Maintenance Log, Miyauchi Heights

MIYAUCHI HEIGHTS — 5-STORY REINFORCED CONCRETE RESIDENTIAL 12 UNITS (2 PER FLOOR, FLOORS 1-5, PLUS GROUND-FLOOR MAINTENANCE OFFICE) BUILDING SUPERINTENDENT: OGATA SHUICHI MAINTENANCE LOG — CURRENT VOLUME BEGINS JANUARY 6, 2026

January 6, 2026 — COMMON AREA, GROUND FLOOR — Routine Inspection

Annual boiler inspection completed. Filter replaced (standard 200mm, ordered from Takahashi Supply, invoice #4412). Pressure gauge reads 1.4 bar, within normal operating range. Hot water circulation tested to all twelve units, confirmed functional. Response time from boiler ignition to hot water at furthest fixture (unit 5B, kitchen tap) measured at 3 minutes 40 seconds, consistent with previous years.

Replaced fluorescent tube in second-floor hallway (east side), 40W daylight type. Tube had been flickering for one week per report from Mrs. Nishida (2A). Flickering ceased upon replacement. Old tube disposed of properly.

Cleared leaves and debris from drainage grate, north side of building. Accumulated leaf matter consistent with the zelkova on the neighboring property. Checked all exterior lighting. Bulb above rear entrance operating intermittently — replaced with same wattage. Front entrance fixture functioning normally.

Heard the 2:32 train. Checked the schedule posted in the maintenance office — the laminated copy I update each April when JR East publishes revisions. No 2:32 service runs on the Joetsu Line. The 2:17 local to Naoetsu and the 2:58 freight are the nearest scheduled services at that hour. Sound was distinct: arrival, braking, doors. Duration approximately forty seconds. Noted for follow-up.

Action Taken: All items resolved. Train observation logged.

January 11, 2026 — UNIT 4B — Plumbing

Mrs. Harada (4B) reported water dripping from the ceiling light fixture in her kitchen, onset two days prior. Inspected unit 5B directly above for leak source. Checked all joints, supply lines, and drainage connections. No evidence of water damage, standing water, or pipe failure anywhere in 5B. Floor dry beneath all fixtures. Bathroom and kitchen seals intact. Inspected roof above 5B quadrant — membrane intact, no pooling, no cracks in flashing. Downpipes clear.

Returned to 4B. Dripping continues at a rate of approximately one drop every nine seconds. Water is warm to the touch, noticeably warmer than ambient room temperature. Collected sample in a clean maintenance jar. Water has a faint odor I could not classify — not chemical, not sewage, not mineral. Sweet. Very faint. Mrs. Harada had not noticed it until I held the jar close and asked her to smell it. She agreed there was something but could not name it either.

Action Taken: Unable to identify source. Placed collection basin under light fixture. Monitoring. Will re-inspect 5B if dripping persists beyond one week.

January 14, 2026 — COMMON AREA, STAIRWELL B — Cleaning

During routine cleaning of stairwell between floors 2 and 3, observed marks on the interior wall at approximately 95cm height. Handprints. Five or six, overlapping, pressed flat against the painted surface as though someone had been walking up the stairs and steadying themselves with both hands. The paint beneath them was undamaged. The marks were a pale gray, consistent with dust or possibly chalk. No resident has reported a visitor, a delivery person, or any other non-resident using stairwell B on the dates in question.

Cleaned the marks with a damp cloth and standard wall cleaner. They came off easily, leaving no stain.

Checked resident registry for all units accessible via stairwell B. No minors listed at any unit in the building. Building policy permits occupants listed on lease only. Visitors are not prohibited but must be accompanied.

Action Taken: Marks removed. Will re-inspect during next scheduled cleaning.

January 19, 2026 — UNIT 6A — Complaint

Received written complaint from unit 6A regarding noise between 23:00 and 1:00, described as “tapping inside the walls, rhythmic, like someone counting.” Complaint was in the maintenance office mail slot when I opened the office at 6:45 a.m.

Miyauchi Heights has five floors. There is no unit 6A. The building contains units 1A through 5B. No sixth floor exists or has ever existed. I have been superintendent here for eighteen years.

Handwriting on the complaint form is neat, small, in blue ballpoint. The form is one of mine — the standard complaint slips I keep in the lobby rack, printed in batches of fifty from the copy shop near the station. I checked the rack. One slip missing from the current stack. The form is filled out correctly in all other respects: date, time, nature of complaint, contact preference (“no contact necessary — just make it stop”).

Action Taken: Filed. No action possible. Complaint origin unverifiable.

