Ichizawa Tetsu was pulled from the clinging limbs of sleep by the loud, insistent blare of the alarm clock.
The sudden silence did little to ease the startling intrusion, so he slammed his palm down on the snooze button.
With a moan, he forced himself to sit, the dim morning light tentatively penetrating through the holes in his cheap blinds to create stripes on his room's disorganized surface. Sleep-tousled strands of his golden-yellow hair stuck out at odd angles as he ran a hand through his stubbornly unruly hair.
Still half asleep, he muttered, "Ugh… is it morning already?
The prospect of yet another dull school day loomed before him, a blank canvas in contrast to the excitement of the previous evening.
He sighed as if he were giving up, swung his legs out of bed, and began his morning ritual. In his quiet home, the sound of the fabric as he pulled on his slightly rumpled school uniform was reassuring. Feeling the burden of homework, he hurriedly stuffed his notebooks and schoolbooks into his battered backpack. He picked up a piece of toast and went out into the daylight.
Before the hectic day started, the streets were still peaceful in the early morning. The sweet scent of flowers from a nearby garden was carried by a light breeze. Although it was a pleasant moment, Tetsu's strange worry persisted.
With an almost imperceptible smile on his lips, he instinctively headed for Haruto's house.
He could already picture the disorganized scene that would be waiting for him:
Haruto, who was consistently late and was most likely trying to fix his equally wild gray hair or find a lost sock.
Tetsu knocked with his typical assured rhythm as he arrived at Haruto's somewhat ancient front gate.
"Hey, Haruto! Get up! You slept in again, so don't make me late!"
Usually, that would be followed by a muttered moan from inside or the sound of Haruto's parents rising to greet him cheerfully at the door.
But there was nothing this time.
Haruto didn't respond drowsily, and his parents didn't make any welcoming noise.
Nothing but silence.
All the sounds of the waking neighborhood seemed to be swallowed by a dense, odd silence.
Tetsu scowled as a tiny bit of anxiety crept into his mind.
He knocked once more, louder this time, and the sound reverberated through the silence.
"Haruto! Man, hurry up! We will be late.
Nothing has changed.
There was no indication of the typical morning chaos in Haruto's bedroom, as the curtains remained drawn.
Tetsu shifted uneasily and took a step back to take another look at the house.
Something didn't feel right. Haruto always waited for Tetsu, even if he was late.
"Maybe he… already left?"
Even to himself, Tetsu's mumbled words sounded insincere. It took him a moment to believe it.
He forced himself to act normal and carefree in an attempt to get rid of the mounting anxiety, and he began to walk in the direction of Mio's house.
The same weird silence was there when he arrived. Behind its well-kept garden, her modest, tidy house was quiet. He rapped on the door, waited in the eternal silence, and then knocked again, his knuckles rapping the hard wood. No response.
Tetsu tried to sound casual when he said, "Don't tell me you two actually left without me," but his voice belied the knot of anxiety in his stomach.
He took out his phone to see if there were any messages he might have missed and waited by Mio's gate for a few more minutes.
The screen remained utterly blank.
He started the lonesome walk to school after adjusting his backpack, which felt suddenly heavier, with a heavy sigh.
The anxiety in his stomach became a genuine, oppressive fear.
The typical bustling schoolyard was in full swing by the time he arrived at the school gates.
In stark contrast to the heaviness in Tetsu's chest, groups of students were chatting cheerfully, their loud greetings and laughter. In an attempt to feel better, he approached some classmates he saw near the entrance.
"Hey, Kaname, morning," Tetsu said, attempting to sound normal while addressing a tall boy with untidy dark hair.
"Have you seen Mio or Haruto this morning?"
Kaname looked perplexed and shook his head.
"No, I haven't seen them. Why? You three are always together, aren't you?
Tetsu uttered the odd and incorrect words, "They weren't… home," His simple inquiry became a worried frown as his eyebrows furrowed.
"That's… weird," remarked a girl who frequently participated in their lunch discussions and had short, tidy brown hair.
"Mio is never late. Perhaps they're both ill or something."
Tetsu answered, "Yeah, maybe," but the feeble justification did little to quell the mounting fear within him. A cold, uneasy feeling settled in his gut, and the knot in his stomach grew tighter.
The loud ringing of the first bell typically signaled the beginning of another typical day. But today it sounded like a dejected church bell.
