the human body, or as i like to call it, “suffer puppet”

“Alain-sama, Alain-sama, here!” Kanon tugged on his sleeve and they came to a halt in front of a small shop. “You need to try this.”

“...what is it?”

She pulled him inside. “It’s called ice cream! Look,” she said. There was a counter with a glass front window through which they could see ten or so different varieties. “I think I’ll get chocolate. What about you?”

“Is there a takoyaki flavor?”

Kanon giggled. “Alain-sama, no!”

He frowned. He eyed each option critically, and finally decided to just get the same thing Kanon was having.

“Good idea,” she said. “You can always try something else later.”

Kanon paid for their order with the strange human construct called money, and the man behind the counter prepared two chocolate ice cream cones. They had round scoops on the top; this was definitely worth trying.

Once they were outside, Kanon handed Alain his cone. He gave it a curious lick and his eyes widened. “This is good!”

“See?” Kanon grinned. She started in on her cone.

Alain took a huge bite out of his ice cream. It was cold against his teeth, but it gave practically no resistance the way other foods did; his mouthful separated easily from what was left in the cone. He didn’t even really have to chew. This was a very strange food, indeed.

There was a cold sensation against the roof of his mouth. He swallowed to rid himself of it, but it didn’t fade. Instead it seemed to travel upward and blossom into an all-encompassing pain. The epicenter seemed to be just behind his forehead, but the pain—cold and stabbing, worse than any blow he’d ever taken in battle—wrapped around and sunk into his brain itself.

He cried out, dropping his ice cream cone and grabbing at his head in vain.

Kanon glanced over at him in shock. She dropped her own cone and grabbed him by his arms. “Alain-sama, what’s the matter? Alain-sama?!”

“This pain—” He gasped for breath.

Kanon gasped. “You gave yourself an ice cream headache!”

“A what?” His eyes, wide and frantic, searched Kanon’s face desperately. “It hurts— Kanon, I think my head is going to explode...!”

“No, no, no, you’ll be fine! Calm down! Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth, like this.”

She demonstrated. He tried to follow along, but the pain was so distracting...

“Now just keep doing that. I’ll be right back.”

The last thing he wanted was for her to leave him right now, but before he could stop her she had rushed back into the shop.

She returned shortly with a to-go cup. “Here, it’s tea. It’ll warm your mouth up.”

“The pain isn’t in my mouth,” he protested.

“I know it doesn’t feel that way, but it really is. C’mon, drink it,” she pleaded, and she was so earnest and he was so desperate that he couldn’t say no.

It worked. It really worked. He didn’t know how or why, but the pain in his head quickly dissipated. He sucked in gasps of air and clung to the cup of tea like his life depended on it. He would forever be in Kanon’s debt.

It came on suddenly.

One moment Alain was sitting on the front steps of the Daitenku Temple leafing through a book on Japanese history and sipping from a cup of tea. The next, there was a little spasm in his chest and something that felt almost like a split-second choking sensation in his throat.

He let out a strange squeak-like sound. His arm jerked, spilling tea on the pages of the book.

He stared down at his tea in shock. A moment passed during which nothing happened. Then the spasm and the squeak happened again.

He quickly set down his cup and his book—if it happened again, he couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t react by throwing them or dropping them.

Alain rested his hand on his chest and waited. It happened again—and he felt a slight thump below his hand.

His eyes narrowed. He bit his lip in worry. “What in the...”

He kept waiting. It kept happening. There seemed to be no end in sight. What was this phenomenon? Could it be harmful? It definitely wasn’t normal, or he was sure he’d have encountered it by now.

The spasms seemed to come faster and faster. Alain’s breath quickened. What if they didn’t stop? What if they just kept speeding up? Surely there would come a point when they interfered with his breathing, they’d make him choke, he would just keel over and die and from what? Not a battle with a Ganma, but from some bizarre new method of torture his human body had dreamt up.

He swallowed and tried not to panic. His body spasmed again.

“Hey, Alain!”

