Author's Note: Each team member confesses their worst fear this chapter. Three are lying about what scares them most. One tells the complete truth. Figure out which one is honest—it matters for Chapter 45.
POV: Rotating (Kaito → Ayumi → Akira → Takeshi)
Word Count: ~1,950
[KAITO - 11:47 PM]
Twenty-three days, and Kaito couldn't sleep.
He lay in bed staring at his ceiling, counting the cracks in the plaster like they were sheep. Fourteen major fractures, countless minor ones, all spreading from a central point near the light fixture like frozen lightning.
His phone buzzed on the nightstand.
Group chat. Of course.
Takeshi: Anyone else awake?
Ayumi: Unfortunately.
Akira: Yes.
Kaito: Ceiling's more interesting than sleep anyway.
Takeshi: Midnight honesty hour? Last one helped. Might help again.
Kaito considered pretending he needed sleep. Considered ignoring the message and hoping exhaustion would eventually win.
Instead he typed: Fine. But someone else goes first this time.
Ayumi: I'll start. My biggest fear right now isn't the trials. It's that I'll transform into someone during combat and just... stay that way. Forget how to be myself. Wake up one day and realize I've been wearing someone else's face so long I can't remember what mine looks like.
The confession sat there for thirty seconds before anyone responded.
Takeshi: That's not going to happen.
Ayumi: How do you know?
Takeshi: Because you're aware of the risk. People who lose themselves don't see it coming. You're watching for it. That awareness protects you.
Ayumi: Does it? Or does it just mean I get to watch myself disappear?
Kaito: The costume helps though, right? You said it anchors your transformations. Makes them more controlled.
Ayumi: It anchors the TRANSFORMATION. Doesn't anchor ME. I can hold someone else's face for twenty minutes now. What happens when it's thirty? An hour? What if there's a point where the costume makes it TOO easy to be someone else?
Kaito: Then we remind you who you actually are. That's what teams do.
He was quoting Takeshi from earlier, and it felt strange to be the one offering reassurance instead of receiving it.
Ayumi: Thanks. Your turn.
Kaito stared at his phone. His biggest fear. The real one, not the sanitized version.
Kaito: I'm afraid that when I finally remember everything about my mother's death, when those walls in my head finally come down—I'll discover I'm not the victim. That Sora and Akashi are right. That I killed her deliberately. That eight-year-old me WANTED her dead for some reason I've suppressed, and the guilt I'm carrying is actually justified.
He hit send before he could delete it.
The chat stayed quiet for a full minute.
Takeshi: Kaito—
Kaito: I know it's probably not true. I know trauma makes you think terrible things. But what if it IS true? What if the reason I can't remember is because the truth is worse than not knowing?
Ayumi: Then we'd still be your team. Even if you'd done something unforgivable as a child. Even if the worst version of that memory is true. We'd still be here.
Akira: People aren't defined by their worst moments. Especially not moments from when they were eight years old.
Kaito: Easy to say when you don't know what that moment actually was.
Akira: I know you. Now. The person you've become despite that moment. That's who we're choosing to stand with.
The words hit harder than Kaito expected.
Kaito: Thanks. I think. Akira, you're up.
[AKIRA - 12:03 AM]
Akira sat cross-legged on his futon in his father's empty apartment, phone illuminating the dark room.
His turn for honesty.
He'd gotten better at this over the past few weeks. Midnight vulnerability with people who actually listened instead of looking through him.
Akira: My biggest fear is that I'm not real. That I've phased through my own existence so thoroughly that there's nothing solid left. That if I tried to stay corporeal forever, I'd just... cease. Because I've defined myself by absence for so long that presence feels impossible.
He reread it. Too philosophical? Too abstract?
Sent anyway.
Kaito: That's heavy even for you.
Akira: You asked for honesty.
Ayumi: Do you actually feel that way? Like you might cease to exist if you stopped phasing?
Akira: Sometimes. When I'm translucent too long, coming back to solid feels wrong. Like I'm forcing myself into a shape that doesn't fit anymore. And I worry that eventually, I won't be able to come back at all.
Takeshi: Has that ever actually happened? Failed to resolidify?
Akira: Once. After I phased for six hours when my parents forgot I existed. Took me twenty minutes of concentration to become solid again. And when I did, I felt like I was wearing someone else's body.
Ayumi: That sounds terrifying.
Akira: It was clarifying. Made me realize I need to choose to exist. Consciously. Every day. Because disappearing is easy. It's the default. Staying solid is the hard part.
Kaito: Jesus Christ, we're all disasters.
Takeshi: We're traumatized teenagers with supernatural powers preparing for death matches. "Disaster" is the baseline.
Akira: Your turn, Takeshi. What's your worst fear?
[TAKESHI - 12:11 AM]
Takeshi sat on his bed with Miko asleep beside him, phone brightness turned down so the light wouldn't wake her.
His worst fear. The thing he didn't talk about even in therapy.
Takeshi: I'm afraid I'll have to choose between you and the team. That trials will force me to reverse an attack aimed at one of you, and I won't be able to save both. That I'll have that 0.3 second delay to decide who lives and who dies, and whichever choice I make will destroy me.
His finger hovered over send.
This was different from admitting survivor's guilt. This was admitting he'd already run the scenarios in his head. Already calculated who he'd save if forced to choose.
He sent it.
Kaito: Fuck, Takeshi.
Ayumi: Have you actually thought about this? Who you'd choose?
Takeshi: Yes. Multiple scenarios. Different variables. I've run the calculations dozens of times and I hate myself for it.
Akira: What did you conclude?
Takeshi: That there's no right answer. If I save Miko, I've failed as a team leader. If I save one of you, I've failed as a boyfriend. Either way, I'm carrying someone's death because I couldn't save both.
