------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Author Note:
' ' = Thoughts
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*A/N: I am back.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
DING!
The door opened, and the small brass bell above it gave a soft, familiar jingle that briefly cut through the low murmur of the bar before being swallowed by the voices, laughter, clinking glasses, and the dull warmth of alcohol-soaked conversation.
The bartender spoke from behind the counter while wiping a wine glass with a white cloth. His gaze remained on the glass for the first moment, focused on the faint smudge near its rim, but habit made him glance toward the entrance all the same. The moment he did, his hand paused.
The person who had entered was covered from head to toe.
A long hood. A full-face visor. Gloves. A dark coat that concealed the body beneath it so completely that even gender, age, expression, and intention became difficult to guess. For a second, the bartender's eyes stayed on the figure longer than they normally would have.
Then he looked away.
He had worked behind a counter long enough to understand one simple truth: some people came to drink because they wanted to be seen, while others came because they did not want to exist for a while. Suspicious clothing, hidden faces, quiet steps, lowered heads—none of it was new to him. Unless someone caused trouble, curiosity was bad for business.
Kaelthorn stepped inside without acknowledging the greeting.
He scanned the room once. Most of the seats were occupied. Men leaned over tables with red faces and loosened collars, laughing at jokes that had already lost their meaning. A few office workers sat together in a corner, their ties pulled down and their voices gradually rising with each drink. Near the bar counter, a middle-aged man argued softly with his own glass, while two younger customers beside him listened to a story they had clearly heard more than once.
No one paid Kaelthorn much attention.
Most were already drunk enough to let strange things pass by them without question.
Kaelthorn moved toward an empty seat in the farthest corner and sat down with deliberate calm. His back faced the wall. The table gave him a clear line of sight across the bar, the entrance, the counter, and the person he had come to observe.
He picked up the menu card from the table and opened it.
His visor tilted slightly downward, giving the appearance that he was reading.
In reality, he barely glanced at it.
His attention was elsewhere.
More specifically, on a person sitting on a stool near the counter, holding a beer with an intoxicated expression and an unsteady posture. The person laughed once at something the bartender said, though the sound was delayed, as if their mind had received the joke several seconds late.
That person was the reason Kaelthorn had come here.
He had no intention of approaching them. No intention of speaking. Not yet. The purpose of this visit was simple confirmation.
A waiter soon approached Kaelthorn's table with a notepad in one hand and a pen in the other. From the waiter's perspective, Kaelthorn still appeared to be studying the menu because the visor gave nothing away. No eye movement. No expression. No direction of focus.
Kaelthorn: Hibiki 21.
The waiter's pen stopped above the notepad.
For a brief moment, he looked at Kaelthorn more carefully than before. Suspicion had existed in his eyes when he first approached, but it disappeared almost instantly, replaced by a bright and professional smile that carried more sincerity than it had any right to.
Waiter: Right away!
He turned and hurried off.
At that moment, Kaelthorn's appearance stopped mattering.
Whether the customer was suspicious, eccentric, secretive, or strange was no longer important. A person ordering Hibiki 21 in a place like this was not someone a waiter wanted to offend. Wealth had a quiet talent for making people polite, even when instinct told them something was wrong.
While the waiter went to prepare the drink, the person Kaelthorn had been observing slowly stood from their stool. The movement was unsteady. One hand pressed against the counter for balance, while the other reached into a pocket and placed money beside the unfinished glass. They murmured something to the bartender, received a distracted nod in return, and then began wobbling toward the exit.
Kaelthorn watched them leave.
He did not follow.
There was no need.
He had come only to confirm their presence, their condition, and their place within the movement of this world. That much was done. Pursuing them now would create unnecessary contact, and unnecessary contact had a habit of becoming noise.
A few moments later, the waiter returned.
THUD.
A glass was placed on Kaelthorn's table with careful respect. The amber whisky caught the dim bar light and held it softly, while the ice inside shifted with a faint, clean sound.
Waiter: Here's your order, sir. Is there anything else you need?
Kaelthorn lowered his attention to the glass.
Kaelthorn: That's all for now.
Waiter: Then… enjoy your drink, sir.
The waiter left immediately, no longer willing to disturb him. A customer like this was best handled with distance, respect, and silence. If he became annoyed and never returned, the loss would not belong to the bartender alone. Everyone who worked here understood that.
CLING.
The ice moved softly inside the glass as Kaelthorn picked it up.
He raised it toward his face.
Then the impossible happened quietly.
The rim of the glass reached the visor—and passed through it.
