Chapter I 

ウッチャリ

1.

A trail of berries cuts through the fog-soaked amusement park. 

The berries glow as little red stars on the cosmos-black ground, leading to a rollercoaster—its twin in red—pulsing and still, waiting.

Creak. The rusty door opens. A shimmer flickers on the seat and sharpens into a card under a touch. One half shows a trickster from a chaotic literary world; the other, his gambling-loving ancestor. The same ink bloodline.

And—

Why is the velvety line like a long-lost friend? Why is the card like a forgotten gift from years ago? Why does it look like an undiscovered story’s cover?

Uncle?

2.

When K. opens her eyes, there is no amusement park, only an empty and dim-lit ramen shop. 

Just another weirdo dream.

She yawns and takes empty bowls to the sink. Uncle. Yeah, she wishes she had anyone to call that. Stupid dream lingers on her like the forest bedding on her shoes after a run.

No boss lurking, no customers lingering, she can slip out to her reading hut—her mist-wrapped forever morning.

The eyeglasses on the cover—round with black frames—remind her of Uncle. 

What? There is no Uncle. She snaps the book open and a card thuds against her palm.

3.

K. always dreamed of peeling back reality’s fabric and experiencing the unknown. The saying that never sat right with her—be careful what you wish for—had a sharp point piercing her.

It’s like the swinging boat ride all over again: her stomach somersaults, and oh god, don’t puke, don’t fall, no—

She lands on the grass—soft, yes, but treacherous, a fragile thread barely holding her to this world. She gulps the doughy air. When will this stop—never breathe again?

The card. She tightens her fingers on it. The spinning stops.

The hut stands. Her thoughts lurch, she’s not fully back yet.

4.

Everything is normal.

The oaks. The half-sand, half-stone paths. The holey fence slouching from the forest to the shop. She’s been gone too long, her boss will kill her.

Everything is normal.

Was the house—violets on the gate—always here? Probably. She walks faster.

It’s always so empty at this hour. She likes this stillness. The weirdness? That’s just the dizzy dream messing with her. That’s all.

Everything—

Her fingers twitch against the card in her pocket. It replaced the keys. Where the hell are her keys? 

Everything is—

The card presses against her palm, ink-sticky. No. This is not normal.

5.

The wooden shop door won’t budge. Her keys—great, still replaced by that useless card.

K. presses her face into the window. Inside, everything’s blurry—as if someone dragged a giant brush and eraser slowly across the glass.

What is she supposed to do? 

She reaches for the book and leafs through it. The words are replaced by one gibberish passage on the last page: 

Ɛ x 9ᔭㄥ

Cold teeth bite at her calves. Panic crawls up her spine on its spiky legs—like the buzz from too many magic-infused chocolates at the Red Lodge cafe.

No choice left—she needs to get out.

Chapter II

顔が嘘って。今日も

1.

Is this a place only K. can enter?

She hates the thought—hellishly self-centered—but what else could explain time turning into static just for her?

A scenario she’s daydreamed, nightmared, but never thought it’d look back at her with multitudes of eyes.

Her vision flickers, then snaps back. The usual “Guitar lessons” (not her age range) and “Have you seen this cat?” (heartbreaking) fade into manga panels.

There’s the same shimmer from her dream. Her fingers jump toward it—and it vanishes.

The inky line, the long-lost friend, is back. Why does her chest tighten? Friends shouldn’t make her palms sweat, right?

2.

It’s a repeated panel: a figure in a fur cap with two suitcases chasing a rush of white smoke. Too specific to be new, too strange to remember.

She’s supposed to take the train? Sure. Why not. Like this whole place isn’t already folded wrong-side-out.

The train jolts as K. steps in. She hits the floor. Dignity: gone. It’s fine. Fine.

Colors blur past, too vivid to be real. In her usual world, they’d melt the stone in her gut.

But this isn’t that world.

Can she still call it home if she’s not sure she’ll ever make it back?

3.

A message flutters on the window—too fast to read, but not to feel. The train halts. Outside, the air hits like déjà vu: mossy, floral, thick with foreign words, suffocating like a demon’s breath.

She walks the sandy asphalt. The signs shake with the same furious red that blistered through the dream that still clings like sweat to her skin.

