Hey, can I tell you something?
There's a story going around Shinsekai in Osaka — one that's hard to just let pass.
I can't say it's been verified. But I've heard the same thing from several different people, so maybe there's something to it.
It happened last autumn, apparently. A man in his thirties who'd come to Osaka on business. His name — well, let's just call him K. After finishing up his work, K came to Shinsekai alone to eat kushikatsu. Sometime after nine in the evening. Tsutenkaku was glowing faintly orange, and the main street still had a fair number of people on it. But after his meal, when K set off back to his hotel, he decided to take a small shortcut.
That's when he turned down a narrow alley.
At first, nothing seemed wrong. A dark passage between old buildings, barely wide enough for one person. The asphalt underfoot was crumbling in places, and there was a smell from the drains — something faintly sour, like rot dissolved in standing water. An old smell that had always been there. K watched his step as he walked.
After a while, he realised he had no idea where the exit was.
That's strange, he thought, and reached for his phone to open the map — but there was no signal. Old buildings, narrow gap, these things happen, he told himself. But then something else caught his attention.
It was too quiet.
He'd stepped only one alley away from a bustling street. Yet there was nothing — no traffic, no voices, not a sound. Only his own footsteps, echoing off the damp concrete.
When K stopped, he noticed it.
His footsteps were still going.
One, two, three — they continued. He had already stopped moving.
And yet the steps weren't approaching. They simply carried on, just behind him, as though someone were walking at exactly his pace, right at his back. K said he couldn't bring himself to turn around. Not from fear, exactly. More that he felt — if he turned, it would be over.
When he slowly started walking again, the footsteps followed, a beat behind.
K ran. He didn't know where he was going — he just ran, and when he came back to himself he was at a dead end in an unfamiliar alley. Gasping, he pressed his hand against the wall, and felt something cling to his palm. A sticky warmth, like body heat. But the wall itself was cold.
I heard that the next morning he went back to look for the place. But there was no such alley anywhere to be found.
When he mentioned it to an old man who'd lived in that neighbourhood for years, the man started to say something — then stopped. He closed his mouth. "Always been that way round here," was all he said, and he wouldn't speak another word about it.
They say that sediment collects in back alleys. The way heavy things slowly settle wherever water doesn't flow. Perhaps in that alley in Shinsekai, something has been accumulating over the long years.
What exactly has been accumulating — well, no one will say.
Only this: the wristwatch K had on him that night, when he looked at it after getting home, had stopped. Frozen at nine fourteen — the moment he'd entered the alley. He replaced the battery, but the watch never moved again.
