After school, I had been invited into the inner sanctum of her house.
We were exchanging words regarding our band’s itinerary and the technical layout of the upcoming live show, when she stood up. “I’ll fetch us some tea,” she murmured, leaving the room.
I popped the latches of her guitar case, staring down at the instrument inside while my gaze instinctively tracked her retreating figure. She was a guitarist whom I held in absolute, near-religious reverence. Whenever I witnessed her execution on the fretboard, a fierce, cold desire to sharpen my own proficiency would lock itself in my throat.
But in the very next instant, the architecture of my visual field fractured. My perception blurred, and I was seized by a sudden, sickening levitation—as though my core were being unmoored from gravity.
When my eyes calibrated to the light, I was struck by absolute horror. Standing directly before me… was myself.
“Wh… Why the hell am I standing over there…?”
The reflex to speak was instantaneous, but the acoustic resonance that erupted from my throat was not my own. It was her voice—clear, pristine, and chillingly distinct.
Panicked, I brought my hands up to inspect them. My eyes mapped a set of narrow, fragile fingers, entirely stripped of my usual skeletal mass.
The truth settled in like an icy weight: I had been interred within her flesh.
“This is impossible…” As the realization destabilized me, the “me” standing across the room mirrored my disorientation. The lips of my original face parted. “You… don’t tell me you’re…?”
It appeared she, too, had successfully registered the displacement. She was piloting my native body.
After a tense interlude spent calculating the coordinates of our situation, her consciousness spoke through my old face, her expression turning severe and demanding.
“…In any case, since you occupy my vessel now, you had better execute my guitar practice flawlessly.”
There was an unsettling curiosity in her eyes. She was intensely fixated on the prospect of me navigating her instrument through her own nerve endings. Perhaps she harbored a dark, clinical desire to witness how her habitual fingerings and rhythmic geometry would manifest when filtered through a foreign intellect.
“But… do you honestly believe I can command your anatomy well enough to play?”
Struggling to mask my internal friction, I questioned her. She merely offered a slow, compliant smile through my original features, her tone laced with a quiet authority. “You will manage. Besides, I have monitored the discipline of your daily practice. My anatomy is safe in your hands.”
Read the rest here 👇
コメント