Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1
ONE DAY FOR TWO DAYS
Consciousness does not return all at once — it seeps in.
Slow. Viscous. Uncomfortable.
Alexis Ness wakes as if emerging from something too dense to be just sleep. The body comes first, heavy, unresponsive, as if every muscle had been turned off and reactivated incorrectly. There’s a diffuse pain beneath his skin — not sharp, not localized — but persistent, wrong. Like a chemical echo that hasn’t faded yet.
He doesn’t move right away.
Breathing already requires effort.
The air enters too cold, too dry, carrying something old… sealed wood, settled dust, a faint metallic trace that shouldn’t be there. His tongue feels thick, bitter. There’s a residual taste — undefined, but unsettling.
Silence.
Not the comfortable kind. Not the natural kind.
A constructed silence.
Ness opens his eyes slowly, as if the mere act might alter something around him. The ceiling above is uneven, aged wood marked by thin cracks spreading like dried veins. He blinks once. Twice.
The world doesn’t adjust.
His perception lags, struggling to align distance, shape, reality.
When he tries to get up, his body responds with delay. A synchronization error. His muscles tremble — not from weakness, but from disobedience. Still, he forces it. Props himself up on his elbows, then his hands.
The floor is hard. Cold. Raw.
Old wood.
Only then does he notice the clothes.
Casual.
Wrong.
No uniform, no familiar context. Just ordinary fabric against his skin — too light, too out of place. As if someone else had dressed him. Or dressed him for someone else.
A small detail. Enough to shift everything.
His gaze moves through the room cautiously, as if every motion needs to be negotiated.
The cabin.
Small, but not exactly cramped — the discomfort doesn’t come from the space, but from how it exists. Everything feels… contained. Held back. Like a setting arranged to prevent exits.
Kitchen cabinets line the wall, their doors shut with simple locks — too firm for what they should be. The wood darkened with age. No signs of recent use.
The front door — visible from where he is — also locked.
Windows.
Closed.
No curtains.
The glass isn’t opaque from dirt, but from the lack of light outside. No movement beyond them. No shadows passing by. No sign of wind.
And yet…
The feeling persists.
Observation.
There is nothing visible. Nothing concrete. But something — a formless presence — seems to settle in the gaps, in the corners, in the spaces the eye cannot hold all at once.
Ness stops.
Listens.
The silence remains… but now he notices what had been diluted before.
Breathing.
Not just his own.
He turns his head, slower than natural — instinctive caution, almost animal.
And then he sees him.
Rin Itoshi is leaning against the opposite wall, his body slightly curved, one hand pressed to the side of his head. His eyes are open, but unfocused — as if the light is still too harsh to face directly. His expression isn’t exactly pain.
It’s restrained irritation.
Masked disorientation.
He doesn’t speak.
But he’s been awake long enough to understand something is wrong — even if he can’t yet name what.
Further to the left—
Movement.
Reo Mikage stirs on the floor, his awakening less controlled, more abrupt. A furrow of his brows, a trapped breath, and then his eyes snap open — too fast — as if his body sensed danger before his mind could catch up.
He looks around.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
His breathing quickens, but he tries to contain it. Only partially succeeds.
No one speaks.
And that is their first silent agreement.
Because any sound feels… unwise.
Because, even without proof, without logic, without clear memory—
There is an uncomfortable certainty crawling beneath the surface of consciousness:
Something happened.
And worse—
Something is still happening.
Time does not flow in there. It watches.
It’s an unsettling thought.
The kind that doesn’t settle immediately — it lingers, waiting for the mind to have enough silence to realize just how… wrong everything is.
"What… what is going on?" Reo Mikage’s voice comes out low, rough, as if speaking takes more effort than it should.
He sits up slowly, his body still misaligned, and looks between them as if expecting someone to hold together a coherent version of reality.
"Where are we?"
