(Are you...alive...?)

　Kyosuke Utsurogi wakes up. His head is dizzy. He manages to get up and tries to check his surroundings, but his vision is not clear. Running a hand over his forehead to hold it, Kyousuke notices something strange.

　Hair, no.

　Baldy!　In this one moment!　I thought, but I would soon find out that it wasn't. It wasn't just the hair that wasn't there. It was something much colder and harder to the touch in the first place. Yes, there was no hair, or even skin. I'm not sure if it's a serious injury or not, but there's no blood or flesh flowing or anything else to feel. Kyousuke was confused.

　Wait, let's get the situation straight.
　He took a deep breath in for a moment (the breath he inhaled felt like it was escaping from his chest) and tried to remember what had happened.

　All of us in the second year of Kamishiro High School, Class 4, were in the middle of a school trip. In the bus on the way, everyone was enjoying their time with karaoke, cards, and other trivial banter. Of course, so was Kyousuke. As an otaku group, Kyousuke was at the lower end of the class caste, and he was having a good time in his own way, chatting discreetly with his friends in the same group.

　Hell came suddenly. A mountain slope with many sharp curves. The road was slippery, even after the rain. A motorcyclist jumped out of the corner of a curve and almost caused a collision with the bike. The driver swerved in a hurry and the bus body went straight through the guardrail.
　A scream rang out inside the car, and I have no memory of what happened next.

　Anyway, the bus had fallen down. But apparently, fortunately, Kyousuke survived.

　No wait, that doesn't explain why I'm bald. As Kyousuke tried to rub his eyelids, he realized something even more terrifying.

　My eyelids, they're gone.

　Fearfully, he gently crawled his fingertips over his eyes and found an area that looked like an edge. I stuck my finger in and traced the edge of it to see how big it was.

　It's an eye socket. This.

　Holy crap. Not even an eyeball. On the contrary, it doesn't even have a nose. No lips. Not even an ear. I stuck my finger in my eye socket and scratched it up again, but to my surprise, there was no brain.

''Oh no!　I thought I'd survived, but this is me dead for sure!

　When he shouted, his vision finally cleared. Kyousuke didn't have enough time to make a self-tweak about why he could see when he didn't have eyes. He had to check his own hands first.

''Whoa!　My hands are bones too!

　It wasn't just his hands, his abara bones were in full view as well. Originally, Kyousuke was skinny and was ridiculed every time he went to the pool for having his abara sticking out, but this was nothing compared to that. His ribs were asserting themselves in a big way.

　Were they dead?　I knew he was dead!　How is it possible that there is not a single piece of meat left in that!

　Where are we in the first place? Looking around, it was clear that the landscape was different from the one in the mountain where the bus had fallen. It was not a mountain slope lined with coniferous trees, but a rocky area with reddish brown ground.
　Is this the afterlife after all? Or is it that the dream I'm seeing now is the dream of a butterfly, and my real self is still being crushed in the fallen bus?

　As Kyousuke was pondering, a blue, semi-liquid object crawled out of the shadow of a rock, Nubaaa. He was startled.

　Even more surprisingly, the sticky object pointed at Kyousuke and let out an adorable scream.

''Kyaah!　Haunted!

　To be honest, it was quite unexpected.

　It was true that Kyousuke had somehow turned into a geyser, but he still retained his human shape. It didn't make sense to be called a monster by a monster.
　No, wait.
　Kyousuke quickly reconsidered. This voice sounded familiar.

''You........you're Himemizu.......?''
What...?

　The sticky ghost, which had been trying to escape behind a rock, stopped moving with a snap. Then, again, it crawled out to this side, fearfully.

　It's Himemizu Rin. A classmate of Kyousuke's. One of the three most beautiful girls in the class, belonging to the track and field club. To be frank, Kyousuke rarely had the experience of exchanging words properly, but I remember her voice, the most energetic one in the second year and fourth class, because I could hear her clearly no matter where I was in the classroom.
　She's changed a lot, though.

Well, you're not going to... you're not... well...

　He chuckled. After all, it was Kyousuke who was at the bottom of the class. There was no way that a girl like Rin, who was always in the center of everyone's circle, could be remembered by her voice alone.
　But Rin made his body bounce with a thump and said

'Alright!　Karaki-kun!
"Utsurugi, huh?
'Yes, yes!　That's it!

　As if in tune with Kyousuke's words, Rin shakes around with a tap-tap-tap-tap. Apparently, Rin's energy mark doesn't change quickly when she becomes a semi-liquid, sticky ghost. It's kind of comforting to look at it because it's far removed from its human form.
　However, even though she got her last name wrong, I was surprised that Rin recognized me. Even though I've rarely raised my voice in class.

　For starters, even though her appearance has changed horribly, it seems that the person in front of her is the real Himemizu Rin. It was reassuring to have one classmate there.

'What do we do now, Utsurogi-kun? We were on the bus, weren't we?
'Yeah. The bus crashed, fell off, and I thought I was dead ... and here I was.
It's like I'm having a bad dream. You're a skull and I'm a skull and I'm a skull and I'm a skull...

　As they were dodging the casual conversation, there was a further clatter from behind another rock. With a bang, Rin jumped and hid in Kyousuke's shadow. She hid, but since Kyousuke was a full-body skeleton, she wasn't able to hide at all.



　There was a roar that seemed to echo from the depths of the earth, and a three-meter tall giant slowly emerged from behind a rock. Muscular. Sharp, triangular eyes, with uneven fangs sprouting from its mouth. Two large hornlike horns sprouted from a gap in the hair of the mangled head. It's like a demon.
　That's not all.
　Yet another woman with a snake-like lower body crawled out from the shade of another rock, as well as a large monster with a pig wig, a mummy man with his entire body wrapped in bandages, a monster with tentacles sprouting from his entire body, et cetera et cetera. Kyousuke and Rin's surroundings quickly turn into a monster house.

　They were surrounded in a daze. Kyousuke's heart grows cold. No, he doesn't have his heart or liver anymore, but for now, he cools his heartbeat as an idiomatic expression. With this, he can't escape.

　Just as I thought that, the demon turned its gaze on Kyousuke and Rin. The two tremble with a jolt.

''Utsurogi and.......Himemizu?''

　Had Kyousuke's eyelids remained in place, he would have blinked his eyes involuntarily.

''.........By any chance, Goubayashi?''
Yeah, it's me.

　The demon crossed her arms and nodded. Immediately after that, the snake woman looked at her own lower body and screamed out.

''Wait, what!　What the f*ck!　What's happening to my lower body?
'Oh, you're crazy, fatty!　My body is turning into a pig before I know it, fatty!
Uh..... What time is it?　Have you arrived at your destination?　Apparently I've been sleeping quite a bit, but...
Oh, those things sprouting from my whole body... they're not tentacles...!

　It's not just the snake woman. Monsters everywhere were looking at their bodies, one after another, and then at the monsters around them, screaming in astonishment. All of them, Kyousuke firmly understood, were the voices of his classmates.

　Apparently, all the classmates involved in the bus crash are alive.

　And somehow, they all seemed to have turned into a monster form.

　What does this mean? Kyousuke looked at Rin and immediately afterwards he remembered that she had no face.