He shouted and toppled over, off the stairs and to the ground.

Takeru Tenkuuji laughed. “You okay?”

Alain pushed himself up. He was covered in dirt. He glared up at Takeru, who had materialized out of thin air. “What is the meaning of this?”

Takeru just smiled. “Your hiccups stopped.”

“My—what?”

“I was just inside when I heard you hiccupping. Everyone always says a good scare will make the hiccups go away, so I gave it a shot. And it worked!”

“Hiccups?” Alain repeated. “Is that the name for that horrible experience?”

“You’re being melodramatic. They’re not a big deal.”

Alain glowered.

“Anyway, you’re welcome! Let me know if you ever need the hiccups scared out of you again.” Takeru grinned broadly and vanished from sight.

Grumbling under his breath in a manner that was certainly not melodramatic, Alain picked up his book and his tea and went back inside the temple.

Sleeping was an inconvenience, but it was one Alain had quickly become accustomed to. Humans needed to recover energy, and they did so by ingesting nutrients and by passing out and hallucinating for upwards of a third of the day.

Actually, now that he was used to it, he found the sensation of falling asleep to be rather pleasant—even if he could do without the random visuals his brain decided to play for him in the form of “dreams”.

Several nights after his first bout of hiccups, Alain fell asleep, as you do. The next morning he awoke to find his head tilted at an unusual angle respective to his body. When he tried to straighten himself out, an intense, searing pain shot through his neck.

He cried out, clasped his hand to his neck as though that would help, and ceased his attempts to sit up.

Somebody had evidently heard his shout, as within a minute the door to the room he was staying in slid open. That bald monk, Onari, peeked inside. “Is something the matter?” he asked.

Alain forced himself to sit up, grimacing the whole way. “My neck... It cries out with pain when I try to move it.”

“Oh? Well, the solution to that is a very simple one, indeed.”

Alain grunted inquisitively.

“Don’t try to move it!” Onari guffawed.

Alain growled. “You’re completely useless!” He managed to push himself to his feet, gasping with pain when his head turned without his meaning for it to, and stumbled toward the sliding door.

“Ah— Alain-dono, wait a moment.” Onari’s laughter was gone. He crowded around Alain, gingerly placing his hands on the shorter man’s shoulders. “You mustn’t push yourself. In all seriousness, it seems that you’ve a kink in your neck.”

“A kink?”

Onari nodded. “Brought on by sleeping in an unnatural position, no doubt.”

Alain shrugged away from Onari’s hands, wincing as doing so brought on another spasm of pain. “How do I make it stop?”

“You must rest. Applying heat and pressure to the area will reduce the pain. Fortunately for you, I am well-versed in the art of massage!”

Alain had no idea what that meant, but it looked like Onari intended to demonstrate. The monk took him by the shoulders and steered him out of the bedroom.

Every night from then on, Alain made sure he was lying perfectly flat and rigid before he fell asleep.

The waking hours had their own hazards.

In this world, when sitting around a table it was customary to kneel. Doing this often led to an ache in Alain’s legs.

One day, when he went to stretch his legs out and shift position, he found that he could no longer feel his right leg.

It was still there. He could see it as plain as day. When he touched it, he could feel it beneath his hand, but he couldn’t feel his hand on his leg; it was as though he was touching somebody else’s limb entirely.

“What is happening?” he demanded aloud, attracting the attention of Akari Tsukimura from where she was sitting across the table.

She looked up from her notes on the latest case plaguing the Mysterious Phenomenon Institute. “Eh?”

“I can’t feel my leg.” Alain struggled to keep his voice level, to refrain from panicking. “I think—I think it might be about to fall off.”

Akari burst into laughter. “Your leg isn’t going to fall off! It just fell asleep.”

Alain frowned in confusion. “But I’m awake. How can a part of my body fall asleep on its own?”

“It’s just a saying.” Akari set her notes aside and waggled her finger condescendingly. “The technical term is paresthesia. It’s caused by a loss of blood flow to the limb in question—your leg, in this case. You must have been sitting weird.”