"Great question." Rin Itoshi replies without fully lifting his head. His hand still presses against his skull, fingers tense, as if trying to contain something pulsing beneath the skin. "Too bad no one here seems to have an answer."
The words land dry.
No echo.
No comfort.
Alexis Ness blinks slowly, as if each thought needs to pass through a thick layer before forming completely. Logic tries to organize — fails — restarts.
"Huh…" The sound slips out more as a reflex than intent.
His gaze shifts. Lifts. Stops.
The backpacks.
Lined up on top of the cabinets, too high to have been left there by accident. There’s something meticulously wrong about their placement — not carelessness. Choice.
And then he sees it.
The note.
Attached.
Waiting.
"I think… we’re in a cabin. In the middle of the woods." Ness murmurs, but the sentence sounds hollow even to him. It answers nothing that actually matters.
"Really?" Rin lifts his head this time. His gaze, still blurred, already carries enough irritation to sharpen. "Hadn’t noticed."
There’s a cut in his voice. Thin. Deliberate.
"I’m trying to help," Ness shoots back, sharper than intended. Or maybe exactly as intended.
The air between them tightens — it doesn’t explode, it compresses.
Mikage exhales quietly, running a hand through his hair as if that could somehow reorganize what’s out of place.
"How did we even end up here…?" he murmurs, more to himself than to them. His gaze drifts up to the ceiling, landing on the unlit lamp. "I… can’t really remember."
The absence of memory isn’t emptiness.
It’s a failure.
A cut too clean to be natural.
No clocks.
No phones.
No electronic sound, no sign of external interference — as if the world had been shut off outside.
Or them, inside.
"Were we kidnapped?" Rin says, too casually.
The word lingers.
Heavy.
Reo turns to him, his gaze serious, almost sharp.
"What?" Rin shrugs, still leaning against the wall. "It’s the simplest explanation."
Simple.
But not enough.
Alexis stands.
Or tries to.
His body responds with delay, heavy, as if still partially submerged in something invisible. There’s a strange discomfort under his skin — a silent chemical noise he can’t name.
He studies his own hands for a moment too long.
Then brings them to his face.
Sniffs.
Something there.
Subtle.
Wrong.
But it slips away before he can define it. He exhales slowly, abandoning the attempt — for now.
He walks to the cabinet.
Each step feels slightly out of sync with the floor, as if his sense of distance is… imprecise.
He grabs the backpacks.
One.
Two.
Three.
"Our backpacks…?" Reo blinks, confused, his brow furrowing. "Wait… didn’t Ego let us go out for a bit?"
The memory comes incomplete.
Fragmented.
"I think so…" Rin murmurs, closing his eyes for a moment. "My head’s… hell right now."
Throbbing.
But not just pain.
There’s something else — a pressure that isn’t purely physical.
Alexis doesn’t respond.
He just places the backpacks on the floor, next to each of them, as if that simple act could restore some minimal order.
When he picks up his—
He sees it.
The note.
Attached too cleanly.
Too intentionally.
The paper isn’t crumpled. Not misplaced. Not out of position.
It’s… placed.
As if it had been part of the scene from the beginning.
The writing.
Japanese.
Alexis looks at it for a second, maybe two, before walking over to Mikage and handing it to him.
"It was on my backpack." His voice comes out low, controlled.
Reo takes it.
Reads.
And something shifts.
Not immediately — subtle, almost imperceptible — but it’s there: the slight dilation of his pupils, the tension in his jaw, the breath that comes in slower than it should.
"What does it say?" Rin asks, opening one eye, attentive now.
Reo takes a second longer than necessary.
As if considering not reading it was, somehow, a valid option.
But it isn’t.
It never was.
"I was looking for new toys… and I found you." he begins, his voice too steady for the content. "Let’s have fun. A lot of it."
A pause.
Small.
Heavy.
"After all… you don’t have a choice."
Silence.
Dense.
Almost physical.
