It’s a raw spring night. Yuzu Korematsu takes the train home from cram school. Her reflection in the window flickers for just half a second. It ripples, like skin stretched over water—but nobody sees except her. She’s top of her class and hoping for med school, but for nights like these, she hates this city. Is there a secret to lonely streets, or just tired eyes?
Two weeks later, Yuzu’s best friend Jun Ikeda vanishes. In the halls, people shrug and mutter. Rumors start. He’s in her biology club but she admits, near a broken vending machine, “I might be the last to see him.” Other club members nod, silent. Someone’s phone buzzes. The screen lights up: breaking news—two more students missing this week, all from her block. No bodies. Jun’s picture on the ticker burns into her eyes, a dull ache under ribs. What if you watched a face that once smiled fade piece by piece, right off a hallway wall?
Taro Sosugi, the club president with too-clean nails and cold jokes, watches Yuzu. “Maybe you brought the curse,” he whispers, half-smiling. Was he joking? Is it safe to laugh at pain? “Are you happy in your own skin, Korematsu?” He walks off before she can snap back. Two minutes after, Yuzu double-checks her hands and arms. Her skin crawls. Flickering street shields in the rain only add to it.
After school, Yuzu stomps through the alleys where Jun went missing. Touches peel posters. One reads 『return the fragments ／ 仮面の声 (the masked voice)』. Each wall tries to say something you almost don’t want to read. Down near Sugiyama Field, she stumbles over a discarded school bag—his. In the soft pink glow of sunset, a wet sound carries out from behind a fence. Yuzu breathes low, steps forward. Jun is half-hidden in the yellow grass, his flesh pale, shifting. Long new arms sprawl, melting, reforming. Their eyes meet. He does not have a mouth, but a thin row of eyes opens on his cheek. “Help,” a voice climbs free, bitter and blurred. 
Packed in her bedroom, Yuzu shakes while she scribbles what she saw. Is this just stress? Every shadow in her room bends wrong. Jun’s words—their pleading not-quite voice—stick in her head. You ever have a friend changed so much, even their shape asks for rescue? That night, she dreams herself as him: gulped by her sheets, ribs warping, teeth along her spine perfect and glass-like. Every time she sits up, she checks her skin. Hollow eyes stare back from the window’s dark glass. Are dreams warnings, or just static?
She starts digging for answers. What links the vanished students? The word fragments repeats the most. Even her rival Taro mumbles it while flipping his club notes—his old notes half-torn, margins replaced with sketches of hollow bodies. Some ancient urban tale about a spirit belonging to the city, made up of everyone who feels out of place. “Shouko from 2-E saw a face inside the whiteboard at math club,” someone warns. She learns it collects lost skin, faces, swallows them whole. Missing students return, changed. 
Each day the lines blur between student and creature. One girl’s smile yanks upward until it splits at the temple. Another glides through cracked glass. Sometimes it’s a sudden shimmer under the neck, or hands that twist to form new lips—none admit it to each other. Yuzu keeps watching her own elbow, never sure if it bends right. At lunch, someone’s wrist flickers translucent. Silence gets charged like air before rain.
Is anyone safe? Is Yuzu next? She begs her father for help, but his words splinter, swallowed from inside, leaving him mute for seconds at a time. Her mother tapes face-shaped masks on cracks. “Everyone has bad days, Yuzu. Don’t fear your shadow,” her mother insists — but it’s now dark even when lamps glow bright. 
Taro corners her, outside, in moon-slick puddles, and snaps: “What’re you turning into, Korematsu? Your pupils swim like ink-small lakes.” She’s shaking so hard cracks chase up her fingernails. “If I’m next, just remember no one is alone. You seemed to know already.” A rash blooms under his jaw, dust-shaped droplets on skin.
Every object, ordinary or not, blends features from erased friends—the faucet’s chrome lip grins, her pencil case bruises when pinched hard. Last glimpse of Jun comes during class rolls the next night: his eyes, stitched into a dog mask dangled on a noticeboard, follow her around the room. Shadows gush along the walls. “Give back what was taken!” some echoed voice screeches through tubes and vents. Lights shatter. Faces bubble into fleshy bastards gnawing the class entrance. She calls out to Jun as arms snake from between cracks in the linoleum—a hand brushes hers, familiar. The gaps gape wider; her whole frame ripples together and apart. She might vanish or pull herself back. There, the cliff between old and new self wavers: Which side will she choose, whole or split? 