Not breaking it. Not pushing it aside. Not causing the surface to ripple like water. The glass simply crossed the boundary, as if the visor had decided that this one action was permitted. A portion of the glass disappeared through the dark surface and reached the mouth hidden beneath.
It was a bizarre sight.
A sight that should have drawn stares.
Yet no one in the bar reacted.
The bartender continued wiping another glass. The waiter moved toward a nearby table. The drunk customers continued talking, laughing, and forgetting themselves. To them, nothing strange had happened, or perhaps their minds had refused to keep the detail long enough to understand it.
The amber whisky slid down Kaelthorn's throat, leaving behind a controlled warmth that spread into his chest.
He finished the drink without haste.
Then he set the glass down, placed the bill on the table, and stood.
No one stopped him.
No one called after him.
The bell above the door gave another faint jingle as Kaelthorn left the bar and stepped back into the night.
.
.
.
There were still two hours before midnight, so the streets had not yet emptied completely. A few people could still be seen moving under the dull glow of streetlights and shop signs, but most of them were drunkards, exhausted salarymen, or workers returning home with their shoulders bent beneath the weight of another wasted day. The shops had already begun closing one after another, their shutters rattling down with tired metallic groans, while the remaining pedestrians walked without looking around, too drained to care about anything beyond reaching their beds.
Kaelthorn moved through them without drawing attention.
His appearance should have stood out. A hooded figure covered from head to toe, with a full-face visor and hands buried inside a dark coat, was not something that belonged naturally on an ordinary street. Yet no one stopped. No one stared for long. A few eyes passed over him and then slid away, as though their minds had decided that noticing him would require effort they did not have.
After walking for some time, Kaelthorn stopped in front of a small clinic.
The light inside was still on.
He looked at the building for a moment, confirming the name, the layout, the weak flow of activity within, and the general state of neglect. Then he stepped forward and entered.
CLICK.
The door opened with a small sound that felt too sharp in the quiet interior.
Inside, several old chairs lined the waiting area. A thin layer of dust had settled across their surfaces, untouched long enough to make it obvious that very few patients came here. The clock on the wall had stopped, its minute hand trapped at one, while the hour hand rested in a position that no longer mattered. The magazines on the side table were outdated. The air smelled faintly of disinfectant, old paper, and an emptiness that belonged only to places people had stopped trusting.
The only part of the clinic that looked even slightly maintained was the reception desk.
A nurse sat there, sleeping with her head resting on her folded arms. A computer screen glowed dimly in front of her, casting a pale light across her tired face. Beside it stood a small service bell, a pen holder, and a few files that had not been properly arranged.
Anyone could tell the business was not doing well.
Kaelthorn was not surprised.
The larger hospital nearby had reasonable costs, better equipment, trained staff, and enough reputation to pull away most of the patients in the area. Against such a competitor, a small private clinic like this had very little chance of survival unless it offered something unique, and from what Kaelthorn had observed, this place offered nothing except convenience and slow decline.
He walked to the reception desk and tapped the bell.
DING!
DING!
The nurse stirred at the noise. Her brows tightened first, then her fingers shifted against the desk as irritation pulled her out of sleep. She raised her head slowly, rubbing one eye as she looked at the figure standing in front of her.
Under normal circumstances, she might have asked why he was dressed like that. She might have wondered whether his condition was serious enough to require full covering, or whether he was simply another strange late-night visitor. But exhaustion and frustration reached her mouth before professionalism did.
Nurse: The clinic is about to close. Please come tomorrow.
After saying that, she lowered her head again, clearly intending to return to sleep and forget that anyone had entered.
Before she could settle back down, something heavy landed on the counter.
THUD.
Then another.
THUD.
A flicker of anger crossed her face.
She raised her head abruptly, her voice already rising.
Nurse: Sir, I said come—
Her words stopped.
Her eyes widened.
On the counter in front of her were stacks of cash.
Not a few bills. Not an envelope. Full stacks, arranged neatly, heavy enough that the sound they made against the desk still seemed to remain in the room. For several seconds, the nurse simply stared at them, her sleepiness vanishing so quickly that it almost looked painful.
Kaelthorn placed one more stack on the counter.
Then he returned both hands to his coat pockets.
Kaelthorn: Call your supervisor or the property owner. Tell them I want to buy this clinic. I have already confirmed the price of the place. If they can finalize the deal within the next hour, I will pay an additional ten percent.
The nurse looked from the money to him, then back to the money again, unable to immediately decide which part of the situation was more impossible.
