Hey, can I tell you something?
It's about Ikebukuro… I can't say for certain it's true. But I've heard that several elderly people who've lived in the area a long time have all told more or less the same story, so maybe there's something to it.
Apparently there used to be a temple called Jūrinji. It's gone now. It was founded sometime during the Keian era — early Edo period — and for the longest time, the land around it was one vast cemetery. For centuries and centuries, it was a place where people had been laid to rest.
Then at some point, they turned it into a road. Right on top of the graves.
At first, no one noticed anything. Just a road. Cars drove through, people walked along it. But then… accidents started happening. One after another.
Not just once or twice. They kept occurring, again and again, always in that same stretch. Gradually, people in the neighborhood started saying: *best not to go that way*.
And then someone came forward who'd heard this story.
One night, a man was driving along that road… it was past midnight. He slowed down as he approached a traffic light, and all at once, a smell drifted through the car.
Incense.
The windows were closed. The air conditioning was on. And yet — unmistakably — that sweet, heavy scent of incense filled the car.
*That's strange*, he thought, waiting for the light to change. And then someone knocked on the passenger door.
Knock, knock.
Slow. Twice.
The man turned instinctively. But there was no one there. No one on the pavement, no one in the road. Of course there wasn't — it was the middle of the night. Only, on the glass of the passenger window, right there beside him… there was a handprint.
The shape of a palm, fogged onto the outside of the glass.
He didn't wait for the light. He hit the accelerator and drove away. But the frightening part is — when he told an acquaintance what had happened, that person said: *the same thing happened to me. Same spot.* A completely different person, a completely different time.
After the expressway was built overhead, the accidents apparently stopped almost entirely. Maybe that's a relief, you might think. But there's also a rumor that one of the construction workers — a man who stayed alone at the site late one night — saw something. And the next day, he never came back.
What he saw… he never said. Not even now.
Only, there are still people, every now and then, who pass through that place and think they catch a faint trace of incense in the air.
Maybe it's nothing.
…I hope it's nothing.
