Chapter 34 : the reality of expected madness
The silence in Kamiko's house was a fragile thing, shattered the next morning by the first ring of a doorbell. It was not the sound of a friendly visitor. It was a herald.
From the living room window, Kaguro watched as a single news van pulled up to the curb. Then another. Within ten minutes, the street was a clogged artery of satellite trucks, their dishes pointed at the sky like mechanical flowers seeking a poisonous sun. Reporters, armed with microphones and the hungry gleam of a breaking story, swarmed the pavement. Photographers with long lenses stood as a predatory line at the property's edge.
"They're here," Kaguro said, his voice flat. The others didn't need to ask who.
The siege had begun.
It started with shouted questions through the closed door, voices amplified by a need for a scoop. "Kamiko! Can you tell us what happened?" "Alan, how does it feel to be home?" The words were sympathetic, but the intent was a scalpel, designed to pry them open.
Kamiko's mother, her face pale and etched with a new, permanent anxiety, peeked through the blinds. "Oh, my god," she whispered, letting the slat fall back into place. "The whole world is out there."
The world, it seemed, had decided their story was its newest obsession. The police had released their names—standard procedure for found missing persons—and the bizarre, unresolved nature of the case was a media magnet. Five teenagers and an unidentified man, vanishing from a locked, camera-monitored room and reappearing in the same spot twenty-four hours later? It was a mystery that wrote its own headlines.
By noon, the first special news bulletin cut into regular programming. On the television screen, a sharply dressed anchor sat before a backdrop featuring the boys' school photos.
"The mystery deepens in the baffling case of the returned teenagers," the anchor intoned, her voice a practiced blend of gravity and intrigue. "While authorities remain tight-lipped, sources confirm there are no leads on where the five boys spent their missing day. The sixth individual, an adult male found with them, remains in a coma at a local hospital. The only statement from the boys themselves? A story so fantastical, it's left everyone questioning… everything."
The screen cut to a chaotic clip from outside the school the previous day. A reporter was shoving a microphone toward Bachi's father as he tried to shield his son and hurry him to a car. "Sir! Sir! Can your son tell us where he was? What really happened?"
Bachi's father, his face a mask of exhausted fury, barked, "No comment! Leave us alone!"
But the cameras were merciless. They captured the dazed, thousand-yard stares of the five friends, the way they flinched from the sudden flashes, the way Alan seemed to shrink into Kamiko's side. The footage was raw, damning, and perfect for television.
The chapter of their quiet, terrifying reunion was over. The chapter of their very public unraveling had begun.
The pressure was a physical force, a constant, low-grade hum that vibrated through the walls of the house. The landline phone, when Kamiko's mother foolishly answered it, was a reporter from a national tabloid. She slammed it down, her hand trembling. Their personal mobile phones, once buzzing with messages from concerned friends, were now inundated with unknown numbers and social media alerts. They had become trending topics. Memes were made. Conspiracy theories bloomed in the dark soil of the internet.
The school was no sanctuary. When their parents, after tense discussions with lawyers and a deeply skeptical principal, decided they should attempt a return to normalcy, the ordeal was simply transplanted.
A police barricade and a handful of overwhelmed school security guards were the only things holding back the media horde at the school gates. The five of them were forced to walk a gauntlet. The air exploded with the sound of shouting and the rapid-fire clicking of cameras.
"Kaguro! Look over here!"
"Kamiko,is it true you can't remember anything?"
"Bachi!Did you run away? Were you kidnapped?"
"Alan!Who was the man you were with?"
The questions were a relentless barrage, a storm of noise and light. They kept their heads down, their parents forming a protective, but pitifully small, phalanx around them. Kashimo's fists were clenched so tight his knuckles were white. Alan focused on his feet, one in front of the other, a silent mantra to keep from screaming.
Inside the school was no better. The hallways, usually a river of noise and movement, fell into a dead hush as they passed. Every eye was on them. Whispers slithered through the silence like snakes.
"...think they're lying?"
"...look totally spaced out."
"...my dad says they were probably on some crazy drug binge."
"...heard the police found weird symbols..."
They were specters in their own lives. Friends didn't know how to talk to them. Teachers looked at them with a mixture of pity and profound unease. Tumika, their old rival, merely smirked from a distance, enjoying the show.
The breaking point came during lunch. A bold journalist, having somehow slipped past security, appeared at the door of the cafeteria with a cameraman. He zeroed in on their table, a lone island of silence in the noisy room.
"Gentlemen! A moment of your time! The public deserves to know the truth. Your story about… another realm," he said, the words dripping with condescending skepticism. "Can you elaborate? What was it like? Were there… monsters?"
The entire cafeteria fell silent. Hundreds of students turned to watch.
