Chime 2024

Takuji Matsuoka is a cooking teacher whose daily routine appears calm on the surface, but a darker tension begins to thread through his lessons. While most students in his class are able to cook calmly and complete their tasks, Ichiro Tashiro is distant from the rest, and struggles to finish his work. Tashiro asks if he can hear a chime, claiming it is a message meant for him, and Matsuoka brushes off the remark, leaving the moment tense before fading into the ordinary rhythm of the classroom.

As Matsuoka is leaving school, another student informs him that Tashiro asked for his address, a request they refuse to share. Later, Matsuoka attends a job interview at a restaurant, telling the interviewer that he would quit his teaching job if offered the position. The next lesson brings a troubling escalation: Tashiro explains that a surgery has replaced half of his brain with a machine, supposedly guiding his actions on behalf of the chime. In a shocking attempt to prove the claim, he cuts into his own head with a knife and dies, the scene unfolding with a clinical, almost detached finality. After a detective interviews those present, Matsuoka returns home and shares a quiet meal with his family, choosing not to reveal what has occurred.

In another lesson, Matsuoka teaches Akemi a method for butcher’s work, showing how to gut and prepare a chicken. Akemi refuses to follow his method, and in a chilling moment Matsuoka stabs her to death with a cold, emotionless precision. He then conceals her body inside a sleeping bag and buries it in the countryside, the act passing as if it were a routine part of a lesson rather than a murder. When he returns to school the next day, a detective has returned to investigate Akemi’s disappearance. A second student rushes downstairs, insisting that Akemi is upstairs waiting for him, and the two hurry up, only to find an empty chair where Akemi was supposed to be. Something near the chair frightens the student, who bolts from the room, and a few seconds later Matsuoka experiences the same fear and flees as well.

Outside, the detective confronts him and notices blood on Matsuoka’s hand, which is explained away as a kitchen accident. He goes back to the restaurant for a second interview, where he rants about himself and is ultimately rejected for the job. At home, tensions mount as Matsuoka argues with his son over money and contemplates harming him. He moves through the house in a state of torment, and the intercom rings without showing who is on the other side. A second ring yields no answer at the door, and Matsuoka wanders the street before returning home, haunted by the sequence of events that have begun to unravel his life.