Hey, can I tell you something?
It's about Namba Walk… I can't say for certain it's true, and I only heard it secondhand. But it's the kind of story that, once you've heard it, comes back to you every time you walk through that place.
A friend of a friend used to work the cleaning crew down there — in the underground mall, Namba Walk. Late nights, after everything closed. She said that during the day it's so lively, but once all the shutters come down, it becomes somewhere else entirely. Just the fluorescent lights burning white, and the sound of footsteps echoing strangely. Her own footsteps — and yet they seemed to land half a beat off, like they belonged to someone else.
One night, she was mopping her way down the corridor as usual, when she noticed something.
The air had gone cold.
Underground malls aren't known for steady temperatures. But this cold was different, she said. Not like air conditioning, nothing like that — more like a coldness seeping up from the soil itself. Starting at her feet, crawling slowly upward.
It was only then that she remembered something she'd once heard: that the area around Namba Walk had once been the site of an execution ground — back in the Edo period, in the old Sennichimae district. A graveyard, too. People put to death, sleeping in the earth beneath. It might be urban legend, though there was even a horror event held there once, which suggests it's not entirely without basis — something called the Dark Shopping Street, if I recall. A horror event themed around grudges and curses. They used the closed-off underground mall after hours — survive the wrath of what lies beneath, that sort of thing.
But never mind all that. This is about that particular night.
She noticed the cold, and looked up.
At the far end of the corridor, pressed against the wall where the shutters lined up — someone was standing there.
At first she thought it must be one of the other cleaners. The person was wearing something like a work uniform. But when she looked more carefully, she saw that the figure was facing her — and had no face.
…Not exactly no face.
The head was bowed. Deeply, completely — chin pressed hard to the chest, as though the neck had simply given way.
She was about to call out, when one of the fluorescent lights above her began to flicker. It went dark. When it came back on, the figure was gone.
But the tiles along the wall where it had been standing — one small patch of them was wet. As though water had dripped down. She checked the ceiling: nothing leaking. Her mop hadn't reached that far.
Wet wasn't quite the right word, she said. It was more like something had seeped through.
After that night, she stopped taking the late shifts. She never explained why.
You hear it sometimes — the idea that someone is still down there beneath Sennichimae. People who never found peace, still lying in the earth. And every time a foot comes down on the tile above them, perhaps they feel it.
Someone is walking through that underground mall tonight, I'm sure of it.
I wonder how many of them are thinking about what might be just beneath their feet.
