Well, today I've got a story from Sapporo for you.
I heard it from someone else, so I can't say how much of it is true… but listen anyway.
There's a place called Heiwa Falls. It's in the Nishi ward of Sapporo, out toward the hills — close enough to the city, really, and yet the moment you step inside, people say the air changes. There's a waterfall, there's greenery, and during the day families come with their children. But at night, apparently, something is different.
They say many people have died there over the years. People who jumped in, people who hanged themselves, people who burned. You'd wonder why anyone would choose that particular place — but I was told by locals that there's never been a shortage of people drawn there, as if pulled by something. There's even a cemetery right near the falls. Perhaps the land itself was always that kind of place.
Anyway. There was a man.
In his twenties, he went there with two friends on a dare. Late summer, just past eleven at night. One flashlight between them, walking along the paved footpath. At first they were laughing, making jokes as they went. But as they drew closer to the falls, all three of them gradually stopped talking.
Not that something had changed, he said — more like something was being taken away. Hard to put into words, but it felt as though the edges of himself were slowly fading.
And then they stood before the basin at the foot of the falls.
The water looked white, he said. Glowing white. Even in the dark, there was a pale luminescence rippling across the surface that couldn't be explained by the flashlight alone. Despite it being the end of summer, the air in that spot was sharply cold, and the smell wasn't earth — it was something older, something damp and enclosed. Not quite the smell of something rotting. More like the smell of something that had been shut away for a very long time.
The man found himself staring at the surface of the water.
When he came to, his feet were moving.
Not by his own will. And yet, toward the water's edge — one step, then another. His mind was empty. There was no fear. Only a quiet, settled feeling that he needed to go to the water. That was all.
One of his friends grabbed him by the arm and pulled him back.
In that instant he snapped awake, he said — drenched in sweat, knees shaking, unable to stand. He'd been less than a meter from the edge.
The three of them ran back without a word.
The next day, something nagged at him, and he looked at his ankles. There were faint marks there — like the impressions of fingers. Not on the arm his friend had grabbed. On his ankle.
He hadn't been pulled back, he thought afterward. He'd been pulled forward.
He said he had no desire to look into it any further.
… He never said, until the very end, what he had seen reflected in that white surface of the basin. But he did say one thing.
The faces looking up at him from beneath the water — there was more than one.
