Unknown

Li Xue looked up at Tang Yao again. Her long, pale fingers gripped the manuscript so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.

But Tang Yao wasn't looking at her. Instead, she was idly scrolling through her phone.

Maybe she thought Li Xue was taking too long.

"..."

Li Xue swallowed lightly, glanced at Tang Yao's beautiful profile, then lowered her eyes to the page, where Uzumaki and Kazuko were kissing. She repeated the comparison twice, but still couldn't figure out what the two had to do with each other.

Just as she couldn't understand why Uzumaki had appeared in the story.

But.

But.

Even without any explanation, she still felt afraid.

The fear came from nowhere. Maybe it was the realistic art style, or maybe it was the bizarre plot.

Whatever the reason, the ominous atmosphere had been building—and when Uzumaki appeared, it erupted.

That gloomy, unsettling feeling she couldn't quite put into words had completely enveloped her. It had drawn her in, too.

Though she was frantically wondering what the hell was going on.

Deep down, she desperately wanted to know what happened next.

So what the hell was this!?

Li Xue thought it over, calmed herself a little, and turned to the next page.

What happened next.

She really wanted to know what happened next.

In the manga.

After witnessing the bizarre scene with her own eyes, Kazuko ran all the way to the police station to explain what had happened. But when the police went with her to the woods, they found nothing and told her she must have been dreaming.

There was nothing at the place where it had happened. Uzumaki had vanished.

Had it been a hallucination?

Seeing this page, Li Xue relaxed a little... As she'd thought, Tang Yao must have been using bizarre imagery to portray the characters' state of mind.

After all, Tang Yao didn't seem like the sort of person who would draw strange manga.

It was bold, sure, but only bold.

Mm.

Li Xue couldn't tell whether she was disappointed or relieved. She kept reading.

In the manga, the story moved to the next day. On her way home from school, Kazuko told a few friends about the bizarre events of the previous night.

Of course, her friends thought she'd been dreaming.

And as they were discussing what had happened,

a few black specks appeared in the clear sky.

One of the girls pointed up and said the specks looked like balloons.

Kazuko heard her and jerked her head up. The black specks in the sky were drawing closer. They really were balloons...

One, two, three, four!

There were four in all.

Only they weren't ordinary balloons. They were... Uzumaki!

The floating, swollen heads matched the four of them exactly. They looked just like the girls, except their faces were twisted with terror, and below their necks there was no body—only loops of rope... nooses for hanging.

The four Uzumaki rushed toward Kazuko and her friends. The ropes dangling from their heads shot straight at the girls, as if to slip the nooses around their necks.

The four girls shrieked in terror. Two of them couldn't dodge in time. The balloons with their faces dragged them up, and they were hanged in midair.

Li Xue: "!!!!!"

She stopped turning the page again, then straightened up and drew a deep breath. Forcing down the roller-coaster of emotions, she finally continued.

With her own Uzumaki chasing her, Kazuko fled in panic. She and the one remaining friend hurried into an alley.

The Uzumaki were too large to get in right away.

But they still hovered at the entrance, staring at them.

Just then, someone in an apartment on the second floor heard the screams and opened a window. When they saw the Uzumaki, they shrieked that it was a monster, then rushed inside, grabbed a crossbow, and shot one of the heads.

Pff—

Under the sound effect of air escaping,

the Uzumaki that had been shot let out a terrified scream. Just like a punctured balloon, it visibly deflated.

Kazuko stared in shock, then slowly let out a breath. Turning to her only remaining friend as though they'd been saved, she said, 'Thank goodness, that balloon's gone flat.'

But.

Her friend didn't answer.

Kazuko turned around.

The head of the only friend left beside her was deflating just like a punctured balloon. Her muscles vanished, her bones melted away, and her skin lost its elasticity. In the end, she became 'flat'—like a wrinkled piece of rubber...

"!!!!!!!!!"

Li Xue gripped the manuscript even harder, her beautiful eyes widening as she stared at the head deflating like a balloon. She felt as if the whole world had gone wrong!!!

At that moment,

she finally understood why the manga was drawn in a realistic style!!!