Sitting weird, sleeping weird—these simple, everyday activities were rife with treachery. Alain’s hands balled into fists. “And how do I—”

“Try moving your leg around. You just need to stimulate blood flow, and the sensation will return.”

He tried wiggling his foot. It was very strange; he could see it moving, but he felt... not quite nothing. There was a prickling feeling throughout his lower leg, as though flesh and muscle and bone had been abruptly replaced with the brambles from those bushes that infested the temple grounds.

Alain winced. The more he moved his leg, the more it almost seemed to hurt.

“It’s not comfortable,” Akari acknowledged. She offered a sympathetic smile. “Once the feeling starts to return, try standing up. That way gravity will be able to help.”

Alain did as she suggested. He almost fell over, unable to support himself on the sleeping leg. He scrambled to grab onto the nearby door frame so he could hold himself up.

But Akari was right; like this, he could actually feel life gradually returning to his leg. He stared down at the limb, utterly baffled. “This body is absurd.” He knew he was better off now than he had been before, without it, but at times like these he almost wished he could go back.

Even before he’d become human, Alain had been fond of Makoto Fukami. That sort of feeling didn’t require a human physiology.

After becoming human, though, he started to feel other, different sensations.

He felt fear when he was in danger. He felt joy when he ate something delicious. But when he was in Makoto’s proximity, he felt something that was rather like a combination of the two emotions. His heart rate increased, his stomach fluttered as though he were looking down from someplace high, his palms began to sweat, and he felt very, very warm.

But despite that—or perhaps exactly because of it—he couldn’t be sure—he wanted nothing more than to remain by Makoto’s side indefinitely. When they parted ways for whatever reason, the strange feelings that permeated Alain’s body were replaced by a desperate longing.

He needed advice from someone who had experience with being human. So he described his symptoms to Makoto one afternoon as they were sparring, though he decided it would be prudent to omit the part where it was Makoto himself who caused these feelings.

“When does this happen?” Makoto asked.

“...at various times,” Alain replied. “I haven’t noticed a pattern.”

Makoto frowned. He set his wooden sword aside and gestured for Alain to do the same. He didn’t want to; keeping himself distracted with some other task was an effective way of ignoring the strange sensation. But he followed Makoto when he led him over to the stairs leading up to the temple so they could sit down.

“That doesn’t sound good, honestly. You could be coming down with something.”

“You mean I’m getting sick?”

Makoto nodded hesitantly. “Well, not necessarily. It could also just be nerves. Let me guess—you’re worried about something.”

Of course he was. There was plenty to worry about: His brother’s attempts on his life. His sister, back home—he didn’t know what had become of her after she’d told Takeru to keep him safe. The fate of his people, who he’d once thought were just sleeping peacefully. And all of that was in addition to how he now had to worry for himself, to make sure he didn’t fatally injure himself or forget to eat or something.

So Alain nodded. He ran his fingers through his hair absently. But was he worried for Makoto specifically? “I don’t think that’s it, though.”

“Well, you would know better than anyone else.”

In the end, they gave up trying to diagnose Alain’s strange malady and resumed trying to beat each other up with their bokuto.

This might be something Alain would have to figure out on his own.

The first time Alain deigned to eat dinner with the other residents of the Daitenku Temple—he supposed he could think of himself as a resident; it’s where he was staying, after all—something went wrong. About a minute after he’d finished his plate, a sudden burning sensation erupted upward from the bottom of his throat.

He doubled over, grasped at his throat, and sputtered out a description of his symptoms.

“Ah! Heartburn, heartburn!” Takeru realized.

Shibuya fumbled for a glass of water, almost spilling it all over himself. To prevent the clumsy acolyte from splashing it everywhere, Makoto—with a roll of his eyes—took the glass and offered it to Alain.

There was that fluttering feeling again. Alain ignored it and accepted the drink.

Just how many more strange sensations did his new body have in store for him?