Red Room

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This page details the urban legend-based interactive Adobe Flash horror animation; for other uses see The Red Room.

Red Room (赤い部屋, Akai heya^?) is an interactive Adobe Flash horror animation, entirely in Japanese, about an urban legend called "the Red Room". The protagonist searches on the Internet for proof of its existence, only for the results to go horribly awry. It can be considered a prank flash because of an unexpected occurrence that takes place after the video ends.

This flash video became notorious when it was discovered to be the favorite of Girl A, the Japanese schoolgirl who slashed her classmate to death on 1 June 2004 in Sasebo, Japan. Her personal website was designed using the same color scheme.

[edit] Summary

Two friends discuss a rumour about an Internet pop-up ad that asks "Do you like —?" (あなたは—好きですか？, Anata wa — suki desu ka?^?). If you dare to close the pop-up, you die. The more skeptical friend does some investigation. At home, he looks it up on the web, but nothing happens, and he goes on to visit his own favorite sites. Suddenly, the message pops up. He tries to call his friend, but there is no answer. Again, the pop-up says with a strange husky voice: "Do you like —?"

After he clicks to close it the first few times, it keeps re-appearing. It then starts automatically reloading. Then the voice gets mangled and then the friend notices the word 'red'. At first he gets confused when he reads 'Do you like red?'. Then the voice gets mangled as he keeps clicking off the pop-up until a new part of the message is revealed, finally displaying "Do you like the red room?" (あなたは赤い部屋が好きですか？, Anata wa akai heya ga suki desu ka?^?) with a dangerous, creepy sounding voice. Then a website with the names of all the people killed shows up, with his friend's name at the bottom. He feels that there is something behind him. Two mysterious hands in the dark grab the friend's arms as if to throw him on the floor.

The next day, some people in school talk about two boys from the next class who committed suicide, painting their rooms red with their own blood. Then, we see the protagonist's computer, still on the website with the names. The protagonist's name is now at the end of the list, after his friend's. It then shuts off, along with an eerie sound.

After the video ends, if the user's browser has not disabled pop-ups, an exact replica of the killer pop-up ad from the story will then open on the user's own machine.