Hey, can I tell you something?
It's about Nikko… You know Kegon Falls, right? That waterfall — the one that just pours straight down in a rush of white.
I heard this from a friend of a friend, so I can't say how much of it is true… but apparently last autumn, a young man in his twenties went to Nikko alone. He was into photography, and he'd taken a weekday off specifically to shoot the falls during the autumn leaves.
By the time he rode the elevator down to the observation platform, it was already close to evening. Most of the other tourists had gone, and there was almost no one left in front of the falls. October in Nikko — the sun drops early, and the light was already beginning to fade.
The sound of a waterfall up close is something else, isn't it. Not just a roar or a crash, but something that gets inside you — the very air trembles, and you feel it vibrating deep in your ears. He loved that sound, and for a while he just stood there listening, camera still at his side.
Eventually he started shooting. He moved around, tried different angles, took a handful of frames. He was thinking he should head back up — one last shot, he told himself, just one more — and he pressed the shutter.
That was when it happened.
Something seemed to slip into the sound of the falls.
He told himself it was his imagination. But when he held his breath and listened… it was there. Just beneath the roar of the water. A low, wavering sound. Like a human voice.
He looked toward the plunge pool, his breath caught in his throat. Nothing. Only white spray and black water. But the voice didn't stop. If anything, it grew clearer — and then he realized something he couldn't un-realize. The voice was calling his name.
Not his family name. His given name. And the way it said it… it was the same way his mother used to call him when he was small.
Fear nailed him to the spot. He couldn't move. The voice kept coming, and some instinct told him he must not turn around — so he just stood there, staring at the falls. It could only have been a minute or two, but he said it felt like far longer.
Somehow he came back to himself, and he half-ran to the elevator and got out of there.
When he got home and went through his photos… something else was wrong. The last shot — the one he'd taken just before leaving. It should have been nothing but white spray spreading across the frame. But there, roughly in the center of all that mist, was something that looked like a human face.
Not vaguely. Quite clearly.
The eyes were open.
The mouth was open too, just slightly… and the expression wasn't one of suffering, exactly. It looked more like someone trying to say something.
He deleted the photo. But he said he'd looked at it properly, right before he did. The face wasn't turned toward the plunge pool. It was turned toward the camera. Toward him.
Kegon Falls is still there, still falling, still making that sound.
What might be woven into that sound beneath the roar… perhaps you can only find out by going yourself.
But he said — when something calls you by your name, you must not answer. He just felt that, instinctively.
Just a feeling, he said.
…Just a feeling.