Kaelthorn did not wait for her response.
He turned and left the clinic.
The door closed behind him, and the faint sound of the street returned.
For several minutes, the nurse remained frozen in her seat. Then, as if waking from a second sleep, she reached out and picked up one of the stacks with trembling hands. She counted it once. Then again. When she confirmed that the bills were real, her face changed completely.
She grabbed her phone and dialed with frantic speed.
The call connected after several rings.
Nurse: Dr. Naoki, just now…
Her voice shook as she began explaining everything.
By the time she finished speaking, Kaelthorn had already left the clinic and reached his next destination.
.
.
.
Kaelthorn's next destination was another small shop tucked away from the brighter part of the street, its front half-shadowed by the weak light of a nearby lamp. A small blackboard stood near the entrance, and on it, written in neat white lettering, were the words:
"The Hollow Blue Eyes of Yomi at Twilight"
Feel free to drop in
— Misaki M. Studio
Kaelthorn read the words once, then moved slightly to the side and looked through the glass display. Inside, behind the faint reflection of the night street, he saw a doll staring outward with hollow blue eyes. The expression on its face was calm, delicate, and empty in a way that did not feel like simple craftsmanship. It looked less like an object made to resemble a person and more like a person carefully reduced into an object.
After a few seconds, Kaelthorn turned toward the door and entered.
DING!
The bell above the door rang softly as he stepped inside.
At the front desk sat an old woman wearing spectacles. Her back was slightly bent, her hands rested quietly near a ledger, and behind the lenses of her glasses, her eyes looked dull and tired, as though they had spent too many years staring at things that ordinary customers never noticed.
Old Woman: Are you a customer, or perhaps…
The old woman paused for a brief moment, then gave a small, polite nod.
Old Woman: I see. Everything you see in the shop is for sale, so please take your time looking around. You are probably the last customer today. I could put on some tea as well, if you would like.
Kaelthorn: I am good.
Old Woman: Very well. Then please, take your time.
Kaelthorn moved away from the front desk and began looking around the shop. Glass cases lined the walls, each one filled with dolls of different sizes, styles, and expressions. Some were dressed like children from another century. Some wore mourning clothes. Some had faces so soft and beautiful that they seemed almost alive, while others looked deliberately incomplete, as if their maker had stopped just before giving them a soul.
The shop was quiet, but not peaceful.
It had the stillness of a place where too many eyes were open.
Kaelthorn continued walking, his gaze passing over the dolls one after another without lingering for long. None of them were what he had come for. Eventually, he reached the far end of the shop and found a staircase leading downward into the basement.
He descended without hesitation.
The air grew colder with each step.
At the bottom, he entered another room, wider and darker than the shop above. Like the upper floor, the room was painted black, but down here the color felt heavier, almost damp. More dolls filled the space, arranged on shelves, in cases, and on worktables. Beside them lay separate parts—hands, legs, glass eyes, painted heads, wigs, unfinished torsos—carefully placed as though they were medical instruments rather than art materials.
The basement felt less like a storehouse and more like a place where human shape had been studied, dismantled, and quietly questioned.
Kaelthorn walked through it slowly.
His visor turned from one case to another until, at last, he stopped before a coffin-like display.
Inside lay a doll.
It looked very similar to the girl he had met at the hospital.
Mei Misaki.
The resemblance was not perfect in the ordinary sense. It was not merely the face, the hair, or the quiet, distant atmosphere around it. Something deeper had been captured. Something that did not belong entirely to the doll, and perhaps not entirely to Mei either.
Kaelthorn stared at it for several seconds.
'Kaelthorn: Yes. It also has that. But stronger.'
After confirming what he needed, he turned and left the basement.
When he returned to the front desk, the old woman raised her head slightly, as though she had already guessed which piece he would ask about. Kaelthorn told her the doll he wanted to purchase. The moment she heard his choice, she fell silent.
For a few seconds, neither of them spoke.
Then the old woman answered.
Old Woman: That is one of the shop owner's finest creations. Its price is not something normal people could afford.
The old woman studied him carefully, but the visor gave her nothing. No expression. No hesitation. No impatience.
Old Woman: …Three million yen.
The answer came immediately.
The old woman remained still for another moment before nodding.
Old Woman: Understood. I will prepare it for you.
She stood from her seat and reached for the necessary documents.
Old Woman: Where do you want us to deliver it?
Kaelthorn took a piece of paper, wrote an address on it, and passed it to her. The old woman received it, glanced over the location, and placed it beside the ledger.
