Mushi-shi

As there are many things man is not meant to see, so there are things best left unheard. From the silence, deafness grows. Into this void, that which has no voice will reverberate throughout the world.

Summoned to a remote village, Ginko has traveled into the winter which swallows all sound. Every year when this valley lies bereft of noise save for the silence of falling snow, villagers are stricken with a sudden loss of hearing. The cause is soon found and the offending mushi easily vanquished, but the grandson of the elder proves a far more drastic dilemma. While one should shelter that which he does not wish lost, even when the ears are covered all sound cannot be extinguished.

When the balance between worlds cannot be maintained, the pathway is left open while the eyes remain closed. Dream becomes fantastic reality for he who cannot find the peace of slumber.

Ginko travels back to a place he’s been before, to check in on a man whose dreams carry portents of the future. In the midst of desolation Ginko finds grief, and rather than a mushi he must free this one from guilt. Where dire advice was not followed the balance was lost. Prophetic vision warped to become living nightmare, fevered brow cradled in the pillow’s embrace. Only in the sleep of death are the worlds merged and the pathway found, but what becomes of the host when the guest is no longer welcome?

The appeal of the unknown is undeniable and freshman Mai Taniyama is hooked. But her love for the telling of ghost stories seems to have unleashed a plague of spirits upon her school, drawing both mystical and scientific investigators to the campus in an effort to separate truth from hearsay. The most enigmatic of them all, Kazuya “Naru” Shibuya of the Shibuya Psychic Research team, enlists Mai to aid in his research after an accident lands her predecessor in the hospital. Within the oldest halls of the school, death awaits. And when a student gets attacked, it is apparent that the darkest corners are not truly empty.