The Human Ranch

When Lin Zhou was seven, his younger sister Lin Wan was “erased.”

Not killed. Something more thorough than death: her place in the family photo became a blank space, his parents had no memory of her and believed she'd never existed, and even the picture she'd once looked at while lying on the floor had become a white blur. It was as if she had never existed at all.

Then Lin Zhou discovered something: he could see those things. He'd also awakened a supernatural ability. The monsters floating among crowds, incorporeal and feeding on human emotions. They disguised themselves as ordinary people, hiding in every corner and treating humanity like livestock kept for food. Anyone who “saw” them would be erased in an instant, vanishing completely from the world and from everyone's memories.

For fifteen years, he'd worn headphones and pretended not to see. He painted abstract pictures, but what he was really painting was the true form of those watchers. He lived like a perfectly straight line, doing everything he could to avoid being noticed.

Then, the day before graduation, his good friend Chi Yu got too excited over an erotic painting and attracted their attention. Lin Zhou had no choice but to act.

He'd been exposed.

Now the watchers knew he could see them and wanted to erase him. Awakened ability users were waiting for him in the future he'd foreseen. And in his palm was a dark-red crystal, sealing countless souls that had been devoured.

They were all saying the same thing:

“You can't escape. You're food, too.”