Background and Setup
Meet Sota Minami, a quiet second-year at Ichonami High. He loves painting but hides deep pain—his left hand’s scarred and numb from a fire years ago.
Lately, students in the city wake up altered: skin split, flesh rippling, limbs bent at wrong angles. Local rumors call it The Flow. Sota wants to vanish into the crowd. His best friend, bold Kaede, won’t let him. “You can’t run from this just by keeping your head down!” she says, fists balled.
The Change Starts
Sota skips gym when whispers go wild. “Morita fainted, his arm’s like clay,” a classmate says. That night muscle pain throbs in Sota’s hand. He dreams his fingers tangle and move like water. Wakes—and can’t move his thumb. He shakes in silence. What would you do if your body turned alien?
Near Home
Kaede bangs at his door. “Just talk, please.” He shows her his hand. Kaede scans his arm, voice flat. “Your skin—it’s rippling.” Skin glows as if ripples move under the flesh.
The Clinic
His parents don’t want him to leave. It’s not safe. “You can’t cure a curse,” shouts Dad. But Kaede pulls Sota to a one-doctor clinic after dusk. Dr. Aya greets them, holding back a grimace. “The tissue’s not dying—it’s growing. It’s common this week. Every teen here has the same kind of mark Since Monday.”
Spreading Inside
Strange hunger aches in his body. Black specks swirl under his skin, crawling up his wrist. Sota wants it to stop but is scared what will happen if he cuts them out. Kaede suggests researching news. Instead, she stays over—watches him shake with pain and strange cracking sounds as the surface of his arm swells in waves.
Transformation: The Harbor
A rumor spikes on local message boards: “It started at the closed harbor storage.” Sota and Kaede sneak there together, sunset dying behind them. Inside, the air shimmers. Loud metallic rattles fill the room—fleshy, clicking, as bodies writhe behind boxes.
Out stumbles Mitsu, class prez. Her body half-melded with ropes and rusted netting. “Sota—run—before the shell breaks!” Mitsu sobs as skin sags, bones bursting at odd angles. Sota tries to help but Mitsu’s flesh lurches toward him. Do you always help a friend, or does fear win?
Breaking Point
As Sota kneels, pain takes his mind. Light pours from his torn hand. Some shape crawls out, like living paint. Kaede screams. Then her own body starts to warp—ribs stretch, skin peels into long strips like seaweed.
The “Core” Awakens
He sees them: hidden under each pool of melting skin is a hard seed, pulsing in each altered teen. Sota—half-melted now—dives for one, grasping tight even as his flesh dangles from ebon bone. Voices whisper: “Break the seed. Save one. Doom many.” The hand’s shell cracks. He lifts the seed. End credits—
Next Time: Shell or Soul?
Sota stands torn, the core held in shaking deformed fingers. Kaede arches up, tears mixing with gory shell. Does he shatter the seed to stop their change? Might breaking it end them—or save them all?
Wonder what you’d do? What price is too steep to be whole again?
