Chapter 34: The Interrogation
Telegram Chat – 1:00 AM
The blue light of their phones illuminated five separate bedrooms, five pairs of exhausted eyes staring at screens that connected them across the city. Sleep was a distant memory, a luxury their trauma-addled brains could no longer afford.
"have you all gotten the same notification? Principal, she is calling me." Kashimo's message appeared first, his anxiety bleeding through the casual tone.
Bachi's reply was instant, dripping with his characteristic sarcasm. "same for all of us, dumb shit."
A brief pause, then Kaguro's analytical mind kicked in. "are we gonna collectively meet?"
"yes, let's meet." Alan's response was short, practical. The others could almost hear the tremor in his voice through the text.
"what time?" Kamiko asked.
"around 1:45, suits the best. We could discuss and then go to school." Bachi had clearly been thinking about this, calculating the optimal timing.
"yeah great time, suits me too" Kaguro agreed.
"So everyone will meet around 1:45."
One by one, the confirmations came. Simple "ok" responses. Nothing more. What else was there to say? They had survived gods, demons, and dimensions. Now they had to face a principal.
Each of them placed their phones on their nightstands and stared at ceilings that suddenly felt too close, too familiar, too real. Sleep came eventually, but it was thin and restless, haunted by glitching children and the weight of a dead man they had carried home.
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The Park – 1:45 PM
The afternoon sun was indifferent to their suffering, casting warm light across the familiar playground where they had once been carefree children. Now they gathered in the shade, five teenagers who had seen too much, carrying secrets that would shatter the sanity of any adult who heard them.
"So what's the plan?" Kamiko wasted no time. His arms were crossed, his posture defensive, as if bracing for a physical blow.
"See, we will say truth, that we were stuck in the realm, and that Tarameki was in the realm." Kaguro's voice was measured, reasonable. It was the voice he used when presenting a logical argument.
"And then w—" Kaguro began to elaborate.
"No one asked." Bachi, Kashimo, and Alan spoke simultaneously, their voices flat with the easy cruelty of long friendship.
"Wait! Let em speak. Maybe it's something important." Kaguro held up a hand, genuine curiosity flickering in his exhausted eyes.
Kashimo shrugged. "We should deceive the principal."
The response was immediate and brutal.
"Ok shut up! Dumb idea. You should kill yourself at the point." Kaguro's words were harsh, but his tone carried the weight of genuine frustration. They couldn't afford stupidity now.
Bachi grinned, finding dark humor in the situation. "This guy thinks he can deceive everyone with his so called manipulation."
"Hah! True!" Kamiko's laugh was short, brittle, but real.
The tension cracked slightly, a hairline fracture in the wall of their collective anxiety. They fell into step, heading toward the school. Twenty minutes of walking. Twenty minutes to prepare.
"So, should we take a taxi or walk there, the distance is only of 20 minutes." Kaguro asked, though the decision had already been made.
Everyone signed in walking. The rhythm of their footsteps was grounding, a simple human rhythm in a life that had become anything but simple. As they walked, the conversation drifted, as it always did, toward the mysteries that now defined their existence.
"So who is the real hero and villain." Alan's question hung in the air, deceptively simple.
Kaguro considered it, his brow furrowing. "Maybe there are no villains, just antihero and hero."
"Midnight is the hero, 404 is the anti Hero or whatever you said." Kashimo's declaration was bold, almost defiant.
"What makes you think that? Stop getting sympathy for midnight in emotion." Kaguro challenged immediately.
"How?" Alan pressed, genuinely curious.
Bachi slowed his pace, his expression shifting. Something had clicked in his mind during their walk. "I think I understood him."
The others waited. Bachi rarely spoke like this—not joking, not deflecting, but genuinely thinking out loud.
"According to him, midnight is a manipulator who craves for his land."
Kashimo shook his head. "How could you justify 404 teleporting us to fight, then teleporting us to random place."
Bachi's eyes met his. "I see more than you do." He paused, gathering his thoughts. "The scriptures of the religion say that the entities only can travel to their allies or either on the special request of midnight. This means that 404 was a former ally of midnight, this is evident from the fact that entity 5 travelled into the realm of 404. To the anti midnight campaign we have started many years ago. And the entity 70 was friendly, meaning that he was an ally of 404 during the period of anti midnight campaign."
The words landed like stones in still water. Ripples spread across each of their faces as the implications sank in.
"So why the hell did he say that he will erase concepts of entity 70?" Kashimo's voice was quieter now, the defiance draining away.
"It was for us, don't you understand?" Kaguro's response was gentle, almost pitying. "Entity 70 was his ally. His friend. And he killed him. Or threatened to. For us."
The weight of that realization pressed down on them. Entity 404, the cosmic power who had saved them, had been willing to destroy one of his own—someone who had fought beside him in a long war—because they had been caught in the crossfire. Because 404's mistake had sent them there.
What did that make 404? A hero? A monster? Something in between?
The silence that followed was heavy with unspoken questions. They walked on, each lost in their own labyrinth of speculation. Kaguro's theory was accepted not because it was proven, but because it was the only framework that made the chaos comprehensible.
