Hey, can I tell you something?
It's about Enoshima.
Most people have probably heard the rumour — that couples who visit that island are cursed to break up. Go ahead and laugh if you want, those kinds of stories are everywhere… but this one I heard, I can't quite laugh at it.
I know, I know — friend of a friend of a friend, and I'm sorry for that — but apparently someone actually went there last autumn. A couple from university, together two years, going to celebrate the anniversary. By all accounts they were close. Really close.
They arrived in the evening, while the island still had people on it. The souvenir shops were open, and the warm smell of fried manju drifted through the air. An ordinary tourist evening. She was so happy she walked up the approach road with her arm looped through his.
They reached the main hall of Enoshima Shrine just as the sun was going down. The stone lanterns were beginning to glow one by one, the sky had turned a pale violet, and she said it was beautiful.
The two of them pressed their hands together and prayed.
That's when it happened.
She said she suddenly felt cold. It was an autumn evening, so a chill in the air was nothing unusual — but it wasn't that kind of cold. It was more like… a stillness that crept up from somewhere inside her body. Not from her back, but from the very centre of her chest.
And when she looked to her side, he had let go of her hand.
Without either of them noticing.
At first she thought she must have been the one to let go. But he had a strange look on his face too — that same puzzled expression. Neither of them could remember when it had happened. They had been holding on tightly.
On its own, you might chalk that up to carelessness.
But there's more, and this is where it gets uncomfortable.
After the shrine, they walked toward Koibito-ga-oka — Lovers' Hill, the place where you padlock your love to the railing and make a vow. Night was settling in, the crowds had thinned, and the path was lit only by the faint glow of street lamps.
As they walked, she glanced back over her shoulder. Just a feeling, she said. Like something was there.
There was no one.
But for just a moment, on the stone steps of the approach they had come up earlier, she thought she glimpsed something white. Not quite the shape of a person — but something that seemed to be looking in her direction.
She told herself it was her imagination, and asked him: "Did you just see something back there?"
He was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "I didn't see anything."
But his voice was trembling.
They left the island early that night. On the train home they barely spoke. She said it didn't feel like the kind of silence you could fill.
Less than a month later, she heard they had broken up.
No one could really explain why. What she said was that after they came back from the island, he seemed to drift a little further away each day. There were no arguments. It was just that something cold had slipped in between them, and no matter what she did, she couldn't close the gap.
There's an old story, going back to the Edo period apparently — though I can't be certain — that Benzaiten is a jealous goddess. A female deity, they say, who tears men and women apart. That her fury drifts through that island still, tangled up in the sound of the waves.
Whether you believe it is up to you.
But there's one last thing.
She said that even after the breakup, she couldn't stop thinking about it. About that moment when she turned around on the approach road and thought she saw something white.
She said she thinks it was something she wasn't meant to see.
Because it was staring right back at her.
