Saa-Chan

**Saa-chan** (Japanese: さあちゃん) is a japanese urban legends children's song released in 1959 to mark the 10th anniversary of Japan's NHK radio broadcast. Saa-Chan is a nickname for Sachiko, a common female name in Japan. It tells the story of Satchang, a young girl who loves bananas.

## History

This happened about three years ago. I decided to live with my boyfriend who was dating at the time, and we both left the room where we lived alone and moved to an apartment. When I was about to write my name on the name card that I put in my mailbox after I finished cleaning up the house, he said, " Don't write my name." I felt suspicious and asked why, but they didn't answer.

We got into a bit of an argument about it, but he was so stubborn that I finally gave in, but the only things I could get in my mailbox were newspapers and silly DMs, so it wasn't long before that happened. I forgot to. And one day about half a year after starting to live together. In the morning, I went to get the newspaper as usual, and when I returned to the room with the DMs and leaflets that were in it, he saw me come back and he said, "Ah!" raised. So quickly that I didn't even have time to ask, "What?" When I asked him, "What is that?", he would only answer, "Nothing." what keeps him haunted. I wondered what it was and went to the bedroom and heard him talking to someone else.

It's not a very expensive apartment, so I can hear a little voice in the room through the door. He was probably on the phone, and I could hear "Hey man," "Here's the address," and "Here we go again." I was intrigued by the woman's name, but I had to go to work, so I ignored it and went to work. When I got home from work, he hadn't come home yet.

I remembered the morning postcard. It's not that I didn't think it was bad, but I didn't like being kept secret, so I decided to look around his desk in the bedroom. It was fairly easy to find. "What is this?" I think I said to myself. Of course, the postcard had the apartment address and his name written on it, but the handwriting was strange. The size of each letter was different, and it looked like it was a child's handwriting. In the sender's column, "From Saori ○○" was written.

He's an only child, so he doesn't have a niece, and I've never heard of anyone knowing a kid like that. I thought it was strange, but when I turned the postcard over, I became even more confused. There was nothing written on the back of the postcard. No, to be exact, I didn't know what was written. One side was painted brown. It seems to have been painted over with something like paint, and the index finger that was touching it had something like brown powder attached to it.

The smeared postcard felt kind of creepy. As I wondered what it was, I heard the front door open, put the postcard in my pocket and left the bedroom. When I got home, I immediately noticed that he looked strange. When he entered the room, he looked back many times, and when he heard a noise, he reacted abnormally with startle.

The next day was a holiday, so I suggested we go somewhere else, but he was still depressed and said he didn't want to go anywhere or eat anything. I became more and more annoyed and questioned him. “Generally, what happened yesterday! Who is Saori!?” When I yelled at him, he raised his head, which had been downcast until then, and asked, "Did you see it?"

Thinking that I had said something wrong, I apologized for looking at the postcard without permission. I told him that I didn't mean anything, but that I was curious because he was acting strange, and he told me about the postcard.

Here's what I heard from him. Both his parents were working, so when he was a child, he was sent to his father's parents' house whenever it was summer vacation. The family home was in the countryside of Hokuriku, where there were no arcades. But he said he loved going there. There were several children in the neighborhood who were close to him in age, and among them, I got along well with two children in particular. He called the two friends "Saa-chan" and "Ryu-chan".

The three of them went to the beach, rode bicycles to far distances, did a little homework during the summer vacation, and had fun almost every day. Ryu-chan and he were the same age, but Saa-chan was about two years older.

However, because Saa-chan was a little weak, she was shorter than the other two boys. Saa-chan always carried a spray-type inhaler, so in retrospect, he said it must have been childhood asthma or something. One summer vacation day when he was in the fourth grade of elementary school. After watching scary stories on TV at his grandfather's house during the day, the three came up with an idea to test their courage at night. It was Ryu-chan who said it. "Let's leave some treasure at the shrine now and go get it at night." Ryu-chan said something like that. I hated him for being so scared, but I didn't want him to come across as weak, so I pretended to be having fun.

Anyway, they thought about what to leave behind as "treasure", but they would be in trouble if the dolls and toys were gone, and they couldn't think about what to do, so they finally chose a picture postcard. The postcard was found in his grandfather's drawer, and he said, "It was a picture postcard of a Japanese-style woman. It's not Yumeji Takeshita, but it's something like that." The target shrine was a short bike ride from his grandfather's house. The three of them rode their bicycles as usual and went to drop off the postcards. The shrine itself is not so big, and it seems that it was quiet with only a small offertory box and the precincts.

