…This is a story I heard from someone. I cannot vouch for its truth. Only that such a thing is said to have happened — along that river.
Along the hot spring stretch of the Kinugawa, there are still several large hotels standing as they were left — built during the bubble years, neither demolished nor restored, simply… remaining there, looking down over the river. The outer walls have gone dark with damp, most of the windows are broken, and with every gust of wind something groans inside. The locals tend to keep their distance, I'm told, and yet young people still slip in after dark, without end…
It was at one of these hotels, sometime in the autumn of last year, as I heard it. A man in his twenties went inside with a group of friends. They had entered together, but as they pressed deeper into the building they drifted apart without quite meaning to, and before he knew it he was alone on one of the upper floors. That is how the story goes.
The ceiling had partly collapsed in the corridor, and the floor was strewn with shattered tiles and bundles of old documents. The rooms lining the hall had once been guest quarters, no doubt — their doors long gone, the night air seeping steadily out from each dark opening. Only what fell within the reach of his torch looked, barely, like something belonging to this world. That is how he described it, apparently.
When he reached the room at the far end of the hall, he noticed a smell — sulphur. That faintly rotten, mineral scent particular to hot spring towns. The smell of the baths. There, in an abandoned building. There was no reason for it to be there, and yet it struck him plainly, he said.
Puzzled, he pushed open the door. The room inside was larger than he had expected — perhaps it had been a banquet hall of some kind — a high-ceilinged space opening before him. In the moonlight falling through the windows he could make out the wreckage of tables, the shadows of chairs collapsed and folded over one another.
And then… his torch went out.
Not suddenly. The light thinned slowly, like a last breath, and died. He had only just replaced the batteries, he said.
In the absolute darkness, he found he could not move. His legs, quite literally, would not respond. It was less like fear than like being pressed down by something heavy — he could do little more than breathe. That is what I was told.
After some time, as his eyes began to adjust —
There was someone in the room.
At the far end, near the window, a woman stood alone, facing the river. She wore something white — a kimono, or perhaps a sleeping gown. She did not seem to notice him. She simply stood there, still, looking out.
He could not make a sound, he said. He tried to cry out, but his throat had seized and nothing came. He backed away, stepped into the corridor, and after that he ran — ran with a desperation he could barely remember afterward.
When he found his friends again, one thing stayed with him and would not leave. The window in that room had been broken. Not a single pane of glass remained. And yet the woman had not leaned out, had not swayed — she had simply stood there, quietly.
…The drop on the other side was five storeys, he confirmed afterward.
He fell ill for some time after that, I understand. I don't know the details. Only that there are stories among the locals — that several people died in that abandoned hotel, long ago. I cannot say for certain.
But… the hotel by the river is still standing there, just as it was.
On certain nights, the moonlight catches in each broken window one by one, and from a distance it can look as though lights are burning inside. An elderly local said as much, I'm told.
