Watcher #15

That day, I was at a client's office for work.

By the time I finished my business, it was a good time.

When I contacted my company, I was given permission to go straight home from there.

The station nearest to the client is a JR station.

However, the station nearest to my apartment is a subway station.

If I went back to a station where I could transfer to the subway, it would be quite a detour.

If I went home via JR, I would have to walk a fair bit from the station.

I wasn't tired, so I chose the route that wouldn't take much time, even if it meant walking.


A route I don't usually use feels fresh.

That said, I wasn't exactly gazing at the night view from the train window.

After enjoying it just enough, I started fiddling with my smartphone.

While I was being swayed back and forth, fiddling with my phone, I arrived at my station.

A station I rarely use.

An unfamiliar izakaya chain store in front of the station.

I'll go in there sometime.

I thought that, but in the end, I still haven't been to that branch.

Once you get a little away from the station, the area is already quiet.

Even if there are shops, the shutters are down.

There are also scattered properties with 'tenant wanted' signs on the shutters.

I walked along, thinking that there probably isn't much demand for shops combined with residences.

An imported goods store was still open.

When I passed by, the shopkeeper I caught a glimpse of was young.

The shop smelled like Asia.

When I say things like this,

'What does it mean to smell like Asia?'

some people ask, but I just think that if I could explain it specifically, I wouldn't use an expression like 'smells like Asia'.


Beyond that, I thought things like, 'That ramen shop went out of business and became another ramen shop?'

'A convenience store opened in a place like this,' and so on.

I was surprised to find that a toy store I remembered going to as a child was still there, and I felt glad I had chosen this route.

Just as I was feeling that way, I was hit by cold air.

It was a forest.

It was chilled air leaking from the forest surrounding a shrine.

The shrine grounds themselves aren't large, but the forest surrounding them is quite extensive.

This shrine has a story behind it.

I heard it was a story from the Showa era.

There was a woman who was rumored to be a beauty.

It seems the woman started having similar dreams.

The content of the dream was being called by a man whose face she couldn't see.

Because she kept having the dream, she had a fortune teller look at it.

That fortune teller had psychic abilities and told her she had been chosen by a god.

And that the god in question was enshrined at this very shrine I am approaching now.

However, the woman had a fiancé.

A serious and hardworking young man.

His job was in construction.

If it were just having dreams, it would have been fine, but the woman's body started to weaken.

Even when she saw a doctor, they couldn't find the cause.

The man visited the shrine and prayed, 'The woman is engaged to me, so please do not take her away.'

Even though the man prayed many times, the woman's dreams did not stop, nor did she recover.

On the contrary, the woman even started ending up at the shrine while unconscious, without realizing it.

They relied on Shinto priests, mediums, and even Buddhist monks, but it seems no one would take on a god.

Driven to desperation, the man headed to the shrine with a hammer, his trade tool, in hand.

The worried woman, pushing through her illness, followed the man.

Actually, she didn't want to go near the shrine, but...

The man shook off the woman's attempts to stop him and forcefully opened the door to the main hall.

The door hit the shimenawa rope hanging at the entrance, causing it to sway.

In the center, there was an old, round mirror with no decorations.

It seems it was stood up by a wooden stand.

The man raised the hammer and brought it down toward the mirror.

Facing the easily shattered mirror, the man breathed heavily.

When he calmed down and tried to leave, a white haze appeared from somewhere.

It wasn't that a face with a look of tremendous anger floated in that white haze.

The white haze didn't turn into the form of a terrifying monster either.

But it seems that a feeling of terror welled up strongly in the man toward that haze.

The two of them ran away.

However, because the woman was weak and her knees were shaking from fear, she couldn't walk.

The woman clung to the man.

The man tried to shake the woman off, but he couldn't.

In his extreme terror, the man reflexively struck the woman's head with the hammer.

Then, the woman's hands, which had been gripping the man, finally lost their strength.

And it seems the man left the woman behind and ran away.

He could hear the woman's screams calling him from behind, but the man never looked back.

After that, no one has seen the woman.

Currently, it is said that the woman married the god and became a god herself, and she is enshrined in a small shrine on the grounds.


It's an indescribable story.

What must the woman have felt, being struck with a hammer by her fiancé who was gripped by terror, and then abandoned?

The entrance to the shrine approached.

It was 'that'.

I can't see its face, but it's the woman's 'that'.

It is sitting in a way that looks like it has collapsed onto the ground.

However, from the chest up and the bottom half are facing in opposite directions.

There is a back on top of the chest.

Insect wings were growing there.

But those wings were crumpled and wrinkled, and didn't look like they would be of any use.

And a part of its body was shaped like a ring.

Furthermore, the lower half of its body was growing from the top of that ring.

Could it be the woman from the story earlier?

No, she became a god, right?

If so, she wouldn't be wearing such a short skirt...