NOVA-001 ／ Psychological SF suspense
The Imaginary Illness
A fetal syndrome with no known cause and a hundred-percent fatality rate.
And yet — does the illness even exist?
What this story asks
Faced with a fear we cannot see,
what will we choose?
In a world where an inexplicable phenomenon has spread the suspicion that “I myself might be a carrier of some unknown disease,” people — compelled by no one — give up on bringing new life into the world and begin, quietly, to walk toward extinction. In an extremity where nothing at all is certain, what are the “justice” and the “hope” that people cling to? Through a society tossed about by a nameless threat, this is a suspense that quietly questions the ethics of living in an uncertain world.
Synopsis
Does the disease even exist —
One year, maternity wards around the world begin reporting inexplicable deaths. Fetuses that should have been healthy die one after another, each ending with the same distinctive heartbeat pattern. Region, ethnicity, way of life — none of it matters. And there is not a single case of recovery.
Yet no matter how many tests are run, no pathogen is found. No virus, no bacterium, no toxin — the one thing that exists nowhere is a cause.
At the National Institute of Infectious Diseases, molecular biologist Sōta Kusaka spends day after day exhausting blood, tissue, genes. He has a reason he must find proof. A little sister, lost to a nameless illness when she was ten. The helplessness of having to let her go without ever understanding why has bound him to a single creed: if he can prove it, he can save them.
His wife Mirei, a psychologist, stands in the exact opposite place. What she watches is not a pathogen but the human mind as fear swallows it. When no cause can be seen, people invent an invisible enemy. They shun pregnant women, suspect their neighbors, and in lowered voices look for someone to blame. Not-knowing spreads faster than any virus.
That something doesn't exist... no amount of checking can prove that. — from the novel
Characters
The people who crave certainty
Sōta Kusaka
Molecular biologist
A man who believes in "proof" with the same weight he gives to love. Certain that solving the mystery will save his wife, he too is pulled down into the vortex of certainty.
Mirei Kusaka
Psychologist
Observing the public's panic with cold precision, she comes to learn that understanding the psychology of fear does nothing to protect her from it.
Nagi
Sōta's younger sister
A girl who died at ten, twenty-three years ago. The last words she left behind still bind her brother today.
Shizue Takamura
Elder of a mountain village
A woman who made peace long ago with a life that offers no answers. For some reason, the illness never comes to her valley alone.