Risky, sure—but it’s not like risk ever asked for her consent.

K. hates following rules. She hates not knowing them more.

At the end of the path: a carnival gate. Something human-shaped smiles—wrong enough to run, warm enough to follow.

4.

When she looks closer, the figure resolves into the shape of a man—maybe in his fifties, maybe older. Hard to tell. His features won’t stay still, like someone sketched him from memory and kept erasing, redrawing, smudging the edges.

The lines he’s built of aren’t hers, not quite the inky ones either. Something between.

No time to stare—not here, not in this hall with only one object: a humming slot machine.

The man-not-man shows his teeth in something between menace and fondness. The stone inside her fractures into splinters.

“One pull. One message. If you win, he will hear you.”

5.

“And why should I trust you?”

He shrugs; stapled smirk, dry eyes, hand stroking the machine like a wildcat. “Insert the card. Push the button. Hope. This is all you have.”

Every part of her bristles. Being told what to do makes her want to bite something—chew until it bleeds. But she shoves the card in, jaw locked, eyes pointed anywhere but him.

Whoever—or whatever—he is.

The machine flickers. Berry. Berry. —

Static.

“Tough luck.” He snaps his fingers—

And the world collapses inward like hot plastic.

The floor groans, K. stumbles, heat crawling up her neck.

She’s done playing pawn.

Chapter III

ギャフン

1.

After the world collapses, only L-shaped puddles remain. K. jumps from one to another.

The signs glow blue now, gentle as a breeze. Her chest tugs toward the light. No. She won’t fall for it. Not after signs tore the world apart.

Not easy to blame it—she’s the one who pulled the lever.

Doesn’t matter. Run.

Something wants to eat her? Let it. A manga panel monster? Fine. But only on her terms.

She slips. Darkness lashes her ankle—slick as spilled pen stroke—

shitshitshit—

it squeezes—

she kicks—

climbs—

Another train hovers suspended midair. K. jumps right into its mouth.

2.

This train glides. K. stays upright as colors sharpen—heart-shaped gardens, a mansion devoured by violets.

She exhales. The note she wanted to send to Uncle? Nonsense anyway. Who cares. But her hand drifts to her pocket—empty. Just fabric and the shape of absence. Stupid.

She almost sees it—his ink-stained shadow, dragging behind her like a second spine.

She bites it back. If that thing kept his word, he’d twist it—warp it—send Uncle a lie sewn into her handwriting. If Uncle is real, that is.

She stacks excuses like groceries, hoping neatness would quiet her gut ache.

It doesn’t. Only waits.

3.

She slaps the stop sign on a twitch of doubt. 

She can’t ride forever. Not when her watch spins like a curse and the train’s lamps carve slow halos through the air.

She needs to study the laws of this place. Map them, pin them, nail them down before they slip. The platform crackles like a stormcloud—might be her best shot.

The thought chews at her nerves. A warning? A thrill? Something buried beneath both.

The card, Uncle, not the end, just the hook. And maybe she’s already a character on someone else’s page—drawn in before she chose a pen.

4.

Gravity’s both a joke and a threat. K. flips the book open again. The gibberish on the last page grins smugly.

She almost steps into a yellow lump. Probably a fruit; it’s marked with a fresh bite. K. glances over her shoulder. Who left it here?

She doesn’t want to eat it, she wants to read it. She carves it open with the pen, skin puckers and splits, juice spilling onto the paper, not soaking, but blooming into gold dust, sharp of spice and lavender.

The pen is pulsing in her hand.

And then—

the air breaks like wet paper.

5.

K. freezes—gut twisting into a fist. Not this again. How many times? She should drop it. Forget Uncle.

She turns to bolt—

—and the bridge flickers into place, half-drawn, an abandoned doodle. It looks like it belongs in Southern France—except on a map created by someone who either doesn’t know or wants to mock.

Running won’t save her. She steps forward—then sees it: a manga panel. Uncle laughing at her joke. But it melts before she can absorb it.

Only a note remains: Your Uncle? Trust shattered. Danger ahead.

Her pulse spikes, demanding answers that will shush the wildfire inside.

Chapter IV

狸

1.

