Concurrent (Gone Dark) - Softcover

Nefes

Softcover

ISBN 13: 9798160350356

Publisher: Independently published, 2026

Synopsis

Eight hundred people watch her stream. Something has been watching longer.

Tsumugi is a VTuber. She streams from a one-room apartment in Osaka, an avatar on screen and her face off it. She knows her regulars: their handles, their hours, which one arrives at 2:47 and types a single line, which one has never typed a word. None of them know her name. Most nights they're the only company she has.

At 4 AM, cutting the night's VOD, she finds a red streak in the corner of the frame. It moves wrong.

It's in last week's file. It's in the first stream she ever ran, two years ago, before she had a single regular.

Every check she knows how to run comes back clean. Then the streak stops staying in the footage. Her phone camera finds it in the bathroom mirror. The kitchen window. The lid of last night's takeout.

Her regulars go quiet. The green dots stay lit. Nobody types. One night a handle she can't trace types the name she has never put online.

She mutes the mic. The chat answers her anyway.

A psychological horror novella in the J-horror tradition. 30,000 words. No comfort ending. Content warnings inside.

Edition details

• Publisher: Independently published
• Publication date: 2026
• Language: English
• ISBN 13: 9798160350356
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 137