Since I lived in an apartment, the waste station on the ground floor was the first stop of my morning routine.
It was open twenty-four hours, which made things convenient—I usually dropped my trash on the way to school.
As I approached the disposal area, garbage bag in hand, I noticed someone already there.
A gray-haired granny, her face marked with deep wrinkles, slowly shuffled over with two neatly tied trash bags.
When she spotted me, her expression brightened.
"Kirishima, heading to school? Early as usual…" she said warmly.
I returned her smile and nodded lightly.
"Aye~"
She glanced around—left, right, up the stairwell—almost as if checking whether anyone else was listening.
Then she leaned a bit closer, lowering her voice to a whisper.
"Have you seen Fujisawa lately?"
I blinked, surprised by the sudden secrecy.
Matching her tone, I shook my head.
"No… I haven't seen her for the past two days."
The old woman's brows knitted together. Her whisper thinned into a worried tremble.
"There are some… worrisome rumors going around…"
"Rumors?" I asked quietly, feeling a faint tension coil inside my stomach.
She swallowed, her eyes darting again to ensure no one was nearby.
"Yeah," the old woman whispered, her voice trembling.
"It seems Fujisawa went missing two days ago… vanished without leaving a single detail. But do you know what's even stranger?"
I stayed silent, listening closely.
"Her family—her husband, her daughter—none of them seemed to care at all!"
The granny's eyes widened with disbelief.
"Yesterday, her husband even went out and bought one of those new Love Dolls and brought it home… Can you believe it?!"
A chill shot down my spine.
"How is…"
The words slipped out of my mouth, but the rest froze in my throat.
My blood ran cold.
Everything—every abnormality, every "new law," every shift in societal behavior—had begun about six months ago.
No… thinking carefully, the changes had been happening long before that.
I simply failed to notice them.
Back then, I honestly thought I had been reborn into the same Earth, just in a different country.
Japan looked normal on the surface.
Life was normal.
People were normal.
But the first deviation had come quietly.
At first, every foreigner living in Japan—regardless of their social status, job, or importance—was suddenly forced to return to their home countries.
The government claimed it was a new policy to "preserve job opportunities for native citizens."
It was praised by almost everyone.
But that was only the beginning.
After that, things escalated quickly.
The so-called Special Welfare Act—the law that allowed the government to "repurpose" unlawful women as sex dolls—had faced fierce opposition at first.
Human rights groups, activists, lawyers… people protested loudly in the streets.
But all of them suddenly went silent.
Not because the government convinced them.
But because they disappeared.
More precisely:
The men disappeared completely, and the women were taken away… only to be turned into living dolls and sold off under the government's authority.
Yes—the same government that was supposed to protect its citizens.
That was the moment I finally understood something terrifying:
I wasn't just reborn into another version of Earth.
I was reborn into a hentai world, one of those twisted fantasy settings I had seen only in fiction.
At first, I felt a thrill.
Curiosity.
A strange excitement.
But as I continued observing the changes happening around me, that thrill turned into unease.
Because the world wasn't behaving like a harmless fantasy.
Lot of women—women who never even protested or spoke out against the government—were being taken from their homes.
Kidnapped at random.
Vanished overnight.
The only explanation people whispered about was that they were "selected" under the Welfare Law.
Which meant only one thing.
They, too, were turned into sex dolls.
Fujisawa-san…
The kind woman who always greeted me with snacks when I was younger.
The same woman who always shared vegetables from her balcony garden.
She disappeared just like them.
Kidnapped. Processed.
Most likely reduced into one of those sex dolls… and sold off to someone.
The thought made my stomach twist.
This world wasn't "exciting."
It was wrong.
And I had no idea when the eyes of this twisted system would fall on me—or the people I knew next.
Looking at Sakamoto-san's worried expression, I forced a smile.
"Sakamoto-san… please be careful. And don't talk about this with anyone, alright? Not even neighbors."
She nodded hesitantly. I guided her back toward the elevator until she finally turned toward her floor.
Once she disappeared behind the doors, I exhaled and stepped outside the apartment complex.
The morning air was cold—but the street felt colder.
Because right then, a dark gray van rolled to a stop in front of one of the nearby houses.
Two men in plain, unmarked uniforms stepped out.
Their movements were precise, practiced… routine.
A minute later, the door of the house swung open.
The men dragged out a naked young woman—disoriented, barely conscious, her legs wobbling as if she could collapse at any moment.
Her hair is messy, eyes unfocused and rolled upward as though she had been sedated past awareness.
She didn't resist.
She couldn't.
The men didn't even treat her like a person—more like cargo.
One opened the back door of the van.
Inside, dimly lit, I spotted several other women lying motionless, all in similarly broken, naked, blank states.
Their limbs didn't move.
Their eyes didn't track anything.
They looked… emptied.
The uniformed men lifted the new woman effortlessly and placed her among the others, shutting the door with a dull thud.
The van door slammed shut, and without hesitation, it pulled away from the curb—casual, practiced, as if this was just another routine job.
I stood frozen.
What disturbed me wasn't only the scene itself… but the reaction of the people around me.
No panic.
No outrage.
No attempt to intervene.
Men nearby smirked, whispering among themselves as if they were watching some twisted entertainment.
Women lowered their heads, pretending not to see, anxiety trembling behind their eyes.
"This whole world is so fucked…" I muttered through clenched teeth.
Just before the van disappeared around the corner, I caught sight of someone inside—a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen, in a corner.
She had been taken, stripped of freedom, treated like cargo.
And nobody cared.
When the law was first introduced, there were protests everywhere.
People fought it.
Cried out against it.
Morals were still alive then.
But month after month… something changed.
Something fundamental.
People stopped resisting.
Stopped questioning.
Stopped thinking.
It was unnatural—like the entire population was being pulled into some invisible current… and dragged somewhere darker.
I walked toward school, anger boiling under my skin, trying to steady my breath.
More students in the same uniform as mine streamed through the front gate, laughing, chatting, living as though none of this existed.
"Oi, Kiyoshi—look over here!"
Someone shouted from behind me.
A tall figure with short black hair and sharp black eyes—eerily similar to mine—was walking toward me, waving energetically.
"Kazuma…" I murmured, recognition dawning as I raised my hand in return.
"Hey! You really don't want to join our boys' Kendo club?"
His voice carried a mixture of pleading and excitement.
"Come on, Kiyoshi! We only have three members right now. If we don't get more people, we'll have to disband… Please, help us out!"
I let out a long sigh and shook my head.
"Not interested…"
Kazuma's smile faltered for a moment, but then he leaned closer, lowering his voice so only I could hear.
"Hey… you know who we're training with, right? Hana Miyashiro-senpai… She's the team leader of the national team."
My face twitched involuntarily.
Hearing her name made my stomach clench.
I knew what kind of relentless, abusive things he and the others will put her through… and the thought of it made me grimace.
I forced a small, tight-lipped smile, trying to hide the unease twisting in my chest.