The waves of the Shirakami coast whispered stories older than the trees that watched them. Locals told tales of the Nure-onna, a serpent-bodied woman with the face of a grieving mother, luring travelers with the cries of a baby—then draining their blood with her serpent tongue.
But stories fade. Warnings turn to myths.
Until one rainy night in late October.
---
Miyuki Saito was a journalist for a Tokyo paranormal magazine. Ambitious, skeptical, and bold. When she received a tip about an abandoned fishing village near Fukaura, where "something" was dragging people into the sea, she smiled.
"A Nure-onna story? Let's give it teeth."
The villagers refused to talk. One old man at the shrine whispered, "Don't go to the rocks when it rains. She's wet, angry, and waiting." Then he handed her a prayer charm and shut the door.
By the time Miyuki reached the cliffs, the clouds had split. Rain fell like needles. Her rented umbrella flipped backward in the wind.
Down below, she saw the ruins of a shrine half-sunk into the waves. A path of jagged stone led to it.
She should've turned back. But the wind carried a sound—a baby's cry.
---
It lay near the shrine's edge. A small, white cloth, soaked and trembling. Crying.
Miyuki's instincts froze.
"No baby should be here," she muttered. But still, she stepped closer.
The crying stopped.
She bent down. The cloth stirred.
As she reached, her camera light flickered—and for a split second, she saw scales glimmer beneath the folds.
She yanked her hand back, heart pounding. The bundle tumbled open.
Empty.
She stepped back.
And heard water slither.
Something slick and massive coiled around the base of the shrine. A head rose—a woman's face, soaked hair covering her eyes, lips gray, eyes bottomless. Her neck sloped into a long, wet serpent body, mottled with algae, glistening in the dark.
"Nure-onna," Miyuki whispered.
The yokai smiled, revealing rows of sharp, wet teeth.
"You heard my baby cry," she said. "Now you carry it."
She hurled the bundle at Miyuki. It struck her chest and clung to her like seaweed, wrapping around her shoulders, seeping cold into her bones.
Miyuki screamed and stumbled back, but her feet sank into the earth, as though the rocks were turning to mud. The bundle grew heavier, its weight pressing her down, and she felt her blood throb unnaturally—as if being sucked.
The Nure-onna slithered closer.
"I lost my child in the sea," she whispered. "You will feed me in her place."
---
Miyuki pulled the prayer charm from her coat. The charm burned hot in her hand.
Nure-onna hissed and recoiled, body thrashing like a storm-wracked rope. The bundle loosened slightly.
She ran. Through mud, over sharp stones, through wind and rain.
She didn't stop until she reached the village.
But something had followed.
That night, salt water leaked from her walls. Her bed felt wet and cold. A soft crying echoed from her closet. Her camera footage was blank—except for one frame showing a glistening serpent eye and a wet, infant-like hand reaching toward the lens.
She fled back to Tokyo. Left the story behind. Told no one.
---
Part IV: The Return
Ten years later, Miyuki had a daughter—Airi. Sweet, curious, and afraid of water.
But on Airi's eighth birthday, she found a shell-white bundle by the apartment door. Inside: a tiny black scale and a note:
> You held her once. Now she calls you "Mother."
That night, Airi said she heard a woman crying from the bathtub. When Miyuki entered, the tub was full of seawater, and the water rippled with coiling shapes.
Airi was gone.
The tub was empty.
Miyuki returned to Fukaura, driven by fury and fear. The shrine was gone, swallowed by waves.
But the cliffs remained. So did the rain.
And the baby's cry.
Miyuki followed it again—this time, not as a journalist, but as a mother.
At the cliff's edge, the water rose unnaturally. The ocean peeled back, revealing a coiling body thicker than a tree trunk. From the sea rose the Nure-onna, still young, still wet, still grieving.
"You took her," Miyuki shouted. "Give Airi back!"
"I took no one," the yokai replied, "who did not hear her cry."
"She's my daughter!"
"She is mine now. You accepted her bundle. You fed me with fear and blood. The debt is eternal."
Miyuki pulled the old prayer charm. It crumbled in her fingers—rotted from salt.
"Then take me instead," she cried. "I'll be her mother. Let her go."
Nure-onna paused.
"For one life," she hissed, "another."
Then she smiled—and vanished beneath the waves, dragging Miyuki into the sea with a wet, thunderous crash.
____
They found Airi walking along the highway three days later. Dry, unharmed, but silent.
She lives now in an orphanage.
She doesn't speak.
But sometimes, when it rains, the workers say she hums softly to herself—and cries like a baby in her sleep.
She avoids mirrors.
She fears bathtubs.
And when they tried to give her a doll, she coiled a scarf around its neck and said:
> "She taught me how to wrap them. Just like she did with Mommy."
---
End.