Chapter 2: The Invisible Scar

Rei's alarm clock screamed at 6:30 AM, the same as every morning for the past three years. He slapped it silent and rolled out of bed, his body moving through the familiar motions of getting ready for school while his mind reeled from fragmented memories of the night before.

Just a dream, he told himself as he splashed cold water on his face. Stress from exams. Too much coffee. Too many late nights browsing urban legend forums.

But when he looked in the bathroom mirror, his fingers unconsciously rose to touch his forehead where the burning sensation lingered. There was nothing visible—no mark, no scar, no evidence of the shadow-blade that had felt so real. Yet beneath his fingertips, his skin felt different somehow, like it was vibrating at a frequency only he could perceive.

The walk to school should have been routine. Down the stairs of their apartment building, past the convenience store where the elderly clerk always nodded politely, through the pedestrian underpass that smelled perpetually of cigarettes and rain. But today, every shadow seemed deeper, every reflection in store windows lingered a moment too long, and the whispers of passing conversations carried words that made no sense.

"The mark is set," echoed through his mind as he climbed the steps to Tokyo Metropolitan Kita High School. "He belongs to us now."

"Ashbourne-kun!" His homeroom teacher's voice cut through his thoughts like a blade. "Are you paying attention?"

Rei blinked, finding himself staring at his desk where he'd been unconsciously sketching. The page was covered with drawings he didn't remember making—twisted faces with impossible mouths, corridors that seemed to fold in on themselves, and at the center, a woman in a surgical mask whose eyes seemed to follow him even on paper.

"Sorry, Tanaka-sensei," he mumbled, quickly flipping the page closed.

The rest of the morning passed in a haze. During lunch, he found himself avoiding his usual spot by the window, choosing instead a desk in the center of the classroom where the fluorescent lights were brightest. The shadows at the edges of his vision kept moving when they should have been still.

It was during afternoon study period that the whispers started.

At first, they were just at the edge of hearing—soft murmurs that could have been the air conditioning or distant traffic. But gradually, they grew more distinct, more personal.

"Pretty boy sees too much..."

"Marked meat walking around pretending to be human..."

"She touched him, touched his mind, opened the door..."

Rei's pencil snapped in his grip. Several classmates glanced over, but their faces seemed wrong somehow—features slightly off-center, expressions that didn't quite match their eyes. He blinked hard, and they returned to normal, leaving him wondering if his mind was finally cracking under the stress.

The final bell couldn't come soon enough.

He was packing his bag when his phone buzzed with a notification. A message from an unknown number, but the preview text made his blood freeze: "You can't pretend forever. We know what you are now."

Rei grabbed his phone, but when he opened the message app, there was nothing there. No unknown numbers, no threatening texts. Just his usual conversations with his mother and a few classmates.

I'm losing it, he thought. Completely, utterly losing it.

The train ride home was worse. Every screen in the subway car—phones, tablets, the digital advertisements—seemed to flicker when he looked at them directly. Once, he could have sworn he saw a familiar surgical mask reflected in the black window across from him, but when he turned to look, there was only an elderly businessman reading a newspaper.

By the time he reached his apartment building, Rei was practically running. He needed to get inside, needed the safety of familiar walls and his mother's mundane complaints about her work at the translation agency. He needed normal.

But normal was no longer an option.

His computer was already on when he entered his room, the screen glowing with a browser window he hadn't opened. The page was blank except for a single line of text that appeared as he watched:

"Am I pretty?"

Rei's finger hovered over the power button, but before he could shut it down, more text began appearing, character by character, as if someone were typing in real-time:

"You didn't answer properly last night. Let me ask again."

The screen flickered, and suddenly the blank page was replaced by a video feed—his own room, viewed from the perspective of his computer's camera. But the figure sitting at the desk wasn't quite him. The other-Rei's face was pale, his eyes hollow, and when he smiled, his mouth opened far too wide.

"Am I pretty?" the thing wearing his face asked through the speakers.

Rei stumbled backward, knocking over his desk chair. The whispers he'd been hearing all day suddenly intensified, coming from every electronic device in the room. His phone, his alarm clock, even the digital display on his air conditioner—all of them chattering in voices he almost recognized.

