There's this short manga by Osorezan Da Vinch called "Philosophical Zombie at Dismissal Time." For some reason, the page is divided vertically into three columns. The manga in the middle column progresses normally, showing a pink-haired high school girl complaining, "Ugh, I want to go home, but I have to do these makeup printouts. I don't even have any friends, I might as well just die."
Then, a brown-haired classmate comes over and says, "Is it true you want to disappear? If so, I'll give you this caramel. It's a poison. If you eat it, you can die, but only your self-awareness will disappear, turning you into a philosophical zombie, so no one will even notice you're gone."
The pink-haired girl replies, "I... don't really get it, but it sounds interesting, I'll try it. This is how I disappear, right?" She eats the given caramel, but nothing happens.
Pink hair: "Nothing's happening." Brown hair: "Fufu, did you actually believe it? A senior tricked me with it yesterday, too." Pink hair: "I-I wasn't tricked, I was just playing along!"
And with a "Jeez," the two of them laugh and walk home together happily.
Meanwhile, the manga in the right column is pitch black the entire time, and the manga in the left column depicts scenes from the pink-haired girl's perspective. The moment the pink-haired girl eats the caramel, the left column goes pitch black just like the right one.
In other words, if you only read the middle column, it's just a heartwarming, casual conversation between high school girls. But if you read the left and right columns, you realize that in the end, both of them had transformed into philosophical zombies without any ego.
These characters were reused from the author's manga called "Kowloons," and as someone who had been reading it, it made me sad because it felt like the characters had died.
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