---

It wasn't a philosophy that Fubuki was even aware had a name, but his soul was familiar with the concept. The chill in the room felt solid and as he stepped forward, he could feel cracks in the air and ground form behind him. The labyrinth that previously seemed invincible now gave way as if it was the frosted dew of a winter morning. As he thought on the vague question posed by the deer, Fubuki felt a shot of energy run through him, the smell of alcohol on his father's breath, the taste of rotten food, a flash of his mother's face that he hardly remembered, and a loud bang that rippled through his memory but found nothing. In the emptiness, he found his answer. The world seemed to hold its breath as he prepared to speak, and he could taste glass and blood as he did so.

"Rage should be a tool, used to tear away the pride of the strong, and to protect the weak and innocent. That's how one wages war against this cold, uncaring world. I want to freeze my unbound anger, and control it, so that I can bring its full weight down on those who deserve it with no collateral. You're offering me the power to do that, aren't you?"

Fubuki continued his stride until he was within arm's reach of the deer. He held out his hand, unsure of how a deal like this was made, and placed it on the creature's brow between its eyes. "Just answer me one question, I'll accept your deal regardless of the answer. What do you want me to do with that power or who do you want me to use it against?"

With May, late spring and early summer, came pretty festivals and pretty flowers. Sure, the garden started blooming again when March melted the bits of last snow away, but right now was the time when things truly come to life! At least, that’s how Tohato felt. Warmer weather meant lighter clothes, more tourists, more noise— the pale boy still covered himself head to toe, of course. His shirt was thin, flowy, lacy in some places, like a poet’s shirt, and he still wore high-waisted pants out of nice linen instead of warmer fabrics.
He thought of wearing a yukata, given the festival and the time of year, but with festivals and warmer months comes more business, and that means a day full of weaving between the kitchen and the seating area— and Tohato wasn’t too keen on tripping over long fabric while holding hot plates.
Ah, too much thinking. Tohato shook his head and focused on the countertop, and then looked over to his dad who was busy pulling some noodles by hand.
Someone came through the door. Tohato’s crisp, white hair fell over his face as he looked down to his bare feet, only wearing socks, and to the other person who’d just entered— still with shoes on, how rude! There were tatami mats in the seating area! These floors are historic!
It… suddenly got quiet. Why was it quiet? He focused on this rude man, but… it just had one of those drama masks. Things were getting slow, things were getting weird. Why was time acting weird? Was this one of those, uh. Didn’t that therapist say that he disassociated often? Dissociated?
”hey—“
The short albino wanted to greet this strange character, maybe offer some socks, something—
”HEY—“
And said strange character grabbed him by the collar of his shirt, yanked him out of reality like a rag doll and into… what? Time worked normally again. He could move again, but. What the fuck?
”Hey????”
What was this place? Why was he in a chair? Why did it feel like time was being weird? Surely it wasn’t him! Maybe it was his own mind being weird again, maybe it was uh… it was time loss, wasn’t it? It… huh?
”Yes, Mae Tohato.”
… NOPE! Don’t answer these weird questions! What if this guy wanted to throw him back to the Saeki family? Why did he answer?! How stupid was he??
”I-I mean, what? What’s going on? What’s… where—?”
This whole place was void! The table was springing from it! What is this place, what is this chair and this table and this weird man!

The rabbit gave no reaction to the marionette's aggressive action, simply staring at its originator as they set their clauses into the deal... with a small nod the cracks and fragments that encompassed Kousuke's vision seemed to fade in luminosity, instead beating like a heartbeat...

The world around him... had a heartbeat.

The whispers ebbed and flowed with the rhythm, an endless circle of crescendo and decrescendo. An order of operations.

Though it felt like he was looking through a window, a sheet of glass that somehow separated his consciousness from the darked living world that lay there before him.

The rabbit dissipated into mist, billowing down before condensing again on the ground, walking down one of the many halls, looking back to the dealmaker.

"Well? Let's get moving. It's almost time to..."
@Baphomini

---

The deer closed its eyes as the hand came to rest on its face, the question was something it had known the answer to long before the debt collector came to the realization himself.

"That is something for you to decide. The power I bestow upon you is nothing but a means to one of many possible ends, it is up to your actions and decisions to determine if what I choose to give to you becomes a weapon or a tool."