"...Fuck." Rin exhales through his nose, eyes now fully open. "So that’s it."
There’s no real surprise in his voice.
Just confirmation.
"We were kidnapped."
"Shit…" Reo mutters, running a hand over his face as if trying to wake up again — unsuccessfully. "And I thought Blue Lock was already the worst-case scenario."
No one laughs.
Not even tries.
Alexis sits down harder than he intends. The impact echoes dry against the wood. He leans his head back against the rough wall.
His eyes stay open.
But focus on nothing.
The question comes — inevitable, insistent — not as a structured thought, but like a crack slowly forming:
At what point…
did their reality stop being reliable?
And worse—
If this had a beginning… why can’t he remember it?
Two Days Earlier
Ego Jinpachi observed his players like someone examining an experiment that had begun to show variations outside the expected parameters — not exactly errors, but subtle deviations, enough that, over time, they could compromise the entire structure. And that was what bothered him. Not the arguments themselves, not the predictable friction between inflated egos, but the frequency, the repetition, the uncomfortable sense that something there had crossed the boundary of what was natural and slipped into a state of continuous instability.
Emotions weren’t exploding — they were leaking.
Seeping into gestures, into decisions, into pauses that stretched just a little too long between actions.
Even the foreign players, who should have carried a certain detachment, seemed affected by the same silent tension, as if the environment itself was pressing all of them in the same direction.
His gaze shifts to Michael Kaiser and Alexis Ness, and what he sees no longer sparks interest — only wear.
Because that is no longer productive conflict.
No longer friction that generates evolution.
It is a repetitive cycle. Mechanical. Too predictable to be useful.
And for a brief — rare — moment, a thought crosses his mind with a trace of dry irony, something close to fatigue, as if he were watching a narrative that had gone on for too long without progressing.
He wonders — not out loud, but with enough precision to sustain the idea — whether any of them even understands the concept of emotional balance, or if, at some point, that would need to be inserted as a mandatory variable within the project itself.
"Anri… I think these monsters need a break," he says, crossing his arms as he keeps his eyes on the screen, not really looking at Anri Teieri, who takes a second longer than usual to react, blinking as if recalibrating her attention in the face of a suggestion that, coming from him, sounds almost out of place.
"A break…? Well… they do seem kind of tense…" she replies carefully, as if still testing the weight of the idea before fully accepting it.
"They do," Ego repeats, flatly, without changing his tone. "But I won’t allow a pause to compromise the structure I’m building. Because tension, when properly directed, is useful. The problem is when it starts slipping out of control."
Anri frowns slightly, still not fully following his logic.
"So what are you planning to do…?"
Ego smiles.
And there’s something in that smile that doesn’t quite align with the idea of absolute control he usually maintains — something minimal, almost imperceptible, but still there. Like a variable he chose not to explain.
"We’re going to shuffle the teams."
The decision doesn’t sound impulsive, but it isn’t entirely neutral either.
And when it takes effect, when the players return to the field, something changes — not visibly, not immediately, but in the invisible organization of relationships. As if the axis had shifted a few degrees to the side. Enough to create discomfort, but not enough to be clearly identified.
Within Bastard München, the change doesn’t resolve the tension — it reorganizes it.
The atmosphere begins to carry a constant sense of contained fracture, as if everyone were operating within an artificial balance, on the verge of collapsing, yet still functional enough to continue.
Alexis Ness remains consistent — perhaps even more than before.
His passes are still precise, calculated, almost clinical.
But they no longer orbit a single center of gravity.
The ball begins to circulate through Rensuke Kunigami, through Kenyu Yukimiya, through trajectories that had not been considered before.
And that shift, though technically justifiable, carries something implicit.
Something no one verbalizes.
But everyone notices.
It is during the friendly match against Manshine City that this change stops being subtle.
The game drags on in unstable balance, time compressed by accumulated tension, with Chris Prince and Noel Noa turning every clash into something close to a direct confrontation.
