Hey, are you listening?
This is about that highway — the Beppai Kokudo, the one that runs between Oita and Beppu. People who know, know. But have you ever heard of it? The Beckoning Jizō.
A friend told me this. There's no way to verify it, but it's been stuck in my head ever since, and I can't shake it.
Her father sometimes had to drive that highway late at night for work. It was last autumn — early November, sometime past eleven, and he was making the usual run. Nothing special about that night, he said. He'd stayed late at the office and was tired, but not drowsy. He was clear-headed. He said that, over and over, afterward.
You know how that road is — ocean on one side, the mountain pressing right up against the other. At night it gets so dark that the reach of your headlights becomes the whole world. It was a windy night, sea wind, and he'd cracked the window open a little. That's when the smell came in — fishy, but heavier than just salt. Something else underneath it. Like damp earth mixed into the brine. A bad smell, he said. Wrong, somehow.
And then, just for a moment, he caught something outside the passenger window.
At first he thought it was a reflector. It wasn't. Standing just before the guardrail, at the edge of the road — a figure. A woman, it seemed like. Her face turned toward him. Her right hand moving slowly, curling inward, drawing him closer.
He only glimpsed her as he passed, so he told himself it was nothing, and reached to press the accelerator.
That's when the steering wheel pulled.
Not by him. He had both hands on it, holding firm — and yet something wrenched it, hard, toward the left. He pushed back with everything he had and barely kept the car straight. And in that moment, he felt something cold against his palms. No gloves on, and the wheel had gone cold. Just like that.
He made it through. Afterward, when he looked into it, he found that yes — near that spot, there is a Jizō statue. The locals call it the Beckoning Jizō. It stands close to where a landslide once swallowed a train, and many people died.
People from around there say you must never meet its eyes. At night, when you pass, don't look at it. Don't stop. Just drive through.
But doesn't that seem strange to you?
Jizō are supposed to protect us. So why can't you look at it? My friend didn't know. She just said — maybe.
Maybe the souls of everyone who died there never left. Maybe they're still in that place, and they look out through the shape of the Jizō. Beckoning. Slowly, quietly, drawing toward them anyone who passes alone in the dark.
Her father made it home safe that night.
But he hasn't been able to drive that highway after dark since. Not because of the memory, he says. It's because of what he saw when the wheel went cold — he glanced up at the rearview mirror.
There was someone in the back seat. Just sitting there, head bowed, perfectly still.
The next moment, there was nothing.
My friend said she never asked who it was. She felt like she shouldn't. And she couldn't bring herself to, anyway.
So when you drive the Beppai Kokudo — keep your eyes forward. Only forward.
