It was a winter night, and the cold wind made the light from the streetlamps tremble.
Kazuki stopped in the middle of a deserted alley.
Sensing something strange behind him, he turned around.
There stood a woman dressed in a lustrous blue kimono, smiling at him.
She was so beautiful that she looked as though she had stepped straight out of a painting.
“All alone at this hour?”
Her voice rang as delicately as a tiny bell.
Caught off guard, Kazuki stumbled over his words.
“Huh? Oh… I was just taking a little detour on my way home.”
Seeing his reaction, the woman’s smile slowly deepened.
Yet there was something unsettling about it—something impossible to read.
“Such a cold night, isn’t it? Why don’t you come inside and have some hot tea? I’m sure it’ll help you relax.”
Kazuki hesitated.
His better judgment told him that he should hurry home.
And yet some instinctive part of him was irresistibly drawn to the beautiful woman and her soothing voice.
Unable to overcome the temptation, he gave a small nod.
The woman led Kazuki into an old-fashioned Japanese room.
The faint scent of tatami filled the air, and steam curled upward from a teacup resting on a low table.
“Here you are. It’s nice and warm.”
Smiling pleasantly, the woman offered him the cup.
Still somewhat wary, Kazuki accepted it politely.
“Thank you.”
He wrapped both hands around the warm cup and took a sip.
A comforting heat spread through his body.
But the very next moment, his vision began to distort.
“Huh…? What is this…?”
His body refused to move properly.
Confusion gave way to fear.
And before he could do anything, darkness swallowed his consciousness.
When Kazuki came to, he immediately realized that something was terribly wrong.
His body was melting.
Or rather, it had already become something resembling translucent slime.
The woman stood before him, wearing a wickedly amused smile.
“Surprised? This is how I do things.”
Wh… What did you do to me…?
Kazuki tried to speak, but his liquid body had no voice.
He could do nothing but exist there as a shapeless mass.
The woman picked up another teacup and slowly raised it to her lips.
Closing her eyes with a satisfied smile, she drank.
Then her entire body began to glow with pale white light.
“I’m going to borrow a little of your youth. But before that… I think I’ll let you have an interesting experience.”
Before Kazuki could even comprehend what she meant, his liquid form was drawn toward her.
It flowed into her body—
and the world abruptly changed.
When his awareness returned, Kazuki found himself inside the woman’s body.
Slender fingers.
Smooth skin.
A graceful waist.
Every sensation was utterly different from anything he had ever known.
“This… isn’t my body…?”
Still overwhelmed, he stared into the mirror.
The woman in the blue kimono stared back at him.
Or rather—
he stared back at himself through her face.
“Well?” a familiar voice asked. “Interesting, isn’t it? Experiencing a woman’s body?”
Kazuki spun around.
Standing behind him was—
himself.
His own body was there, but the woman’s consciousness was clearly controlling it.
“N-No way… How did you…?!”
“I simply felt like playing a little trick on you.”
She smiled mischievously through Kazuki’s face.
“Go on. You have a rare opportunity. See what it’s like to move around in a body completely different from your own.”
Kazuki hesitantly examined his unfamiliar form.
The texture of the kimono against his skin, the weight and balance of his body, even the way his hair brushed against his neck—all of it felt strangely vivid.
“This is… what it feels like to have a woman’s body…”
Embarrassment mingled with fascination as he became increasingly absorbed in the unfamiliar sensations.
Eventually, the woman spoke again.
“I suppose it’s about time I changed you back. But before I do, I’ll teach you something.”
The woman—
or perhaps it would be more accurate to call her a yōkai—
gave him an enchanting smile.
Then she began teaching Kazuki the secret of her strange technique.
“With this art, you can exchange bodies with another person. But be careful. If you use it carelessly, you may create consequences you never intended.”
After memorizing the technique, Kazuki repeated the incantation she taught him.
Light flooded the room.
And when it faded, he was standing in his own body once again.
—
The next day, Kazuki couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened.
Had the technique truly been real?
Or had the entire night been some bizarre dream?
There was only one way to find out.
After school, Kazuki spotted his classmate Ayaka walking nearby.
Remembering the incantation, he quietly recited it.
The moment he finished, his vision went dark.
When his eyes opened again, the world seemed strangely different.
He looked down.
Slender fingers.
A school skirt.
“Wait… It worked…!”
Suppressing his astonishment, Kazuki hurried to the nearest mirror.
Ayaka’s face stared back at him.
Meanwhile, Ayaka had awakened inside Kazuki’s body.
“What?! What is this?! Why am I… in Kazuki’s body?!”
Kazuki—now occupying Ayaka’s body—forced himself to appear just as confused as she was.
“Ayaka, calm down! This must have been some kind of accident. We’ll figure out how to fix it together.”
He pretended to be shocked, even though inwardly he was fascinated by how different everything felt.
The lighter balance of Ayaka’s body, the unfamiliar weight of her hair, the fit of her uniform—
every tiny movement reminded him that he was seeing the world through someone else’s body.
“We should probably figure out what’s changed first.”
“What do you mean, ‘figure out what’s changed’?! We need to change back!”
“I know, I know. I just mean we shouldn’t panic.”
Kazuki gently touched Ayaka’s shoulder and arm, ostensibly checking whether anything seemed physically wrong.
The difference in build was immediately noticeable.
“See? Everything seems normal. We’ve just… somehow switched places.”
“This is not normal!”
Ayaka’s protest came out in Kazuki’s low voice, which only made her look even more bewildered.
“Sorry. Bad choice of words.”
Kazuki then gestured toward his original body.
“You should probably get used to moving around in that body too. At least until we figure this out.”
Ayaka hesitantly raised her—Kazuki’s—hands.
She flexed the fingers, then moved the arms and shoulders.
“Whoa… This feels completely different. Everything feels heavier. Stronger, too.”
“Yeah. That’s pretty much what having my body feels like.”
Ayaka examined herself in the mirror, still looking deeply uncomfortable with the unfamiliar reflection.
“This is so weird… How are we supposed to get back?”
“I’ll think of something.”
Kazuki chose his words carefully, trying to reassure her.
“But until then, I guess we should try not to panic. It might even be interesting to see what the world feels like from the other side for a little while.”
Ayaka gave him a suspicious look.
“What are you talking about?”
Yet even she couldn’t completely suppress her curiosity about the unfamiliar sensations of inhabiting a boy’s body.
Eventually, Kazuki decided the experiment had gone far enough.
He recited the incantation the yōkai had taught him.
A flash of light enveloped them—
and the two returned to their original bodies.
Ayaka tried to convince herself that the bizarre incident had somehow been a dream brought on by exhaustion.
Even though her body felt strangely unfamiliar for the rest of the day, she chose not to think too deeply about it.
Kazuki, however, couldn’t dismiss what had happened so easily.
The technique was real.
He had experienced another person’s body, seen the world through someone else’s eyes, and then returned whenever he wished.
And now that he knew the true power of the forbidden art, his curiosity was stronger than ever.
The yōkai’s warning echoed somewhere in the back of his mind.
If you use it carelessly, you may create consequences you never intended.
Kazuki looked down at his own hands and slowly smiled.
He had no intention of forgetting the technique.
If anything—
he wanted to discover just how far its power could go.
And so began Kazuki’s strange new life with the forbidden art of Kyōka Suigetsu.
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