In Ghost of Prime Time, the two comedians harass their audience through their ikiryo — living spirits — forcing helpless laughter from viewers, driving some to literally laugh themselves to death.
Their popularity grew with every broadcast. Eventually, they earned a coveted slot in television's golden hours.
Their ikiryo traveled through the airwaves, pouring into home after home. Anyone who watched the program fell under their influence.
This was the nature of Junji Ito's horror manga — no cultivation system, no power ceiling, and a casual willingness to deal in world-ending consequences. Strange worlds played by strange rules.
Amamiya Rin set the notebook down and looked up at Mamiya Yuka, who was still laughing without any sign of stopping. For a long moment, he had no idea how to help her.
According to the manga's logic, there should be an ikiryo hovering somewhere near Mamiya Yuka right now — tickling her, physically compelling that helpless laughter. It was almost disarmingly mundane as supernatural threats went. About as grounded as Dio stopping time and then manually carrying Boing-Boing down a flight of stairs, one step at a time.
But Amamiya Rin couldn't see ikiryo. As a rule, traditional living spirits were visible to the naked eye — but Junji Ito's version clearly operated on different parameters. In Ghost of Prime Time, only the male protagonist possessed the Yin-Yang Eyes needed to perceive them.
If he couldn't even see it, what exactly was he supposed to do?
Amamiya Rin's teeth pressed lightly against his lower lip, his expression caught between thought and frustration.
(Are you asking for our help?)
(Just so we're clear — we have absolutely no ability to deal with spirit entities.)
(I may be half-demon, but I didn't inherit a single useful power from that biological father of mine.)
The voices of the Tomies surfaced in Amamiya Rin's mind, arriving with impeccable timing — and absolutely no solutions.
They were just as helpless against souls as he was.
(There's also some bad news. We were asleep for too long. While we were under, Kayako pushed all of us out of the haunted house.)
(I just tried to get back inside — I can't. She's sealed the house completely. The door won't budge.)
(The plan to use our charm to keep Kayako occupied? That's dead.)
The night mist hung over the dark alley like gauze threaded with ice. Overhead, branches from the tree canopy wove together in a dense tangle, thick enough to swallow the moonlight whole. The air carried a cold that clung and would not lift.
More than twenty women, entirely bare, were scattered through the narrow lane — some standing, some seated, some leaning against the mottled brick walls with languid exhaustion, others crouched low in the shadows where the streetlight couldn't reach. Among them were Tomie instances whose bodies hadn't yet finished forming.
One of them was little more than a massive growth of flesh — a tumorous mass, its surface pale and slick. At its crown, the outline of Tomie's features had begun to emerge: sparse black hair plastered against white skin, eyes half-open and unfocused.
There were many like her. Together, these incomplete Tomies had occupied Kayako's home — dying and dividing and regenerating endlessly under Kayako's onslaught, their supernatural allure driving her already-unstable mind past the point of control.
But the Long Dream had lasted more than twenty hours. And Saeki Toshio had drawn Kayako's attention outward by luring other victims to the property. Together, those two factors had given Kayako just enough room to claw her way back to clarity.
While the Tomies lay submerged in dreamless sleep, Kayako had seized the moment and cleared every last one of them out of her home.
"Tsk. Bad enough that she's hideous — now she doesn't even have the nerve to kill us?"
Kawakami Tomie stood at the entrance to the courtyard, head tilted back to look at the house rising before her. In the second-floor bedroom window, a faint white silhouette was just barely visible.
The corner of her mouth curved into a vicious smile.
Her body began to change.
The bones of her calves let out a faint series of cracks. Bone density surged through cellular division — and with it came growth: length and diameter both doubling in rapid succession. Her once-slender legs thickened in seconds, becoming as substantial as the thighs of a grown man, layers of muscle fiber stacking and compressing beneath the skin like coiled cable under tension.
Her thighs broadened outward. At the hip joints, new cartilage split and formed, reinforcing the skeleton's load-bearing capacity. Her torso rose in tandem, every muscle group writhing and proliferating as it expanded, forming a natural armor of living flesh.
Her skin stretched to accommodate the change — thickening, toughening — as the outer layer divided into dense, overlapping keratin, hardening into a scale-like sheath of layered protection.
Within seconds, the transformation was complete. Kawakami Tomie's slender frame had surged to nearly three meters in height. Two additional heads grew from either side of her neck. Four pale arms tore through her body, emerging at intervals from shoulder to waist, their surfaces ridged with solid, layered bony protrusions.
This was the most powerful combat form currently within Kawakami Tomie's reach. She drew a long, deep breath and pushed her breathing technique to its absolute limit — her chest surging outward, her cheeks flushing dark with the effort.
BOOM.
She drove both legs into the ground and launched herself forward. Her enormous body rocketed toward the iron gate like a cannonball. All six fists clenched simultaneously and swung — trailing a shearing roar through the air — slamming into the rusted iron bars with everything she had.
The gate did not move.
The moment her fists made contact, it was as though she had struck an invisible wall — elastic, unyielding, utterly solid. A deep, resonant impact shook through the alley. The shockwave blasted the surrounding dust into swirling clouds. But the iron gate itself didn't so much as shiver.
Kawakami Tomie refused to accept it. She couldn't control her body's density yet — that much was true — but at this size, with her breathing technique at full output, she was generating enough raw force to flip a car. There was no rational reason a rusted iron gate should stop her.
"Save your energy. She doesn't want visitors — she's locked the door."
From the shadows of the alley wall, another Tomie let out a contemptuous snort. Arms crossed over her chest, she let her gaze slide briefly over the massive Asura-form Tomie before drifting up to the pale white shape in the second-floor window.
"One more try!"
The enormous form rocked backward, gathered itself, and exploded upward — launching into the air with enough force to clear the gate entirely.
But the moment she would have crossed over it, the invisible force returned. Like a wall of solid rubber, it caught her at the apex and flung her back. Kawakami Tomie staggered on landing, stumbling backward until she crashed into the wall behind her.
"What are we even supposed to do with a coward who just turtles up behind her wall? Forget it, forget it. Don't waste any more time here."
Another Tomie, crouched low on the ground, wound a length of her black hair lazily around one finger and spoke without urgency.
"Heh. Technically, Kayako threw us out this time. We didn't leave voluntarily. Amamiya can't blame us for this one, can he?"
"Whoever could have guessed that Kayako would turn out to be this pathetic."
"She was always this pathetic. This is a woman who once hid under someone's bed to eavesdrop on the person she had a crush on. We've always known she was that kind of coward, haven't we?"
"Truly pitiful."
...
The Tomies went back and forth at a leisurely pace, trading barbs, every word dripping with contempt.
Up on the second floor, the curtain shifted — barely, almost imperceptibly.
The white silhouette remained exactly where it was. No response.
But the temperature in the alley had dropped another few degrees with each mocking remark. The air grew thick and heavy, pressing in from all sides like something alive.
No matter what the Tomies said, however, Kayako did not move. She had become, in the most literal sense, a turtle retreating into its shell.
____
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