This happened over ten years ago, back when I went to the Jukai—the Sea of Trees, infamous as a suicide hotspot.
My buddy B and I were losers with no dreams or aspirations. All we did was gamble and drown ourselves in cheap booze. On the first day of a holiday weekend that happened to line up for both of us, B suddenly brought something up.
"Hey, wanna go to the Sea of Trees and look for dead bodies?"
It was a sickening idea, but stuck with a vague dread about my own future, I actually got into it. The people who took their lives out there probably had all kinds of reasons, but back then, I just saw them as people who chose to run away. I think seeing them in person was my twisted way of trying to feel superior—like at least I wasn't as bad off as them. I honestly don't know why my brain worked like that back then.
First, we hit up an outdoor supply store and bought everything we needed for the search. Our motive was vile, but having a goal energized us.
Having heard rumors that compasses don't work properly in the Sea of Trees, we bought plastic twine to trace our way back.
It was already late in the day, and getting to the forest would take about two hours, so we decided to start our search the next morning and went out drinking instead.
Naturally, we drank too much that night, overslept, and didn't arrive at the forest until after 2 p.m. Before stepping inside, B tied the string to a nearby tree so we wouldn't forget, taking charge of unrolling it as we walked.
Being out in nature actually felt pretty refreshing for a change, and my mind drifted away from our original plan. Meanwhile, B was obsessively scanning the trees, desperate to find a body.
After wandering around for about two hours, we took a break. All around us were dense trees, rocks, and the plastic twine trailing behind us. As we sat on a rock shooting the breeze, B squinted at something behind me. The next instant, he scrambled to his feet and sprinted off. Stunned, I watched him disappear beyond the trees. A few seconds later, I heard B's voice shout from deep within the forest, "Hey!"
I ran toward the sound, where I found B staring upward.
Following his gaze, I saw... a hanging man.
Even though he was dead, it felt like he was staring right at us. His eyes were dried out, his mouth half-open with his tongue lolling out, and his head tilted slightly to the side. A stain on the ground beneath him, pooled from bodily fluids, swarmed with hordes of insects.
"Holy shit...! We actually found one...!" As B thrilled with excitement, a wave of guilt and remorse rushed through me. To end one's life all alone in the depths of a forest like this... how lonely must he have been? In stark contrast to how I felt just yesterday, I pressed my hands together in prayer.
Then B, still caught up in the thrill, muttered, "Ah, crap... I left the spool of twine behind..."
A flash of anger flared in me, but since it was only about fifteen meters away and our gear was there, I figured it wouldn't be hard to find.
B hurried back in the direction we had come. But when he returned, his hands were empty—no twine, no gear.
"It's gone..."
B said, his face drained of color. Thinking that was impossible, I headed back the way B had gone, but I couldn't find the twine, our bags, or even the trailing line marking our path.
We searched frantically, but no matter how far we walked, nothing turned up. It was only fifteen meters away—it made no sense for it to just disappear.
Just as I was clutching my head in desperation, wondering what to do...
"Heyyy! Are you lost? Over here!"
A voice called out from behind us.
I turned around to see a man waving his hand about twenty meters away. It was past 5 p.m., so darkness was falling, and surrounded by the thick canopy, he looked like a black silhouette.
I felt a wave of relief—until I noticed something off.
The arm he was waving was abnormally long—nearly twice the length of his other arm hanging by his side.
He must be holding a walking stick or something, I thought, and started walking toward him.
But the next instant, B grabbed my arm with all his strength and bolted in the opposite direction.
"Hey, B—" "Shut up and run!" B screamed before I could even ask. The arm gripping mine was trembling violently, and his face was frozen in terror.
As we ran together, a voice kept calling out from behind us:
"Heyyy! Are you lost? Over here!"—over and over, in a flat, mechanical drone.
Within just a few minutes of running, we stumbled right upon our gear and the trailing string. Even though we couldn't find them no matter how hard we had searched earlier.
When I tried to stop and grab our stuff, B yanked me along. We followed the string out of the forest and scrambled into our car.
The entire time I drove, B kept darting terrified glances at the rearview mirror.
Once we pulled into a convenience store parking lot nearby, B finally started to speak, his voice slow and shaken.
"Hey... did you... did you look at that corpse's arms?" "That body... it didn't have any arms..." To be honest, I hadn't looked closely enough at its arms.
B continued.
"And that guy who called out to us...?" "He was waving... a severed arm..."
A chill ran down my spine. That abnormally long arm had been the severed arm of the corpse.
B kept talking.
"The moment I realized that, I knew we had to run... And then..." His teeth clattered loudly. In a trembling whisper, he muttered:
"That thing... was chasing after us, flailing that severed arm around..."