Kenichi’s life was an endless descent, sinking into a quagmire of gravity and despair. In the stale air of his forty-year-old apartment, a single room of six tatami mats, the scent of dust mingled with the acrid sting of anxiety. The stacks of collection notices on his desk were no longer mere paper; they were death warrants beckoning him toward the scaffold.
“Twenty-one thousand left…”
Every time he checked his bank balance, his stomach twisted like a wrung-out rag. He had inherited his parents’ massive debts, and his desperate gamble on an import business had collapsed when his partner vanished. All Kenichi had left was his twenty-six-year-old “youth” and the extreme poverty that forced him to use that very youth as collateral.
Every morning, he looked in the mirror. There stood a young man with dark circles from insomnia, yet possessing a skin that retained a vibrant, undeniable elasticity.
“If only I could sell this body for a few dollars a gram,” Kenichi muttered, gripping his own muscular arm in self-derision. As his fingers dug in, the resilient muscle pushed back. To him, this overflowing life force was nothing more than a curse—a fuel meant only to prolong his suffering.
That night, wearing his last suit, he headed to the main dining room of the city’s most prestigious hotel. An anonymous invitation had arrived from a woman.
“I have a proposal that will solve your problems at their very root.”
Whether it was a trap or an invitation into the black market for organs, Kenichi had no luxury of choice.
She was seated at a round table, secluded from the restaurant’s roar. Her name was Reiko.
The moment Kenichi saw her, he caught his breath. A vibrant pink silk dress clung to her, emphasizing the opulent curves of her body with blatant, unapologetic carnality. She was likely in her fifties. Yet, her skin possessed the smoothness of fine porcelain, radiating a sweet, slightly fermented allure—the scent of a fruit at its absolute peak of ripeness.
“Welcome, Kenichi-san. Please, don’t be nervous.”
As Reiko spoke, the surrounding air was dominated by her heavy perfume. It was a scent like boiled agarwood and roses—noble, yet suffocating, carrying a faint premonition of “death.”
“Think of me as an investor in life. I have the ‘gold’ you crave so desperately. And you have the ‘vessel’ that I desire more than anything.”
Reiko traced Kenichi’s large, youthful, calloused hand with her own white fingertips—fingers that were elegant, yet etched with fine, delicate wrinkles.
“This wasted, overflowing energy of yours… the heat of the blood coursing through your veins. Won’t you surrender it to me?”
Her proposal was a departure from sanity. To swap souls—a forbidden ritual combining ancient sorcery and modern neuro-engineering. Reiko had spent decades and her husband’s fortune obsessing over this research.
“If we exchange bodies, your debt vanishes as mine. You will inherit this fortune and this estate under my name. In exchange for entering the cage of age, you will obtain ‘freedom’ for the first time.”
Kenichi trembled. But Reiko’s eyes—the bottomless hunger lurking within them—exerted an irresistible gravitational pull.
“…If it’s true. If you’ll truly buy this miserable life of mine.”
“Oh, gladly. Including every bit of your brilliant despair.”
They toasted with the finest champagne. Cold bubbles raced down Kenichi’s throat. He did not know it would be his last taste as a “man,” or as “Kenichi.”
The ritual took place in a windowless chamber in the deepest level of Reiko’s mansion. Mirrors lining the walls reflected an eerie, distorted light. Reiko handed Kenichi a glass filled with a viscous, transparent liquid.
“Drink it in one gulp. Come, shed your ‘old self’.”
The moment the liquid passed his throat, Kenichi’s consciousness was hit by a violent acceleration, as if being sucked into a black hole. His vision tore apart; his five senses muddled into a chaotic blur. He felt the grinding of bones, a surge of nausea as his internal organs seemed to rise to his throat, and the primal terror of his own boundaries dissolving like mist.
“…Kh… hah… ah…”
How much time had passed? The first thing Kenichi felt was overwhelming gravity. His body, which had been light as air until moments ago, now felt like a massive block of leaden mud.
He pressed his palms against the floor. The hard, knobby sensation he expected was gone. Instead, he felt the squelch of soft, flabby flesh.
“…Eh?”
Kenichi tried to speak, but the sound died in his throat. What leaked out was a voice that was undeniably female—moist, yet raspy with age. As he tried to scramble up, a sharp pain shot from his hips to his knees. His joints screamed like ungreased machinery.
Looking down at his chest, he saw a heavy mass of “flesh” sagging behind lace—a foreign, pendulous weight.
“Aha… ahahahaha! Look at this view! How wide, how high it is!”
A familiar voice. A voice he knew as his own. He looked up to see “Himself”—Kenichi—standing there. Reiko was moving Kenichi’s former body from within, dancing in a frenzy of joy. She hugged his muscular frame with his own strong arms, pounding the hard pectoral muscles with a fist, listening to the solid thud with an expression of pure rapture.
“It’s wonderful, Kenichi-san! I can feel the oxygen reaching every corner of my lungs! Just moving a finger feels like a spark of pure vitality!”
Reiko (in Kenichi’s form) took a step forward. The movement was one Kenichi had performed unconsciously, but in her hands, it possessed the predatory grace of a beast. In contrast, Kenichi (in the crone’s form) could do nothing but crawl.
“Ah… ah… give it back… my… body…”
The old woman’s fingers traced her own throat. The skin was dry, his fingers sinking into the deep trenches of wrinkles. Kenichi understood then, for the first time. “Youth” was not merely an age. It was a “function”—the ability to defy gravity and dominate the world.
Now, all he possessed was a heavy, dull, pungent “cage of another’s flesh,” waiting only to rot.
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