The Innocent Specimen: Embers of the Expiration Date
Takuya Yoshida’s seventeen years had been filled with a peace as dry and gritty as sand in his teeth.
A second-year student at a public high school. His grades were average, his athletic ability mundane. He had no remarkable talent, nor had he ever loved anyone with any real passion. Every morning, he would look at his face in the bathroom mirror—the face of a typical teenage boy with a lingering hint of youth—and live without a single doubt that it was, indeed, himself.
That peace crumbled soundlessly in a humid classroom after school.
“Hey, Yoshida-kun. Can we talk for a minute?”
The one who stopped him was Hana Suzuki. She was a creature inhabiting the “sanctuary” of the class—no, of the entire school. Porcelain-white skin, pale eyes, and limbs so slender they seemed fragile, all wrapped in a perfectly worn uniform. Just by her sitting in a corner reading a book, the very density of the air around her seemed to change. To Takuya, she wasn’t even an object of admiration; she was simply a piece of completed scenery that existed in the background.
“I’ve been… having some trouble lately. Please, could you help me?”
Hana’s eyes were slightly moist. Faced with the violent symbolism of a “beautiful girl’s tears,” an utterly ordinary seventeen-year-old boy had no room to choose refusal.
“Ah—yeah. If it’s something I can do…”
Takuya realized his voice had pitched up pathetically. She smiled contentedly and gently grasped his hand. Her fingertips were shockingly cold, like those of a corpse.
That night, Takuya fell into a sleep so deep it felt like sinking into an abyss. In his dreams, he felt his flesh peeling away like thin parchment, being repainted into something else. His internal organs contracted, and his skeleton groaned as it shrank. It was a sensation of hideous “regression,” like growth played in reverse.
When he woke up, the world had become “lower.”
“…cough… ghhk!”
The air drawn into his lungs was strangely cold and thin. Takuya tried to bolt upright in panic, but no strength reached his arms, and he slumped forward onto his futon. Something was wrong. His arms were too thin. At the edge of his vision, long, glossy black hair spilled down.
“What… is this…”
What came out of his mouth was not the muddy voice he knew. It was a high, clear, yet strangely hollow chime of a bell. It was the exact voice of Hana Suzuki, the one he had watched from a distance until yesterday.
Takuya crawled toward the full-length mirror in his room. Standing in the mirror was Hana Suzuki. Disheveled hair from sleep, fragile and defenseless shoulders peeking through a thin nightgown. Takuya reached for his crotch. The certain “anchor” of his manhood that should have been there was gone. Instead, his fingertips met a smooth, flat, and bottomless sense of loss. The arrangement of his organs had shifted, and his center of gravity had sunk deep into the depths of his pelvis.
“Ugh… ah… AHHHHH!”
His shout echoed in the room as a delicate scream. The despair of being betrayed even by his own voice. He grabbed Hana’s smartphone. His fingers were too slender; he struggled even to type the passcode. In the “Diary” app, he found entries detailing an obsession with him from several days ago.
『Takuya Yoshida. A healthy, characterless body with no color attached to it. I want that “free vessel.” I want a world where no one looks at me as “Hana Suzuki.” I’ll push this heavy skin onto him.』
Takuya felt a surge of nausea. To her, this perfected beauty was nothing more than a “heavy skin.” And he was nothing more than a dumping ground, forced to wear her discarded shell.
The “Hana Suzuki” in the mirror, regardless of Takuya’s will, let her eyes moisten with terror. Takuya felt sick to his core that the expression was so “perfect as a beautiful girl.”
Every time he tried to move his body, there was a tightening discomfort, as if the underside of his skin were being pulled taut. The “outside air,” which he had never noticed as a boy, now chilled his internal organs directly through the thin skin. On his chest, two lumps of flesh—possessing a slight but certain weight—were attached, rising and falling with every breath, exerting a faint pressure on his ribs. They weren’t charms; they were merely “noise” that skewed his center of gravity and delayed his movements.
Takuya, with trembling hands, slipped into the uniform Hana had prepared. The restraint known as a bra restricted the expansion of his lungs, forcing a constant awareness: I am being decorated. His legs, exposed by the short skirt, were shockingly thin and unreliable. With every step, his knees felt as if they were pulling inward. The shape of his pelvis had fundamentally rewritten the way he walked.
On his way to school, Takuya tasted a deeper hell. Just by walking down the street, gazes pierced him. When he was a man, the world was a background. He was part of the scenery, never judged by anyone. But now, it was different. Salarymen passing by, students on bicycles, from inside cars waiting at traffic lights—unrestrained gazes scanned him, literally “licking his skin.” It wasn’t admiration; it was a one-sided appraisal, a silent violence fueled by possessiveness.
“…ghh”
Takuya looked down, hiding his face with his long hair. But he didn’t yet realize that the very act of looking down only reinforced the “Hana Suzuki” symbol, making her more delicate, more “something that incites a desire to protect.”
As he passed through the school gates, Hana Suzuki was standing there, inhabiting the body of “Takuya Yoshida.” She wore Takuya’s worn-out uniform perfectly, sporting a cool, confident smile that Takuya had never once managed.
“Good morning, Takuya-kun. How are you feeling?”
She clapped him on the shoulder with Takuya’s low voice. At that contact, filled with “male strength,” Takuya’s body—independent of his will—gave a violent start and shrunk back. His body was already learning the shape of submission to the strong.
“…Give it back. Give it back now…”
“Give it back? How? I’ve taken a liking to this body. It’s light, free, and no one expects me to be ‘cute.’ It’s the ultimate camouflage.”
Hana (looking like Takuya) gazed contentedly at her—originally Takuya’s—brawny arms.
“You stay there and fulfill the role of ‘Hana Suzuki’ for me. Don’t worry, I left a manual on the phone on how to maintain that body. …If you neglect it, the people around you will bared their fangs. Being a beautiful girl is a contract built on that, after all.”
With a powerful stride, she trampled over the mundane future Takuya had once held and disappeared toward the classroom. All that remained was a discarded shell—exposed to heavy hair, a tightening chest, and a chilling, constant gaze.
Takuya stared at his slender fingers. His nails were neatly groomed, glowing with a faint pink luster. They looked like the bars of an inescapable cage, designed to murder him as a human being and fix him in place as a single “specimen.”
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