[JapanUrbanLegend] Kunekune
くねくね
When I was a child, I had an unforgettable experience. It happened during the summer vacation when I went to my grandmother’s house. Her house was in a remote rural village in Akita Prefecture, far from the city, and it felt like an entirely different world. The wind was cool, the rice fields stretched out green, and the village was quiet and peaceful. But amidst this tranquility, something ominous lurked.
One day, my brother and I went to play near the rice fields around my grandmother’s house. The weather was clear, and the air was fresh. It was the perfect day to play outside, but for some strange reason, neither of us felt like going out. So, we decided to spend time inside the house. Then, suddenly, my brother stood up and walked over to the window. Curious to see what he was looking at, I followed him and looked in the same direction.
Beyond the window, there was a figure standing in the middle of the rice field. It looked like a person, but from a distance, it appeared to be nothing more than a white shape. The figure moved, swaying slightly, and at first, I thought it was dancing. But it wasn’t dancing. The body moved unnaturally, twisting at strange angles as if it were bent out of shape.
“Look, what’s that?” I asked my brother.
He stared at the figure without saying anything. “I don’t know,” he replied, his voice trembling slightly.
At that moment, I definitely felt something was wrong. That white figure continued moving in a strange and unnatural way. I asked my brother again, “What is that?” He looked more uneasy and replied, “I’m not sure, but maybe it’s better not to know.”
A few days later, just before we were about to leave my grandmother’s house, she spoke to me. “Don’t go back to that rice field,” she said, her voice heavy with a warning. I didn’t fully understand her words at that time, but later, I realized it wasn’t just a casual warning. My grandmother knew exactly what was happening there, and she knew what that white figure was.
“People who see it never come back,” my grandmother quietly said later.
As time passed, I tried to forget about that day. But every time that memory resurfaced, I couldn’t help but shudder. What was that white figure? Why did it look like that? And why did my grandmother say what she did? Even now, I still wonder about the meaning behind it all.
Years later, I experienced another strange event. It happened during a summer camp I attended with my friend, K. On the first day of the camp, we were supposed to swim in the sea, but a typhoon was approaching, so we had to stay inside. We were bored and spent time in our rooms. I was looking out the window, watching the sea. The beach was buffeted by strong winds, and gray waves crashed against the shore. Then, I noticed something moving close to the water’s edge.
“What’s that?” I casually said, and K, who was sitting beside me, stared at it too. There was no one on the beach, but a white figure was walking along the shore. At first, I thought it was just some kind of scarecrow, but the winds were strong, and the figure continued moving against the gusts.
“That’s really strange,” K said, looking uneasy.
We couldn’t ignore it any longer. K hurried to get a pair of binoculars. I told him to check first, but when he looked through the binoculars, his face turned pale. “You shouldn’t look,” K muttered without saying more, dropping the binoculars. At that moment, I felt a chill run down my spine. “What did you see?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. K ran back to his room, and I was left too scared to check for myself.
A few days later, when the camp was over and I was at a family gathering, I asked K about that day. But he refused to talk about it, his face still showing signs of discomfort. And then, I understood. What he had seen was something beyond anything I could have imagined.
Since then, I’ve tried not to think about ‘it.’ But whenever I recall that day, the memory of the figure returns, and I can’t help but feel uneasy. I still wonder—was that figure a living person, or something else entirely?
