Dialogue with the Spirits of the Skin
A Mystical Beauty Saga

Season 1 – When the Moon Descends: The Tale of the Loquat Spirit

Prologue: Visione — The Divine Sight

Kodama Takano — a Kewaishi of the Reiwa era.

Born into a family of Kewaishi that had endured for generations,
he carried the weight of inherited skill more keenly than anyone.
Raised within ornate traditions,
his heart wavered between the resolve to guard their value,
and the reality that mere preservation would not suffice to survive.

“Between what must not change, and what must.”

Those words had once been spoken to him.
Even now, Takano carried them deep within his chest.

His mission was never to remain only a successor.
It was to breathe life into ancient technique,
to re-create the very concept of beauty.
That was the path of “Kesho-dō” he walked.

Late autumn.
Takano visited an ancient temple at the foot of Mount Atago, Kyoto.
In a small tea room annexed to the temple,
he slid open the paper door just enough to let in the morning air,
and sat in silence, poised in formal meditation.

He closed his eyes and calmed his breath.
Surrendering his whole body to the presence of the outside world,
he slowly unraveled the edges of his awareness.

—It was then.

A sudden heat welled between his brows.
From the depths of consciousness, something rose upward.

His vision changed.

The instant he opened his eyes—
the skin of the person before him leapt into the center of the world.

Signs of dryness. Imbalance of surface temperature.
Fibers of the dermis, fraying.
But more than the surface—
he felt the vibrations of the heart: wavering, confusion, all carried through the skin.

It was not theory.
Not experience.
But an anomaly that could only be called sight.

Takano knew at once:
—the skin itself was speaking.

And what it told was not only the present condition or decline of beauty.
Within it also dwelled an intention toward the future—
still wordless, yet alive.

It was the first gift awakened within him:

Visione — The Divine Sight.

It quietly, yet surely, began to take root inside him.

From then on, whenever Takano touched skin—
not only appearance, but the hidden “reason” behind it
was conveyed to him,
as naturally as breathing.

Why it had become so.
How it might return.
The delicate veil of the skin whispered these answers to him.

But this sight carried its price.

Each time he used the power, something was carved away from within.
Breaths he drew deeply reached nowhere,
burned into heat, and quietly slipped away.

His breathing grew shallow.
Blood circulation dulled.
Even his bones turned cold.
It was as though, in receiving another’s beauty,
he surrendered his own.

—And still, he accepted it.

For he believed that was the true response of a Kewaishi.

To listen quietly to what lay beneath words.
To seek with another the unseen answer.
That act, to him, was the essence of “makeup.”

Seated on the veranda, Takano drew out a small vial that hung from his neck.

Shisui.

A liquid appearing only to Kewaishi,
holding within it both color and presence.

Takano’s Shisui was red.
Not fire, nor blood—
but a living crimson, unmistakably alive.

Within the vial, it swayed gently.

Something unseen seemed to have touched it.

—At that moment, his smartphone vibrated.

The name displayed: Misaki.

An old friend, once a fellow researcher,
now running a salon in Tokyo—
a woman who still, in some quiet way, thought of him as special.

“…Takano-san, please.
Recently, my clients’ skin has suddenly erupted with redness, with bumps…
Whatever treatment I try, it only worsens.
It’s as if their skin is rejecting my hands…”

Her voice was unsteady, urgent.
That plea instantly cast a shadow of disturbance within Takano’s Visione.

It was not a mere mistake in treatment.
Not an issue of formula or device.
It was something else—
something deeper, quietly stirring within the skin.

“…I understand. I’ll come at once.”

He ended the call,
gripped the vial of Shisui as if to confirm its state,
and rose slowly to his feet.

From the garden, a single stalk of bamboo gave a thin, clear sound.

Takano’s vision opened quietly—
toward the next change to come.

Where that presence had arrived from,
he would learn only later.