And then, without warning — without visible buildup — Ness makes the decision that reorganizes the entire field.
He carries the ball with precision and releases a pass that does not follow expected logic.
It does not seek Kaiser.
It does not return to the usual axis.
It finds Yoichi Isagi with unsettling accuracy, as if that point had been determined before the play even existed.
The surprise isn’t just in the execution.
It’s in the absence of signal.
Isagi doesn’t call for the ball. Doesn’t indicate. Doesn’t build the moment.
And yet, it arrives.
As if it had been predicted outside the reach of the other players.
That creates a different kind of silence.
One that doesn’t interrupt the game — but follows it.
Invisible.
Isagi absorbs the impact, quickly reorganizes his expression, and finishes, converting the goal that sets the score to two–one.
The victory resolves the match.
But not the discomfort.
After the game, while bodies attempt to return to a more stable state, Michael Kaiser walks toward Ness with a feeling he does not name.
Not because he can’t.
But because acknowledging it would mean accepting something that contradicts the very logic sustaining his identity.
There shouldn’t be discomfort.
Not when he was the one who encouraged distance.
Who wanted to break that dependence that made everything too comfortable.
And yet—
Now that it is happening…
Something in him reacts as if he is losing territory.
"Ness," he calls.
Alexis Ness cuts off his conversation with Reo Mikage, turning with that precise, almost automatic smile that reveals nothing beyond what is necessary.
"Yes, Kaiser?"
He steps aside just enough to create the illusion of privacy, though the entire environment feels too attentive for any conversation to truly be isolated.
Kaiser has questions.
Several.
Organized. Ready to be spoken.
But all of them carry implications he refuses to sustain.
Why not me?
I was open.
Why Isagi?
Why… not me?
Because admitting doubt would mean admitting need.
And that doesn’t fit the image he built for himself.
So he chooses the most acceptable version.
The most neutral possible.
"What were you thinking when you passed to Yoichi?" The question comes out controlled, but tension cuts through the tone.
Ness doesn’t hesitate.
And maybe that’s what bothers him most.
"He was the best option."
Simple. Direct. Unquestionable.
And precisely because of that — disturbing.
Because inside Michael Kaiser, a thought forms that shouldn’t exist.
A deviation.
A question that doesn’t belong to him, and yet emerges with clarity impossible to ignore:
Am I not?
He laughs.
There is no humor in it.
Only an attempt to restore control that, for a brief moment, failed.
"The best option…?" he repeats, rolling his eyes, his voice laced with a disdain that sounds almost rehearsed. "Seriously? You lowered yourself to that level, Ness?"
On the outside, Alexis remains stable.
Almost unshakable.
But internally, something is misaligned.
A silent disorder that doesn’t manifest in gestures — only in the way he responds, quieter, more restrained, as if choosing each word with excessive care.
"I don’t understand, Kaiser… weren’t you the one who told me to find a new emperor?"
Kaiser stays silent for too long.
What unsettles him isn’t just the answer — it’s the clarity of it.
No hesitation.
No room for interpretation.
And that creates internal noise that is hard to ignore.
Because, despite what he tries to maintain externally, his own mind begins to organize facts he would rather keep disconnected.
He was the one who started this shift.
Not casually.
Deliberately.
He ordered Alexis to find a new “emperor.”
He exposed him.
Reduced him publicly to something disposable.
And now—
Faced with the direct consequence of those actions—
Something in the way he reacts is fundamentally misaligned.
As if he were being betrayed by a logic he himself constructed.
And that realization doesn’t come as clarity.
It comes as discomfort.
Distortion.
Something difficult to accept.
"And you went straight to Yoichi? Pathetic, Ness," he says, maintaining pride as an external structure that no longer fully matches what is happening internally, while a silent fracture opens in his perception of himself.
A question he doesn’t voice.
But one that persists:
How irreplaceable am I, really?