The characters' faces looked so ordinary in the realistic art style. And because they looked so ordinary, when their heads really deflated like balloons, the impact, terror, and horror were more intense than ever!

The more normal something looked, the more real it felt—and the more shocking it was when that normality fell apart.

Li Xue stared at the scene's devastating impact. Her heart raced. She froze for a full minute before turning to the next page.

And there was something even more shocking ahead.

In the manga, Kazuko saw what had happened to her friend and ran home in a panic.

On the way, she saw countless Uzumaki rising into the sky: her own, her parents', her younger brother Yosuke's, her teacher's, her neighbors'—enough to nearly blot out the entire sky.

Rendered in the realistic art style,

countless Uzumaki floated overhead, nooses dangling from their lower ends, filling the sky.

A grand spectacle of horror, a massive nightmarish carnival that had grown from a single incident... It all unfolded in an instant.

The story, too, began racing toward madness...

The world of the manga descended into chaos. Kazuko barely made it home. Her family sat on edge indoors, while the whole town seemed powerless to do anything.

A TV host was reporting safety precautions, but in the next moment, the host was hoisted into the air by their own Uzumaki.

Things at Kazuko's home also began to fall apart. Even in this situation, her father still wanted to go to work. He thought he'd be fine as long as he protected his neck. But the moment he stepped outside, a balloon hoisted him into the sky by his arm and neck, alongside countless other Uzumaki.

Next came Kazuko's younger brother. They were running out of food, and if no one went out to find more, they would all die sooner or later.

So Kazuko's younger brother took a sharp umbrella, said he'd stab any balloon that came near, and went outside.

But as soon as he stepped out, he ran into his own Uzumaki.

Last was Kazuko's mother. Her husband and son still hadn't come back, and she broke down too. She rushed out of the house and never returned.

In the manga, more and more people were hanged. The entire world was filled with swollen Uzumaki, and it seemed as though the world itself were falling apart.

No.

It had already fallen apart!

The manga's timeline returned to where it had begun.

'Knock, knock, knock.'

Someone was tapping on the window.

Kazuko huddled in the corner of her room, trembling. Her face was slick with cold sweat and twisted with fear.

She lived on the second floor... The only thing that could knock on her window was an Uzumaki!

Her parents hadn't come back, and her younger brother had gone out to look for food and hadn't returned either. She had no idea what had happened to them—whether they'd escaped or not... All she knew was that she was alone in the house.

Exhausted, she hid beside her desk, listening to the knocks on the window and the calls outside. She was close to losing her mind... but no one was coming to save her!

Just then... Kazuko suddenly heard her younger brother's frantic voice outside the window.

He told her he'd found food and urged her to open the window quickly.

Hungry, terrified, and on the verge of breaking down, Kazuko heard her brother's voice and seized on it like a lifeline. She hurried to the window.

Still, she held on to the last thread of her resolve. She didn't open it right away, but looked outside first.

A slender figure was dimly reflected beyond the window... It really didn't look like an Uzumaki. It really was her younger brother...

Relieved beyond words, Kazuko opened the window at once.

But...

When she opened it, all she saw was her brother's corpse.

His body hung in front of the window, pierced by the umbrella he'd taken outside. Its metal ribs had sunk deep into his abdomen. His tongue lolled out, and he'd died a gruesome death.

A noose was around his neck, and the rope above it was tied to the Uzumaki that looked like Kazuko's younger brother.

Hanging from his own body, he looked at his sister, who had opened the window, and said, "Thanks for opening the window for me, sis..."

Beside him, Kazuko's own Uzumaki grinned.

At the same time, the noose tied to its tail flew toward Kazuko.

...The end.

"..."

The story ended abruptly, giving no explanation of what happened. Readers were left to imagine the rest for themselves.

The well-timed silence left just enough room for thought.

The story had no cause, no resolution, and no indication of what might happen next.

This wasn't some story using bizarre imagery to portray a character's state of mind! It was a full-blown horror story... a carnival of terror!

Li Xue's red lips parted slightly. She stared blankly at the final scene, then shuddered violently and froze in place, as if she'd fallen into some unknown terror.