The deer then began to move, past the predator, and toward the stairs. A strange feeling descended upon Fubuki, conflicting. The feeling of being trapped yet also free, of being suffocated yet breathing in the cold and brisk air... A feeling of as if one were looking at the world through a hall of mirrors, each image distorted in its reflection.

The deer turned before descending, eyes piercing through to it's originator's soul.

"Come. Things are still in motion. In order to learn what I have given you, then you must..."
@Kronshi

---

Their body didnt move, it refused to, watching as the shadowy wolf fought the creature, the whispers getting louder in their ears as she raised her hands, covering her ears...

The noise, it was too loud... like being stuck in an echo chamber, letting the sound reverberate and grow enough to make someone's head explode...

"Listen to me!"

The voice cut clearer than the sharpest knife- no.. It peirced the static haze like a bullet straight through her skull.

With a sharp inhale, she looked up, the wolf staring back at them, the creature recovering just behind the creature.

"There's a reason this place is a labyrinth. The fear of being trapped, of being pitted into a corner by your decisions. A winding path that never sees an end, this is the fear, the anxiety of a student, of an apprentice. I need you, as much as you need me, and time is ticking here pup. It's about time, you and the others need to.."



As their vision started... to crack.

---

The masked man smiled at the albino, finding the little bird's confusion and panic amusing.

"Oh, don't worry. Your former family would be much more... hidden if they had access to this. Anyway, that's not what I'm here for, I need you. Or rather, something else needs you, depending on what you do with this."

With a flick of his wrist, a tattered yellowed page materialized from the blackness, as if he had pulled it from the darkness itself. He placed it down, sliding it over to the boy, a small gray feather falling to rest on the title of the paper...

The contract.

"Go ahead, read it over however many times you need. It's a very simple contract, I just need you to sign it."
@CorviDoggo

Tohato wanted to hide away like a termite in wood, burrow into someplace safer than whatever this was. His instincts told him this was absolutely NOT safe, NOT okay, NOT anything he wanted to work with— but what choice did he have? This thing just… pulled him out of reality! Quite literally, too.
He looked down at the yellowed paper. The masked man, he said it was a contract— but that implied it’d have words on it, no..? It didn’t, not to him. It had swirling ink that used to be brushstrokes, changing languages, gibberish upon gibberish and words written on top of each other and random images that had no business being on any human writing system.
Well… Tohato heard somewhere, that dreams, no matter how real they felt, can be figured out if the words are gibberish or if the sky looks off— the sky definitely looked off, as there was none, and he’d definitely consider the words on this paper to be some strange gibberish ever-shifting like mist on mirrors. So, was this a dream? Did that mean he was safe, in his bed, and this was just a horrifying, extremely realistic nightmare? The mask also… seemed to know of Tohato’s dark past, and that made his pale skin crawl.
This could also be a hallucination. Last time he checked, he didn’t have those— just flashbacks and nightmares about the past, but this wasn’t related to his past at all, and it wasn’t some flashback because this is just not part of reality in any way.
Tohato shook himself, tried to stretch as far as his scars would let him, avoided even looking at this cursed contract.
Maybe, if Tohato just signed the weird paper, this would stop, and he would wake up, and he could just smile and pretend this never happened!
And so, the albino silently grumbled to himself about this strange situation, picking up the feather pen and signing where the “blank spot” was. He watched as the kanji of his name swirled with all of the other splotches of ink, and looked back up to the masked man.
”Done. Can I… wake up, now?”

---

Refreshing yet drowning, like a riding a raging rapid while in a very shitty kayak. The cracks of space and time, all but invisible a moment before, revealed themselves to Fubuki. Everything was a reflection of a reflection of a noiɟɔɘlʇɘɿ. Every breath felt as though he was inhaling what existed between these cracks, it was the vacuum of space, it was the real world, it was nothing at all. Nothing and everything existed simultaneously within the essence of Fubuki's wake, his steps resounding like the echoes of an icy cave, hollow but full.

