When Suzuko Ichikawa saw the face of a strange girl appearing under her right eye in front of the mirror at her university graduation ceremony, her world was split in two. This growing "face book" can not only copy other people's expressions, but also steal their emotions: the anxiety of her neighbors, the fatigue of her classmates, the indifference of the convenience store manager... The layers of faces are like shackles, causing her to gradually get lost in the joys and sorrows of others, and even her own appearance becomes blurred.
Until one rainy night, she rescued three kittens in a second-hand bookstore, and their shells began to fall off strangely. As the number of noodle shells decreases, Suzuko discovers an astonishing truth: each noodle shell is a sealed sincerity - her mother's nagging on the phone hides worry, her classmates' complaints hide trust, and even the indifference of convenience store regulars hides unknown scars.
But the weirdness didn't stop there. A mysterious resident with green light shining in the old building, a black cat that always disappears on rainy nights, a scar with the word "Xun" written on it... A series of supernatural events followed one after another, and Suzuko was involved in the whirlpool of the unsolved case ten years ago. When she tore off the last layer of the shell, what appeared in the mirror was not only her true self, but also the bloody secrets buried by time - the memories she thought she had forgotten, but had actually been hiding in the cracks in the shell, waiting to be awakened by the truth.
This is an urban ghost story that combines suspense, horror and warmth. Each chapter unfolds an independent case in the form of a unit drama, but is intertwined with hidden clues. When the human face becomes a canvas for emotions, when memory becomes a murder weapon, Suzuko searches for her true self in a world where reality and fiction intersect, and every reader will get a glimpse of their own inner shadow in the cracks in their faces.
Purpose: To explore how modern people lose themselves through "empathy" with other people's emotions under social discipline. The face shell is both a protective shell and a shackles.