Humans believe they are creating something new, but in truth, they are pulling the shadows of another world into this one. Every fictional character, every imaginary monster—they all exist somewhere in a parallel universe. Imagination is the window through which they peer into our world.
Be warned! If you stare into the darkness of your imagination for too long, that darkness will begin to stare back at you.
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The city never truly slept.
Even at dawn, when the sky hovered between night and morning, MN City breathed like a restless beast—traffic murmured in distant veins, neon signs flickered with dying persistence, and the cold wind carried the scent of metal, rain, and exhaustion.
Kageaki Yugen walked alone through this half-awake world.
At twenty-two, his frame was slender, almost fragile, yet his steps were steady, deliberate. His black coat swayed gently as he moved, the collar turned up against the chill. His face bore no remarkable features—no striking beauty, no obvious flaw—but his eyes told a different story. They were eyes that had seen too much loss too early, eyes that carried a permanent shadow, as if something behind them was always watching, always waiting.
The MN Corporate Office rose before him like a monument to indifference: glass walls reflecting a world that never reflected him back. Employees passed by in groups, laughter and chatter flowing around him like water around a stone. No one greeted him. No one noticed him.
That was normal.
To his colleagues, Kageaki was an enigma—silent, withdrawn, a presence that slipped through hallways without leaving footprints. Rumors followed him in whispers: *He's creepy.* *He never talks.* *There's something wrong with him.*
But the truth was painfully simple.
Kageaki was tired.
Inside the office, the fluorescent lights hummed relentlessly. His desk sat at the far end of the floor, isolated, as if deliberately placed away from human warmth. Before he could even sit down, a stack of files landed heavily on his table.
"Finish these by tonight," a senior employee said flatly, not bothering to meet his eyes. "They're urgent."
Kageaki nodded.
This was how it always went.
Extra work arrived under false smiles and empty excuses. Mistakes made by others somehow became his responsibility. If he protested, he was told he was being difficult. If he stayed silent, they took advantage of him. Either way, he lost.
By noon, his fingers ached from typing, his eyes burned, and his stomach growled in quiet protest. He ignored it. Hunger was familiar. Pain was familiar. Loneliness—*that* was the oldest companion he had ever known.
He had walked hand in hand with depression since childhood.
His father had died before Kageaki was even born—an existence reduced to photographs and half-finished stories. His mother followed when he was only three, her warmth fading into the cold permanence of memory. His grandfather, the man who had tried to fill every empty space with love and discipline, passed away when Kageaki was sixteen.
The funeral rain had been relentless that day.
Standing before the grave, umbrella shaking in his hands, Kageaki had realized something terrifying:
He had no one left.
From that moment on, life became survival rather than living. He learned to cook for himself, to wake himself up, to endure silence. Nights stretched endlessly, filled with questions that had no answers.
*Why am I still here?*
The only light that entered that darkness came in the form of one person.
Haru.
Haru had appeared in his life like an uninvited miracle. A boy with messy hair, an easy grin, and eyes full of stubborn hope. He had no surname, no known parents—raised in an orphanage, abandoned by a world that never bothered to look back.
Yet Haru smiled anyway.
To Kageaki, Haru was not just a friend. They were brothers—bound not by blood, but by shared emptiness. They understood each other without words. When Kageaki sat in silence, Haru sat beside him. When Kageaki felt like drowning, Haru dragged him back to the surface.
They dreamed together.
Haru attended college, juggling part-time jobs, saving every yen with quiet determination. "Someday," he would say, eyes shining, "we'll leave this place behind. We'll build something that belongs to us."
Kageaki believed him.
Then came the night that shattered everything.
Rain-soaked streets. Blinding headlights. A scream swallowed by the sound of impact.
Haru lay motionless on the asphalt when Kageaki arrived, blood mixing with rainwater, his body unnaturally still. The sirens came too late. The world moved too slowly.
The diagnosis was cruel in its simplicity.
*Coma.*
Days blurred into nights inside the hospital. Machines breathed for Haru, monitors beeped with mechanical indifference. Kageaki sat beside the bed, never leaving, his hand tightly gripping Haru's cold fingers as if warmth alone could pull him back.
"You promised," Kageaki whispered, voice trembling. "You said we'd build a future together."
There was no response.
Something inside Kageaki began to crack.
The universe had taken everything from him—again and again—without explanation, without mercy. Sitting in that sterile white room, despair finally overflowed.
He bowed his head, tears dripping onto the sheets, and screamed into the silence.
"Why do I always have to lose?!"
His voice broke.
"First my father, then my mother, then Grandpa… and now Haru too?"
His grip tightened, knuckles white.
"Please! Give me back Haru," he begged, eyes burning with madness and grief. "Otherwise, I will snatch him away from you!"
The moment the words left his mouth—
The world fractured.
A sound like shattering glass echoed through reality itself. Darkness swallowed everything. Kageaki felt weightless, as if he were falling through an endless void. His heart pounded violently, his breath trapped in his chest.
When he opened his eyes, the hospital was gone.
The sky above him was a wounded crimson, cracked with black veins like a dying organ. The air felt heavy, thick with an unfamiliar pressure. Beneath his trembling hands lay grass—red, wet, and warm, as if soaked in blood.
Towering trees stretched toward the horizon, their twisted branches clawing at the sky like skeletal hands. The forest breathed.
Then—a voice.
Not loud. Not clear.
A muffled, hazy whisper slid directly into his ear, bypassing sound itself.
"Don't stare through the window."
Kageaki froze.
"Don't stare through the window."
His head throbbed violently.
"Don't stare through the window!"
Pain exploded behind his eyes, sharp and unbearable, as if something were trying to tear its way into his mind.
Kageaki screamed.
And deep within the Crimson Forest, something unseen stirred—
—as if it had been waiting for him all along.