Compared to the slightly unusual chaos of second year at Sobu High, first year Yotsuya Miko's world had long since been completely eaten away by terror that had nothing to do with the ordinary.
The final bell of the day was a liberation call for other students. For her, it was the beginning of another trial.
She stepped out of the school gates into bright sunlight. The street was full of people, bustling with life. Yet in Miko's eyes, the world wore a completely different, stomach turning face.
A bloated monster with over a dozen arms was clinging to a utility pole by the sidewalk, every hand frantically tearing at something invisible. An office worker with a neck stretched out like a snake walked with his head lowered, but the head itself floated several meters above his body, scanning the people below with empty eyes. There were clusters of eyeballs drifting in the air, fused together into grotesque spheres, and in the depths of the alleyways, squat black shadows gnawed at piles of trash, chewing with wet, squeaking crunches...
The world had gone mad.
What was even more insane was that, as far as she could tell, she was the only one who could see these things.
I cannot see them. I cannot see anything.
Miko repeated the words over and over in her mind. They had practically become the spell she needed just to keep living.
She kept her head down, chestnut hair falling forward to cover most of her cheeks and hiding her lips, which had gone completely bloodless with fear.
She forced herself to focus on the screen of her phone, pretending to be texting a friend, feet moving quickly as she hurried through what was, to her, a street painted straight from hell.
Do not look. Do not listen. Do not react.
That was the only survival rule she had clawed out of countless moments spent on the brink of collapse. These things did not seem very interested in humans who could not perceive them. But once they realized that you could see them, the consequences were unthinkable.
Today, her little brother Kyousuke had said he wanted to try the new pudding that just came out. As a good big sister, Miko went out of her way on the walk home to stop by the 24 hour convenience store along the route.
"Welcome."
The automatic door slid open, and the listless greeting from the clerk arrived together with the cool blast from the air conditioner, loosening her knotted nerves just a little.
The bright lighting and clean layout inside the convenience store always gave her a faint sense of false security. There were a lot of people coming and going here. Maybe the positive energy was stronger. Miko could only cling to such flimsy, half baked reasons to comfort herself.
She walked quickly toward the refrigerated display and scanned the rows of colorful desserts.
"Ah, there it is."
She spotted the pudding with the cute cartoon bear printed on the package. She was just reaching out to pull open the glass door when it hit her.
A chill beyond words, as if it had crawled up from the bottom of some pit, shot up from the soles of her feet to the top of her skull.
The air around her felt like it had dropped by ten degrees in an instant. Even the plastic wrappers on the shelves around her seemed to grow a thin film of frost.
It is here.
Miko's heart clenched hard. It felt like all the blood in her body turned to ice at once.
She did not dare turn her head. She did not dare breathe. She only moved her eyes, ever so slightly, stealing a glance through the edge of the glass door.
In the reflection, she saw it.
From the shadow cast by the shelves, a shape was slowly crawling out, something that made her sanity bar crash toward zero just by looking at it.
Its body was a dull, sick gray, its limbs dried out and shriveled, yet its belly bulged unnaturally as if it were stuffed full of something rotten. Its skin looked like decaying tree bark, slick with sticky fluid and blotched with mold. Its mouth was split unnaturally wide, all the way to the ears. Inside that gaping black hole, there were no teeth, no tongue, only a bottomless hunger that seemed ready to devour everything.
It had no legs. It could only drag itself forward using its two withered arms. Wherever it passed, it left behind two long, black trails on the floor, oozing a foul stench.
"So... hungry..."
A broken, scraping voice sounded directly inside Miko's head, like fingers clawing glass.
A hungry ghost, a cursed spirit.
The grudge and hunger seeping off it were so pure and so strong that Miko felt her own stomach clench. Waves of nausea rolled up her throat.
It was blocking the only way out of the narrow aisle she stood in.
Her body turned to stone. Cold sweat soaked the back of her shirt. She could feel it, could feel that thing's attention locked onto her.
"What do I do... what do I do…"
Her mind went blank. The spell she relied on to live, "I cannot see it, I cannot see anything", was on the verge of shattering under the crushing weight of fear at this distance.
She could sense the creature inching closer, creeping toward her. The stench of rot mingled with the sour reek of spoiled food was already pushing into her nose.
"No, stay calm."
"Miko, you did not see anything. You are just here to buy pudding."
She gathered every last scrap of strength she had to suppress the shaking in her limbs. A smile more twisted than a sob stiffened on her face as she forced her lips to move.
Her hand, trembling like a leaf in a storm, reached for the glass door. She opened it, took two puddings, then turned around to face the monster.
She had to walk past it. That was the only way to get out of that corner.
One step. Two steps.
Every step felt like she was walking on knife points. Every beat of her heart pounded like a drum in her ears.
She forced herself not to look directly at the creature, staring straight ahead with unfocused eyes. But its shape was burned so clearly into her vision that she could see it even with her eyes almost glazed over.
Just as she was about to pass it...
The hungry ghost cursed spirit stopped moving.
Its grotesquely oversized head creaked around toward her, the sound of grinding bone echoing in her skull.
That pitch black mouth stretched closer, until it was almost touching her cheek.
"You... can see... me... right..."
In that instant, Miko felt her world shatter.
She was trapped at the end of the aisle, no way back, no way forward, nowhere to run.
Crushing terror wrapped around her throat like an icy hand and squeezed.
She could not even make a sound.