ]