The girl had never asked to be made.
She remembered only flashes of white walls, the acrid stench of antiseptic, and the muffled voices of men and women who spoke of her as though she were a puzzle rather than a person. They had called her Subject 27. They whispered words like mutation, failure, and containment protocol.
Now she stood in the shadows of the world outside the laboratory, free but trembling, unsure if she had truly escaped or if her very existence was just another layer of the experiment.
Her name—or at least, the one she clung to—was Miyu. Once, long ago, someone in the lab had slipped her that name in a moment of pity, perhaps a nurse who had seen the way her red eyes filled with tears each time the needles sank into her flesh.
Miyu wasn't like ordinary girls. Her black hair, cut raggedly, concealed part of her face, but no matter how she tried, she could not hide the other eyes. Three of them, glaring crimson, bloomed across the left side of her forehead like a curse. They blinked in unison with the pair on her face, each one sharp, unyielding, and uncomfortably alive.
And then there were the others.
The writhing shadows that lived in her back—inky-black tentacles, slick and unnatural, studded with mouths that dripped saliva and whispered to her in voices only she could hear. Sometimes they hissed of hunger. Sometimes they laughed at her pain. Sometimes… they begged to be let loose.
But Miyu never did. She couldn't.
She wanted to be kind. She wanted to be normal.
So when she crept into town for the first time, tugging her oversized jacket around her shoulders and keeping her gaze low, she whispered to herself:
> "Just smile. Just say hello. Don't let them see…"
Her steps were soft on the cobblestone path. Children played at the fountain nearby. Shopkeepers swept their storefronts. The smell of fresh bread floated in the air.
For a fleeting moment, she thought maybe—maybe—she could belong here.
A boy looked up at her. Wide-eyed. Innocent. He blinked once, twice, and then smiled.
Miyu's lips trembled as she forced herself to respond.
"U-Um… hello there…" she whispered, voice shaky.
The boy tilted his head curiously, his smile lingering—until one of her extra eyes blinked. Until one of the tendrils curled out from beneath her jacket, its teeth flashing like a shark's grin.
The boy screamed.
The sound was like a stone shattering glass. Heads turned. Faces twisted. Someone shouted monster! Another dropped their basket of fruit and fled. Children hid behind their mothers, and shopkeepers raised brooms like weapons.
Miyu's heart plummeted.
"I-I hope I don't scare you…" she stammered, voice breaking, her hand flying to her mouth. But it was too late. Her jacket slipped, and the writhing, snapping shadows poured out, shrieking their joy at being seen.
The crowd scattered, fear thick in the air.
And Miyu… stood frozen.
The failure. The experiment. The girl who was never supposed to walk free.
She wanted to cry. She wanted to run. She wanted—more than anything—to not be the thing they saw.
But deep inside, in the whispers of the mouths on her tendrils, something darker stirred:
> They will never accept you, Miyu.
So why not give them a reason to scream?
Miyu clenched her fists, forcing the voices down. Not yet. Not ever.
But as the town bells rang in alarm and shadows lengthened across the square, she realized the truth:
Her existence could never stay hidden.
And somewhere in the distance, back in the lab where she was created, her makers were already searching for their lost experiment.