"Huff… huff…"
A cold, rainy summer midnight carries its own kind of noise — the sound that seeps in when the city finally falls silent, when the wind and drizzle invade the empty streets that once overflowed with light and laughter.
Kume Chinatsu ran through the alley, mascara and foundation smeared into a storm of black streaks and rain. The campus idol — flawless by day — was now nothing but a terrified, stumbling girl, her tears blending with the downpour.
She shouldn't have stayed out so late.That thought came too late. Regret didn't help when her surroundings had twisted into something unrecognizable.
Is this still Tokyo? Is this still the world I knew?
Her desperate cries for help echoed, but no one answered. Apartment lights were out; no doors opened.Only the heavy clang of metal behind her — the sound of something colliding, again and again.
A crazed man's laughter tore through the storm.His face was warped, feral — a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire swung wildly in his hands, striking walls and trash cans. Each shriek of metal against metal scraped at her nerves, making her heartbeat thunder in her ears.
"Help! Someone—please!"
She turned blindly into a narrow alley lit by a flickering lamp. The izakaya signs glowed faintly on both sides, their warm light swallowed by rain and shadow.
Then she saw him.
A tall figure under a storefront awning, half-turned, about to switch off a sign.A person. A human. Salvation.
"Help! Please—!"
"Bang!"
"Ah!!"
The bat whistled past her head; she stumbled aside just in time. Her backpack caught on the barbed wire, tearing open. Textbooks and makeup spilled across the wet pavement as she bolted forward into the alley.
He hadn't spoken or moved. But he had to be human—right?
Then, suddenly, the sign flickered back on.
And something else stood there.
A towering, cherry-pink figure filled the alley. Round, smooth, absurdly shiny — like a walking toy — yet the sight of it made her blood freeze.
It had no face. Just two black, featureless ovals for eyes.
Its limbs were short, stubby, and cylindrical — laughable anywhere else, but here, under the sickly neon light, they were deeply, horribly wrong.
It wasn't human. Not even close.A two-meter-tall Sugar Bean Man stood in her path.
Behind her, the madman screamed and swung again; ahead of her, a nightmare in candy colors waited silently.This wasn't someone in a mascot suit. This thing was alive — breathing, heavy, unreal.
"Thud! Thud!"Its thick, rounded feet hit the ground with the weight of thunder, each step making the earth tremble.
Kume's courage shattered. Every ounce of reason she had left screamed that none of this could be real.
A killer with a barbed bat.A city where no one wakes.And now — a Sugar Bean Man charging straight at her.
"Ahhhhhhh!!!"Her voice broke into a sob as she covered her face.
Then — a soft, round hand gently pushed her aside.
She fell, scraping her palms, and heavy footsteps thundered past.
"Die!" the madman roared.
Then — the clash.
"CLANG!"
A single, ringing sound — metal meeting something far stronger.
The Sugar Bean Man's arm had transformed. That rounded limb now bulged with muscle beneath its pink shell, meeting the bat in mid-swing. The weapon bent with a screech, its barbed tip curling like taffy.
The killer froze, his face twisting in disbelief.
The Sugar Bean Man raised both fists, now grotesquely muscular, and brought them down.
"Crack!"
The sound was wet, final. When Kume dared to open her eyes, she almost screamed again.
The madman's head was gone.His body twitched — neck crushed inward, bone and flesh splattered, as if his skull had been punched straight into his chest.
A thin, black vapor seeped from the corpse. It drifted toward the Sugar Bean Man, coiling into his eyeless sockets, vanishing as he absorbed it.
Kume watched in horror. The monster's arms slowly deflated, returning to their soft, cartoonish shape.Then it turned its blank face toward her.
Those black ovals fixed on her, cold and unreadable — like a predator deciding whether its prey was worth the trouble.
"Ah—ahhh!"Terror broke her paralysis. She scrambled to her feet and fled into the night, desperate to escape back into a world that made sense.
The Sugar Bean Man watched her go. Then, after a pause, he scratched his head with a comically stubby arm.
"Huh… kids these days. Not even a 'thank you.'"
The cherry-pink shell shimmered and faded. Standing there instead was a plain-looking young man.He sighed, crouched, and picked up a student ID card from the wet ground.
"Yo," he murmured. "Same school. Not bad."