SCS 54

SCS

Posted by Akame, Released on October 30, 2025

Story 54

The One Beyond

At my grandma’s house in the small mountain village, they say that every few years, there’s a mass outbreak of centipedes.

It happened a few years ago.
That day was New Year’s Day, and we had been staying at Grandma’s house since two days before.
Dad, Mom, my older sister, and I—all of us were there, like we were every year.

Watching the first sunrise of the year was too much for us, but we wanted to at least see the beautiful morning sun on the first day of the new year. So my father and I got up early and stepped outside.

At first, the trees in the yard blocked our view, so we didn’t notice anything unusual.
But as we started walking toward the road in front of the house, we saw something that made us freeze.

The road was moving.

When I strained my ears, I could hear a strange, rustling, scraping sound—kasa kasa, gasa gasa.

Before I knew it, I had screamed.

The road wasn’t actually moving—it was covered with centipedes.
So many that you couldn’t even see the asphalt beneath them.

Terrified, I ran back into the house.

The countless centipedes made this eerie shashashasha noise—not like a cry, but like the sound of them writhing and tangling together.

Grandma, apparently, had already noticed.

When I went to her room to tell her about the centipedes, she just said calmly,
“I know. That’s why I’m getting ready to pray.”

I watched my grandparents. They changed into black kimono-like robes I’d never seen before, then lit a brown wooden stick about thirty centimeters long. They placed it at the gate in front of the house.

Then they knelt on the ground, hands clasped around prayer beads, and began chanting something like sutras.

Before long, the couple from the house next door came out too. They were dressed the same way—in kimono—and also placed a burning wooden stick by their gate.

The sight of everyone chanting sutras toward the writhing sea of centipedes was terrifyingly surreal.

I just stood there, staring from the doorway.

Then my dad came out and shouted,
“Get inside!!”

He was angry, so I went back in and watched from the second-floor guest room window.

The chanting went on for about thirty minutes.

Then my grandparents pressed their joined hands to the ground and stayed still for about ten seconds.
And just like that, the centipedes began bursting and vanishing one by one.

Before long, there wasn’t a single one left.

How did they just disappear?
No—where did that many even come from in the first place?

This tiny mountain village—how could it hide that many centipedes?

When the last one was gone, Grandpa and Grandma came back inside.

I asked Grandpa what those centipedes really were.

“That,” he said gently, smiling at me,
“is called Mukoude-sama. It’s written with the characters for ‘welcoming’ and ‘hand.’”

He went on:
“He’s the god of this village. He appears the day before someone in the village dies. Mukoude-sama takes the form of centipedes and comes to welcome the soul that’s about to pass. The one he welcomes becomes part of the mountain god. That’s why we pray—so that Mukoude-sama will come to our home, to guide our family’s spirits properly.”

I didn’t understand at all.

Wasn’t that basically calling death to yourself?

It sounded like something out of a creepy cult.

Still, later we changed into our normal clothes, ate New Year’s food, and celebrated.
But that strange scene was burned into my mind.

We stayed the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s house.

Around 1 a.m., I woke up to noise downstairs.

My head was still foggy, but I could hear Grandma, my parents, and… groaning. Loud groaning.

It didn’t sound right. Something was wrong.

I went downstairs quietly.
The sound was coming from my grandparents’ bedroom.

I opened the door just a crack.

Grandpa was lying on the futon, clearly in agony—scratching at his throat until it bled, moaning uuhh, uuhhh.
Grandma and my parents stood around him, looking down helplessly.
Grandma and Mom were crying.

None of them noticed me.

After about ten minutes, Grandpa suddenly stopped moving.

Grandma’s sobs echoed through the room.

I somehow understood what had happened—and fear froze me.
I went back to my room without saying a word.

Mukoude-sama came.

By five in the morning, my cousins and their parents had arrived.

We children were gathered together, and my father told us quietly:
“Grandpa passed away.”

I had already guessed. But everyone else was shocked.

By six, relatives and neighbors were coming one after another.
Around seven, even a doctor from the neighboring town’s hospital showed up.

Most of our relatives lived in the same village, so they must have come as soon as they heard.

And as people saw Grandpa’s body, they all murmured the same thing:

“Ah… Mukoude-sama came to take him.”