Also titled The Wretched Husk. (I don't know when I'll start it, but here's a picture of the male lead in human form. He's partly nonhuman. He's a monster at first, then later turns human-looking, though his nonhuman appearance really isn't pretty. For the style, you can look at the monsters in Miyazaki's films.)
In 1950, an older brother fell into a rift with his younger brother, and the two disappeared without a trace.
In 2025, an older sister fell into a rift with her younger sister, and they were never heard from again.
A yaksha lost in a strange realm meets a girl from the present world in front of a temple. From then on, the two set out to find their loved ones and return home.
*
Legend has it that a yaksha lived between heaven and earth, eating people and gnawing on their bones, committing all manner of evil, until one day a Buddhist monk persuaded him to enter a temple. The monk said to him, “I will feed you with my own flesh. I hope you will stop harming ordinary people.”
The yaksha heard this and laughed. “We yaksha eat people just as people eat livestock. It's only natural.”
When the monk saw that the yaksha would not submit, he had no choice but to curse him. “Your evil thoughts are hard to dispel. I sentence you to remain trapped in this temple. If you ever want to leave, you must become human.”
The yaksha asked the monk how he could become human and escape.
The monk replied, “To become human, you must endure five hundred years of wind and five hundred years of rain. One day, when you form a deep attachment, that attachment will help you become human. If you wish to atone for your sins, you must devote yourself to that person and wait to meet them here.”
*
The first thing Chu Weisi said when he saw Chao Chu was, “Don't worry. There's nothing to gain from eating people, and I won't eat you.”
The first thing Chao Chu asked Chu Weisi was, “Have you seen my younger sister? She's... she's only in ninth grade, fourteen years old, only as tall as my shoulder, with a little mole on the tip of her nose. Have you seen her?”
After an accident on a trip, Chao Chu was separated from her younger sister and then swept into another world. A strange village, people trapped in a foreign realm with no way to leave, cannibalism, monsters that were half-human and half-ghost, and that peculiar temple all made it clear that this was a dangerous and bizarre place.
To find her missing sister, Chao Chu steeled herself and headed deeper into the unknown, gripping the ax in her hand.
But while searching for her sister, Chao Chu was injured. When she opened her eyes again, she had been picked up by a monster!
When the monster saw her wake up, the first thing he did was assure her that he had no interest in eating people, and that she wouldn't end up in his belly.
*
To find her missing sister, Chao Chu bound her life to a monster's.
She had to survive in this strange world, and to stay alive, she wasn't afraid to travel with a monster.
She had to find her missing sister. Anyone who dared to stop her, she would kill them all.
For you, I can do anything.
This is a story about finding a younger sister.
Notes:
1. Contains gore and violence. The plot is slow-paced and takes center stage, with a survival game aspect and some strange legends mixed in.
2. A bungee-jumping, adaptable, decisive, ruthless heroine x a carefree, seemingly cynical but truly violent hero.
3. The male lead is a monster at first! A monster! A monster! I'll commission a cover showing what he looks like once I have money (pounding the ground!!). His monster design can take inspiration from Warhammer aliens and Sekiro, with some Chinese elements. Anyway, he doesn't look human. He's partly nonhuman, though he'll take on a human appearance later.
4. Contains depictions of mental instability. All the characters will have moments of mental instability, and there is physical violence. Please don't apply the values of the real world to this story.
5. Most people in this book have mental problems, though the severity varies. There are many awful people who aren't constrained by conventional morality.
Blurb subject to change.
Theme: Everyone has a reason to keep living