The only reason they chose to go there was the childish idea that shrines and temples are scary. It wasn't a haunted spot, nor was it a normal shrine for some reason. When they arrived at the shrine, they searched for a place to hide the postcards, and in the end, at Ryu-chan's suggestion, they decided to put it upright in the gap between the boards in the hallway on the other side of the offertory box. became.

three of them made a lot of noise as they left the shrine grounds, but when they tried to ride their bicycles, Saa-chan wasn't following them. Saa-chan was about 10 paces behind them and turned around to look towards the precincts. "Saa-chan, let's go." They called out to Saa-chan who turned her back to us, but Saa-chan didn't look back.

"It's okay, I won't take anyone. Because this shrine is always empty." Ryu-chan said so and rushed Saa-chan. Saa-chan never looked back, so he got scared. "Saa-chan!!" He couldn't stand it and called out to Saa-chan in a loud voice. Then, Saa-chan suddenly turned around and ran towards the two of them. "Let's go home early"

He straddled his bicycle. "Yeah... but did someone see me from inside the shrine?" Saa-chan said with a troubled face.Ryu-chan laughed and said, "That's not true," but he said he was actually scared. "At that time, I should have told you to quit. I didn't care about postcards, but I should have thrown them away." He was trembling as he spoke.

I was talking while smoking, but my fingertips were shaking and the ash was flying. I wiped around the ashtray many times with a tissue. Anyway, the three of them secretly left the house after their parents were asleep. When I asked him if he wasn't scared, he said that rather than being scared, the thrill of going out at night without telling the family was more than the thrill of being on an adventure for the first time. . It is said that the shrine at night was much spookier than it was during the day. Since it was a rural area, the streetlights were sparse, and the grounds of the shrine were thickly covered with trees, so almost no light reached them, making the precincts look absurdly large. It was only a few dozen meters from the torii to the offering box, but it took courage to enter the dark grounds surrounded by trees.

Ryu-chan's only flashlight was unreliable, and he was drenched in sweat and squeezed Saa-chan's hand. The three held hands for a while, looked out at the shrine from outside, and entered the premises at Ryu-chan's signal of "Let's go." The sound of the wind could be heard louder inside the site, and even though they were all big trees, they were all wobbly in the wind.

I could see Ryu-chan whispering jokes and trying to force himself to be cheerful. Saa-chan just followed without saying anything. In his heart, he was singing as bright a song as possible. When we arrived at the offertory box, Ryu-chan shouted, "Huh?" This is because the picture postcard that should have been sandwiched between the wooden boards in the precincts was placed on top of the offertory box.

"What is it, did someone see it?" Saying so, Ryu-chan picked up the postcard and illuminated it with a flashlight. "Wow!!" Ryu-chan hurriedly shook off the postcard. He picked up the postcard that Ryu-chan had dropped, and looked at the side with the picture, and his blood turned cold. The picture on the postcard had been painted over in bright red. After listening to the story, I said, "That must be someone's prank. Just like Saa-chan said, wasn't someone watching?"

Then, still trembling, he said: "Because, isn't it strange? It was very windy that day, and the big trees were shaking and the fallen leaves were dancing. But why wasn't that postcard blown out of the offertory box? ” After looking at the postcards, they rushed out, saying wow and gah. When I ran out of the shrine grounds at once, Ryu-chan shouted, "Saa-chan hasn't come!"

When the two looked back, they saw Saa-chan crouching in front of the offertory box. "Saa-chan! Hurry up! Let's go home!" "What are you doing? Saa-chan, come over here!" Forgetting that it was the middle of the night, the two called out to Saa-chan in a loud voice, but Saa-chan remained crouched and did not move. Ryu-chan was crying. He said, "I may have cried too, but I don't know." The two of them returned to the offertory box and ran up to Saa-chan.

While holding a postcard in one hand, Saa-chan made a sound like she was throwing up something. "Saa-chan! Let's go!" Ryu-chan cried and pulled Saa-chan's arm, but Saa-chan just knelt on the ground and yelled and didn't move. "Saa-chan, where's the medicine? Where's the one that shoots?"

He thought Saa-chan was having an asthma attack, so he looked into Saa-chan's face and asked. However, Saa-chan didn't say anything, and in the end she groaned, "Uguuuu, uuuuuuu" and started scratching the ground painfully. "I'll call Dad!" Ryu-chan said so and rushed out of the shrine. At that time, he was more afraid of being left behind at the shrine, more than the postcards, he was just afraid of being scolded by the adults. All he could do was rub Saa-chan's back and repeat, "Are you okay? Are you okay?"

Then suddenly Saa-chan grabbed his arm. Then she brought her face closer to him and said, "Byouon." I don't remember exactly, but I think it sounded like that. He says that he cannot forget Saa-chan's face at that time. Saa-chan rolled the whites of her eyes, drooled from the corners of her mouth, and said those mysterious words in a low, reverberating voice. He froze, unable to even scream. Because you do that in the middle of the night! Don't cry, you idiot!"