The pupils entered their classrooms gradually. A low hum of anticipation for the day ahead replaced the usual morning chatter.
Tetsu sat down in the back where he usually sat, his gaze focused on the two vacant desks beside him, empty spaces that screamed an odd absence.
From history to arithmetic, the morning classes went by in a haze of routine, their predictability standing in sharp contrast to Tetsu's persistent uneasiness.
He made an effort to concentrate and act as though nothing was wrong, but his eyes kept going to the two empty seats.
His worry didn't really start to grow until the lesson right before lunch, as the clock was slowly approaching noon.
Are they really sick? he thought, the question growing louder by the minute.
Although Haruto was frequently late, he never went unnoticed.
And Mio was always early, Mio, the meticulous Mio.
The door of the classroom creaked open abruptly.
A teacher crept in and whispered something urgently to their geography teacher.
The teacher's eyes widened almost imperceptibly, and his already tense face tightened, before he nodded slowly.
With a pale face, hunched shoulders, and a gloomy, melancholy aura hovering over him like a black cloud, the instructor turned back to the class.
He began, his voice strained, his usual warmth gone.
"Class, I have some… very bad news to share."
Suddenly there was a heavy silence in the room.
The sensation of waiting evolved into a powerful sense that something negative was about to occur.
"Two of our classmates. Takeda Mio and Matsuda Haruto were discovered dead in their houses not long ago. Investigations into the situation are ongoing, and we have very few details at this time."
Tetsu felt a shockwave run through his entire body as the words struck him like a punch, taking his breath away. The familiar classroom tilted and faded around the edges of his blurry vision.
"No…" he muttered, his voice trembling, just loud enough to break the stunned silence in the room.
The classroom was filled with quiet sobs and gasps.
A girl in the front row had tears in her eyes and covered her mouth with trembling hands.
Everyone's young faces were pale and filled with pure disbelief as they gazed at the teacher. The solid ground beneath Tetsu's feet abruptly vanished, as if the entire world had turned upside down.
"I am aware that this is… very hard to believe," the instructor went on, his voice full of passion, his eyes moving over his students' distraught expressions.
"Please come forward right away if you have any information, no matter how small, that could help to clarify this tragedy."
"For anyone in need of assistance during this terrible time, school counselors will be on hand all day. To honor their memory, I ask that we observe a moment of silence for the time being."
There was a profound silence in the room, broken only by a few silent sobs.
However, Tetsu's mind was a whirlpool of incredulity and mounting anxiety. In a desperate attempt to feel something tangible, he clenched his hands beneath the desk, digging his fingernails into his palms.
How? How did this happen?
They were making ridiculous promises about the future, laughing, and singing off-key karaoke just last night.
And now they simply vanished? It was impossible to comprehend its simple cruelty.
A strange fog hung over the rest of the morning.
Tetsu hardly heard the teachers as they attempted to impart their knowledge, their voices muffled and distant.
He gazed at the blackboard in blankness, the images and numbers fading before his unfocused gaze. His mind was trapped in a loop of incredulity and melancholy, reliving moments of shared jokes, laughter, and their easy friendship.
The normally bustling cafeteria felt heavy during lunch. The commotion and noise disturbed his instincts. Until he discovered a peaceful, forgotten nook close to the dusty, seldom-used old stairwell, he wandered around aimlessly, like a ghost in his own life.
With his mind racing with unresolved questions and a growing, unsettling sense that something was amiss, he leaned against the cool, peeling paint of the wall, his chest constricted with a suffocating sadness.
"You look like someone who has lost everything."
Tetsu was abruptly jolted out of his melancholy reverie by the unexpected voice.
He glanced up and saw a man standing a few feet away, partially obscured by the stairwell's shadows.
Wearing a sleek, immaculate black suit, the man appeared to absorb the surrounding light.
His tall black top hat obscured his face, and his sardonic, astute voice seemed to assess Tetsu with an odd intensity.
"Who… who are you?"
Carefully, Tetsu pushed himself to his feet and asked. He had a strong sense that something was seriously wrong.
The man approached Tetsu cautiously and held out a simple white envelope.
"Someone who can give you… answers."
Tetsu paused, his thoughts racing.
He experienced a perplexing mixture of terror and a pressing need for an explanation for the awful event that had occurred.
