There are places in the city of Fukuoka that people will not go near after dark. These are the places where the story of the Shadow-Walker is told — a figure said to appear only on the night of the Hōjōe festival. Deep within Higashi Park stands a small stone shrine that seems to breathe a faint, unsettling air. No one can say exactly when the legend surrounding it first took root.
According to the legend, when the noise of the Hōjōe has finally died down and the night grows still, a person may suddenly become aware of an unfamiliar silhouette following close behind them. The shape is indistinct, as though mist had taken on the rough suggestion of a form, and no matter how quickly one turns to look, its true nature can never quite be grasped.
One autumn night, a group of young people who had come for the festival let their curiosity lead them toward the shrine in Higashi Park. They walked deeper into the grounds, away from the noise of the streets, into a quiet that felt wrong somehow. One of them slipped and went down. He rose quickly enough — but as he did, he caught sight of something in the distance: a shadow, swaying where nothing should have been swaying.
"There's someone behind us." His voice barely held together as he said it, and the others didn't believe him. But then, one by one, they began to feel it too. They ran. All of them. And as they ran, each of them had the same sensation pressing against the back of their neck — the feeling of something watching, patient and still, from just behind.
They cleared the park gates and the shadow seemed to dissolve. Or so it felt. But the legend did not dissolve with it. Those who encounter the Shadow-Walker, it is said, can never set foot in Fukuoka again. And indeed, the young people from that night eventually moved far away, and none of them ever returned to the city.
They swore among themselves never to speak of what happened. Yet somehow the story kept spreading. Tonight, as on every night, the shadow of Fukuoka may already be taking shape behind someone who has not yet thought to look.