At the bridge’s end, a bar looms. Behind the counter: an older man with a handkerchief in the pocket of his velvet suit and a dotted bowtie. Is this—

She’s about to dive in, but then—something’s off. His lines are too neat and too easy. He’s not a silver fox, more like a thirty-something cosplaying one, badly.

Warning bells hiss under her ribs, but hell—she’s already here. What’s she gonna do now, moonwalk out?

“Clever trick,” she mutters, scanning him like a slippery shell cracked just enough to spill venom. “Think a cleaned-up avatar makes me forget the slot machine?”

2.

“Oh you sneaky little so-and-so,” he laughs. “I thought the necktie would do the trick. Touché.” 

The bar rips sideways, peeling back like a movie set—and there it is again: the amusement park from her dream, bathed in that same red-and-black palette. 

Her throat clenches. The walls throb with her messy handwriting.

Uncle is real. I know he is.

I need to find him.

What if I made him up?

“Delicious self-prophecy. You’re such a talented self-mocker, I didn’t even have to touch the pen.”

K.’s middle school nightmare slams back: strangers reading the chaotic pages inside her head.

3.

He pulls a cigarette from thin air. “Nice skill, right? Not gonna save you from being ripped off.”

K. puts two and two together—and it’s the hardest equation in her humble maths career. Is he saying—Uncle is—

Time hiccups. The thought doesn’t land, it detonates.

“Oh, you’re so afraid of this possibility, you can’t even think about it! Poor little bunny.”

Right. The goddamn mind-reading wall. She slams the door on that thought. The weirdo’s had enough of a peek.

“Who are you calling the weirdo?” he sneers. “I’m not the one chasing bedtime stories like they owe me closure.”

4.

“So, my fluffy cutie—still wanna see him?” He blows a smoke. “Or are you scared he’s one of them—the ones who charm like poets and rot like corpses? You know the type. You’ve read their confessions by night, haven’t you?”

A tremor shakes her hands, but she forces them still. “You think I’m new to this?”

His too-silver hair glitches into short, wispy brown strands. K. stabs him with her laser beam stare, raking the smoke aside like a curtain. “Do you think I’m looking for a fucking role model? You think I’m what—twelve? I came here for a conversation.”

5.

K.’s done letting some uncanny shadow pretend it knows her. The golden dust thrums inside her—she reaches for her pen and notebook.

“Be careful with your little toys,” he purrs, a brief lilt slicing through his usual tenor. “They’re more dangerous than you think. I also thought I was careful. And now—”

She shuts him down with a scrawl: SCRAM.

She aims to push him off. Instead, he crumbles into shrieking dust that twists into a shiny paper plane and silently glides away.

There’s ink on her hands and face. The darkness claws in without tearing the world apart.

Chapter V

認められない 弟子

狸

1.

K. hugs her knees, nothingness pressing against her bones.

This is too easy. No shaking, no voice snarling about the end, just an ice shard raking her insides and her breath fogging.

Would the ink smeared on her sting more if it reeked like old coins?

The frost climbs her throat. Murder? Self-defense? Does it even matter here?

She wants to go home. But which home? The one with all her books, the one drowned in unbearable silence, the one eroded by memory?

Three homes.

A pen creaks; a door appears.

“Oh, you poor child. You need to eat something.”

2. 

It’s an elderly woman built of ink lines that smudge like fingerprints.

The bite’s there—brewing—but K. stays silent. She’s—it’s been ages since she last ate—stupid notebook and pen won’t conjure food—

“I know, I know, it’s hard to find good food here.”

Is this woman digging into her mind? Damn—the thought-wall again? K. glances left and right. No sign of it—but then why does she feel so thought-naked?

“Come. I’ll make you an udon bowl.”

K. wants to scream no, stomp and sulk, lash out in a bratty storm. But she isn’t a poor child anymore—only a starving, exhausted adult.

3.

1941 hangs above the door. Her name is Kumi.

Tap. Tap. Tap. Tap. She drums the bowl—four beats that stop K. mid-scoop of curry thick with quiet history.

The rhythm nips her neck. Uncle’s guitar—he’d tap it like this before saying her name.

Sure.

The udon seeps in, quieting the stubborn brat inside her.

“If only my chef loved as much as you do.”

