Hey, can I tell you something?
It's about Nishioka Reservoir, in Sapporo. Some of you might already know the place — there are stories about it, whispered around the city for years. The kind of stories that don't quite go away.
It's a green, quiet spot. Families come during the day, apparently. There's a pond, trees pressing in on all sides, a faint marshy quality to the air. But for a long time now, people have been saying that place has seen a lot of drownings. And that most of the bodies were never recovered. Whether it's the depth, or some current no one can explain — no one really knows. But the ones who went in and never came back are still down there, somewhere beneath that water.
I can't say for certain any of this is true. I heard it from a friend of a friend.
Sometime last autumn, a couple in their twenties went for a walk there at night. Not late — around eleven. Not a dare, not a ghost hunt. Just a whim.
Past the entrance, the streetlamps thin out quickly and the dark closes in. They were following the path along the pond. It was autumn, so the insects had mostly gone quiet, and the water barely made a sound — that's what she said, apparently. Still enough that you could hear yourself breathe.
And then.
She noticed a smell. Not ordinary water — something older, heavier. Not algae, not mud. Something like iron. Damp iron, slipping suddenly into her nose. She was about to say *does something smell strange to you?* when her boyfriend pointed toward the middle of the pond and said, quietly: *…what is that?*
There was something white, shaped like a person, standing on the water.
Standing — I know how that sounds. You can't stand on a pond. But it wasn't sinking, and it wasn't floating. It was simply there, she said.
At first she thought it was a reflection. A sign, a branch, something like that. But then it moved.
Slowly, slowly, coming toward them. Gliding across the surface without disturbing it, without raising a single ripple.
That was when she noticed: the white figure's head was tilted slightly downward. Like someone who has given up. And its arms — they weren't hanging at its sides. They were stretched out in front of it, reaching straight ahead.
Her boyfriend said *run* at the exact moment she screamed.
They ran back the way they came, as fast as they could. But she looked back once. She said she couldn't help it.
The figure was gone from the water.
But in its place — the pond was moving. After all that stillness, slow waves were rolling in toward the bank. Toward them. One after another, quiet and steady.
Nothing there. No wind.
The story goes that there are still people down at the bottom of that pond. People who were never found. Maybe they've been waiting all this time. And because they can't come up themselves, maybe they're looking for someone else to bring down instead.
Please don't go trying to find out.
Those waves might still be rolling toward the bank tonight.
