Chapter 1 This is you asking for death. Hisoka carried Kortopi’s head outside, just in time to meet Shalnark who had turned around to look back. Hisoka licked the blood from the corner of his mouth, responded to Shalnark’s gaze with a polite smile, and casually threw his companion’s head over. The impact was significant….
Story Title Your Forma In an alternate 2023, the Your Forma, a miraculous “smart thread” technology initially developed to treat a massive outbreak of viral encephalitis, has become an integral part of daily life. But these convenient devices come with an invasive drawback—they record every sight, sound, and even emotion their users experience. For electronic…
Prologue Blizzard Every now and then, a thought blew through her mind like a violent gust of wind: I never wanted to turn out like this. “So based on the victim’s testimony, how many centimeters of snowfall are in his room now?” “About forty-eight centimeters before we applied the suppressant. The blizzard is pretty terrible,…
2 Her destination, the Union Care Center, was a building designed in the style of Gothic Revival architecture. Echika couldn’t help but stare at it, but that soon prompted ads to flash into life on the outer walls. Her Your Forma automatically read their data matrices, instantly opening the products’ purchase pages in her browser….
1 <Today’s temperature stands at −7°C. Attire index A, warm clothing, is recommended> Despite it being eight in the morning, the stars continued to faintly twinkle in the sky. With the psychological-horror movie she’d watched during her flight still burned into her eyelids, Echika stood at the roundabout by Pulkovo Airport, located in northwestern Russia….
3 Saint Petersburg’s index case, Clara Lee, had been absent from the ballet academy on the day she was infected. Based on the Your Forma’s records, Lee was an eighteen-year-old Norwegian girl, hailing from Kirkenes in Finnmark county. She had joined Saint Petersburg’s ballet academy as an exchange student and lived in the student dorms….
4 As they got out of the Niva, fleeting snow began to sprinkle down from above. The girl’s house was very much an old-fashioned lodge. Icicles dangled down from its triangular roof, and its vividly colored outer walls were frozen from the snow blowing against them. Echika stepped onto the sundeck and knocked on the…
5 The revolving lights of the ambulance disappeared into the night as it carried Lee away. Gazing at the bright glow spilling over the snowy field, Echika blew out a wisp from her electronic cigarette. The temperature had dropped even further, and by now, the air wasn’t so much cold as it was painful. Based…