He reached out and took the envelope against his better judgment. In his shaking hand, the cool, smooth paper felt oddly strange. "Ishizawa Tetsu," his name, was neatly written in fancy, unfamiliar handwriting on the front.
"What is this?" he asked.
The man said, "An invitation," in a smooth, low voice that seemed to reverberate in the silent corner.
"A chance for you to learn the real reason why your friends died."
Tetsu felt a chill of dread and tightened his hold on the envelope.
"What are you talking about? Why would you know about that?"
There was a growing suspicion that this meeting was not a coincidence, and it was evident in his rough voice.
Tetsu was held by the man's steady gaze.
"Ishizawa, there is a world beneath this one. People like your friends could be pawns in a much larger, more intricate game in this world."
"And you… you are not a pawn. You're a player.
Tetsu's initial astonishment transformed into a wave of rage and incredulity as his eyes narrowed.
"I'm not in the mood if this is some sort of sick, twisted joke." His melancholy seemed cruelly teased by the man's words.
The man calmly stated, "It is not a joke," unconcerned by Tetsu's mounting ire.
"But it's up to you to decide. You know where to find me if you genuinely want to comprehend and know the truth."
Tetsu experienced a wave of disgust and a sense of being watched. The entire meeting seemed incredibly inappropriate and disrespectful to his recent grief.
He moved his legs in the direction of the blue-uniformed security officers passing by as he instinctively retreated from the dim stairwell.
"Sir... sir," Tetsu yelled quickly.
The guards' curious expressions changed as they turned to face Tetsu.
Tetsu said, staring at the guards, "I met a man at that stairwell, and he doesn't look like any staff at this school."
One of them, a large man with a weary expression, asked, "Can you describe him?"
Tetsu responded, "He was wearing a black suit and a top hat. He said some very unusual things."
The guards listened calmly as they looked around the dark stairwell.
The guard said, "All right, kid, we'll have a look."
Their flashlights pierced the darkness as they cautiously entered the stairwell.
They returned with an apologetic expression after a thorough search.
"Kid, nobody is there. Are you certain about this?"
The other guard, an elderly man with keen eyes, inquired.
"Maybe it's just... your imagination?"
Tetsu insisted, a knot of frustration tightening in his chest, "Yes. I… I saw him."
But the man was nowhere to be found.
The guards looked at each other. The large guard gently suggested, "We'll keep an eye out, but maybe you should talk to the school counselor, okay?"
The security officers departed with a sigh of disappointment and a lingering sense of unease, their footsteps resonating down the deserted corridor.
Tetsu stood by himself, the strange encounter resembling a surreal dream brought on by his melancholy.
Attempting to act normally against a backdrop of intense sadness and persistent anxiety dominated the remainder of the school day. Every lesson seemed meaningless to him, and the teachers' words were meaningless.
He kept looking at the two vacant desks next to him. The void left by their jokes and laughter served as a painful reminder that they were no longer with us. In his mind, he kept reliving the encounter with the enigmatic man: the odd composure, the implausible assertions, the manner in which he had vanished.
Was it a trick of his depressed mind?
Or was there something more ominous happening?
Tetsu found himself rushing toward the school gates out of habit rather than thought as the last bell rang, releasing the pupils into the late afternoon sun.
He immediately considered returning home in an attempt to ignore the enigmatic man's invitation and find solace in the comfortable silence of his empty home.
However, two uniformed individuals—a detective and an officer—came up to him as he arrived at the main entrance.
Their serious expressions caught the attention of the remaining students at once.
A detective with white-yellow hair on the left approached with a serious expression that suggested he was focused and possibly anxious.
The detective was accompanied by a black-haired police officer dressed in a standard Japanese police uniform. His serious expression, like that of the detective, confirmed the significance of their arrival and the way it attracted students' attention.
The detective asked Tetsu, calmly but firmly, "Are you Ishizawa Tetsu?"
Tetsu nodded as a new wave of anxiety swept over him.
"Yes?"
With a steady gaze, the other officer stated, "We need to ask you a few questions about Matsuda Haruto and Takeda Mio."
"Your name has come up a lot in our conversations with their friends and classmates. All of the people we spoke with claimed that you were their best friend and that you spent a lot of time with them before the incident."
Tetsu felt a chill of dread.
"Incident?"
"What do you mean?"
No one had referred to their deaths as a "incident," as far as he knew. They had just been discovered dead, according to the teacher.
