Morning in the town felt no different from night. The same thick clouds hung above the rooftops, muting the light, smothering it into dull shades of grey. Yui walked to school alone, her shoes clicking softly against the cracked pavement. She thought she heard something under each step, a faint sound like whispering carried upward from the ground, but every time she paused, the silence pressed in again.
At school, the unease grew sharper. Her new classmates welcomed her politely, bowing, smiling, offering introductions. Yet when she looked more closely, their smiles never quite reached their eyes. Their mouths curled upward, but the rest of their faces remained stiff, frozen, as if rehearsed too many times.
During lunch, Yui sat by the window, staring at the courtyard below. A group of students gathered under the bare cherry tree. They weren't talking. They weren't moving. They simply stood in a circle, their heads tilted downward, as though studying the earth. When one of them finally looked up, Yui's breath caught in her throat. The boy's face looked normal at first, until she blinked and noticed his skin rippling slightly, as if something shifted beneath it.
She turned away too quickly, the image burning in her mind. Her fingers itched for her sketchbook. She pulled it out and began to draw, hoping to calm herself. But the lines escaped her control. Instead of drawing the boy, her hand dragged across the page in jagged strokes. When she stopped, the paper showed a face without features, a smooth oval, and around it, dozens of tiny mouths, all whispering in shapes she could not read.
Her pencil fell to the floor.
That evening, the streets felt even more deserted than the day before. The wooden houses leaned as if they were listening to her footsteps. Shadows stretched unnaturally long, curling across the road like fingers. Yui clutched her bag tighter. She thought she saw the old woman again, standing at the far end of the street. But now, there were others—figures lined along the houses, facing her. None of them moved.
When she finally reached home, her relief didn't last. The house itself groaned as though something inside its walls shifted. She entered her room, closed the door, and pressed her back to it.
The sketchbook lay open on her desk. She hadn't opened it since school, yet the page was different. The faceless figure she had drawn earlier had changed. The blank head now leaned forward, closer, as if crawling out of the page. And where she had left empty space, faint words had appeared, etched in thin scratches.
They read:
"Do not give them your face."
Her breath froze in her chest. She slammed the sketchbook shut, but the words echoed in her mind like a warning carried on a voice she could not hear.
That night, Yui dreamed of the town. The streets stretched endlessly, filled with faceless people walking in silence. When she tried to run, their heads turned toward her in unison, skin folding and peeling, stretching into shapes that resembled faces but never quite became human. She woke in the dark, heart pounding, and for a moment she swore she could still hear whispering under her bed, a chorus of quiet voices murmuring beneath the floorboards.