When I heard an adult yelling and came back to myself, the adults were about to enter the premises with a crying Ryu-chan. Saa-chan crouched down again and was throwing up. Saa-chan was carried by Ryu-chan's father, and the other two followed the adults while crying. Ryu-chan and he were severely scolded the next day.

After the sermon was over, he asked, "What happened to that picture postcard?" It seems he didn't hear it. After that, the summer vacation ended and he decided to go home. send-off day. Ryu-chan said, "Please come again next year," but that was actually the last time I saw Ryu-chan. It seems that he stopped going to the countryside from the next year. "Were you so afraid of postcards?" I asked him, and he shook his head. He said he saw something terrifying that year before the summer vacation ended. Something far more terrifying than a postcard smeared red. A few days after the picture postcard incident, he visited Saa-chan's house alone.

In his own way, he was worried about Saa-chan getting sick. However, I couldn't get it to Saa-chan's house. "Saori won't play with Hiro-kun and the others anymore." Saa-chan's older sister, who came out to the front door, said so curtly. Saa-chan had an older sister who was quite a few years older than him, and she was always very kind to the three of them, so he said that he was shocked by her cold treatment.

Perhaps he liked the older sister. He didn't say so, but I think she was his first love. Refused to meet him, he went to Saa-chan's backyard. Saa-chan's house is a big one-story house, and I thought that Saa-chan would notice if I looked through the window.

Looking into Saa-chan's room from behind a large rock in the backyard, Saa-chan was sitting on the futon by herself. He swallowed it as he tried to say, "Come on!" Because Saa-chan suddenly started scratching her body. He scratched his arm while rolling up his pajamas, scratched his face violently, and was bleeding from scratching. He was startled and just looked at Saa-chan from the outside. "Kyahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha" Saa-chan suddenly stopped scratching her body and burst into laughter. It was so loud and shrill that it could be heard clearly outside. He was shivering under the rock. Saa-chan lifted her head up a little while sitting and continued to laugh with her mouth distorted.

Hearing Saa-chan's laughter behind him, he ran and ran back to his grandfather's house. And for the first time in his life, he hoped that summer vacation would end soon, and he decided not to come to this land again from next year. "Your eyes weren't smiling..." As he spoke, he clenched his arm. Before he knew it, he was dripping with sweat, and his face was pale.

After that, he became estranged from Saa-chan as well as Ryu-chan, so as time passed, he forgot about the terrifying events on that day and the eerie sight he saw at Saa-chan's house. that's right. Should I say that I have forgotten, or should I say that I no longer remember? However, in the fall of the year he moved to Tokyo to enter university, he suddenly received a phone call from Ryu-chan. "Saa-chan is gone" Ryu-chan said so. After that, Saa-chan stopped coming to school and stayed at home all the time. However, after graduating from a local junior high school, Ryu-chan also stayed in a boarding house in another area in the prefecture to attend a high school, so he didn't know much about Saa-chan after junior high school. “I thought it would be bad for me to call you all of a sudden, but you see, that kind of thing happened to me… But Ritsuko-san didn’t ask me to call you.”

Ritsuko is Saa-chan's older sister. "Why? I haven't met Saa-chan for a long time. "I know. But Ritsuko-san said that Saa-chan might have gone to Hiro-kun's place." "I don't know! Because..." He was about to blurt out the last time he saw Saa-chan in a creepy way, so he hurriedly shut his mouth. “That’s right. The handset I gripped was slippery with sweat. When Saa-chan came, she was so scared that she couldn't sleep.

However, Saa-chan himself never came. About 10 days after that call, when he came back from the university, he found a postcard in his mailbox. It had the name and address written in children's handwriting, and the sender as ``From Saori ○○*. Surprised, I turned the postcard over, and the back side was painted brown. Then, I could see familiar pictures peeking through the unpainted areas and lightly colored areas.*

Yes, it was that old postcard they used in that test of courage. With sweaty hands, he carried the postcard back to his room. It was creepy, but I felt like something worse would happen if I threw it away. After that, at the same time every year, he receives a postcard from Saa-chan. As always, a creepy postcard painted brown on one side.

When he started living with me, he thought that this would free him from Saa-chan's postcards. Come to think of it, even though I contacted my former teacher and friend when I was a student about moving, I have never seen him contact me like that. He thought Saa-chan might be watching somewhere, so he refused to put his name in the mailbox. However, I received a postcard from Saa-chan. Saa-chan continues to send him postcards with the recipient's room number clearly written and written in the style of a young child.

Saa-chan remains missing and has not been found yet. What was the first postcard? What did Saa-chan see at the shrine? Is that why Saa-chan went crazy? What the heck is "byon"? How does Saa-chan know his address? There are so many things I don't know, but there is one thing I do know. That means that he will continue to receive postcards from Saa-chan next year, the year after that, and the year after that.