Mdg 115 Reika 12 Now

She lifted her hand to the glass. The reflection did the same. She watched her lips move, forming words she didn't say aloud.

At school, the teachers praised her. “Reika-chan is so calm now.” “Reika-chan never disrupts class.” “Such a mature young lady.”

She was also empty.

And survival, Reika realized, staring at her reflection in the dark window of her bedroom, is not the same as living.

But Reika remembered.

Reika’s skin was perfect. Porcelain smooth, untouched by the acne or awkwardness of other sixth graders. Her hair fell in a dark, heavy sheet to her shoulders. Her eyes, when she bothered to open them, were the color of rain on asphalt. She was, by every clinical metric, a marvel of pediatric gene therapy.

She became a ghost in a perfect body.

In the glossy brochures pinned to the waiting room walls, “MDG” stood for Mono-Dermal Genesis . It sounded like poetry, or the name of a new shade of lipstick. In reality, it was the slow, quiet calcification of a soul.