He felt as though his feet were frozen to the floor, but he knew that he had summoned the metaphorical ice, and he knew that he had to power to break free. Fubuki followed the creature, an act of obedience, an act of rebellion, an act predestined by fate. He could tell he was being lead; to a heated fight, to protect someone's peace, to his next step towards purpose for his rage.

The trinity of expressions within him kept expanding and contracting, and at their collapse there was an emptiness, a fourth that should be present put wasn't. One Reflection was Hot, another Reflection was Peaceful, but in that void existed something that wasn't mirrored, but instead existed as the opposite end of the infinite reflections. With this realization, the connections were complete, a whole was formed.



Structure reforming, space restoring, time returning, and then it all disappeared again. Cracks spreading, void growing, entropy rising, and then it all reappeared again. Existence and non-existence combined, Structured cracks, spacial void, entropic time. What was, what is, and what could be coalesced into a single form. The conflict was still there, but it had been crystallized like melting ice.

Fubuki's mind recentered, and he realized that the world had distorted around him. He had both continued following the deer and stayed frozen in place. The ideas became unified as he willed to be ahead of the deer, following his own warpath as general instead of soldier. Whenever Fubuki would reach an intersection, he would wait for the deer to catch up and have it gesture the next direction. He looked back at the deer as the path continued, thinking about what he had been tasked to do, "Shatter the Veil huh, is that all?"

Cracks spread, lines, barriers, limits, all fraying at the edges. Unwoven yet still withheld shape. The world lay shifted, broken, as three converge. Unbalanced, thus will prove destructive... yet is but one path that lay before them.

Structure calling to be broken, severed ties screaming to be woven back to completion.

---

As Kousuke screamed out to the splintering version of the world around them, the cracks spread larger and larger, the pattern completing itself, shifting into a variety of symbols.

A spiderweb.

A helm's wheel.

A Celtic knot.

All extend their ethereal strings of control, tying themselves to the marionette's fingers and wrists...

However, not to bind... none would pull their strings ever again.

As he flew forward, the ephemeral creature disappeared as heat spread from their fingers and hands, flowing through as the world broke. The window separating perception and the real world was broken in an instant, blinded by a white void, all forms of light and color blending together before darkening back to the shifting shadowy world that pulsed with the otherworldly heartbeat…

Their location seemed to have changed…

Along with their appearance.

@Baphomini

---

Aspects of thought, elements of worldly vision contradicted constantly in the air around Fubuki. The space between the cracks thrumming with apathy… yet one could feel emotion and ideas dancing through the area, flying like stray bullet fire.

It was almost like looking through a cracked mirror.

Shards of reality fractured and splintered, confidence in spite of the biting cold, a step toward what could be the chosen path.

A step in the right direction in a way.

As the cracks spread, patterns formed along the edges of his vision.

Snowflakes.

Blades.

Gilded leaves.

With each step, the world broke further, caught between dualities of infinity… The world seemed so bright all of a sudden, yet also pitch black.

Conflict becomes peace, and Contradiction becomes balance…

As one's true form is revealed when the eyes are shown the other side of the coin.

The move was now his to make, to be a pawn marching on, or to be the quewwn on high, to make all crumble within his dominion...

@Kronshi

---

The sounds around Chihiro were drowned out as she gripped the sides of their head, the whispers still gnawing at her... Eyes wide as cracks webbed into her vision, creeping closer to the forefront.

Patterns crept out from the shadows, both gloomy and sanguine, bright and shadowy...

An olive branch.

A Spiral of Life.

A pentacle.

The inky creature had disappeared, she didn't notice it had left... did it leave?

Why would she ever trust a creature like that so blindly? Was she stupid?

The world around her shattered into a million pieces, a host of colors that hid within the light and the dark presented themselves, along with the form of their heart...

A mirror had been shattered, broken. Now showing what humans truly were...

They were nothing but beasts, her included. But that didnt always have to be such a bad thing...

She found themselves reeling on the ground, as the afterglow of the bright/dark flash faded from her vision... She felt different now...

Better.

But there was something still here, and it was on it's feet again, screeching that terrible sound.

There's more than one way to enact peace. She was ready to raise hell or bring down heaven from on high.

"Bring it!" She yelled, bringing her hands up to her face, ready to fight... only... her hands werent hands anymore.

"Wh- The FUCK?!"