Miko stirred beside him, mumbled something in her sleep. Takeshi adjusted the blanket around her shoulders.
Takeshi: Miko doesn't know I think about this. She'd probably tell me I'm overthinking. That trials won't put me in that position. But what if they do? What if that's exactly the kind of choice they're designed to force?
Kaito: Then you make the call in the moment and live with it. That's all anyone can do.
Takeshi: And if I make the wrong call?
Kaito: There is no wrong call in a scenario like that. There's just the call you make and the consequences you carry.
Ayumi: For what it's worth, if you had to choose the team over Miko to save more people... I think she'd understand. She knows what we're facing.
Takeshi: Understanding doesn't make it hurt less.
The chat fell quiet.
Takeshi started typing again.
Takeshi: New rule. We don't let trials force that choice. We get strong enough, coordinated enough, that I never have to pick between you. We make "save everyone" the only option.
Kaito: Ambitious.
Takeshi: We have twenty-three days. Let's make them count.
[AYUMI - 12:24 AM]
Ayumi lay in her bed, phone screen the only light in her dark room, mother snoring softly in the next room.
The confessions were getting heavier. More real. Less about surface fears and more about the things that lived in the spaces between thoughts.
Ayumi: Question for everyone. If we survive trials—actually survive, make it out alive—what happens to us? Do we just go back to normal life? Pretend this never happened? Try to be regular high school students again?
Kaito: Bold of you to assume there's a "normal" to go back to.
Ayumi: You know what I mean. We're bonding over shared trauma and supernatural combat. What happens when the combat stops but the trauma remains?
Akira: We stay connected. Trauma bonds don't dissolve just because the threat ends.
Ayumi: Don't they? How many soldiers come home and lose touch with their unit? How many survivors drift apart once the crisis passes?
Takeshi: Are you afraid we'll abandon each other after trials?
Ayumi: I'm afraid I'LL be the one who can't handle normal again. That I've adapted so completely to this supernatural existence that returning to civilian life will feel like wearing the wrong costume. And I'll push all of you away because facing you means facing what we went through.
Kaito: That's specific.
Ayumi: My dad left because living with my mom's depression was too hard. He chose easy over family. And I'm terrified I'll do the same thing. That when this is over, I'll look at all of you and see reminders of trauma, and I'll just... disappear.
Akira: I won't let you.
Ayumi: How do you plan to stop me?
Akira: By existing. Persistently. Visibility as resistance. You want to disappear, you'll have to phase through me first. And I'm the ghost here. I'm better at haunting.
Despite everything, Ayumi smiled.
Ayumi: Okay. Deal. You can haunt me if I try to run.
Kaito: We all can. Team haunting. Make it a group activity.
Takeshi: This took a strange turn.
Kaito: You started the midnight honesty hour. You deal with the consequences.
[KAITO - 12:33 AM]
The conversation drifted after that. Lighter topics. Ayumi asking about everyone's favorite food (Kaito said ramen, Akira said nothing, Takeshi said whatever Miko cooked, Ayumi said her mom's curry from before the depression). Takeshi sharing that Miko wanted to meet everyone properly, not just in crisis mode.
It was almost 1 AM when Kaito's phone buzzed with a different notification.
Not group chat. System message.
TO: ALL KAKUSEI-SHA
FROM: [UNKNOWN]
PHASE TWO BEGINS IN SEVEN DAYS.
NEW RULES WILL BE DISTRIBUTED AT THAT TIME.
PREPARE ACCORDINGLY.
COUNTDOWN: 23 DAYS TO TRIALS
COUNTDOWN: 7 DAYS TO PHASE TWO
—THE HERALD
Kaito screenshot it and sent it to the group chat immediately.
Kaito: Everyone else get this?
Takeshi: Yes. "Phase Two." Same as Unknown Team mentioned.
Ayumi: What the hell is Phase Two?
Akira: Unknown. But seven days gives us time to prepare. Whatever it is.
Kaito: New rules means the game changes. We thought we understood the setup. Apparently we don't.
Takeshi: Tomorrow we find out what Unknown Team knows. If they warned us to prepare, they might have actual intel about Phase Two.
Ayumi: And if they don't share?
Takeshi: Then we figure it out the hard way.
Kaito: Story of our lives.
Takeshi: Get some sleep. We train hard tomorrow. If Phase Two is coming, we need to be ready.
Ayumi: Night, everyone.
Akira: Sleep well.
Kaito: Yeah. Sweet dreams and all that.
He put his phone down and stared at his ceiling again.
The cracks looked different in the darkness. Less like lightning, more like a map of something breaking apart.
Twenty-three days until trials.
Seven days until Phase Two.
And somewhere in his suppressed memories, the truth about his mother's death waiting to surface.
Kaito closed his eyes and tried to sleep.
Failed.
Instead, he manifested the greenish-blue substance in the darkness of his room, watching it swirl around his fingers. Practiced holding it steady. Practiced the transitions between states. Practiced not letting it turn black when fear crept in.
If Phase Two was coming, if trials were coming, if the truth was coming—
He needed to be ready.
All of them did.
Outside his window, Tokyo slept.
But somewhere in the city, other essentials were getting the same message. Making the same calculations. Preparing for the same unknown.
The countdown was accelerating.
And nobody knew what they were actually counting down to.
[To be continued in Chapter 18...]
Author's closing note: Four fears confessed. Three lies, one truth. Kaito fears he wanted his mother dead. Ayumi fears losing herself. Akira fears ceasing to exist. Takeshi fears choosing wrong. Which one is completely honest about their deepest fear? The answer shapes their arc through the Maze
Phase Two begins in 7 days. Unknown Team knew this was coming. What changes when the rules change? Drop theories 👇
If you're hooked, add to library! The game just shifted and nobody's ready