"Maybe it’d be easier if you just left Bastard, don’t you think? Or you could go back to your family."
The effect isn’t immediate.
But it’s precise.
Alexis freezes for a nearly imperceptible moment.
The smile — once automatic — falters.
Not dramatically.
But enough.
Enough to reveal a flaw in the carefully maintained surface, as if that specific mention had touched something he deliberately keeps isolated.
Not out of shame.
Out of necessity.
The silence around them thickens.
More attentive.
As if the environment itself noticed the shift before the others did.
There is no warning when it happens.
Only the dry, abrupt sound of impact.
For a second, time misaligns.
Because no one there — not even Noel Noa — had considered the possibility that Alexis would respond with violence.
Much less like that.
Direct.
Unrestrained.
Michael’s eyes widen before his expression reorganizes into something more rigid, more controlled, even as irritation cuts through what remains of neutrality.
"Shut up," Ness whispers.
The tone is too low to match the action.
Which makes it worse.
"Did you just hit me, you bastard?" Kaiser snaps, already moving to retaliate — impulsive, almost automatic — until the motion stops midway.
Not from rational decision.
Something more immediate.
More instinctive.
Because he meets Alexis’s gaze.
The tears haven’t fallen.
But they’re there.
Held back.
Straining the boundary between control and collapse.
The contradiction is impossible to ignore.
And the thought cuts through Kaiser’s mind with almost cruel clarity:
You hit me… and you’re the one about to fall apart?
"You don’t know anything… just shut up," Ness repeats, his voice strained now — not from weakness, but from the pressure of something he clearly has no intention of explaining.
Kaiser’s irritation grows.
Fueled not only by the hit, but by the inability to fully understand what stands before him.
When he moves forward, it’s unclear whether the intention is to retaliate or regain control.
Maybe both.
But the motion is interrupted.
Noa steps in, grabbing his wrist and pulling him back with enough force to establish a boundary.
As if, in that moment—
Kaiser is the unstable variable.
Alexis doesn’t wait.
He turns.
And leaves.
No explanation.
No glance back.
What remains isn’t just shock.
It’s the absence of meaning.
As if everyone present had witnessed something they cannot organize into a coherent narrative.
And that weighs more than any direct confrontation.
After that, the atmosphere within Bastard München doesn’t just worsen.
It becomes opaque.
Harder to interpret.
Every interaction now carries an extra layer of caution.
And it is at this point that Ego Jinpachi announces a day off.
Not as a concession.
As an adjustment.
Players are allowed to leave in pre-defined groups.
Controlled freedom.
Delimited.
Almost experimental in structure.
The detail that draws attention isn’t the break itself.
It’s the composition of the groups.
Especially the fact that Alexis Ness and Michael Kaiser are not together.
In Ness’s group are Reo Mikage, Rin Itoshi, Meguru Bachira, Yo Hiori, Rensuke Kunigami, Don Lorenzo—
And under the supervision of Marc Snuffy.
A combination that, at first glance, seems arbitrary.
But carries a logic that isn’t immediately visible.
Because for Ego, it’s not just about performance on the field.
It’s about patterns.
Histories.
Family structures that shape behavior in ways the players themselves don’t fully understand.
And he knows—
With a level of detail that borders on uncomfortable—
That Reo Mikage carries the weight of an empire he refuses to inherit.
That Rin Itoshi operates on the edge of an obsession that ignores basic self-preservation.
That Yo Hiori is the result of expectations that were never his.
And that Alexis Ness—
Perhaps the hardest to map—
Comes from an environment where absence and demand coexist in contradiction.
Creating a kind of silence that does not resolve easily.
Ego doesn’t call it curiosity.
But he observes it as if it were.
Ness walks down the hallway with steps too restrained to be natural, as if every movement has to be calculated to avoid drawing attention — even though there’s no one around to observe him. And still, the sensation of being watched lingers, persistent, clinging to his skin like a second layer.