"Answer the question."

"She marked you for us."

"One of us now."

"Pretty, pretty, pretty—"

The cacophony was overwhelming, pressing against his skull like physical weight. Rei pressed his hands to his ears, but the voices were coming from inside his head now, echoing through whatever connection that shadow-blade had carved into his mind.

That's when his bedroom door exploded inward.

The woman who entered moved like liquid violence, her silver hair catching the light from his computer screen as she swept the room with a device that looked like a cross between a smartphone and a Geiger counter. She was young—early twenties at most—but carried herself with the confidence of someone who had seen far too much.

"Taint level is spiking," she said into a wireless earpiece, her English crisp despite her Japanese accent. "Multiple digital manifestations. The kid's becoming a beacon."

She looked at Rei, taking in his terrified expression and the chaos of his room with professional assessment. "You're Ashbourne Rei, seventeen years old, student at Metropolitan Kita High. Last night at approximately 11:47 PM, you had an encounter with a Class-A Anomaly designated Kuchisake-onna in Shinjuku District 2."

It wasn't a question.

"Who are you?" Rei managed to ask, his voice barely a whisper.

"Agent Akari Yano, Aegis Bureau Tokyo Division." She pulled out what looked like a high-tech spray bottle and began misting the air around his computer. Where the droplets landed, the whispers grew quieter. "And you're in serious trouble."

The screen flickered once more, showing the woman in the surgical mask. But now Kuchisake-onna was looking directly at Agent Yano, her terrible mouth curved in amusement.

"Too late," the image said. "He's ours now. The Taint has taken hold."

Agent Yano didn't hesitate. She drew what looked like a compact pistol and fired three shots directly into the monitor. Instead of bullets, streams of brilliant light erupted from the barrel, and the screen exploded in a shower of sparks and digital snow.

The whispers stopped.

In the sudden silence, Agent Yano turned back to Rei, her expression grim. "Pack a bag. Only essentials. Your normal life is over as of right now."

"I don't understand—"

"The mark she left on you?" Agent Yano gestured to his forehead. "It's called a Taint. Makes you a magnet for every nightmare and urban legend that crawls through the spaces between reality. That little manifestation through your computer was just the beginning. If you stay here, if you try to keep pretending you're still normal, they'll tear you apart within a week."

Rei sank onto his bed, the weight of the revelation crushing down on him. "So what are my options?"

Agent Yano's expression softened slightly, revealing a glimpse of something almost like sympathy beneath her professional mask. "You come with me. Join the Bureau. Learn to control what's happening to you, maybe even find a way to cure it." She paused, checking something on her device. "Or you can stay here and die screaming when the next Anomaly comes calling. And there will be a next one. The Taint guarantees it."

From somewhere in the building, Rei heard his mother's key in the front door lock, her voice calling out a tired greeting in Japanese. His normal world—homework and part-time jobs and university entrance exams—suddenly felt impossibly distant.

"She really chose me specifically, didn't she?" he asked. "Last night wasn't random."

"Nothing about last night was random," Agent Yano confirmed. "Kuchisake-onna is a Class-A Anomaly. They don't just wander around looking for victims. She had a reason for marking you, and until we figure out what that reason is, you're both an asset and a liability."

Rei looked around his room one last time—at his art supplies scattered across the desk, at the posters of bands he'd never get to see in concert, at the sketchbooks full of dreams he'd never get to pursue. All of it felt like it belonged to someone else now.

"If I come with you," he said quietly, "is there any chance I can come back to this? Ever?"

Agent Yano was quiet for a long moment. When she finally spoke, her voice was gentler than he expected. "I don't know. But I can promise you this—if you don't come with me, you'll never get the chance to find out."

Outside his window, the neon lights of Tokyo continued their eternal dance, painting the world in colors that suddenly seemed far less vibrant than they had that morning. Rei stood up, pulled his school bag from under his desk, and began to pack.

His mother was still calling his name from the kitchen, but her voice already sounded like it was coming from another lifetime.