---

The man of the mask looked down at the contract, picking up the page and staring intently at the signature now written on it.

"Ah, but of course. Wouldn't want to keep your precious 'real world' waiting now would you?" he chided, and with a flick of the wrist the page is licked away in dark flame. Leaning over the table, one could see the shining, no- glowing eyes of the man, glinting with otherworldly glamour.

Before the venue changed again, the echoing sound of snapping fingers ringing within the ear, back behind the cafe's counter as a customer walked up...

"Hi, there. So, I would like an order of dumplings please?"

@CorviDoggo

(This was a collaboration between myself and @baphomini! )
”My… real world..?”
That… that was DEFINITELY some kind of really weird hallucination. It couldn’t have been real. How could it be? Tohato was in the void, signing some weird paper, and one second later he’s where he normally is. He didn’t want to bring this up to a therapist, or to his dad, or to his uncle… it was a one-time thing so far! So… yeah.
He smiled to the customer. ”Of course! What kind of stuffing? Steamed or fried? We have chicken, pork, vegetable, and we also have sweeter versions of dumplings I also find really good!”
That customer, unlike the strange masked man, took off their shoes at the entrance of this historic building. A lot politer than that masked man! It made Tohato smile.
“I’d love some fried chicken dumplings, please!” The customer responded.
Tohato nodded with his usual sweet smile, and he looked over to his dad, Ha-Neul, cooking just a few meters away from him.
“Appa!”He called, We need an order of fried chicken dumplings!”
"deur-ryeo-yo!" Ha-Neul called back. The man always defaulted to their first language of Korean when they were focused on a task like cooking. 'I hear you,' as they had said, was also a very common response, not just from Ha-Neul, but among their little family in general. It held many meanings among them. From the obvious meaning of assuring one that they were heard, to letting another know that they were understood not just comprehensively, but emotionally. 'I hear you,' was often said in response to one sharing about a rough day, letting them known that their troubles and pains were not just heard, but felt. It was their secret little language in a way.
It wasn't long before Ha-Neul was sliding out the order, calling out the name in Korean as they usually did. As the lunch rush dwindled down, Ha-Neul soon joined Tohato at the front behind the counter, wiping off their hands on a cloth hanging from their apron. They greeted him with their iconic warm smile, "Busy day," they commented, laughing lightly, "Are you well?"
Tohato, still standing behind the counter to greet customers, smiled at his dad. He hesitated, his smile a little forced, his brows furrowed, but his cherry-red eyes bright.
“I’m fine, appa, just a little flustered… how are you?”
The kitchen was hot, especially during this time of the year…. ”Appa, do you want some water..? Tohato offered, almost like he avoided trying to talk about that weird… experience? He just had.
"I'm fine, snowbird, thank you, I'll get myself some water on my way back to the kitchen," they told him almost dismissively then asked, "Have you had a chance to eat yet? I could make you something while there is time."
”Are there any leftover noodles? I’d love those! Tohato chirped as he made his way back to the kitchen. He’ll be back to the counter by the time the dinner rush came through, but there were some regulars that came by in these in-between times and challenged him and his dad to mahjong.
Tohato paused, and looked back to his dad. “Do you know where uncle went? We should make some food for him, too, when he’s back.”
He still prepared a glass of cold water for his dad while he was in the kitchen, and then took out a nice iced can of jasmine tea for himself.
His father nodded to his question, leading the way back to the kitchen as they made way to prepare two bowls of noodles for themself and Tohato, garnishing them with some seaweed and other things laying about, left overs from other orders. They never let anything go to waste. Anything they personally didn't eat was either composted, or collected into slop for pigs belonging to close friends, who in turn provided them with prime pork.
As Ha-Neul handed Tohato their bowl, they told him, "Ah, Hyeon-Ju took Mandu to see the vet. He was worried with the way she's been lately, and wants to be safe. He should be returning in time for the dinner rush, I'm sure."
Tohato smiled at the thought of the sweet little flock of Easter-egger chickens living in the backyard. All of them except one were sweet, even the territorial rooster, Kong, loved being cuddled. He did notice Mandu had been breathing a little off lately— he was glad his uncle took her to the vet. Hopefully it’s nothing— maybe she’s just tired! She isn’t the brightest chicken, no, but she produces a lot or eggs. If something happened with her lungs… they’d have to send everyone to the vet, just in case.
Oh, how Tohato loved sitting there with all the chickens. They had soft feathers, and they were all rescues— kind of like him! They were all so kind to him, he saw them as family, too.
”Oh, didn’t Bogsu get broody again? We might have to keep her out of the coop for a day…” Tohato asked, looking up from the bowl he had a few inches away from his face.
Another customer came in— Tohato quickly put his food down, wiped his face with a napkin, and rushed over to the counter again after quickly thanking his dad.

