The Riverside

     Ever since an incident that took place in my elementary school years, I was always curious as to what exactly it meant “to exist”. Playing in our small home on the floor of our living room, while my mom sat on the couch flipping through magazines, I asked my mother if she’d ever seen a ghost. She told me that she’d stopped believing in ghosts a long time ago, and that ghost stories were either made up, or just a misinterpretation of someone’s surroundings. I couldn’t understand much of what she was saying, given that I was only ten years old at the time. To be honest, it might have been the first time I’d even heard the word “misinterpretation”. Nonetheless, I never had that discussion with my mother again, and since then, haven’t really given that topic much attention as I got older.

     When I was sixteen, me and my mother moved from Kyoto and relocated to the western ward of Kobe. Of course, as you could expect, I wasn’t too happy about it. I had left a bustling city; a fantasy world for a budding teenager, and moved off to where the first thing I would see every morning when I woke up were oversized dragonflies buzzing around a piece of farmland owned by a 70-year-old nagging couple. Eventually I came to terms with the change of view, and after about two months at my new High School, I even managed to make a couple of new friends. One of them, Moe, actually lived a few houses down from me, which was rare in Japan since the high school you attended was by choice, and not because of the town you lived in. Not willing to give up my old lifestyle so easily, I chose to attend a school in the nearby Kobe city area of Sannomiya. It was actually a quite popular city and felt a lot like Kyoto. Every day after cram-school, me and Moe would catch the 10pm train back to our hometown and ride our bikes straight home from there. It was about a 25-minute ride from the station, and while there was a bus that could make the trip in a fraction of the time, we would have to wait at the station for way too long. Which didn’t make much sense given that we would arrive home about 10 minutes earlier if we just rode our bikes. Most of the route was us peddling on the outskirts of town, where the road was hugged by a large river on its right-hand side. There were other routes that went straight through town, but Moe had suggested this direction because it was usually quieter and filled with less drunk 40-year-old salary men. The road sat on the west side of town, which was obvious if you ever passed through during sunset hours. The sky would be painted with a beautiful Claude Monet, that would reflect off the water and make for a sight like never before. But in the dead of night, riding down the poorly lit road; save for the few street lights placed way too far apart from one another, and the scarce moments when a passing vehicle would drive by, while Moe and I were dragging our beaten minds back to our even less exciting homes, there was hardly anything around worth telling someone about. At least that’s how it normally was.

     One night while Moe and I were trekking our way home, the road felt darker than usual. As if a mist had cascaded over the land, I could hardly see even as much as a meter in front of me. Moe and I were taking it slow, walking beside our bikes, when a car came zipping pass towards our direction. Its blinding headlights struck the back of my corneas and forced me to shut my eyes closed. When I opened them, I looked around only to notice that Moe was nowhere to be found. “Moe” I called out to her, but I couldn’t hear a thing. It was like I was caught in a vacuum. I didn’t know if I should stay still or keep pressing forward. Chances are she had simply walked ahead of me, but something just felt strange. I looked over to my right, and noticed a lady sitting down a few meters below the road where the river water and the strip of land we were on met one another. She sat with her legs halfway in the water and her body hunched over. Her arms going back and forth as if she was trying to scrub a stubborn stain out of an old shirt. Like I said, the air was covered in a thick fog, but for some reason I could see her clearly. Even down to the print on her ragged kimono. I remember leaning forward and resting my hand on the guard rail, trying to get a closer look at the odd lady. My bicycle slipped from my grasp, and the handlebars banged against the railing. At that moment, I was frozen stiff. The lady sitting in the water came to a full stop. Fear had flooded my veins, and I couldn’t think straight. She slowly began turning her head towards me, and it was at that moment that I realized I had gotten myself into something I shouldn’t have. Slowly stepping backwards and raising my bike from off the floor, I called out to Moe one last time, when suddenly I felt a hand grasp my shoulder. My heart stopped beating for a moment and I felt like I was about to collapse. I had no idea what to expect. When I turned around, I was relieved to see Moe standing right behind me. Frantically looking back towards the river, the lady that was there just a moment ago had mysteriously disappeared. I immediately calmed my nerves and a sigh of relief had escaped my mouth. “Let’s hurry up and get home,” Moe nervously told me, “It’s kind of scary out here.” I agreed with her one hundred percent, and so we picked up our pace and made it home as quickly as possible. On our way back, I told Moe about what I saw, and we both agreed to take the main roads back home from now on.

     That night, I woke up in the middle of my sleep. I had a strange feeling in the pit of my gut that made me feel oddly anxious. I sat up in my bed, staring at the wall on the opposite side of the room. My curtains were pulled back, and the moonlight from outside created long shadows stretching away from the window. I remember feeling extremely lethargic, and my head felt like there was a weight strapped to the back of my neck. I held my head low and tried to massage my upper shoulders to relieve the stress, but it was like it was getting heavier by the second. Unexpectedly, three large knocks came tearing through my window. Startled, I tried to lift my head, when something clenched the back of my neck and forced me downwards. My heart was racing, and no matter how hard I fought, I couldn’t break myself free. I wanted to scream, but the sound of my voice was trapped at the bottom of my throat. My body felt like it was going to snap. The pressure was excruciating. The banging against the window kept on and on, getting louder each time. I opened my mouth and tried to force out a scream as hard as I could. Then eventually, everything just stopped. I straightened my back and looked around the room. Everything seemed normal, but the hairs on my skin were still standing straight up. I sat at the edge of my mattress and tried to put my head on straight. I began to feel a weird sensation on my feet, and when I looked down, I realized that my legs were covered in water from about halfway below my knees. I had never been so terribly confused in my entire life. This was all beyond explanation.

     The next day I woke up to the presence of two police officers standing at the front of my door. I could remember the look on my mother’s face when I walked out of my bedroom and into the kitchen, which was in direct line of sight from the front door. I was scared and confused at the same time. I had no idea what to expect. As I walked towards the door, I noticed that standing beside one of the officers was a sky-blue bicycle, similar to the one I owned. “Hello young lady,” the officer called out to me, “does this belong to you?” Double checking the bicycle one last time, I realized that not only did the bike look just like mine. . . it was mine. I could only imagine what my expression must have looked like at the time. I was just so confused about everything. The officer told me that one of the residents living on the old road that I always took on my way home found it lying beside the river early in the morning. Concerned that something might have happened, the old man phoned the police who then came to investigate the situation. Using the serial number on the bike, they got in touch with the insurance company, since it’s mandatory to have bike insurance in Japan, and was able to track the bicycle back to me. After confirming with my mother that I was okay, the officers decided to carry the bike back to me personally, because they were concerned as to how the bike had ended up in the river in the first place. Unfortunately, I was just as confused as they were.

     The officers told me that most residents of this town tend to stay away from that river, following an incident that took place two years ago. On a foggy night, a mentally unstable mother had drugged his 16-year-old daughter and dragged her out to the river. There she threw her in to the water, sat atop her shoulders, and forced her head down. . . Drowning her. Evidence showed that the daughter had tried to call for help by profusely banging her hand against one of the large stones that lined the edge of the river, but it was late at night, and no one took notice until her body was discovered in the early morning. The mother had already hung herself by the time authorities went searching for the girl’s parents at their home. I didn’t know what to make of what they were telling me; and even more so, why my bike was found at the river, when I knew I had ridden it home last night.

     I found out later that day that the girl’s name was Kaneki, Moe; a student at the same High School that I attended. She’d lived only a few houses down from me, and she was murdered two years ago on the night of March 25th.

Today, was March 26th.