I walked out of the office with heavy steps, my chest gnawed by dread. Every thread of truth that had begun to unravel led to a new question—darker, more obscure, more terrifying.
I realized I had to face the source of this shadow… to stare into the eyes of madness itself.
I had to go there.
I headed toward the prison on the outskirts of the Shinzo district—that isolated place, always shrouded in mist, as if nature itself refused to acknowledge its existence.
That prison which held those deemed "dangerous to society" or "insane," but to me, it was just another gateway into the mysterious past whose outlines were beginning to emerge…
A gateway to "Dr. Kazuya Shindo."
I stood before the massive gate, forged from cold iron that suggested deterrence more than protection.
I tried to enter, again and again.
I presented my ID, explained that I was investigating a convoluted case involving someone held inside.
But they were rigid, expressionless, looking at me like just another civilian trying to breach a security system built not only to protect those inside… but to protect the world from them.
I tried everything.
I begged, I threatened, I pulled every legal string I could… to no avail.
The bureaucracy was as thick as the prison walls, and just as deaf.
That's when I made the only call that could break through the blockade.
I called Koda.
— "Listen to me carefully... I need you.
Location: the prison on the edge of Shinzo.
Bring your badge… and don't ask why. Just come."
He didn't need much convincing.
Maybe my voice was enough for him to sense that I was on the brink of madness—or the edge of a major discovery.
He arrived half an hour later, his face a mix of worry and curiosity, and under his official coat, his police badge glinted.
We entered together.
Thanks to the badge, and a few quiet tricks Koda had mastered during his years of service, we convinced the prison director that we were part of a special investigative committee, recently reactivated to re-examine Dr. Shindo's file.
We presented the visit like a cold administrative protocol—but our eyes burned, our hearts beat with strange urgency.
In a moment of confused acceptance—or perhaps under Koda's pressure and cunning—the director finally agreed.
He said:
— "I'll allow you to see him… but no more than 10 minutes. This man… is not ordinary."
We nodded, though the truth was, ten minutes with that man could change everything.
We walked through a long, dark corridor, thick with the scent of iron, sweat, and dead time.
The silence was eerie, broken only by the clanking of doors closing behind us with each step forward, as if we were descending into something inescapable.
We reached the final cell.
And there, behind a thick glass barrier, sat a thin man, his hair grayed, his eyes sunken—but in them, a strange gleam…
Not the gleam of life…
It was him. Dr. Kazuya Shindo.
He sat in silence, unmoving, showing neither surprise nor resistance.
As if he had been expecting us.
I looked at him, and something inside me shivered.
He sat across from us. I stared into his eyes and asked:
"Do you know someone named Kento?"
He began to behave strangely. He refused to answer.
I repeated the question over and over, but he remained silent.
We tried to persuade him, but he stayed still for several minutes… then opened his mouth and said:
> "I met Kento. He started coming to me as a patient.
He said his previous psychiatrist wasn't good.
I tried to reach him, to help him… but I couldn't.
Even after several sessions, he remained the same.
I couldn't unlock his door.
He was perfect for me… because he was a security officer.
He could've helped me a lot.
I remember sending him several images, tried everything with him."
I stared at him in disbelief.
I said, "What do you mean?"
He replied:
> "The recent attack… I'm the one who did it.
I didn't intend to kill Kento's son — that was an accident. I didn't know he was there.
I thought Kento was alone.
I wanted him to see the savior through the explosion.
I wanted to know if the treatment had worked."
I asked:
"What do you mean by the savior? Is he the faceless man Kento saw in his hallucinations?"
He looked at me and smiled.
> "So… he saw him.
That means the treatment worked."
I looked at him in disbelief, and asked in a low voice, as if the words feared leaving my mouth:
— "What do you mean by treatment?"
He slowly raised his eyes to mine and said in a tone I couldn't place between pride and madness:
— "Every human carries inside them a wound, a fracture that never truly heals.
My mission was never to heal the pain… but to help them pass through it."
I said:
— "Pass through? To where?"
He smiled again and whispered:
— "To the truth we deny…
That we are not victims of our emotions, but prisoners of the false reality we built around them.
I merely opened the door.
And those who chose to pass through… saw the savior."
His words shook me to my core, and I asked cautiously:
— "And who is this savior?"
He took a deep breath, his eyes fixed on a point behind my shoulder:
— "Not a person… but a pure psychological state.
The faceless man… the face we all wear, yet never see.
When the patient reaches the moment of transformation… they begin to see him.
He is the emergence of raw awareness, stripped of masks."
He paused for a moment, then continued with a tone filled with conviction:
— "Kento… was so close.
If he hadn't resisted, he might've become the savior himself."
A chill ran down my spine.
I asked:
— "And you? Did you see him?"
He looked at me calmly, then whispered:
— "I was the first to see him."
I found myself recoiling instinctively, my mind boiling with endless questions.
In that moment, I didn't feel like I was sitting in front of a psychiatrist…
But in front of someone who had opened a dark door inside his mind—and dragged others through it.
Then he said softly:
— "And you… have you seen him?"
I didn't answer.
And for a brief moment, doubt crept inside me…
A faceless man… standing at the edge of my memory, watching silently.
I didn't answer.
It was a simple question… direct… yet it carried a deep terror, as if Kazuya wasn't just asking me—but awakening something that had been dormant inside me all my life.
My eyes avoided his… his sunken gaze, his not-so-innocent smile, his voice that now felt more present than ever.
Koda beside me was silent, watching me, as if he too sensed that something had shifted—that I was no longer myself.
I inhaled slowly and finally said, in a faint voice that barely escaped my lips:
— "I think… I've seen him."
I saw a strange flicker in Kazuya's eyes… something between joy and triumph.
— "Then… it has begun," he said, as if announcing the start of a sacred rite.
— "What has begun?" I asked, trying to hold myself together.
He said:
> — "The journey out of your illusion. All your life, you've looked at things from the surface, never diving into them.
The savior… appears only when your image of yourself breaks, when the shell your memory built to protect you crumbles.
Only then… does the third eye open."
I stepped closer to him, my anger wrestling with fear, awe, and a guilt I couldn't explain.
"Was Kento just an experiment to you? Did you exploit his weakness to prove your insane theory?"
He replied with eerie calm:
— "I gave him a chance to be free. Do you know how many people live shackled by their dead souls?
Kento was searching for something… I merely pointed him to the path."
Then he asked me, in a low, hypnotic voice:
"When did you see him for the first time?"
I wanted to say: "I never really saw him," but my mind pulled back…
Something inside me… something broken, refused to lie.
I remembered that dream.
A dark room, dim light, a man standing without features.
He stared at me without speaking, but I understood him.
"Return," he said.
"Look," he commanded.
It was a dream… but I never doubted it was more than that.
— "In a dream…" I said, feeling the words come from someone else living inside me.
Kazuya smiled a small smile and said:
> — "Dreams are the first mirror. But don't be fooled… what's coming will be deeper than dreams."
The security buzzer rang. Time was up.
Guards began moving in, the sound of opening doors signaling that reality was reclaiming this madness.
Koda gently touched my arm and said, "We have to go."
But before I turned away, Kazuya said one last thing, in a low voice I felt only I could hear:
> — "When you see him again… don't run. Ask him your name."
I walked out, each step feeling like the ground was disappearing beneath me.
The place faded away behind me… but remained inside.
As if I had become the one behind the glass.