In his hands, the wrapped box feels heavier than it should. Not because of the object itself, but because of what it represents. His fingers tighten around it with excessive force, knuckles paling under the pressure, betraying a tension he can’t dissipate.
Guilt is not an isolated thought.
It’s a state.
Something that seeps in and stays, replaying the scene in his mind with minimal variation, always leading to the same point: the impact, the dry sound, the moment he lost control — and the delayed realization that he had crossed a line he didn’t believe existed within himself.
Especially when directed at Kaiser.
Someone he knows well enough to understand that violence isn’t just a gesture — it’s a trigger. An unstable territory that should have been avoided at all costs.
And yet—
He didn’t avoid it.
Now, standing in front of Kaiser’s closed dorm door, Alexis hesitates for a second longer than necessary, as if that physical boundary is also a mental one, difficult to cross.
Then he knocks.
Too lightly to carry conviction.
Waiting not for a specific response, but for any sign that something can still be recovered.
Nothing comes.
He knocks again, a little harder this time. The sound echoes through the empty corridor, returning alone, unanswered, as if absorbed by something unwilling to give anything back.
"Kaiser…" Ness’s voice passes through the wood, low, contained, carrying more than the words themselves can hold. "I… I’m sorry about the slap. I swear I didn’t mean to… I never wanted to… I’m really sorry."
The silence that follows isn’t absence.
It’s rejection.
And when the answer finally comes, it arrives without hesitation, without emotional variation, as if it had been ready before being spoken.
"Go away, Alexis."
Michael’s tone carries no explicit anger.
And that’s what makes it worse.
There’s no heat. No intensity.
Just controlled emptiness, as if any possibility of dialogue has been deliberately discarded.
Alexis stays there for a moment, unmoving, absorbing the weight of that response before trying once more, almost out of reflex.
"I’m sorry, Micha—"
The word doesn’t finish.
He stops.
Breathes.
And without insisting, without forcing something that clearly won’t be given, he crouches and leaves the box on the floor, leaning it against the door, as if that small gesture could replace everything left unsaid.
Then he walks away.
His steps are faster now — not out of urgency, but out of the need to leave that space before the discomfort becomes unbearable.
The day goes on.
Or at least tries to.
The group formed by Alexis Ness, Reo Mikage, Rin Itoshi, Meguru Bachira, Yo Hiori, Rensuke Kunigami, and Don Lorenzo spreads through the streets with a kind of freedom that, at first glance, seems normal.
But it carries weight.
As if all of them are slightly out of sync with the world around them.
Like displaced pieces of a larger system.
Bachira moves ahead, curious, absorbing stimuli with almost childlike ease, while Hiori keeps a comfortable distance, observing more than participating. Kunigami walks with rigid posture, alert, as if still on the field, while Lorenzo interacts more loosely, almost detached from the tension hanging over the others.
Marc Snuffy watches from a distance.
Not interfering directly, but present enough to maintain an invisible line of control.
Still—
Something doesn’t fit.
And maybe that’s why the separation happens too easily.
As if it had been inevitable from the start.
Before long, the group fragments into smaller combinations, until only Alexis Ness, Reo Mikage, and Rin Itoshi remain walking together — not by explicit choice, but by silent convergence.
"So…" Ness begins, his voice steadier now, though still carrying a slight misalignment. "Have you ever thought about how horror works more through what isn’t shown than what is?"
Rin glances sideways, brief, assessing.
"Depends," he replies, flat. "Most of it is predictable. The unknown only works until it becomes a pattern."
"Not exactly," Ness continues, his fingers moving slightly, as if organizing invisible ideas. "Real fear comes when logic fails. When you can’t map what’s happening… when there are no clear rules."
Reo sighs, running a hand over his face.
"Seriously… what did I do to end up stuck with you two?"
Ness lets out a quiet laugh, almost automatic.
