"Uh, Lon, do you see that?" My voice sounded distant, muffled, as if underwater. Lon didn't answer. He kept working, I reached out, trying to grab his arm—and that's when things got truly strange.
My own hand looked foreign. The skin on the back began to peel away, thin as sun-baked paint flaking off in the dry season. I stared, transfixed, waiting for pain that never came. A chill crept up from my fingertips, slowly spreading along my arm. I turned my palm over, hoping it was just a trick of the light, but the skin really was sloughing off, sliding down like wet paper scraps.
Panic began to slither in. I rubbed my arm, desperate to press the skin back into place, but all I felt was a slick, icy surface. Beneath the peeling flesh was a layer of pure black—not muscle, not bone, but something nameless and dark, like a night sky that devours every last shred of light.
I dropped my gaze, staring at my own body. The skin on my chest, my neck, my cheeks—it all began to peel away, flaking off one by one, piling on the floor like old leaves swept by the wind. I wanted to scream, but the sound caught in my throat. My breath came in ragged bursts, but the air felt thick, heavy as wet wool.
Now my body looked like a puzzle stitched together by careless hands—patches of black threaded with strange, shifting colors, as if someone had cobbled me from mismatched fragments. I peered into the cracks and saw shadows of people laughing, their faces blurred, then shifting into figures who wept, their cries echoing in the hollow spaces inside me.
I blinked, desperate for this to be a hallucination. But every blink only sharpened the truth: my skin was gone, shed completely. I stood in the heart of a storm of shadows, lost and dazed, unable to tell where reality ended and illusion began. Lon's voice suddenly cut through the fog in my mind, calling my name over and over, slowly tugging me back toward the waking world.
"You okay?" he asked, wooden spoon still turning in his hand. We locked eyes, my breath caught in my throat, the world hanging between what was real and what wasn't.
I gasped, panic clawing at me, and ran my hands over my arms, chest, face. My skin was whole, intact, not a single patch missing. Everything… normal. But my heart still hammered in my ears like a war drum.
"Hey, what's gotten into you?" Lon asked, genuine confusion flickering in his eyes.
"My skin… it didn't come off, did it?" My voice trembled, barely more than a whisper afraid to be heard.
Lon frowned. "What are you talking about? You just stood there, frozen like a statue. I tried talking to you, but you kept counting past thirty-three. That's why I called your name."
A hallucination? Impossible. The sensation had been so real—cold, bitter, terrifying. I could have sworn I felt my skin falling away, one piece at a time, and those shadowy faces… they were real to me.
"Focus, this is the last page," Lon said, his tone firm but laced with a hint of empathy. "I know you're tired, but please, just hold on a little longer." He slid the final page into the pot.
Lon began to stir. The potion's color stayed a cool, tranquil blue, but now the surface looked deeper—almost bottomless. Foreign words surfaced again, swirling and dancing atop the water.
Turn thirty-three.
Lon lifted the spoon and set it beside the pot. "Now we wait fifteen seconds, then we'll seal it with these two leaves," he said, holding up a pair of slender leaves that gleamed like silver under the lamp.
The first five seconds passed in silence. The ticking of the wall clock thundered through the room, each beat a hammer striking time itself.
The next five seconds, the air grew taut. I could hear my own heartbeat racing, dueling with the relentless click of the clock.
The final five seconds marked the end of everything. Without a word, Lon stepped forward and laid the two leaves in a cross over the potion's surface. He pressed them down gently, with the care of someone closing a door.
"Now we wait for them to—"
Suddenly, the potion erupted, exploding upwards in a tidal surge that swallowed everything. In an instant, a blue flood swept across the kitchen, rising to our knees and slamming us against the wall. It all happened so fast, as if even time itself was swept away by the current.
"Lon!" I screamed, my voice strangled by the roar of water. But Lon was already gone, his body pulled under by the merciless blue surge. In seconds, the entire house was drowned in an ocean we never meant to summon.
I drifted in the swirling water, my body tossed helplessly by the current. Again, my skin began to peel away, falling like flower petals stripped of their season. Beneath it, there was only darkness—deep, endless, absolute.