Kaelthorn paid the full amount in cash.
The old woman did not ask where the money had come from, nor did she show any visible concern over how someone dressed like him had produced it so easily. She counted it, confirmed the amount, and accepted the transaction with the calm professionalism of someone who had learned long ago not to question unusual customers too closely.
Once the payment was complete, she handed him the receipt.
Old Woman: The doll will be delivered to this address within the next hour.
Kaelthorn took the receipt and placed it inside his coat.
Without another word, he turned and left the shop.
The bell rang again behind him, softer this time, and the dolls remained where they were, watching the door long after he had gone.
.
.
.
A few minutes before midnight, the clinic stood with its shutter closed and its lights dimmed from within. There were no patients in the waiting area, no nurse behind the reception desk, and no tired owner trying to keep a failing business alive through another quiet night. The only one inside now was Kaelthorn. From this moment onward, the clinic belonged to him.
After returning here, he had met the former owner in person. The man's appearance had been disheveled, his hair hastily combed, his coat worn incorrectly over one shoulder, and his breath slightly uneven from rushing over as quickly as possible. That reaction was expected. The clinic had been losing money for some time, and when someone suddenly appeared with the intention to buy it outright, along with the promise of paying an additional ten percent if the deal could be finalized within the hour, hesitation became difficult to justify.
The documents had already been prepared in haste. Kaelthorn read through all of them, confirmed the ownership terms, checked the property rights, reviewed the business registration, and only then signed under the false identity he had created for this world. The signature was clean, controlled, and legally sufficient. With that, the transaction was complete.
The nurse had remained nearby throughout the process, her earlier irritation replaced by a warmer and far more interested expression. From time to time, she looked at Kaelthorn with a faintly flirtatious gaze, clearly trying to decide whether this strange, wealthy new owner might become an opportunity. Unfortunately for her, Kaelthorn gave no response. He did not acknowledge the look, did not encourage conversation, and did not require her assistance. In the end, she could only release a quiet, disappointed sigh before leaving the building.
Strictly speaking, Kaelthorn had no real need to buy a clinic. He did not lack money. After entering this world, he had already broken into the necessary networks and taken what he required from certain government accounts and the hidden reserves of so-called upright officials and virtuous politicians. Since such people claimed to serve the public, Kaelthorn saw no reason they could not also be of use to him.
Still, he had chosen to call himself The Doctor from now on.
So, he decided he might as well become one in a visible sense.
The clinic would serve as a front, a legal position, a local anchor, and a quiet base of operations. It was also convenient. The building had two floors: the ground floor functioned as the clinic, while the first floor contained a private residence. That meant he would not need to explain his presence elsewhere, nor would he need to rely on hotels, rented rooms, or places where too many eyes kept records.
After taking a slow look around the ground floor, Kaelthorn turned his attention to the large box placed near the entrance. It was the doll he had purchased earlier. The delivery had arrived only a few minutes before the transaction was finalized, and the coffin-like case inside the box remained sealed.
Kaelthorn started toward the stairs.
As he moved, the box rose silently into the air.
It floated behind him without being touched.
His current body had only recovered to the level of an ordinary human. His muscles, endurance, and physical strength were no longer beyond human limits, at least not for now. But that only meant his body had weakened. Other parts of him remained far beyond ordinary measurement. His mind, for example, was still intact.
And with that mind, he had created something useful.
Telekinesis.
It was crude compared to the abilities he had once commanded, but it was enough.
As Kaelthorn walked up the stairs, the dust gathered across the ground floor began to move. It rose from the chairs, the floor, the counter, the shelves, and the corners of the room in thin gray streams, gathering together before flowing toward an open window. The dust poured outside into the night like silent smoke. Once the last trace had left, the window closed by itself.
By the time Kaelthorn reached the first floor, the same process had already begun above. Dust lifted from the hallway, furniture, windowsills, and floorboards, then drifted out through another opened window before it, too, shut without sound.
The residence had clearly not been used often by the previous owner. The rooms were neglected, but not damaged. The furniture was plain, the walls were unremarkable, and the air carried the stale stillness of a place that had been left waiting for someone who never returned. Once the dust was removed, it became clean enough for immediate use.
Kaelthorn entered the master bedroom.
The floating box followed him and settled beside the door.
He walked to the window, pulled the curtains aside, and looked out at the silent street below. A few dim lights remained in nearby buildings, but most of the area had already surrendered to night. Behind him, a table and chair that had been placed near the wall moved on their own, sliding across the floor until they came to rest beneath the window.