January 24, 2026 — UNIT 4B, COMMON AREAS — Plumbing / Observation

Fourth visit to 4B regarding the ceiling drip. Rate has increased to one drop every four seconds, approximately. Water remains warm. The smell is stronger now — present immediately upon entering the unit, without needing to hold the sample close. Mrs. Harada described it this morning as “like someone’s hair after a bath.” I collected a fresh sample and held it against the tap water from her kitchen sink for comparison. The drip water is not the building’s water. Different texture — I could feel it between my fingers. Softer. Almost slippery.

Inspected stairwell B. The handprints have returned. Same location, same height, same wall. I cleaned them on January 14. Today is the 24th. The marks are identical in placement and number, as though I had not cleaned them at all. Same pale gray. I photographed them before cleaning this time, for the record.

Checked storage room on ground floor for unrelated inventory matter (winter salt supply). Found a bicycle that is not in the property log. Small frame, 20-inch wheels, white with a rusted bell on the left handlebar. Tires deflated. No resident has claimed it and no resident has reported one missing. I have not seen it before. Logged as unidentified personal property, stored in the maintenance cage pending owner inquiry.

The 2:32 train again last night. I was awake for unrelated reasons and timed it precisely from first sound to silence. Forty-one seconds. The 2:32 does not exist on the current schedule. I pulled the historical schedule book I keep in the bottom drawer of my desk — a habit from when I first took this position. A 2:32 local service ran on the old Shin’etsu Main Line routing until the 1972 timetable revision, when the junction was restructured. That service has not run in fifty-four years.

Action Taken: Water in 4B — monitoring, escalation to management company pending. Handprints — cleaned and photographed. Bicycle — logged as unclaimed property. Train — no action available.

February 1, 2026 — BASEMENT — Structural

During monthly inspection of basement storage areas and foundation walls, observed irregular formations along the east foundation at approximately 40cm above floor level, extending roughly 3 meters along the wall. Initially classified as mineral deposits from prolonged water exposure — not uncommon in buildings of this age with the local groundwater table. On closer inspection, the formations are raised, ridged, elongated. Not calcium buildup. Not efflorescence. They follow a pattern — grouped in clusters of four to six, each approximately 15cm in length, radiating from what appears to be a central spinal ridge. The concrete around them is slightly darker, damp to the touch.

They resemble organic impressions. Specifically: the imprint of small ray-finned fish, preserved in the concrete as though the foundation had formed around them rather than being poured over bare ground. This is not possible. The building was poured in 1971 over standard excavated and graded earth. I have the original construction documents.

Consulted K. Ogata, Fossils of the Triassic Period (juvenile reference edition, 2009), which I keep in the maintenance office. The formations are consistent in general shape with Cionichthys, an extinct freshwater genus from the Late Triassic, approximately 230 million years ago. The name derives from the Ancient Greek for “pillar fish.” This region of Niigata was submerged in freshwater during that period.

I note this for the record. I am not a geologist. The formations may have a simpler explanation that I lack the training to identify. The book belonged to my daughter and was left behind when she moved out of unit 3A.

Action Taken: Photographed. Will consult building management company regarding structural assessment. Formations do not appear to compromise foundation integrity at this time.

February 5, 2026 — COMMON AREAS, HALLWAYS — Observation

The smell has spread beyond 4B. It is present in the third-floor corridor, in the stairwell between 3 and 4, and faintly in the ground-floor entrance hall. Sweet, warm, specific. Not floral. Not chemical. Not decay. Mrs. Harada’s description remains the most accurate I have encountered: like someone’s hair after a bath. I would add: like the air in a bathroom after someone has left it, before the warmth dissipates.

I have received no other complaints about the smell. I asked Mr. Goto (3B) directly if he had noticed anything unusual about the air quality in the corridor. He said no. I asked if the hallway smelled different to him. He stood in the corridor and inhaled slowly and said it smelled the way it always smelled. I could smell it while we were speaking. He could not.

The stairwell B handprints are back. I have not cleaned them this time. They are the same as before: same gray, same height, same wall. I measured the span of the largest print. Nine centimeters from thumb tip to little finger. Consistent with a hand aged five to six years.

I did not write “a hand aged five to six years.” I wrote “a hand span of nine centimeters,” and the reference was from K. Ogata, Fossils of the Triassic Period, appendix C, which includes a comparative anatomy chart. The chart is not relevant to this entry. I am correcting the entry but leaving this note so the correction is documented.

Running footsteps in the fourth-floor corridor at approximately 14:20. Light, rapid, bare feet on concrete. No one was in the corridor when I arrived from the stairwell thirty seconds later.

Action Taken: Monitoring. [Previous entry amended.]

February 9, 2026 — UNITS 4B, 5B, COMMON AREAS — Plumbing / Electrical / Observation

Water now present in 5B. Mr. Tanaka reported dampness along the baseboard of his bedroom, south wall. I inspected. The wall is wet to the touch from baseboard to approximately 60cm height, as though the wall itself is producing moisture. The water is warm. There is no pipe in that wall section — I have the original 1971 blueprints and have confirmed this three times.

