Prologue: Broken Skin
Shigeo Kado hates mirrors. They always show scars, even old ones. Last year, after the big gym accident, he kept to his quiet Tokyo life, mixing routines with leftover worry. All that ends one June storm, when he wakes up to dark veins under his eyes and sharp pains in his soil-stained hands. He pokes at his arms: skin bulges, blue liquid moving under the thin layer. What is happening to him?
Shigeo’s little sister Misa panics when she sees her brother’s arms leaking blue pus as he cuts his toast. “Are you sick? Did something bite you?” she asks, voice shaking. They agree to keep it quiet for now. Their soft-spoken mother, Yumiko, is out the whole day and doesn’t pick up when Misa calls. Have you ever felt change inside you—creeping up slow, then flipping normal life upside down?
Act I: The Pressure Beneath
At their run-down high school, things keep getting weirder. Shigeo’s best friend, Ren, pops his bubble gum at lunch. “What’s with your hands? That’s not ink.” Ren tries to sound cool, but his eyes dart away.
After gym class, blisters appear everywhere. One bursts open, sending wriggling black threads through the air. Brick corners pulse as if breathing. Even the teachers grow jittery. Ren whispers, “My cousin in the city says folks are acting wild. Like, they’re changing. Bodies twisting, growing strange stuff on their skin. We shouldn’t push our luck.”
Shigeo hides in the bathroom. His face blisters and peels, leaking clear sap with motes of color. Blood under his fingernails shifts green, pulsing. Washroom tiles cough brown stains. A tightness in his chest grips him each time he closes his eyes. What would you do if your body felt like a stranger’s?
Act II: Pulse and Coil
Iso, a quiet transfer from Hokkaido, peeks under the faucet. “It’s everywhere, isn’t it?” she whispers in a flat tone. Her left arm bends the wrong way. Her eyes flick between green and purple. Iso says, “When it hurts, just scream. Don’t try to stop it. Or it grabs tighter.” The words stick in Shigeo’s mind.
Later, the school nurse shrieks. By dusk, half the class won’t stop scratching or moaning. Ren bites the edge of the chalkboard, teeth falling out. Outside, city sirens whine. Iso, calmer than ice, sketches symbols in her diary, drawing bodies blooming with twigs and mouths full of rust. “You feel the call under your muscles? That’s the strain. It comes from deeper, from under the school…or from us. Both, now. We have to break the source.”
They search the old subway below the building. Lights dead, just the squelch of their feet in moist puddles. Walls look made of packed wounds and glass. Bulges pulse, like veins behind fading wallpaper.
Act III: Source of the Bleed
Time stutters. Rib bones crackle. Iso’s elbow blooms into gold eyes. Shigeo stops, sick. “Don’t look back,” she mumbles, mouth dividing into four tiny lips. His hands erupt in hard ridges. The others follow silent. Rock trembles. Something spools out of the ground—a root shaped like a misshapen child.
A figure forms: skin turned stone, face split across two jaws, fingers like barbed wire. It turns to Iso. “Mother, you brought them here.” Iso bows, fierce sorrow sharpening her slime-green face. “We woke the Borrowed Veil. It…ate my old town.” She hands Shigeo a knife made from bone—his own bone, torn cleanly from his side with a wet pop. “It wants us by choice or by hunger. We resist or we collapse.”
Act IV: Requiem Within
Battling their changing bodies, the team crosses the bone field. Every step shaves away more human features: Shigeo’s teeth sprout out of his cheeks, his jaw unfolds into petals, humming. Ren gurgles as a maze of tiny hands claws for his eyes. The Borrowed Veil groans, pulsing orange light. If you saw your friend’s face melting away, could you hold on?
Yumiko appears, drifting in as if pulled by strings, eyes and limbs stitched with flowers that open and close with her breath. She points to the heart-root. The group rushes, driving their new sharp limbs into feeding tendrils. Blue blood spurts, lighting up the field. Shigeo howls, voice splitting into wails and whimpers, and cuts deep inside himself, knife striking sick flesh.
Beneath, they find piles of their old forms, faces twisted in calm smiles. Each pile faintly calls their real names. For a second, Shigeo sees himself—high school loser, too small to fight, but wishing for life to mean more. “Have we lost…or are we new now?”
Cliffhanger: When the Veil Sleeps
The world shakes. Iso changes back—but her face ripples. Misa’s eyes crawl in her cheeks. Light rushes in. Shigeo claws at dirt, but the monster’s hand clamps his wrist. The bone knife pulses. “It’s your turn. Strip away this skin.” He screams, or laughs.
Text fades: Will they be monsters in new skins…or lose themselves for good?
