In the outskirts of a coastal city stood a three-story detached house covering roughly forty tsubo of land. Inside a room on the top floor, a man sat before his workbench, studying a newly completed figure. From time to time, he compared it against the design sheets laid beside him, his expression grave and intensely focused.
Only after a long while did he finally set the piece down, then slowly let out a breath of satisfaction. After taking a short break, he picked up a carving knife from the side and engraved two characters onto the bottom of the figure:
Muyu.
The man's name was Sora Mizukumo, a thirty-two-year-old lifelong bachelor who was, to put it bluntly, still a virgin. Even so, he was something of a legend online: a well-known tech otaku, a master prop-maker for cosplay, and an expert craftsman of high-end collectible figures. He ran a premium handmade workshop on the internet, specializing in anime-related products such as costumes, props, and figures.
His business model, however, was rather unusual.
Sora's workshop did not accept custom commissions.
Whenever inspiration struck, he would first finish the design draft, then upload it to his website for people to preview. A typical draft included the original reference image, background information on the source material, related notes, and his own concept sketches for the piece.
If a buyer liked what they saw, they had to spend 10 credit points to subscribe to that design draft. Only after Sora completed the final product would those subscribers earn the right to participate in the auction for the finished piece.
People called him crazy.
And yet, the sheer delicacy of his work and the extraordinary quality of his craftsmanship were universally acknowledged within the circle. With skill far above the ordinary and a reputation built on consistent excellence, Sora's creations were sold again and again at astonishing prices. He drew every kind of envy, jealousy, and resentment from others in the industry, but even those who resented him could do nothing but admire him.
But for all his talent, there was one obstacle in his life he could never overcome.
He was sick.
Sora Mizukumo suffered from a severe physiological form of social phobia.
Social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder, is a mental illness characterized by intense fear or anxiety in social situations or public settings. In psychology, it is classified as a kind of anxiety disorder. When patients are forced to face the situations they fear, the emotional distress is often accompanied by physical symptoms such as blushing, trembling, excessive sweating, a racing heartbeat, palpitations, mild headaches, dizziness, chest tightness, and shortness of breath.
People with generalized social phobia fear most or even all social situations, while those with specific social phobias are only affected by particular circumstances. The most common example is glossophobia, the fear of public speaking or performing, better known as stage fright. Others fear writing in public, blushing in front of others, eating in public, or even using public restrooms.
Social phobia had long been recognized as a legitimate psychological disorder.
But Sora was an exception even among exceptions.
His was a physiological case.
His personality was bright and cheerful. He genuinely liked being around people. Yet when he was ten years old, the illness struck without warning. His temperament never changed, but from that day on, as long as people were physically near him, the symptoms would begin.
A nameless fear would close in around him.
A chill would seep up from deep inside his bones, so cold that his limbs stiffened and his hands and feet turned icy. No matter how clear his mind remained, his body would still react as though it had lost control.
In the end, after graduating from middle school, he never returned to formal education.
He distanced himself from his family. He distanced himself from society. Using his family's assets, he bought a house in the outskirts of a coastal city and began living alone.
Every day, Sora spent his time online, hopping from forum to forum, posting nonsense and chatting idly with strangers. When he got hungry, he ordered delivery. When he had trash, he stuffed it into bags and left it outside the door, where property management staff came by regularly to collect it. He drifted through life in a haze, eating, breathing, and waiting for the days to pass.
Until one day, on an internet forum, Sora Mizukumo met the person who would change his life.
"Ding."
A notification sounded, but Sora ignored it.
Only after he finished engraving the signature and set down the completed figure did he pull his gaze away from the workbench. He turned to the nearby computer monitor and saw that a new message had popped up on his chat app.
He glanced at the sender's ID and smiled.
ID: TearsFlowLikeSpring
His real name was Ryuuichi Kunikawa, though anyone who knew him well simply called him Ryu-Pot.
He was the benefactor Sora had met back then.
At the time, Sora had been doing nothing with his life beyond hanging around forums every day, talking trash and wasting time. Then one day he ran into Ryuuichi Kunikawa on one of those forums. After exchanging a few idle messages, the two discovered that their personalities clicked surprisingly well. They added each other as friends, and from then on began their days of roaming from forum to forum together.
Because television programs showed the images of real people, they could still trigger Sora's condition. For that reason, he avoided television and movies whenever possible. Even when he wanted information or entertainment, he stuck to newspapers, novels, manga, and forum posts.
So back then, Sora's understanding of animation and the two-dimensional world was still stuck in a very old-fashioned era. To him, "cartoons" meant things like the kind little children watched.
One night, while chatting with Sora on a forum, Ryuuichi somehow steered the conversation toward anime.
Sora knew absolutely nothing about it.
He was mortified, but Ryuuichi was even more stunned. He found it hard to believe that Sora had so little understanding of what anime even was. That night, the two of them stayed up until dawn. The more Ryuuichi learned about Sora's situation, the more he understood. Without hesitation, he began his mission of conversion.
Well, not conversion.
Education.
He began introducing Sora to the basic concepts of anime and the two-dimensional world, then recommended several popular series from that time, insisting that Sora absolutely had to watch them.
Unable to refuse such enthusiastic encouragement, Sora finally decided to give this so-called "anime" a try.
He prepared himself mentally before pressing play. The moment his condition flared up, he was ready to cut the power at once.
But what happened next left him completely stunned.