4B drip rate now continuous — a thin, steady stream rather than individual drops. Mrs. Harada has placed towels in a ring around the light fixture. The collection basin overflows within two hours. She has stopped filing complaints. When I visited today she was sitting at the kitchen table with the basin in front of her, watching the water fall into it. She said it had been falling faster since Tuesday. Then she said something I will record exactly as she said it: “It’s not leaking. It’s the building sweating.”

I did not respond. I replaced the towels with dry ones and emptied the basin.

Lights in second-floor hallway flickering again. Same fixture I replaced on January 6. The new tube is functional — I removed it and tested it in the maintenance office socket, where it operated without interruption. The flickering occurs only when the tube is installed in the hallway fixture. I stood in the corridor for seven minutes timing the intervals between flickers. The pattern is not irregular. It repeats on a cycle of approximately forty-one seconds. The same duration as the 2:32 train.

Heard arrival at platform 3 at 2:32 this morning. Platform 3 was demolished in 1998 during the station renovation. Sound clear, including braking and the door chime. Two-tone, descending. The Shin’etsu Main Line used a two-tone descending door chime until the 1985 fleet replacement. I know this because I rode that line to school for six years.

Action Taken: 5B — opened work order, source unidentified. 4B — basin replaced with larger container. Hallway — fixture replacement on order. Platform 3 — [no action taken].

February 14, 2026 — UNIT 3A — Structural / Personal

Opened unit 3A for inspection following a reported smell in the third-floor corridor near its door. Unit 3A has been vacant for seven months. I have keys to all units. I do not recall who occupied it after Yuki, or when they left, or under what circumstances. This is unusual. I keep thorough records. But the tenancy log for 3A shows only my daughter’s name, lease terminated four years ago, and then nothing — seven months of vacancy with no record of any interim occupancy. The management company’s system shows no listing for 3A. As though it has been empty since she left.

The apartment is wrong.

The window in the main room is on the south wall. It should be on the east wall. I have entered this apartment several thousand times over eighteen years — first as its occupant, then as superintendent of the building that contains it. The window was on the east wall. It is on the south wall now. The light comes in at a different angle, lower, warmer. The room is the same dimensions but the light is wrong and so the room is wrong.

The closet in the bedroom opens onto a hallway. Not the hallway of the building — a narrow corridor, approximately 80cm wide, extending beyond the range of my flashlight into darkness. The walls of this corridor are damp. The air coming from inside is warm and carries the smell — the same smell from 4B, from the stairwell, from the corridors — but concentrated. I held my breath and still tasted it at the back of my throat. Warm water and something underneath that I will not describe in a maintenance log.

I closed the closet door. I opened it again. The corridor was still there.

Yuki said this. Four years ago, when she stayed the night in her old room. She woke at three in the morning and came to my office and said the window was on the wrong wall. She said the closet opened into a hallway that did not exist. I went up and checked. The window was where it had always been. The closet was a closet. I told her she had had a bad dream. She said: “You always choose the building.” She left the next morning. She has not called since.

I am recording this accurately. The window is on the south wall. The closet opens onto a corridor that should not exist. I did not enter the corridor.

Action Taken: Work order placed — full inspection required, unit 3A. Structural anomaly, west wall. Source of water ingress unknown. Recommend professional assessment.

February 14, 2026 — MAINTENANCE OFFICE — Personal

Phone call received at 22:15. Caller ID displayed Yuki’s number. I have not deleted it from my phone in four years. I have not called it either.

She did not speak. I heard breathing — hers, I believe, though I cannot confirm — and behind the breathing, the sound of running water. Not a faucet. Not a pipe. Something larger. Like water moving through a space bigger than a room.

I did not say anything for the first twenty seconds. Then I said: “The corridor is still there.”

I do not know why I said that instead of something else. There were other things I should have said.

The line went silent. Then it disconnected.

Call duration: forty-one seconds.

I attempted to return the call immediately. The number is not in service.

Action Taken: [None.]

February 15, 2026 — UNIT 3A / MAINTENANCE OFFICE — Pending

Returned to 3A this morning. The window was on the south wall. The corridor behind the closet was still there, but shorter — I could see the end of it now, or what appeared to be a wall where previously there had been only darkness. The water smell was fainter today, or I have become accustomed to it.

Placed the following item on the bookshelf in the main room: K. Ogata, Fossils of the Triassic Period, juvenile reference edition, 2009. Yuki’s name is written inside the front cover in green felt-tip pen, in the handwriting of a twelve-year-old. I gave it to her for her birthday.

The 2:32 came again last night. I did not time it.

Action Taken: Pending.