Young Ngod-220 -... | Nagase Mami - Wheelchair-bound

A low hum filled the room. Then, a sensation she had not felt in eight months: pressure. Against the soles of her feet. A soft, rhythmic kneading, like warm hands pressing into dead nerves. It was impossible. She felt nothing below her waist. Yet there it was—a phantom ghost of touch.

She reached for the ankle restraints, unclicked them herself, and swung her dead weight back into her wheelchair. For the first time, she didn’t look at the chair as a cage.

“Your file,” Hoshino continued, “says the moment you felt your feet leave the final hold, you looked down. That was your mistake. Not the fall. The looking down. Today, you will not look. You will only feel.”

Then, the floor dropped.

The threat was cold, clinical. Her family, already strained by her medical bills, had no idea. The social worker, Tanaka-san, had simply shrugged. “Hoshino-san’s group is… unconventional. But they have government ties. I can’t stop it.”

Mami’s throat tightened. “You want to strap me to a bed?”

Click.

The door opened. Hoshino stood there, holding a clipboard. “The session is over,” he said. “NGOD-220. Neural Ghost Output Delineation. Your brain remembered the sensation of falling and, for a moment, overrode the spinal gap to feel the ground again. It didn’t fix you. But it proved your mind still believes your legs exist.”

He spun the dial on the case. It clicked open. Inside, nestled in foam, was a single, heavy object: a black leather blindfold and a set of industrial-grade, weighted restraints—not for the wrists, but for the ankles. And a small, handheld device with a single red button.

“No,” he said softly. “I want you to strap yourself.” Nagase Mami - Wheelchair-bound Young NGOD-220 -...

The door opened. Kazuo Hoshino was not what she expected. He was thin, gray-haired, with the gentle eyes of a retired professor. He wore no lab coat, just a cardigan over a button-down shirt.

Her room was neat, sterile, and unbearably quiet. The only personal touch was a single climbing shoe, still faintly chalked, sitting on her bedside table like a relic.

“Let go,” Hoshino’s voice came from a speaker, calm and distant. “You are not falling. You are being held.” A low hum filled the room

Not physically—the bed was solid. But her inner ear, her primal brain, registered a sudden, sickening lurch. She was falling. The same vertigo as the climbing wall. The same rush of air. The same scream lodged in her throat.