Blade Under Mask, the comic

Asazaki Nae is a young orchid mantis maiko, an apprentice geisha, living her daily routine in the Asazaki teahouse alongside her adoptive family: Asami, her strict mother, and Tetsuo, her protective older brother.

Her calm life turns upside down when she starts seeing horrendous, inexplicable figures that she and only she can see, just a few days before the ceremony that will mark her transition from maiko to full geisha. Doubting her own grip on reality and afraid to seek help for fear of accusations of insanity that could ruin her future as a geisha, she starts sinking into her own mind. Between hallucinations and etiquette, Nae tries to keep sober on her feet and succeed in the trials to become a geisha, as the world outside slowly becomes unrecognizable.

Nae and art © me, from Blade Under Mask