This is something I heard from a friend of a friend, so there's no way to verify it… but take it for what it is, and hear me out.
There was a woman in Kyoto, they say — a woman named Kana (加奈). She was in her late twenties, working at a company somewhere near Karasuma. It was her habit to walk home along the Kamo River every evening. The air along the river at night is different from the daytime, isn't it. The smell of the water, the willows whispering in the dark — she found it calming, somehow. That was the kind of road it was for her.
It happened on a summer night. The end of July, and even after the sun had gone down the heat still clung, thick and damp. Kana was walking her usual route along the riverbank. The cobblestones pressed up through the soles of her shoes, the smell of the water reached her, insects were singing. It was a night like any other.
But partway along, she noticed something.
A child's voice. Children's voices.
Laughter — but not the bright, shrieking kind. More like… kuku, kuku… a smothered, restrained laughter, drifting over from the far bank. She thought it strange, children out at this hour, but at first she paid it no mind. Only the laughter followed her as she walked. Wherever she went, it kept pace.
She glanced toward the riverbank and saw something near one of the willows.
Children. Three, maybe four of them. Dressed in old-fashioned kimono, crouched at the water's edge. They seemed to be playing — touching something, trailing their hands in the water, she couldn't quite tell.
Kana stopped and stared.
Their faces were lit by the light reflecting off the river's surface. White. Unnaturally white. And around their eyes — a hollow darkness, as though the light simply refused to reach that part of their faces.
In that moment, she says, her legs stopped working.
She knew she had to run. Her mind understood that clearly. But her body wouldn't listen. She could feel the sweat running down her back — cold sweat, in the middle of summer.
Then a wind came from behind her.
A cold wind, on a midsummer night, touching the back of her neck.
She didn't want to turn around. Some instinct told her she must not turn around. But her body moved on its own, and she turned.
Standing between the willow trees was a woman.
Long hair. A pale kimono. Her face — Kana said she was smiling. Only the mouth, stretched wide to the sides, pulled into a grin. The eyes were not smiling. They were simply fixed on her, perfectly still.
And then the woman spoke.
"My, my… whatever have you been looking at?"
A quiet voice. Not shouting, not screaming — genuinely, softly composed. And that, Kana said, was what made it so unbearable. It snapped her back to herself, and she ran. She just ran. Her breath gave out, her knees buckled beneath her, and still she kept running.
The next morning, she was found by a passerby, collapsed near Sanjō Bridge (三条大橋).
She was conscious. She had no injuries. But she remembered nothing of what had happened along the Kamo River.
According to a colleague of hers, for some time afterward, Kana would sometimes be found at night standing very still, facing in the direction of the river, her gaze distant and unfocused.
No one knew what she was looking at.
Only that her face, they said, was just like that woman's face — the mouth alone, smiling.
