About a Place in the Kinki Region p.11: Information gathered from the internet 2
The following was taken from a blog compiling together stories found on an online message board titled 'Seriously Serious Scary Stories'.
Anonymous (ID: ZDKsJPWc0) 2010/05/17(Mon)20:30:43
This reminded me of a story I have about a creepy blog, so here goes. Sorry if it's hard to follow. I'm not used to telling stories.
This happened about five or so years ago. It still crosses my mind sometimes and I find myself wondering what happened to the blogger.
I've been really into motorbikes since I was 20. Back then I would look for blogs ran by other bikers and follow them. I don't remember how exactly I found this blog but the blogger rode the same model of Suzuki that I did, so it might've been through that.
It was hosted on FC2 I think. It wasn't anything special, just a personal blog ran by some old dude as a hobby. It didn't get much interactions or comments and was probably mostly for his own satisfaction. That said, there were a whole ton of posts, so maybe he was using it like a diary.
I didn't really interact with him in any way but the blog had a lot of useful info about maintaining and customising bikes, so I checked in pretty often.
About half the posts were like I just said and the other half detailed biking trips he'd been on on his days off with plenty of photos attached. It was pretty plain stuff like pics of his bike in front of Lake Biwa or comments about how good the ice cream was at a service station.
But suddenly something really weird happened to his blog.
I went to check out his blog from my bookmarks like I always did but all of his previous posts were completely gone. He was posting like normal until about three days before this.
All the stuff in the profile section was gone too. He used to have his profile picture set as a pic of his bike, but it was just a black box now.
Like all the stuff in his blog had vanished overnight.
I thought I'd gone to the wrong blog on accident since there was nothing there, but the blog name hadn't changed at all.
But on that blog, otherwise totally empty, was a single post. One post on a blog that should've had tons.
The post title was just 'a'.
He used to title his posts like 'XX/XX - Trip to Kochi' or 'Tire Maintenance Tips' so that single letter was really odd.
But that's not all, the post was locked. That means you can't read it without a password.
Since I read his blog all the time I felt like I had a small connection to this old dude, even if I didn't know him. So I really wanted to know what was in the post. I thought maybe it explained what happened.
I looked around to see if the password was somewhere on the blog but had no luck. Since everything got deleted there wasn't really many places to look anyway.
I basically gave up on finding the password and started putting stuff in at random. I tried the blog name, his bike model, and even basic numbers like 0000, but none of it worked.
I tried one last guess, a four digit number, and figured if this didn't work either I'd just give up.
The number I entered was the guy's birthday. The only reason I knew it was because he had the same birthday as me.
It was on his profile back when it wasn't empty, so the fact we shared a birthday stuck with me.
Surprisingly, that was it. I remember I felt really excited to crack the password.
That 'a' post didn't have any text in it, just images.
The first photo looked like it was taken at a roadside rest area. His bike was there in the photo, so it seemed like he took the picture.
Up until then I'd wondered if maybe his blog got hacked, but this had to have been posted by him.
The next photo was of a dam I'm pretty sure. The bike was sitting there next to a sign that said '●●●●● Dam' and you could see a reservoir behind it.
Because of those photos, this was probably another trip he went on.
Then the next photo was of some run-down torii gate at the foot of a hill or a mountain. Behind the gate you could see a set of stairs going up.
The photos after that were weird. There were quite a few that were probably taken as he was climbing the stairs. Some were pointed right at the sky, some to the side showing the forest there, and some were pointed at the stairs themselves. It didn't look like he was trying to take a photo of anything, more like he was just randomly pressing the button as he went up.
After those random pics, the next one seemed to be a photo of the shrine's main hall? I couldn't tell for sure. It was out of focus and blurry so it was hard to make out, but it looked to me like it was in ruins with its roof collapsed in. You couldn't see inside because the door was closed.
Next up was a pic of a small shrine. It was about as big as a person with a set of doors and a small roof on top. It was taken weirdly too, tilted at a bad angle. Obviously it was a lot smaller than the building in the last photo but it was also run-down with its doors shut.
The next photo was of the same shrine but this time the doors were open.
I was expecting to see something enshrined inside it, but instead it was crammed full of dolls. All kind of dolls. There were Licca-chans, French dolls, Japanese dolls, anime figures, etc. Dolls of different types, different sizes, and probably even from different eras filled up the whole shrine from top to bottom.
Next was the final photo.
It was a photo of a man taken from behind. He looked like he was bowing before the shrine.
And that was the whole post.
When I went back to the homepage, there was another post that wasn't there before. I guess it had just been uploaded.
It was titled 'it's all fallen apart'.
This one was locked too, but I wasn't able to figure out the password.
The blog was gone entirely about a month later.
It's just a guess, but I think the guy in the final pic was the blogger. He was dressed like a biker.
Although if that was him, who took the photo?
I hope he's alright.
Translation Notes 9-16
The translation notes are organised by part. Please be careful of spoiling yourself by reading ahead.
This is an amateur translation of the web novel 近畿地方のある場所について as posted to kakuyomu.jp by the author 背筋. The web novel is freely accessible to the public, and this translation has no relation to any other adaptions. I claim no rights or ownership of the content presented.