I have never told this story to anyone before. Maybe precisely because it’s a board like this... It’s going to be a long story, but please, just listen.
In the summer of my last year in college, some friends from my club and I went to Izu Oshima. One of our friends' family ran a minshuku (guest house), so we used that connection. After swimming to our heart's content at Oonohama and Kōbonohama for the first two days, on the third day we toured the island's sightseeing spots, centering around Mount Mihara.
That night, despite being exhausted, we decided to hold a ghost story session. The main speaker, of course, was U, who was a local. The six of us, including U, sat in a circle in the large room we were renting. We started a little past 10:00 PM, but by the time it passed midnight, we were completely drawn into U's stories.
Frankly, using local material is a cheat code. Ghost stories that start with things like, "A person was in the bathroom when...", could apply to anyone, but because of that, they lack punch. In contrast, ghost stories from the very island we were currently visiting had a completely different atmosphere.
Listening to U's story with chills running down my spine, U took a break right when things reached a stopping point, saying, "Go eat some watermelon or something."
About thirty minutes later, he came back holding a sheet of traditional Japanese calligraphy paper. "The next story is seriously messed up," he said, turning off the lights, and illuminating the paper placed on the desk with a flashlight.
"This story, see, people around here have said from long ago that you mustn't speak it aloud. That's why I'm writing it down as I go. It was a pain, so I wrote the whole thing out in advance."
My intuition told me, *This one is the real deal.*
However, since six of us were surrounding it, someone would end up reading it upside down, making it "hard to read." One of us said, "Just tell us out loud."
U tried to resist, saying, "No, seriously, it's messed up." But we coaxed him, driven by morbid curiosity, and he agreed to speak. I’m a bit of a coward, so honestly, I wanted to run away. Saying, "I take no responsibility for this," U began to speak in a halting manner.
"Long ago, around the northern fishing port on this island, there lived a girl named Yuki. Her father was a fisherman, and her mother had drowned in the sea when Yuki was little. Yuki was a hard worker who sold candy while also helping with her father's work, but when she turned 18, she fell ill with a severe chest disease. The doctor said she couldn't be saved, and Yuki, who was just about to be married, was unilaterally dumped by her fiancé, and finally went mad."
"Wait a second, when was this?" someone interrupted.
"Who knows. I think it was back in the Meiji era. Anyway, the mad Yuki started wandering around all day, muttering things that made no sense. The people around her, who had pitied her, gradually grew creeped out and started treating her father coldly. Living alone with just the two of them, the father couldn't look after her while he was out fishing. He didn't have the money to put her in a sanatorium either. The father was at his wit's end. One night like that, Yuki disappeared."
"The next day, a fellow fisherman said that the previous night, he saw Yuki get into her father's boat and head out to sea. 'It was a night with a bright moon, so I could see her profile clearly,' he said. When the father asked, 'Why didn't you stop her?', the fisherman replied, 'There was someone else in the boat with her. Wasn't that you?'
The place went into an uproar, and the fishermen joined in to help search. Before long, a report came from a fellow fisherman out at sea that the boat carrying Yuki had been found. The boat, which had been towed back, carried what was left of Yuki's unrecognizable body. Yuki had been alone, but people said whoever had taken her out must have done it. Whether that person went out to sea to die a double suicide with her, or they fought and fell into the sea, in either case, they couldn't possibly be alive.
The story settled around those conclusions, but in their hearts, everyone thought: *'This wasn't the work of a human.'*
Yuki's head had been torn off. ...Ever since then, yu-ki yu-ki I am hhh just like they said hhh I went out to Matsu-unabara just like they said. Hands reached up from the calm sea. White hands, countless of them, rising from the very, very deep bottom of the sea..."
We couldn't move. We couldn't make a sound. It wasn't U's voice. The fallen flashlight was illuminating the window, but no one looked over there. It sounded as if U was speaking, yet at the same time, it seemed to be coming from nowhere at all. From that point on, only sounds like strings of consonants could be heard, and the content was unintelligible. However, at the very end, we heard this clearly:
"The shadow of Fuji is so beautiful."
As if reacting to that voice, someone violently shook U's shoulder. No matter how you thought about it, the context halfway through had become unnatural for the continuation of a ghost story. Half-crying myself, I shook U as well. U seemed to come to his senses immediately, but he kept repeating "I'm sleepy," and fell asleep as if passing out. We looked at each other's faces and somewhat awkwardly brought the ghost story session to an end.
Finding it utterly nagging, I looked at the final passage of the calligraphy paper U had prepared before going to sleep: *‘Ever since then, Yuki comes to the person who tells this story—’* Reading up to this point, I tore the paper to pieces.
The next morning, U said he didn't remember anything about yesterday. "No way. Did I really tell that? Well, whatever, I don't care."
It left a bad aftertaste to bring it up again, so we didn't say anything more. However, for some reason, this one thing was bothering me, so before leaving, I asked, "What is the shadow of Fuji?" "The shadow of Mount Fuji? What about it?" "No, it's nothing."
It felt somewhat awkward to ask U directly, so I secretly asked U's parents, who had taken care of us. "Ah, on nights with a full moon, you can rarely see it. If it's bright, the air is clear, and conditions like the temperature of the sea surface line up, you can see it from here even in the middle of the night."
Ever since that incident, I have never told this story to anyone. Physically speaking, I just cannot bring myself to say it out of my mouth anymore. It's as if U's voice from that time is clinging to the inside of my head. When my grandfather died the year before last, as I was sleeping near his body at the wake, I felt like I heard my grandfather's voice in the middle of the night. Hearing that voice, I felt like I understood something.
If U's voice at that time had been a woman's voice, we probably would have panicked immediately, slapping and shaking U awake. U's voice was like my grandfather's voice—a dead person's voice that we instinctively couldn't classify as either male or female.
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