The first officer said, "Mr. Ishizawa," in a more solemn tone.
"We must be clear, even though we understand that you are going through a difficult moment."
"This was no coincidence."
Tetsu gasped.
"What are you saying?"
The second officer looked straight ahead.
"Our preliminary findings suggest that Takeda Mio and Matsuda Haruto were murdered."
Suffocating and heavy, the word hung in the air.
"Murdered?"
The world appeared to tilt once more, with a premeditated, heinous act taking the place of the natural cruelty of fate. Even Tetsu's initial sadness was overtaken by the shock of this new information, causing his mind to spin.
"Murdered?" he repeated, his legs suddenly feeling weak, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
"But, how. "Why?"
The first officer said, "Mr. Ishizawa, those are the questions we're trying to answer. We're trying to piece together what happened before they were found by talking to everyone who knew them."
Tetsu's thoughts were racing, attempting to comprehend the magnitude of this new knowledge.
Murder?
There was no way to consider it. He recounted their final evening together, including the karaoke, the laughter, and the seemingly routine farewells at the train station. He described their friendship, their daily schedule, and the absence of any overt threats or altercations.
The policemen listened intently, their expressions solemn.
They thanked Tetsu for his time and said they might need to speak with him again after asking a series of questions that felt both too personal and necessary.
Tetsu remained motionless as the police officers vanished into the throng of departing students. He felt the pressure of their words.
Murder. Mio and Haruto had not simply passed away in a tragic accident or from an unidentified illness.
They had been deliberately killed.
The words of the enigmatic man suddenly had meaning and sparked a fresh, deep insight. Is there any connection between this and the strange man?
Was there any chance he knew anything about what had happened?
All of a sudden, the familiar route home felt uncomfortable. The silence of his deserted home served as a stark reminder of his friends' absence rather than as a potential solace.
He was no longer able to ignore this. He felt he didn't have the time to devote to the police investigation. He was driven in a different direction by his desperate need for explanations and some kind of understanding in the face of this terrible reality.
His footsteps made an odd sound as he turned and dashed into the deserted school building. The long, twisted shadows created by the late afternoon sun added to the uneasy atmosphere. He made his way to the very end of the same staircase.
As though he had been waiting, the man in black was already there, leaning against the railing. He exuded the same odd serenity.
With a low whisper that seemed to absorb the echoes of the deserted stairwell, the figure said, "You came."
"They were murdered," Tetsu declared, his voice brimming with rage and grief.
The police news was still a raw, unhealed wound.
He continued. "I was just informed by the police. You claimed to have the answers."
The figure took a step closer, the shadow of his hat deepening over his features.
"Once you enter the world beneath this one, you'll know. a world in which the laws you are familiar with are not applicable."
"Where justice is a currency paid with sacrifice and blood, and where the shadows have teeth. If you are strong enough to deliver it, you will live in a world where those who stole your friends will be judged."
With a slight, nearly undetectable glow coming from his palm, he held out a gloved hand.
"Tetsu, are you prepared to see for yourself? To transcend the delusion and assert the authority to exact revenge on those you lost?"
"What?" Tetsu stumbled, a glimmer of insight beginning to appear in his azure eyes.
"This city is a multi-layered city. The one that everyone sees and that you walk on is just the surface. There is a hidden current beneath it, a web of rumors and shadows where old forces and contemporary aspirations converge. It is a place of power, secrets, and people who don't follow the law.
His voice trailed off to a near whisper as he hesitated.
"Haruto and Mio, your friends, were enmeshed in the reverberations of that deeper world. They were casualties in a conflict you are only now starting to understand, not just the victims of a random act."
"And you… you know about this?"
Tetsu inquired, his misgivings clashing with a frantic hope that this peculiar person might be the answer to his friends' senseless deaths.
"I don't know, but they do," the figure said with a smooth correction.
"An organization called the 'Darkside Destroyer.' They are committed to defending this planet against the invisible forces that prey on the defenseless."
"The 'game' I was referring to earlier... It is a battle for dominance, a covert conflict waged in the shadowy nooks of your community."
Darkside Destroyer?
Tetsu gave a mental sneer. Really? It sounds like it belongs in a bad manga.
"So... Mio and Haruto were killed because of this… 'game'?" A mixture of sadness and growing rage made Tetsu's voice tremble.
"Perhaps," the figure replied, "a straightforward word, maybe, but not incorrect."