Rin doesn’t react.
And then it happens.
The impact is light, almost insignificant, but enough to interrupt the flow as the three of them bump into a pregnant woman coming from the opposite direction. Her body loses balance, lowering carefully, but still too abruptly.
"Sorry," Reo steps forward immediately, extending a hand to help her up. Ness follows just as quickly, and Rin, after a brief hesitation, does the same — though with visible reluctance.
"Don’t worry…" the woman replies, her smile too soft, too steady. "It was just a slip."
Once she’s standing, she reaches up and brushes the back of each of their necks.
A simple gesture.
Almost maternal.
But it lingers just slightly longer than necessary.
There’s something about it that doesn’t quite fit.
Even if none of them can identify exactly what.
They move on.
Keep walking.
And choose a shortcut.
That’s when reality begins to fail.
Subtly.
Almost imperceptibly.
The air feels heavier.
The sounds around them lose definition, as if muffled by something unseen.
Alexis Ness is the first to feel it.
His step falters.
His vision wavers for a second.
There’s a strange delay between intention and movement.
"You guys—" he starts.
But the sentence doesn’t finish.
His body doesn’t respond as it should.
And the ground rushes up too fast.
Reo tries to react, but a sudden weight drags down his limbs, as if his body is being shut off from the inside. He stumbles, his breathing breaking before giving out entirely, collapsing soon after.
Rin watches.
For a second.
Two.
Something is wrong.
But the realization doesn’t form in time.
His own body begins to fail, senses distorting, and as consciousness slips, he registers a presence approaching — firm, controlled footsteps.
A male voice cuts through the space with a clarity that doesn’t match his condition.
"They messed up this one’s dosage."
A brief pause.
"Fix it."
The impact comes right after.
Direct.
Precise.
Erasing what remained of awareness before any reaction could exist.
Hours dragged on without announcement, dissolving into each other until time stopped being a measure and became a sensation — a diffuse, almost imperceptible weight accumulating in the air.
Gradually, the groups returned.
Scattered laughter. Loose comments. Superficial accounts of a day that, at first glance, carried nothing beyond the ordinary.
The foreigners seemed faintly charmed, like people experiencing the world with controlled curiosity.
The others… simply satisfied to be outside.
Nothing unexpected.
Nothing worth attention.
Except for what was missing.
Marc Snuffy had not returned.
And that alone wouldn’t be enough to cause unease — not immediately.
Discomfort doesn’t come from a single event.
It seeps in through repetition.
Through accumulation.
Through absence beginning to stand out against the pattern.
Especially when three names don’t answer.
Rin Itoshi.
Reo Mikage.
Alexis Ness.
"They’re taking too long," Charles Chevalier mutters, sprawled on the floor, eyes fixed on the ceiling as if expecting it to respond. "Where’s Rin?"
"Reo’s not answering," Seishiro Nagi murmurs, thumb persistent against the screen, message after message sent into absolute digital silence.
"They’re probably just enjoying themselves," Hyoma Chigiri comments — but there’s a slight pause before he finishes, as if he doesn’t quite believe it himself.
"Snuffy hasn’t come back either," Lavinho observes, stepping closer to Noel Noa, who only shakes his head.
"That’s… strange," Chris Prince says, not raising his voice, but enough to shift the axis of the conversation.
The silence that follows isn’t complete.
It never is.
There are breaths. Movements. The sound of fabric brushing against fabric.
But something changes.
A collective attention, not yet acknowledged, begins to form.
"I’ll call," Nagi decides, already dialing.
"Drama," Michael Kaiser says, almost automatically, as if the word were a conditioned reflex.
"That’s called caring," Yoichi Isagi shoots back without hesitation. "Ah… right. You wouldn’t know what that is, would you?"
Kaiser’s gaze cuts through the space between them.
Sharp. Precise.
But there’s no time for escalation.
The phone rings.