Kumi glances at the faded portrait—ladle raised, soft wrinkles catching the dim light. Some old man’s approval? Please. She’s folded flavors into broth since before K. could talk.

“Your chef—”

But Kumi’s gone, swallowed by shadows.

4.

Rock & roll hums through curry-stained spoons. “My sister always asks for extra eggroll.”

A hoodie hides heart-shaped acne. “Told them I trained under Kamado. Chef loved my tempura—never mind.”

Messy bun, crow’s feet, a soap-opera quote on her mug. “He says my udon’s too soft. She says my heart is.”

Old cookbooks, recipes flecked in gold dust. Silence.

Thirteen hours, zero tips. “I need a dentist, a rheumatologist, and food that’s good. Not just decent.”

Thinning hair, calloused hands. “All I want is a nod. A tiny one.”

Seven faces, one passion.

Kumi returns with a plate of seven fruits.

5.

“Okay, what the hell—you were seven people.”

“What are you talking about, dear? I got dessert.”

Her eyes flick furiously to the portrait—but Kumi’s absent smile turns fire to hush.

She looks back: six berries on the man’s plate.

She grabs the card (the notebook and pen still burning). Berries. She presses it—

Click.

The painting tips—
crashes down—
revealing:
_ x 6 _ _
A lock.

Three homes.
Four taps.
Seven selves.

The numbers fall into place. Never gibberish or smug—just waiting for her to look closer.

“I always knew,” Kumi says. “They only let me leave the six.”

Chapter VI

シーラカンス

1. 

The door slams before K. can say thank you. 

Kumi. 

Her body craves the false promise of safety, her mind drags her across the cosmos-black floor.

The corridor shifts behind her gaze—doorframes glitching like old TV pixels and bleeding bruised green and sickly pink.

Rot sours the smell of burnt paper and ink. K. pulls her sleeve over her face, there’s something—

when—

he’s supposed to be—

gone—

A pixel puppet with strings cut mid-glitch-performance. She presses against the wall—

and recoils with a gasp. The red is oozing up her skin.

He’s not trying to play the gentleman anymore.

2.

The fractured splinters inside her liquefy into panic. She bolts door to door. He follows, a static and close breath.

Every door slams into the next—

too fast to parse, too loud to forget. A four-legged fish drawing its tank in chalk, her bedroom in the wrong shade of blue.

His voice scratches the air, echoing through vents. The notebook and pen—the bombs she forgot how to defuse—are the only things that might help. She grabs, but her fingers miss. 

The notebook and pen dissolve into darkness. He glitches—becoming the figure in the fur hat.

It’s a win for him.

3.

He used to wear the smile of someone who knows her journals by heart. Now it’s so blank she can’t read it.

“This is what you wanted, right? Someone who tells you yes. Even when your ideas make no sense and you’re spiraling again.”

Each word nicks her open with surgical precision.

It’s over. Her weapon’s gone. She curls into a crumpled knot behind the crate, her face slick with tears and snot.

He kneels with a tired sigh. “You still don’t get it. I’m not here for you.” He pauses. “I’m here because no one was there for me.”

4.

He morphs into mascot-her: blue cat ears, baseball cap, and lines begging for love. “I thought he’d match the version I drew in my head, too.”

His voice drips with hollow wisdom, his ears are swollen with self-importance. 

K. wipes her face, straightening, still on shaking legs. “It’s just a sketch. But I need it.”

He tilts her head. “You don’t. And you don’t need the notebook or pen to erase me. Just do it. Please. No one can live like this.”

Her hand twitches—reaches out, then jerks back. His pixels smear into vapor.

She’s left alone with the silence.

5.

This reality gasps its dying breath with him. A new opening tears open the dark—the mansion devoured by violets looms again.

There is no door, only a ladder. K. climbs it—pale blue butterflies bursting mid-wingbeat around her. The ladder coils beneath her grip; it won’t stop her.

Her hands burn; she pants. The sky isn’t sky anymore—it’s paper, ash, whatever it wants to be.

A figure shifts in the fog. Her vision fuzzes when a hand extends through the mist. She hesitates. Grabs it.

The grip is firm and it fills her with an unknown strength.

She won’t let go.