Chapter 36: The Week of Silence
Seven days had passed since the world decided their truth was a lie. Seven days since the police closed the case, since doctors called it "shared psychosis," since news reports spoke of their "trauma" with pitying voices. For Kaguro, Bachi, Kashimo, Kamiko, and Alan, these seven days stretched into an eternity of silent suffering. The vibrant friendship that once defined them had shattered, leaving behind five isolated islands of pain in a sea of disbelief. What remained wasn't a team but a collection of broken survivors, each drowning in their private nightmare. This was the final torture - not the realms they'd visited, but returning to a world that refused to believe them.
Kaguro's Descent into Nothingness
Kaguro's mind, once his greatest asset, had become his torturer. Sleep became a battleground where he always lost. Nearly every night, he'd awaken paralyzed, his body refusing to obey while his consciousness screamed in the dark. The familiar shapes of his bedroom would morph into terrifying visions - the shadow of his desk chair becoming the hulking form of the bear, the pattern of his wallpaper twisting into the grotesque grin of the Momo-faced warrior. Even the ordinary hum of electronics took on a sinister quality, echoing the distorted chants of Entity 404 until he had to press pillows against his ears.
During daylight hours, he moved through his home like a ghost. The logical frameworks that once structured his understanding of reality now seemed like childish illusions. What was the point of studying mathematics when the fundamental laws of existence had proven so fluid? What value did a future hold in a world that could so easily dismiss truth? A profound nihilism settled in his bones, heavier than any fatigue. He'd find himself staring at ordinary objects - a kitchen knife, the balcony railing - not with intention, but with a hollow curiosity about how easily the illusion of life could be broken. The thought of simply ceasing to exist began to feel less like a fear and more like a logical conclusion to an unsolvable problem.
Bachi's Fortress of Silence
While others crumbled visibly, Bachi built walls around himself. He didn't scream or cry; he simply stopped. For seven full days, he spoke to no one - not his worried parents, not his friends. He'd sit for hours in the same position, his eyes fixed on nothing, while his mind worked relentlessly. He was reverse-engineering the madness, trying to find the blueprint in the chaos.
His memory became a high-definition projector of horror. He could feel the exact texture of the bear's fur under his blade, smell the acrid scent of gunpowder in the courtroom, hear the precise pitch of Johnson's final, broken words. The haunted city's unnatural glow and the glitching school's distorted announcements played behind his eyelids in perfect detail. He needed to organize it, to find the pattern that would make it make sense to everyone else. The words formed perfect sentences in his mind - clear, undeniable explanations - but when he opened his mouth to speak them, nothing came out. How could he prove the reality of a nightmare to people living in a dream? His silence became a fortress, and he was both its prisoner and its guard.
Kashimo's Cycle of Torment
For Kashimo, night brought no rest, only different forms of torture. His dreams weren't dreams but vivid recreations. He'd feel the poison coursing through his veins again, the cold sweat and trembling muscles as Michelle watched with empty eyes. Just as quickly, he'd be back in the Realm of Darkness, watching Kamiko fall, then Alan, feeling the terrible impact as he got stabbed. Each horror blended into the next in a seamless loop of suffering.
The physical strength that once defined him now felt like a betrayal. His hands, which had fought bears and warriors, now trembled uncontrollably when he tried to hold a glass of water. The depression was a physical presence, a weight on his lungs that made every breath an effort. He felt disconnected from everything - the food his mother cooked tasted like ash, his father's concerned words sounded distant and meaningless. The boy who once faced death without flinching now jumped at slamming doors, his nerves frayed beyond repair. He was a warrior with no war to fight, haunted by battles nobody believed had happened.
The Quiet House of Kamiko and Alan
In the house Kamiko and Alan now shared, silence had become the third resident. They moved through rooms like ghosts, careful not to touch, not to speak. The bedroom they shared was the heart of this silence - two beds, two breathing patterns, but no "good nights" or "good mornings." The comforting rituals of their friendship had vanished, replaced by a heavy, unspoken understanding of shared damage.
Kamiko, who had always been the protector, watched Alan fade with a helpless ache in his chest. He saw how Alan's eyes stayed fixed on nothing, how his meals went half-eaten, how he flinched at unexpected sounds. Every instinct told Kamiko to fix it, to say the right words that would make the pain stop. But the words had deserted him. His own mental strength, which had survived Michelle's abuse and interdimensional battles, had finally fractured under the weight of the world's disbelief. The war was no longer against monsters you could punch or outsmart - it was against pitying looks and official diagnoses, and he had no weapons for that fight.
Alan retreated further inside himself each day. The world's verdict - that he was mentally ill - felt like the final confirmation of something he'd always suspected. First his mother had hurt him, then demons had tortured him, and now doctors and reporters gently insisted that none of it was real. The surgical mask was gone, but he felt more invisible than ever. He'd stare at his reflection in windows, wondering if the person looking back was the real Alan or just a collection of symptoms in a patient file. The effort of pretending to be normal, of trying to believe in a world that called him a liar, was too exhausting. It was easier to be quiet. Easier to disappear.
The Eighth Day
For seven days and seven nights, the silence held. No messages, no phone calls, no attempts to bridge the distance between them. They didn't attend school. They barely spoke to their parents, who moved through homes filled with a helpless, watching anxiety. The depression had become a physical presence in five different houses, thick and suffocating. They had reached the absolute bottom, where simply continuing to breathe felt like an impossible task.
Then, on the morning of the eighth day, something shifted.
A single notification appeared in the long-dormant Telegram group. The sound, so familiar yet so foreign after the week of silence, made four phones light up simultaneously. The message was from Alan.
Alan: can we all come to the park tomorrow
The simplicity of the question hung in the digital space between them. In the deathly quiet that had prevailed, it sounded as loud as a shout. The group, which had seemed clinically dead, registered a heartbeat.
Bachi was the first to respond, his instincts for analysis overriding his self-imposed silence.
Bachi:okay, why?
Then Kaguro, his mind grasping at this sudden, concrete thought in the fog of his nihilism.
Kaguro:maybe talking about our bizzare thoughts
Kashimo's reply came in a burst of raw, unfiltered emotion.
Kashimo:i cannot handle it, what is even happening here and there
The exchange wasn't joyful or even hopeful. It was strained, heavy with the weight of their shared suffering. But it was communication. For the first time in 168 hours, they were speaking to each other. After a few more tentative messages, an agreement formed. A plan took shape.
They would meet. They would break the silence with words.
The meeting was scheduled for the next day at 4:00 p.m. at their usual spot in the park. It was a small thing - just a time, a place, a possibility. But for five friends lost in separate darknesses, it was the first thread of light they'd seen in a week. It was a chance, fragile as a spider's web, to begin finding their way back to each other, and maybe back to themselves.
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Chapter 36 Ends
To be continued…