---

Before any processing could be done, reality shifted around Fubuki and dropped him off in a new location. He felt more connected, more grounded to this place then before but something was off besides the change in scenery. He followed the path in front of him, until he reached the first new intersection and then he realized what was wrong. The deer was gone, but Fubuki guessed that it must have been left behind wherever he had come from and was probably also questioning the boy's disappearance. He wondered which path he was supposed to follow, but that was answered for him when he heard a loud, shrill screech like nails on a chalk-board or a sharp instrument carving into glass.

"Not that way," he attempted to think aloud but realized that it had come out more as Naawt taah ay in a deeper growl. Reaching for his throat, feeling that it was sore, Fubuki saw a clawed hand reaching for him and he flinched. As did the hand. It, no, most of Fubuki's body was covered in a frost blue pelt that was coated in ice. The fingertips were hairless, and no ice covered them, and so he could see the shriveled skin that revealed the shape of his bones underneath. This body was corpse-like and his breath was cold, so cold that it created a fog in the air in front of him. Then he noticed that all of him was surrounded in a similar but thinner mist, his entire body was chilling the air around him. He was further from the ground, and his legs were bent awkwardly like a deer's. It reminded him of a horror story he knew was big in the west. The screech from before still rang in his mind, and he felt it reverberate his entire new form. This body wanted to fight and Fubuki guessed that if he was going to get any answers about what happened to him, then he'd have to cooperate.

Rushing towards the noise, it continued to ring in his head. It plagued him as if begging to be silenced. Fubuki turned a corner and could see movement down the hall. He then heard a girl's voice panicking and soon after a boy's voice commanding something but he wasn't close enough to make out words. He knew he had to get there quickly, and his elongated arms offered him a faster option. He began running on all fours, galloping into the room. He noticed the odd creature clawing its way out of the wall and towards a, wolf, girl, wolf-girl? Fubuki raised his body back onto its legs and stood upright. He wanted to shout at the beast to get its attention, but what came out instead was a chilling howl that even caused Fubuki to metaphorically shiver. Although his new form seemed unfazed by the sound.

The world that lay deep within slowly began to stir... vague images becoming twisted and distorted yet so much more clear. Reflections of the realm of perception twisted by thought and emotion. Repression, masking, adaptation, this trinity holding dominion...

The mirror's children. Shattered to splinters and spread far into the recesses of the darkened collective heart of humanity. Split and subdivided.

Tainted. A hall of warping and shifting mirrors. A new awakening has caught the attention of something far bigger... The world itself awoke from its long slumber, the blackness rippling with apathy and empathy, distorting the raw concepts of time and space, of infinity and void.

One of ^her_his^their children had been more active than the rest... They would soon follow suit, but was most interesting were these... contracted souls, more intertwined than most... Best to see how it plays out.

---

The heat has risen.

The waves of heat around the puppet cut loose bent and flowed in accordance with their will. As the words came forth, they exploded out of the marionette, a shockwave of power that emanated from them.

Commanding the very construction of the walls surrounding.

The walls were pushed back, bending and warping at odd angles, yet held together by the absence of natural law.

Empathy and Apathy. Life and Death. Repression and Expression. Thus were the only rules by which this place abided. A spectrum of absolutes and polarities, fraught with twisted truths and balancing contrasts.

The spike of heat from within the dealbreaker's chest reached out, strands of ethereal thread, the strings of control that lay severed… Once used against them, now laid before him as a weapon primed for use.
@Baphomini

---

Warped became rigid.

The pure sound of howling stopped the shifting walls in its tracks, a chilling brine radiating across the twisted walls, as the absence and presence of energy clashed within the room, the two third parties trapped in the center of both crowd control Artes.

