💄 Gold Coin Chronicle: The Slit-Mouthed Favor

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📚 The Library Awakens

The Library did not sleep tonight.  

Lamps flickered with a feverish pulse. Shelves trembled. Mirrors—objects that did not belong in a library, yet appeared whenever the Ledger willed them—fogged and defogged as if exhaling.  

The scent of old paper thickened, tinged with something sharper… the metallic sweetness of blood warmed by breath.  

A single page in the Gold Ledger curled upward.  
Ink beaded, then slithered like a living thread.  
It rose, drew a line, twisted, and sharpened into a name.  

Aya Nakamura.  

The Library hummed in approval.  
Another story had stepped out of the dark.  

Answer. Drink. Obey. Smile.  

---

I. The Question

Aya lived in Unit 4C, where the bathroom mirror was always covered with a towel. She didn’t fear mirrors—she hated them. Her reflections always seemed a little too slow, a little too eager, her mouth a little too wide.  

But tonight, the towel slipped.  

Cold air spilled from the mirror like a breath.  
The glass fogged.  
A woman’s voice—soft, intimate, impossibly close—curled around Aya’s ears.  

Am I beautiful?  

Aya froze. Her wrist tingled. The mark beneath her skin shimmered, rippling like scales shifting direction. The Library’s ink pulsed in her veins.  

She didn’t answer.  
The lights flickered.  
The mirror darkened.  

The voice whispered again, closer this time.  

Am I beautiful?  

Her throat tightened.  

“Yes,” she breathed.  

The fog on the mirror vanished.  
The whisper smiled.  

Obey. Smile.  

---

II. The Alley

Rain slicked the city, making it smell like rusting metal and wet concrete. Neon signs bled color into puddles, shifting like oil.  

Aya felt watched.  

She turned into a narrow alley, feet slapping against slick asphalt. The air smelled of damp trash and dying lilies. The flickering streetlight above her gave off a low, electric hum.  

Then she saw her.  

A woman stood at the far end of the alley, perfectly still.  
Hair black as wet tar.  
A surgical mask trembling against her lips.  
Her posture too smooth, too deliberate, as if she were rehearsing being human.  

She tilted her head.  

“Am I beautiful?” the woman asked.  

The voice was silk.  
Soft.  
Motherly.  
Hungry.  

Aya felt the mark on her wrist pulse like a second heartbeat.  

“Yes,” she whispered, though her breath shook.  

The woman’s hand lifted toward the mask.  

Answer. Drink.  

---

III. The Mouth

The mask slid away.  

Her jaw opened with a slick, wet tear—cartilage popping, tendons peeling apart like overripe fruit. Her mouth extended from ear to ear, a trembling cavern of glistening teeth.  

Saliva dripped.  
Her breath reeked of iron and old bandages.  

“Even now?” the woman asked.  

Aya’s pulse hammered. Her tongue tasted rust. Something deep in her bones—something born from the Ledger—whispered:  

Answer. Drink. Obey. Smile.  

Aya swallowed.  

“Yes.”  

The slit-mouthed woman’s grin widened, impossibly.  
The alley shuddered as if exhaling.  

---

IV. The Favor

Warm fingers cupped Aya’s chin.  

“You are mine.”  

The scissors gleamed in the rainlight—long, surgical, stained with old clots. The woman sliced into Aya’s cheek with slow, almost loving precision.  

Aya felt the blade kiss her skin.  
Felt it spread her smile.  
Heard the delicate rip of flesh parting.  

Blood trickled into her mouth—warm, metallic, strangely sweet, like spoiled cherries.  

She did not scream.  
She swallowed.  

The Ledger purred inside her like a satisfied animal.  

Smile. Obey.  

---

V. The Coin

Aya woke in her apartment, dizzy and trembling. Her mouth hurt. Her cheek throbbed. The world felt double-layered—one version visible, the other whispering beneath it.  

Her neighbors found a gift outside their door.  

A mirror.  
Perfectly polished.  
Beautiful.  

The Ledger’s first favor had been delivered through her hand, though she couldn’t remember exactly how.  

When they looked into it, their reflections were flawless. Smooth. Whole. Untouched.  

They smiled.  
They loved it.  

Aya checked her own reflection.  

There was none.  

Only darkness.  
A suggestion of teeth.  
A shape behind the glass wearing a mask like hers.  

Her mouth felt too wide now.  
Her cheek tugged every time she swallowed.  

A warm glow pulsed in her palm—the Gold Coin she had earned.  

It was not survival.  
It was transaction.  
Complicity had a price, and she had paid it.  

---

📖 The Library Closes the Page

Back inside the Library, the Gold Ledger sealed Aya’s page with a soft, metallic snap—the sound of scissors closing after a final cut.  

Shelves leaned inward, listening.  
Ink writhed on the page, then settled into the mark of the Kuchisake-onna, glowing faintly like an ember under skin.  

A new mirror appeared on a nearby shelf.  
It hadn’t been there before.  

The surface rippled.  
Something behind the glass grinned, stretching wider than human anatomy should allow.  

The Library dimmed, savoring the cruelty now etched into its bones.  

Another pulse stirred within its aisles.  
Another story was waking.  

Answer. Drink. Obey. Smile.  

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X (Twitter): @NightlyStoryTel

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Email. thenightlystorytellerblog@gmail.com
  

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