In the rain-soaked alleys of modern Tokyo, a single paper lantern flickers to life... and a child-sized figure in gray monk robes steps out of the shadows. He carries only a wooden tray with one perfect block of white tofu. His head is shaved. His feet are bare. And where his face should be, there is only one enormous, unblinking eye. Haruto Nakamura laughed at the old stories. So did his friends. One mocking screenshot of an ancient woodblock print was all it took. Now the Hitotsume-kozō has chosen them. At first the curse is subtle: a child's whisper in the dark demanding, "Be quiet." Tofu squares appear on doorsteps, inside locked apartments, even on pillows while victims sleep. Ignore the offering and the pranks turn vicious. Tongues stretch unnaturally long, tasting rain and soy. Laughter twists into something that is no longer human. Eyes begin to migrate-slowly, painfully-toward the center of the face. The world itself flattens into two dimensions, like a living woodblock print. Mirrors become doorways. Silence becomes the only mercy. What begins as urban legend escalates into body horror and psychological terror. The one-eyed boy does not kill. He envies. He steals perception, voice, depth, and dignity. Those who mocked him first now wear his mark: a single central eye, cursed laughter that never stops, and a world reduced to flat, ink-black lines. The ancient December ledger has been delivered. The god of pestilence has read every jeer, every snort, every dismissive joke. Set against the neon-drenched nights of Tokyo, this is a relentless descent into Japanese yokai folklore reimagined for the 21st century. The Hitotsume-kozō-long dismissed as a children's prankster-reveals his true nature: a jealous scribe of misfortune who records every act of ridicule and repays it with poetic, grotesque precision. Soybeans fail. Many-eyed baskets fail. Even fire cannot burn the ledger. Readers who love Junji Ito's body horror, Koji Suzuki's slow-burn dread, and traditional yokai tales will be hooked by this modern nightmare. It is a story about the danger of mockery in an age when every laugh is recorded, every insult goes viral, and the old gods still walk among us-waiting for the next fool to look them in the eye. The Single Eye Watches. Laugh once... and it will never look away.