"There are dangers and forces in this world that operate in the shadows and are invisible to most people. Mio and Haruto were victims of a fight that went beyond everyday life and became entangled in something they couldn't comprehend."
"And you believe that I can—what. Avenge them?" Tetsu found it difficult to comprehend the size of what the figure was implying.
He was a typical high school student who was still in shock over the terrible death of his closest pals.
The figure said, "That is beyond my knowledge, Ishizawa," with a fierce look in his eyes.
"You have the potential to change things and ensure that others don't experience what happened to your friends. They can provide you with the information you need, but more significantly, they can provide you with the ability to take action."
Tetsu's mind was racing with conflicting emotions as he gazed down at his hands. He struggled with sadness, fear, incredulity, and a strong desire for justice.
It seemed like something from a comic book to imagine a hidden world with invisible threats.
The chilling reality of Haruto and Mio's murder, the eerie encounter with the figure, however, all seemed to suggest that there was something more sinister lurking beneath the surface of his everyday existence.
He recalled Haruto's infectious laugh and how he could always lighten the mood with a dumb joke.
He recalled Mio's quiet brilliance, her astute observations that frequently saw past appearances, and her steadfast devotion to their friends.
He thought back to the pledge they had made just the night before, a pledge of close friendship and a commitment to forge ahead.
Their future had been taken in a violent, unthinkable act that the police now confirmed was not an accident, cruelly breaking that promise.
His blue eyes were filled with a new resolve, a desperate need for knowledge that overcame his fear as he gazed up at the figure.
"What am I supposed to do?"
There was a faint smile on the figure's lips, a trace of satisfaction in his dark face.
"Your dedication. They will lead you if you join the Darkside Destroyer. They will assist you in comprehending the world in which your friends disappeared."
"It won't be simple. It will be risky. However, it is the only way to get the answers you need and, possibly, the way to ensure that their deaths weren't in vain."
Tetsu paused just a fraction of a second longer.
He had a vivid vision of Haruto and Mio's happy, animated, and laughing faces. His stomach still knotted coldly in fear, a natural defense against the unknown.
However, it was overtaken by a desperate desire to comprehend the darkness that had extinguished their light and a burning need for vengeance. He had a burning determination that would lead him into the dark after the police confirmed the murder.
Tetsu said, "Fine," in a firm voice that belied the tremor of worry still coursing through him.
"I'll join."
He repeated. Louder.
"I'll join the Darkside Destroyer. Whatever it is."
With a steady gaze, the figure nodded.
"All right. Ishizawa, welcome to the dark world."
The sound of his polished shoes reverberated in the silence as the figure turned and started up the dimly lit staircase. A sense of finality weighed heavily on Tetsu as he took his first step away from the stairway's worn stone.
His everyday existence, which consisted of homework, karaoke evenings, and the consoling company of his friends, was genuinely over. In order to secure justice for Haruto and Mio, he was entering a world he had never heard of, one full of unspoken perils and incredible opportunities.
He felt the pressure of losing them, which was made even more intense by the knowledge of murder.
His eyes hardened with grim determination.
No matter the cost, he would discover the truth.
The bright oranges and purples of the sky faded to a melancholy gray as Tetsu walked home that evening under a dark, bruised twilight.
As though the city itself were holding its breath in sorrow, the streets were more subdued than usual, the familiar evening bustle muted. The first shock gradually gave way to a cold, simmering anger as the weight of the day's awful news weighed heavily on him.
With a dull thud, he dropped his bag on the floor of his tiny, quiet home and sat down heavily on the edge of his bed, staring at the blank space in his mind where Haruto and Mio should have been.
He kept thinking about what the figure had said: a quiet war, a hidden world. Everything seemed surreal, like an odd dream from which he was unable to awaken. However, the sobering reality of their murder, which was corroborated by the grave policemen, solidified his incredulity and gave the figure's assertions a horrifying veracity.
His fists clenched as he remembered the figure's intense stare.
There was nothing he could do. No matter how odd or hazardous the truth was, Haruto and Mio had to know it.
He could never have predicted the weight of his vow to them, which he had made during the brief excitement of their final night together.
Even if it meant believing in the unreal, he would delve into this hidden world, discover the secrets that led to their deaths, and pursue justice for his lost friends. A burning determination that would lead him into the darkness had been ignited in his soul by the confirmation of murder.