Fear. A feeling not unfamiliar, but introspective. The innards of the soul were torn outward, fighting for one's life with the demons that lived in the mind, a parasite transformed into a weapon.

The frozen coating of the walls formed patterns, initially esoteric, before shifting and formulating one solid. Snowflakes, crystals. Fractals of the frozen substance hung in the air, the heat bending and flowing through the cracks.

Two absolutes held within perpetual balance through contradiction.
@Kronshi

---

Echoes of sound and power rang hard.

She felt it in her bones, a wave of heated words pushing her back as another sound sent an icy chill down her spine… She fell over by the combination, still unsteady in her footing with her new ‘hybrid’ body.

Their body moved on its own, moving away to a now farther wall, before she halted, muscles tense as her heart hammered in her chest.

Other than the blatant situation of danger at hand, she felt something even more unsettling. She felt unbalanced, a twist in her stomach, the dreaded sensation of tilting too far on a tightrope…

She tried to steady her body, a tremble that shook them to the core… Standing again, she placed a hand/paw/thing on the wall to stabilize her footing…

Fear is a weapon. Something she could disarm.

Her eyes drifted closed, a steady breath in, then out. Spectrums of color shined from behind her eyelids, darkening down to the peaceful blackness that she found calming. A spike of sudden energy, uncomfortable at first, but soon subsiding…

Like a shard of glass embedded in her chest.

---

The creature, manifestation of thought, fragment of masking, freezes at the sounds, glass cracking with the contrast.

The fractured mirror that made up its ‘face’ rippled and shifted as it slowly turned to the marionette, the howl forcing it to look away from the frozen pelted predator as it fixed its gaze upon the white-clad wooden man. The glass that embedded itself into its body, prismatic in coloration as it cut through visage and the floor beneath it.

The slightest glimpse of a face glinted in the reflective material, a shadow of whatever person created this beast. A creature that reflected a person's social mask. An aspect of repression and fake expression.

---

Customers flowed through like water in a stream.

The festival still went on, people enjoying their orders in whatever dining space was allowed, as sunlight brightened and dimmed with clouds outside.

It was like clouds blended and merged with the sky, light dancing through the cracks and tears of the blanket of vapor. The light seemed to last forever.

Yet something felt hidden in the radiant streams, like something one couldn't begin to see by shining a light on it…

Something that didn't quite belong in this world.
@CorviDoggo

---

Human perception has always been a piece of work.

The masked man sat atop one of the many bright billboards that overlooked the district square, looking down at all the people scurrying about like ants. Within his gloved left hand he held a flower with six petals, of six colors. Red, Blue, Purple, Yellow, Black, and White. He looked at the flower in his hand, a representation of the balance and chaos of the mirror, bound by the principles of this world…

To think he was a representation of this filth.

He lifted the mask with his right hand, revealing the smooth and featureless surface beneath, shadowy short hair that seemed to ebb and flow. The eyes were the only thing that defined his face. A bright prismatic hue that changed its coloration constantly… As the shining oculi were covered by flesh and blood, and placing the mask back onto his face, the outward picture shifted from one of theatrics, to one that struck fear.

An oni mask.

Black brambles sprouted from the man's fingers, a bud of a flower growing in his palm. A sweet seed to be planted…

He let it fall. Fall far down to the flow of humans below.

For even the most beautiful of roses has its thorns. One would be a fool to think that such a beautiful mask had not consequences behind it's face…

---

A new headline graces the opulent signs that hung above the district.

“Strange vanishings shock Shibuya…”

Cracks are beginning to form in the Veil of Ignorance. The creature's that reside there beginning to reach past their dominion…

The lines are beginning to blur.

---

The walls of the room had been moving just a moment ago. Fubuki hadn't noticed due to more pressing concerns such as the strange glass-man and equally strange but less-threatening wolf-girl, but when they stopped the contrast made it evident. It was as off the very space they occupied had become scared of him, and the monster in front of him reacted similarly. He watched as it stiffened up, the reflections within its face getting smaller like when someone's pupils constrict out of shock. The smell of sand reached Fubuki; glass was odorless and yet he smelled sand as if the glass was shivering and cracking, degrading into its previous form. The monster turned away from him to face the boy that he had previously heard, and that made him certain. Three versus one, the loner will always aim for the weakest link and yet there was no notable difference between the girl and the boy, so why change his target when he was already after the girl?

