I Become a National Treasure in a Strange World

I became a “purebred human baby” in the uncanny world, only for the monsters to dote on me like a “national treasure.”

A pretty young Slit-Mouthed Woman hand-knits me a bloodstained little sweater. A Shadowkin patrol officer secretly records how many times I yawn. Even an ancient abyssal god has learned to push my swing with its tentacles.

I thought it was just an absurd survival game, until I returned to reality and, in a supermarket late at night, saw a coworker I knew smiling at me with the exact same perfect expression as the monsters: a mix of doting affection and madness.

On my wrist, the watch gifted to me by the Shadowkin, which can see through “danger,” once again sends its hands spinning beneath the neon lights of the real world, pointing wildly to the highest crimson mark.

Only then did I realize...

The “audiences” in both worlds may have always been one and the same. They...

have been watching us all along.