First tone.
Second.
Third—
A click.
"Hiori?!" Nagi straightens slightly, surprise breaking through his usual monotony.
"Put it on speaker," Chigiri murmurs.
The sound expands into the room.
"...Fuck… Nagi…" Yo Hiori’s voice comes through, low, uneven, as if being pressed down by something unseen.
"Where’s Reo? Why did you pick up his phone?" Nagi asks, direct.
"And Rin?!" Charles is already on his feet, nervous energy vibrating through him.
"And Ness?" Kurona Ranze adds simply, drawing glances in his direction.
A pause.
Too short to be absence.
Too long to be natural.
"I… I need to check something…" Hiori murmurs. A dry sound in the background. Metallic? Or just the mind trying to fill gaps. "Shit… shit… I’ll—"
The call drops.
No goodbye.
No explanation.
Now the silence is different.
It has weight.
Anri Teieri already has her phone in hand before she even realizes she’s decided to act. She calls Snuffy.
Once.
Twice.
No answer.
Ego Jinpachi watches.
He says nothing.
But his eyes… calculate.
Accident.
Delay.
Disorganization.
Simple hypotheses.
Weak ones.
"This just makes it worse," Eita Otoya mutters.
And time starts moving again.
Heavier now.
Slower.
As if every minute has to pass through something before it can exist.
Until the door opens.
Snuffy’s group returns.
But something doesn’t fit.
Not immediately visible.
There are no injuries. No explicit chaos.
And yet—
There’s a flaw.
They don’t carry the day with them.
No trace of lightness.
No overlapping voices.
The energy… didn’t come back.
"Finally—" Chris starts, but the sentence dissolves when he sees Snuffy’s face. "Are you—?"
The question doesn’t finish.
"Where are Reo, Rin, and Ness?" Anri asks, with excessive care, as if the tone itself might alter the answer.
Snuffy doesn’t respond right away.
He sits.
The sound of his body meeting the seat is louder than it should be.
His eyes… aren’t there.
Shoei Barou notices first.
Recognizes it.
Not by context — by pattern.
It’s the same look from when something has already been lost before being said out loud.
"...They’re gone," Snuffy murmurs.
The world doesn’t react.
Not immediately.
But people do.
Movement. Adjustment. Postures shift. Bodies that were relaxed now straighten, rigid.
"What?" Noa asks, direct.
"They’re gone," this time louder. Clearer. "They split off for a few minutes. I went after them."
He pauses.
"The phone was ringing."
Nagi turns.
Rensuke Kunigami is already holding three phones.
Too heavy to be just objects.
"They were in an alley," Snuffy continues. "All three of them."
"And…" Meguru Bachira starts, his voice faltering. "That was there too…"
A bag.
Fabric.
Clothes.
Far too recognizable.
The air seems to shrink.
"Let’s stay calm," Anri says, too quickly. "It could have been a robbery—"
"What kind of robbery leaves the clothes behind?" Hiori cuts in, irritation sharp as a blade.
No one answers.
Snuffy places something on the table.
A piece of paper.
Simple.
Light.
And still—wrong.
"This was with them. I couldn’t read it."
Anri steps closer.
Each movement measured.
She picks up the note.
Reads.
Stops.
Her eyes widen before her breath can catch up.
The phone rings.
She answers.
But doesn’t take her eyes off the paper.
"We need to call the police…" her voice comes out lower than expected. "They were taken by… Higanbana no Shisha."
The name doesn’t echo.
It sinks.
The older ones exchange looks.
Not full recognition—
But close enough.
Enough.
On the paper, the handwriting is too careful.
Almost elegant.
"I borrowed your players.
I’ll return them soon. In… prettier versions."
The signature is a curved stroke.
And below—
A drawing.
Handmade.
Long, thin petals.
A red spider lily.
The ink still looks wet.
Or maybe that’s just the impression.
Because no one there steps closer to check.