Kaelthorn sat down.
From inside his coat, he removed a small metal piece no larger than something that could be hidden in a person's palm. It looked insignificant at first, just a thin object with a dull surface and no obvious mechanism. But when he placed it on the table, a soft light spread from within it.
A holographic screen appeared in front of him.
Then a holographic keyboard formed beneath it.
Kaelthorn withdrew one hand from his coat pocket and began typing.
Windows opened and closed in rapid succession. Lines of information appeared, shifted, vanished, and were replaced by more. To a normal person, the speed would have made everything unreadable. A single word would not have remained long enough to register.
Kaelthorn read all of it at a glance.
'Kaelthorn: Yomiyama City… Yomiyama North Junior High… an incident from twenty-six years ago, in 1972.'
That was what drew his attention most.
The information was not easy to find. It had been buried beneath missing records, incomplete witness statements, deleted posts, and memories that no longer matched reality. More importantly, something supernatural was covering it. Not like a wall. More like a veil placed over the mind. It did not simply hide facts; it made people stop caring about the fact that something had been hidden.
Even the person who had once posted about the anomaly no longer remembered doing so.
Kaelthorn had not spent the night merely walking from one location to another. He had been investigating from the moment he entered this world. He had searched public records, private accounts, old networks, abandoned files, and the digital traces left behind by people who had once witnessed something strange and later forgot it. He had also questioned people around town. His appearance made him suspicious, but suspicion did not matter when there were countless ways to make someone speak.
Then, all at once, he stopped typing.
The temperature in the room dropped.
The faint noise from outside vanished.
The street below, the wind near the window, the distant movement of late-night traffic—everything fell into silence. An eerie pressure spread outward, with the clinic at its center, as if the world had noticed someone looking too closely at a wound it preferred to keep covered.
Something entered Kaelthorn's mind.
It did not attack violently. It did not tear or crush. Instead, it tried to soften the edges of his thoughts. The information he had gathered began to blur. Names lost their sharpness. Dates became less certain. His reason for investigating weakened, as if the matter were unimportant and continuing would be pointless.
It was a power meant to make people forget.
More accurately, it made them lose the will to remember.
Kaelthorn: How intriguing.
He muttered the words softly, then dismissed the influence as if brushing dust from his sleeve.
The blurred information became clear again in an instant. His will hardened. The pressure that had tried to enter him found no weakness to hold onto and collapsed without leaving a mark.
Such power might influence ordinary people.
It could bend witnesses, erase suspicion, and allow an entire town to walk around a disaster without truly seeing it.
But it could not control Kaelthorn.
He continued digging.
The power tried again. Then again. Each attempt came from a different angle. Sometimes it tried to make the records seem irrelevant. Sometimes it tried to make the incident feel ordinary. Sometimes it tried to turn his attention elsewhere, pushing his thoughts toward the clinic, the hospital, the students, anything except the truth beneath Yomiyama North Junior High.
None of it worked.
Kaelthorn remained completely unaffected.
After gathering all the data he needed, he finally leaned back in his chair.
'Kaelthorn: So, that is how it is.'
His head turned slightly toward the box beside the door.
The lid opened by itself.
Inside, the coffin-like display case emerged slowly, then opened as well. The doll within rose into the air and drifted across the room until it reached the table in front of him. It settled there gently, sitting beneath the pale glow of the holographic screen.
Kaelthorn reached forward.
One gloved hand rested on the doll's head, while the other touched its face with quiet precision. His visor lowered as he looked into its eerie, emerald, hollow eyes, like something preserved beneath still water.
Kaelthorn: It seems you will be far more useful to me than I planned.
At that moment, the time on his desktop changed.
0:00
Midnight.
Kaelthorn looked at it once, then moved one hand from the doll's head to the keyboard. His other hand remained near the doll's face as he began typing again, faster than before.
The screen suddenly turned black.
A single search bar appeared in the center.
Inside it was only one button.
Send.
Kaelthorn watched it for a second.
He typed a sentence into the bar.
"Every prison mistakes itself for the edge of the world."
Then he pressed send.
The screen closed.
Another window opened.
Kaelthorn turned his head toward the darkness beyond the window.
Kaelthorn: Let us see where it all started.
On the holographic desktop behind him, a group photo appeared. Students from different years stood together in front of a school building, their faces frozen in old smiles that now felt less like memories and more like evidence.
Beneath the image was the name of the place.
Yomiyama North Junior High.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
*A/N: Please throw some power stones.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------