The glass-man was scared.

Fubuki grinned, the opening of his maw reaching farther down his face then he would've thought. Returning to all fours, he charged the beast and pounced onto its back. One hand had a clawed grip on its left shoulder, and the other grapped its chin and lifted its head up as he leaned over from its back. "Don't you know you're supposed to face your fears?" Fubuki asked, the end of his speech being said with a low growl. The glass-man reached its right arm up to strike at its back but Fubuki was expecting that and an advantageous position. He let go if its head and grabbed its arm, and using its own weight already leaning onto its left, pulled hard to roll them both over onto the ground.

His advantage didn't last long, his grip onto the shoulder was just enough to keep him from falling off its back and he only had one arm pinned. He also had no idea how this creature was capable of moving. The laws of physics don't hold here and this creature wasn't organic in nature, its limbs didn't need worry about ripping flesh and muscle. Its pinned arm spun around in its socket, the monster now facing Fubuki and struck its claws down towards him. He rolled out of the way and quickly grappled its other arm. With both arms held, Fubuki and the creature continued to wrestle for control on the ground. Fubuki was physically stronger, but he couldn't ignore the laws of anatomy like this thing could. He knew he'd have to try and land a kick on this thing, and so he allowed it to get above him in order to get his legs positioned. He kicked upwards and hit the glass-man squarely in the stomach. He heard glass shatter, but felt nothing but a brick wall under it. Fubuki could crack its shell like this, but not really hurt the beast.

Damn it, I can't hurt it without putting my whole body behind my strikes. And I can't do that without getting up. And I can't do that without letting this thing get a pot shot off on me and go after those other two. All I can do is hold it here until they run away.

It was another busy day for Tohato, a time where even the off hours have a good few tables, and where Tohato played against a few customers who requested the mahjong challenge because his father was busy cooking. Overall, he didn’t have a chance to think about the strangeness around him ever since that hallucination earlier in the day. He didn’t have a chance to think about how, sometimes, the customers he spoke to didn’t have faces. He didn’t have a chance to think about how the walls felt like they were caving in. He didn’t have a chance to think about why his heart kept beating so quickly and why he felt uneasy. He didn’t have a chance to think about how there were moments where he couldn’t hear his dad calling from the kitchen.

In between all the orders, some time in the evening, Ha-Neul eventually asked Tohato what was going on.

“Is there anything wrong, snowbird?” Tohato heard from the kitchen, after silence and melting walls plagued the young man’s senses. Tohato couldn’t answer anymore… for some reason, he kept feeling fear..? A fear so strong and so… unreasonable that Tohato both wanted to run despite his bad leg and hit his skull against a steel beam for being so scared of what was most definitely nothing.

Ha-Neul gently put a hand on Tohato’s shoulder. “Can you check on the chickens for me?” They asked with a smile on their face— Tohato knew his father was trying to give him a little fresh air. Maybe it would help.

The albino still couldn’t talk, and instead silently nodded. The chickens were… probably fine, honestly, but he loved just being with them. So, he slowly walked over— out of the back door, into the little patio, right where the chicken coop was. All do the hens were getting ready to roost as the light started to dim, the rooster trying to encourage the ladies to head into the little wood hut that Tohato was about to sit in.

How did it still feel so… tight? He was outside, but he still felt trapped. He felt uneasy, as the lush garden around him started to… melt? Strip itself away from the world? The chickens disappeared from his vision, as did the restaurant, as did all the buildings in the traditional town he was in.

He felt hands all over him. He felt claws on his back. He felt the pain of being thrown around, the pain of people, the pain of loneliness, the pain of fingers on his neck tightening until he could black out. Where was he again? What was going on..? He should— he should go back to the restaurant. He should go back home. He was just there! What time is it? Where is uncle..?

The last thing Tohato was able to hear was his name, until everything swallowed him up. “Snowbird? Tohato?” Ha-Neul called from the back door.

“Tohato..? TOHATO??”

And then Tohato was entirely alone.