I tried to breathe, but the water rushed in, filling my lungs with biting cold. Every movement was pointless; my body heavy, petrified in the boundless blue. In the midst of panic, my mind cursed—refusing to believe all this was because of a single drop of blood spilled by accident. How absurd, I thought, just before darkness closed over me.
I wanted to move, to summon the last of my strength and search for Lon in the churning water, but my body refused. All I could do was surrender, letting the current drag me wherever it pleased. At the edge of consciousness, where drowning and waking blurred, a shadow drifted closer—black hair shimmering among the ripples. The face… the figure… slowly sharpened, and there, on the front of his shirt, was a printed cat mid-stretch, its paws reaching out as if clawing at invisible air.
He shook me gently, hope flickering in his touch, as if trying to rouse me from a sleep that had gone on too long. I wanted to wake up, to answer him, but my body stayed frozen, unmoving. I closed my eyes, letting the darkness swallow everything—then, slowly, I forced them open again.
Lon slid a glass toward me, rolling up his sleeve. "Here, drink this. The potion's ready," he said, his voice light but edged with urgency.
"Wait… where's the water? Where's the flood? Why are you here?" My words tumbled out, panic rising, my voice on the verge of cracking.
Lon gave me a puzzled look, then let out a small laugh. "What are you talking about? Everything's been normal. You were just daydreaming. Since you wouldn't snap out of it, I just went ahead and poured it."
I hesitated. My eyes scanned the surface of the potion, searching for anything out of place—bubbles, shadows, anything. But all I saw was calm blue liquid, as if nothing had ever happened.
I stared at the potion in the glass, my thoughts spinning. My fingers still trembled, as if my body hadn't quite returned from that strange world. Maybe everything I'd just experienced was nothing but a hallucination?
I exhaled, trying to steady my racing heart. Maybe I really was just exhausted, I told myself. Or maybe this potion had side effects no one had ever warned me about.
Lon grabbed a rag and started tidying up the table. "Hurry up and drink it, so I can clean all this up," he said, his tone softer now.
I wrapped my hand around the glass, feeling the chill seep into my skin. "This recipe only makes one dose, so you get the whole thing," Fionn added, glancing at me, waiting for my reaction. "Let me know how it tastes, okay?"
I frowned. "Uh… what's it for?"
Lon grinned, as if the answer was obvious. "Isnt't we're going to sell it?"
I stared down at the potion. Who in their right mind would buy something like this? I hadn't even tasted it yet, and it had already driven me halfway mad.
Without another thought, I downed the potion in one gulp. The moment the blue liquid touched my tongue, a coldness spread through me—not just the chill of ice water, but something deeper, sharper, that seemed to reach into my very core.
A strange sensation followed, subtle and hard to pin down, as if something was dancing beneath that calm—a flavor that didn't quite belong to this world. Each drop carried a trace of breathing in the morning air of a place I'd never visited, or tasting dew from a flower that only blooms in dreams.
That cool blue taste crept slowly down my throat, calming, yet leaving a faint shiver along my spine—as if something alive was flowing through my veins.
I glanced from Lon to the empty glass in my hand, waiting—hoping, at least, for something extraordinary to happen. But nothing. Silence. The world remained unchanged, except for the ticking of the wall clock, which suddenly sounded louder than ever.
"Nothing happened?" Lon asked, watching my expression closely.
I nodded, a little disappointed. "Nothing at all."
Lon sighed, then offered a faint smile. "Yeah, that's normal. Potions like this usually take a whole day to kick in. You should just get some sleep."
It was hard to believe that something so complex could leave no trace, no effect at all.
"I'll help you clean up," I offered, trying to distract myself.
"No need, it's just a few dishes," Lon replied lightly.
"In that case, I'll wait until you're done," I said, half-joking, half-serious.
Lon just nodded and started washing up with practiced hands. Water ran, metal clinked, everything felt so ordinary. I watched him from a distance, letting my thoughts drift between curiosity and exhaustion.
Then, out of nowhere, a message box floated into view right in front of me—bright, sharp, impossible to ignore.
「Welcome to System of Imaginary」
Huh?