Poa (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798234040008)

"A master of modern Japanese horror."

After the bestselling, award-winning success of the Japanese horror sensation KAI, Derek Vasconi returns with his most disturbing vision yet: a chilling exploration of devotion so absolute it consumes everything in its path.

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Her love is a virus: quiet, invisible, and perfectly patient...

Ayano is a predator.

While the world sees only a woman of flawless beauty, her perfection is a calculated front maintained through ascetic yoga and a deliberate immersion in the sex trade. She did not become a prostitute for money, but for an education in the mechanics of human intimacy-learning about the desires of men while mastering the art of manipulation. She is a woman obsessed, sculpting herself into the only shape capable of catching the eye of Taka Yoshino, Japan's most adored eromen idol.

After meeting Ayano at a DVD release event and later an arranged fan date, Taka-a professional at selling a gentle fantasy of love to the housewives and lonely women of Japan-believes he has finally found a fan he can truly be himself with. He is impressed by Ayano's beauty and feels they have a rare, genuine connection.

He was wrong. Dead wrong. Because for Ayano, Taka is only the first step into total, absolute madness.

In the tradition of Ryu Murakami's Audition, the curated grace of the "perfect woman" is merely a shroud for a horror that defies comprehension. But where Murakami's nightmare was an intimate betrayal, Ayano's is a global contagion. Indeed, her devotion is to a vision far more sinister and devastating than a simple obsession. Everything she does is for somebody who has shaped her entire being since she was a child, molding her into an instrument of destruction that will bring about the end of the world-in order to save it.

But can she save herself?