Kaguro felt a hot flush of anger and humiliation. This was it. They were being treated like circus freaks. He stood up, his chair scraping loudly against the floor. "We told the truth," he said, his voice low but carrying in the quiet. "We don't have anything else to say."
The reporter's smile was patronizing. "The truth? Son, the truth doesn't involve vanishing into thin air. People are worried about you. Your parents are worried. Don't you think you owe everyone a real explanation?"
It was Alan who snapped. The pressure, the fear, the sleepless nights, the stares—it all coalesced into a single, desperate outburst. He slammed his hands on the table, tears of frustration springing to his eyes.
"We told you the real explanation!" he cried out, his voice cracking with a raw, painful energy that silenced even the reporter. "We were in another place! A dark realm with a haunted city and a… a demon who made us fight! There was a school that wasn't a school, with children who weren't children, and they offered us knives and called it purification! We saw a man get his head cut off and then get brought back to life! We were saved by a shadow god who talks in a language that breaks the air! That's the truth! That's where we were! Now will you please, please just leave us alone?!"
A profound, absolute silence greeted his words. It was more devastating than any noise. He had laid their horrific, sacred truth bare before the entire school, and the response was not belief, not understanding, but a stunned, pitying, and deeply uncomfortable silence.
The reporter's smirk was gone, replaced by a look of clinical fascination. He had his soundbite. He had just recorded a teenage boy's complete psychological breakdown on national television.
Alan crumpled back into his seat, sobbing quietly into his hands. Kamiko put a firm arm around him, glaring daggers at the reporter until a finally alerted security guard escorted the man out.
The damage was done.
That evening, the story exploded anew. This time, the angle had shifted. The mystery of the disappearance was now a tragedy of a shared mental break. Alan's tearful, fantastical rant was the centerpiece of every broadcast.
"A cry for help?" one psychologist, invited as a studio guest, speculated gravely. "This elaborate shared delusion is a classic coping mechanism for a deeply traumatic event they are either unable or unwilling to disclose. The details—monsters, demons, other realms—are archetypal symbols of fear and powerlessness."
Another news channel ran a banner: GONE FOR A DAY, LOST IN MADNESS? The Chilling Testimony of the Returned Teens.
They were no longer just missing persons. They were a case study. They were a cautionary tale. They were crazy.
Sitting in the living room, watching their own trauma being dissected and dismissed on national television, was a unique form of hell. Bachi muted the TV, unable to bear the commentary any longer. The silence that returned was thick with despair.
"We never should have said anything," Kashimo muttered, his head in his hands. "We should have just stuck to the blackout story."
"It wouldn't have mattered," Kaguro replied, his voice hollow. He gestured at the dark screen. "They would have come to this conclusion anyway. The truth was the only thing we had, and it's the one thing that makes us look insane."
The doorbell rang again, a persistent, annoying sound. Kamiko's mother went to the door, speaking through the intercom. It was another reporter. She came back into the living room, her shoulders slumped in defeat. "They're not going away," she said, her voice tired. "They think you're… unwell. They think we need to 'get you help'."
The word "help" hung in the air, synonymous with white rooms, medication, and being permanently separated from each other.
Later that night, as the media circus outside began to dim slightly, the parents gathered their sons. The tears from the first day of reunion had dried, replaced by a grim, fearful resolve. Bachi's father, a normally stoic man, had tears in his eyes as he pulled his son into a tight hug.
"I don't know what happened to you," he whispered, his voice rough with emotion. "I don't understand any of this. But you're my son. You're home. That's all that matters."
Alan's adoptive mother held both him and Kamiko close. "We will get through this," she said, her voice trembling but firm. "We will find a way. No one is taking you away from me. No one."
One by one, the families departed for their own homes, carving a path through the lingering reporters with a newfound, protective fury. The five friends were separated again, but the bond between them had never been stronger, forged in the shared fire of a horror no one else could see and a disbelief that felt like a betrayal.
Kaguro was the last to leave. At the door, he turned and looked back at Kamiko and Alan. No words were needed. Their faces, pale and exhausted, said everything. They had faced down a Midnight Demon and a realm of darkness, but the judgment of their own world, the simple, crushing weight of being called liars and lunatics, was a battle they had no idea how to fight.
He stepped out into the night, his father's arm a solid, reassuring weight across his shoulders. Camera flashes popped like distant lightning, and a few shouted questions followed him to the car. He didn't flinch. He didn't look back.
They were home. They were with their families. But as the car pulled away from the curb, leaving the haunted house and the lingering press behind, Kaguro knew with a cold certainty that they had never been further from safety. The nightmare wasn't the other realms. The nightmare was trying to live in this one, forever branded as the boys who had gone mad.
The world had its answer to the question "Where have you been?"
It had decided they had been nowhere at all.And that was the most terrifying place of all.
Chapter 34 Ends
To be continued