After that night, Arnold vanished from the world.
He didn't leave the house, didn't answer the phone, didn't touch his work shoes.
He withdrew like a shadow unwilling to cling to the light.
The blanket became a thin barrier against a world that felt increasingly foreign.
Beneath the thick fabric, his body curled up, unmoving.
The ticking of the wall clock sounded louder than usual.
Wind slipped through the window cracks, scraping the roof tiles like whispers that refused to stop.
Time didn't heal. It merely moved forward, slowly pressing down on every inch of Arnold's body with an invisible weight.
He took a full week off.
But not to rest—just to sink.
He began to replay it in his head—again and again,
the nightmare that never woke,
the news that never aired,
the police too clean,
the death too silent.
And that cry.
Something felt out of place beneath it all.
A faint pattern behind the thin fog, and Arnold tried to piece it together.
Could it be… someone was playing the opposite role to his?
Not petty crime, not careless perpetrators—
but a shadow figure, an antagonist who knew how to cover their tracks,
who understood that true chaos didn't come from noise,
but from silence.
He sat up.
A hand covered his mouth.
His eyes stared blankly—then hardened,
as if seeing something he couldn't yet name.
The living room became the place he poured all his unrest.
He turned on the radio and television at once,
letting the two sound waves collide in a near-mystical cacophony.
He wrote—names, times, places, possibilities.
The tip of his pen dug deep into the paper, the ink nearly bleeding through the pages.
His eyes reddened.
His hands trembled, but didn't stop.
And then,
two words cut through the noise on the radio—
"secret mission."
Arnold stopped writing.
His head turned slowly toward the radio, as if the voice might become aware of him.
He listened.
Held his breath.
Each word piled on the next, forming something more than a report.
More than information.
As the sun crept high over the city,
Misleidend returned to the streets.
Not with confidence,
but with the need to understand.
The narrow alleys became his vantage point.
A group of youths stood in black hoodies—
their body language suspicious,
their movements too calculated.
His reflexes took over.
He struck fast, trained motions bringing each one down until they lay groaning or silent.
But then, something unusual happened.
People started to gather, one by one.
But there were no claps.
No nods of respect.
Only pale faces, eyes that turned away, lips sealed tight—
fearful, anxious… and angry?
Misleidend stood among them.
His body motionless, but his thoughts in chaos.
He didn't understand.
What had gone wrong?
And when it all became too heavy to grasp,
something inside him broke.
He felt suffocated by the silence that surrounded him.
The world became a dark room.
And in the middle—only him,
and a fractured mirror.
Then came a sound.
A child's laughter—soft, pure.
He felt a moment of warmth.
But then he looked at his hand.
The glove.
It was wet.
Red.
The laughter turned into a scream.
Sharp.
Panicked.
The crowd panicked.
Someone shouted.
Another called emergency services.
The word "psychotic" slipped through the murmurs.
Misleidend stepped back, then ran.
Not out of fear—
but because he couldn't bear to stand another moment under the gaze of a world that now rejected him.
He ran through alleys,
colliding with shadows,
avoiding stares,
fleeing voices that echoed louder in his mind than any siren.
The weight in his chest thickened—
regret,
rage,
confusion,
and something deeper:
an inner collapse that had no language.
He no longer knew the way.
He only knew—
there was no one waiting at the end of any path.
He was alone.
In a space with no exits.
No arms to hold him.
No shoulder to lean on.
Only him…
And the bloodied gloves.
And the fractured mirror.
And that scream.
And—
…something beginning to stare back
from inside himself.
"Alienation doesn't always mean no one is around—
sometimes, it means no one truly sees who you are behind the eyes that look at you."