The Neighbour's Window, also titled The Window Next Door or The Adjacent Window, is the third chapter from volume 13 of the Horror World of Junji Ito Collection, The Circus is Here.
Plot[]
Hiroshi Sakaguchi and his family move into a new house. He is curious about the house next door, which has only one window. They discover that the inhabitant, a middle-aged woman, is never seen, but neighbors have spotted a figure at the window during the night. When Hiroshi goes to bed, he hears a voice calling to him and sees a woman with a hideous, corpse-like face and clawed, bony hands asking him to come visit her.
Hiroshi thinks it was a dream, but the following night, he hears the voice again, now upset that he didn't visit. He looks out of the window to see the woman trying to climb across to his room using a washing line pole. Hiroshi knocks the pole down and runs into his parents' room, calling for help. When they return to Hiroshi's room, they can't see anything outside and are not sure whether it was real or not. After some discussion, the family agrees that Hiroshi will switch rooms with his parents.
The woman doesn't reappear, and Hiroshi eventually moves back to his old room, believing it was a dream after all. When he goes to sleep, the woman appears once more, this time trying to reach over to his house with only her hands, hoping to knock on his window. However, to her dismay, she can't reach, but tells Hiroshi to wait as she has another way. Hiroshi, on the other hand, wants the woman to cross so he can push her from his window to her death, ridding himself of her forever, but she never arrives. In the morning, Hiroshi reveals that she never did knock, but knows she is trying still and has soiled proof for the police and his family. The window next door has magically stretched out from the woman's house towards his own, just a few feet from his own. Hiroshi figures that by the end of that night, she'll be able to reach his window and he will no longer be safe. Hiroshi decides to accept his fate, and waits for the woman and her window to reach his house and his window (possibly creating a tunnel for her to crawl through into his room). Meanwhile, his family is talking about moving to another house, leaving Hiroshi's fate unknown.