Aka Manto: red paper or blue

Another inhabitant of Japanese school toilets, and the cruellest in construction. A voice from the last cubicle asks which paper you want, red or blue. Choosing red means one thing, blue another, and both are bad; refusing to answer, in most versions, does not save you either. The legend is interesting because it is built as a trap with no exit: there is no right answer, and that is the point — it is the shape of a fear of being asked something you cannot answer correctly.

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