After some more discussion about the entities—debates that circled the same questions without ever reaching solid ground—all of them reached the school. The familiar building loomed before them, its windows reflecting the afternoon sun, its hallways echoing with the mundane sounds of education. It looked exactly as it always had.
That was the most terrifying part.
They cracked jokes as they approached, nervous laughter serving as armor against what waited inside. They talked about nothing—homework, video games, a stupid YouTube video Bachi had watched—anything to feel normal for just a few more minutes.
But the jokes died as they pushed open the main doors.
The reception area was quiet, too quiet. The secretary barely glanced at them, simply pointing toward the conference room with a look that mixed curiosity with pity. They had become spectacles, the five students who had vanished and returned with a dead man.
Outside the conference room door, they paused. Five pairs of eyes met. No words were needed. They had faced gods. They had fought demons. They had watched a man die saving them.
They could face a principal.
"May we come in, principal?" The five asked in unison, their voices surprisingly steady.
"Yes!" The response came from within, sharp and impatient. Mrs. Bureina. Even her name seemed to carry the weight of her personality—impatient, which is the meaning of bureina
They entered.
The conference room was standard institutional fare: a long table, uncomfortable chairs, motivational posters that had long ago lost any power to motivate. Mrs. Bureina sat at the head, her glasses perched on her nose, her expression a carefully constructed mask of stern professionalism. Behind her, a window looked out onto the empty courtyard.
All of the five sat down on the chairs arranged opposite her. The leather was cold even through their clothes.
"What are your names?" The principal asked, though she knew perfectly well who they were. This was procedure. This was control.
One by one, they told her their names. Kaguro. Kamiko. Kashimo. Bachi. Alan. Each name felt like a small surrender.
Then the real questions began.
"Who was the person who was dead? Why did you all bring him?"
Bachi leaned forward slightly, his voice calm and measured. "His name was Tarameki. He was fighting demons for 15 days of Earth. He died while fighting demons and we could not have been saved if he was not there."
Mrs. Bureina's eyes narrowed. Her pen stopped moving over the notepad in front of her.
"Tell me the truth." The words were ice.
"This is the truth." Kaguro's response was immediate, unwavering.
"Tell me the truth. I am asking you again." Her voice rose slightly, a warning.
"Ma'am, this is the truth you are asking for." Alan's accent colored his words, but his conviction was unmistakable.
"Where were you trapped?"
Kaguro answered, his voice steady despite the absurdity of what he was about to say. "We were in a realm. From a religion. Not so famous. Its name is Fujism."
The principal stared at him. The silence stretched, became uncomfortable, then unbearable. Her expression shifted—from stern to incredulous to something harder, something colder.
"Tell me the reality again."
"This is the reality." The five spoke in rotation, their responses automatic now, a litany of truth that sounded like madness.
"The reality."
"The reality."
"The reality."
Each repetition was met with the same flat, unyielding response. They could see it in her eyes—she didn't believe them. Couldn't believe them. Their truth was too far outside her understanding of how the world worked. In her reality, students got into trouble, they ran away, they made mistakes, they lied. They did not travel to other dimensions and fight alongside cosmic entities.
Mrs. Bureina set down her pen with deliberate precision. She removed her glasses and pinched the bridge of her nose, a gesture of exhaustion and frustration.
"Very well," she said, her voice now quiet, almost gentle in its finality. "If that is how you wish to play this."
She reached for the phone on the table.
The five watched as she dialed, one by one, the numbers they recognized too well. First Kaguro's mother. Then Kamiko's. Then Kashimo's. Then Bachi's. Then Alan's. Each call was the same: a brief explanation, a request, a confirmation.
"Please come pick up your child. We have organised a plan to get out of this... situation."
When she hung up the final call, she looked at them again. There was no anger in her eyes now, only a profound, almost pitying disappointment.
"I don't know what happened to you five. I don't know what you experienced. But I know lies when I hear them. And I know scared children when I see them." She stood, gathering her papers. "Your parents are coming. We will figure out what really happened. And we will help you. Whether you want it or not."
She left without another word, her heels clicking against the linoleum, each step a countdown to the next phase of their ordeal.
The five sat in silence, alone in the conference room. Through the window, they could see the courtyard, the trees, the sky. Everything looked so normal. So peaceful.
Alan spoke first, his voice barely above a whisper. "She didn't believe anything."
"No," Kaguro agreed. "She didn't."
"What happens now?" Kamiko asked.
Bachi leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. "Now we wait. Our parents come. They don't believe us either. And then... I don't know. Therapy, probably. Suspension. Maybe both."
"They'll try to fix us," Kashimo said bitterly. "Fix something they can't even understand."
Another silence. Longer this time.
Kaguro's voice, when it came, was quiet but firm. "We stick together. No matter what. They can separate us, question us, drug us, lock us up. But they can't take what we know. They can't take what we've been through together."
"Together," Alan repeated.
The word hung in the air, a promise and a shield.
Outside, the first car pulled into the parking lot. A mother, anxious and afraid, rushing to collect her broken child from a world that would never understand the truth.
The interrogation was over.
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Chapter 34 Ends
To be continued...