This is a story I heard from a friend of a friend. There's no way to verify it, but the person who told it to me remembered it with an unsettling clarity — so I've decided to pass it along to you, just as I heard it.
Somewhere on the outskirts of Sapporo, there is a forest set back from the road. I won't say the name, but the locals all know it. And in their own quiet way, they all know why they don't go near it.
This happened one autumn, several years ago.
A university student named Misaki (美咲), along with four or five friends, wandered into that forest. It wasn't quite a dare — more like a casual walk to clear their heads after a few drinks. It was early October, the time of year when the sun starts going down too soon.
The entrance had no streetlights. A single gravel path disappeared between the dark trees as though swallowed whole. The moment they stepped inside, the temperature dropped — two or three degrees colder than outside, Misaki said afterward. The fallen leaves underfoot were strangely damp, making no sound when stepped on. They should have been dry autumn leaves, but each step gave a soft, wet compression, like pressing down on a soaked cloth.
For a while they walked and laughed together. But the deeper they went, the quieter the conversation became. Someone said it aloud: "Isn't it too quiet?" No insects. No wind — and yet the branches overhead stirred with a faint, dry rustling.
The first thing Misaki noticed was that she could no longer hear her friends' footsteps. She looked back and saw several beams of torchlight glowing faintly through the trees. They're still there, she told herself. Everything's fine. She sat down at the base of a nearby tree and retied her shoelace. Ten seconds, maybe fifteen.
When she looked up, there was no light anywhere.
She called out. No answer. She called again, louder this time. The forest absorbed the sound and gave nothing back.
Misaki stood and began walking in the direction she'd come from. Five minutes passed. Ten minutes. The entrance never appeared. The trees were all the same thickness, spaced at the same intervals. The leaves beneath her feet still made no sound.
And then she heard it.
Her name, called from just beside her ear — close enough that she could feel breath against her skin.
"Misaki."
It was less a voice than a sound. More like a musical tone, she said later. Not human. And yet it held the unmistakable shape of her name.
Misaki turned around.
There were figures standing between the trees.
Not one — five, maybe six. The darkness made it hard to be certain, but they were all facing her, perfectly still. She couldn't make out their faces. What she could see was the way they were standing. Their knees were bent slightly the wrong way.
She couldn't scream. She couldn't make a sound. She understood only one thing: if she looked away, it would be over. So she kept her eyes fixed on those shadows and stepped backward, slowly, one step at a time. She doesn't know how long it went on. At some point the trees gave way, and she felt gravel beneath her feet again.
When her friends found her at the forest's edge in the early morning hours, she was sitting on the ground, knees pulled to her chest, staring into the depths of the trees. When they spoke to her, she didn't respond at first.
Misaki never told anyone what had happened to her that night. But she did say one thing, quietly, to one of her friends.
"They were smiling the whole time," she said.
