The blue light from the computer monitor washed over Ciel’s face, casting an unhealthy pale hue amidst the darkness of his messy room.

  It had been three days.

  Three days since the fireworks parade in Gant City, and Ciel had barely slept. His status as a freshman and paperboy seemed forgotten. His focus had narrowed to a single point: a deep-web discussion forum and internet conspiracy community dissecting the "Carta Sky Phenomenon."

  His fingers danced with maddening speed across the keyboard, creating a mechanical, emotionally charged rhythm of keystrokes.

  Thread: [URGENT] The Silk Web Behind the Fireworks – Did You See It?

  User: C_Evans99

  You are all being deceived. Those weren't ordinary fireworks. In the stratosphere, when the silver-white explosions peaked, there was a structure. A web of light, thin as spider silk, woven across the entire sky. That structure pulsed every time it absorbed an explosion. Someone is holding something back from entering our atmosphere!

  Ciel slammed the Enter key. He wiped the sweat from his brow, then scrolled the mouse wheel to view incoming replies.

  Notifications exploded. However, their contents were not supportive.

  @LogicMaster: "Bro, that's an optical illusion called an 'Afterimage'. Your eyes got hit by a massive firework flash, and your optic nerves glitched. Stop reading too many comics."

  @PixelHunter: "I've checked 4K footage from ten different angles. Nothing there but smoke and gunpowder. Maybe your camera lens is dirty, or were you 'high' while watching?"

  @AntiHoax_Carta: "Just report this account. Spreading fake news amidst national joy. The government was nice enough to give us entertainment, yet someone's still trying to get attention with garbage conspiracy theories."

  "Damn it..." Ciel hissed. His face flushed with anger.

  He drew short, shallow breaths, his chest feeling tight. He remained adamant. He knew what he saw. He couldn't be wrong—he saw it with his own eyes, piercing the smoke fog, piercing the illusion created to deceive millions.

  He began typing another reply, his fingers trembling from muscle fatigue.

  You don't understand! The barometric pressure anomaly data posted by @MadAnalyst is real! Those explosions had kinetic function, not aesthetic! Why were the fireworks double-layered? Why is the military silent? My father works in the Ministry of Defense and even he doesn't dare speak the truth!

  Ciel paused. He deleted the last sentence about his father. Too dangerous. He replaced it with a technical argument about light refraction that made no sense if it were merely smoke.

  The netizen attacks grew more brutal. Mockery and insults flooded his comment section. They laughed at him, calling him a "Failed Indigo Child", an "Attention Seeker", and even a "Traitor to Happiness."

  Ciel felt like he was drowning. He was alone against a current of information engineered so perfectly. The internet, which was supposed to be a place to share the truth, now felt like a prison filled with volunteer wardens defending the government's lies.

  He typed again. Replying one by one. Dissecting every rebuttal with the logic he possessed, even though his head began to throb with pain.

  "I... saw it..." he whispered hoarsely. "I saw the web..."

  His back was drenched in sweat. His t-shirt clung to his skin, cold and uncomfortable. His eyes stung, as if grains of sand were lodged beneath his eyelids.

  Hahh... hahhh...

  Ciel leaned back in his chair, tilting his head up to stare at the bedroom ceiling. His breathing was heavy, labored, and jagged. Overwhelming exhaustion hammered him, but his nerves were still too taut to let him sleep.

  Outside the window, Gant City still looked beautiful with the remnants of lanterns hung by citizens. The world was still partying in sweet ignorance.

  Only Ciel, inside his dark room, was fighting alone to maintain sanity against a hidden reality.

  Hahh... hahhh...

  He looked back at the screen. A new notification popped up. Not an insult. Just a direct message (DM) from an account with no profile picture.

  Unknown: Stop replying to them, Ciel. You are attracting the wrong kind of attention.

  Ciel’s heart seemed to skip a beat.

  He pulled his hands away from the hot keyboard, then buried his face in his palms.

  Dark.

  That was all he saw behind his tightly shut eyelids. Yet, within that darkness, the image of silver light webs in the night sky swirled again like a ghost refusing exorcism.

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  "I couldn't be hallucinating..." he hissed, his voice muffled by his palms. "I really saw it myself. It wasn't an afterimage. It was a physical structure. It was a barrier."

  His heavy breaths bounced between his fingers. He tried to reconstruct the memory second by second. The vibration of the ground. The pulse of the light. The way the smoke hung suspended for a moment before dissipating. All the laws of physics he had learned in his first semester of civil engineering screamed that the explosions had collided with something solid in the sky.

  Slowly, Ciel lowered his hands. His red, exhausted eyes shifted from the painful monitor screen to a small object beside him.

  A polaroid photo.

  The photo Elsie took that night. There, on the glossy photo paper, the three of them smiled widely. Denes with his goofy grin, Elsie with her sweet smile, and Ciel looking slightly tense but still smiling. Their background was a sky still bearing traces of colorful smoke.

  Ciel stared at his best friends' faces with a bleak gaze.

  Denes...

  Ciel recalled their conversation the day after the festival, when he tried to explain his theory at the campus cafeteria.

  "Oh come on, El. You probably stayed up too late playing games," Denes laughed crisply while swiping Ciel’s fries. "I was there, Bro. I looked at the same sky. No spider webs. Just smoke. Your eyes got crossed by the flash of that finale explosion."

  Denes denied it outright. To Denes, the world was simple. If it wasn't on the news, if it wasn't seen by the masses, it didn't exist. Denes’ denial was rough, but honest.

  Then Ciel’s gaze shifted to Elsie’s face in the photo.

  Elsie...

  The girl's reaction was different. When Ciel spoke passionately about the silver web, Elsie didn't laugh. She listened patiently, staring intently into Ciel’s eyes.

  "Yes, Ciel... maybe you're right," Elsie had said then, her voice soft, her hand rubbing the back of Ciel’s hand. "Maybe there really is something only observable by someone as meticulous as you."

  Elsie nodded kindly. She validated Ciel’s words.

  But as Ciel looked at the photo now, he felt a different kind of pain.

  He knew Elsie wasn't being honest.

  That nod wasn't an agreement of fact. It was a nod of "pity." It was the nod of a nurse soothing a patient delirious with fever. Elsie didn't believe him; she just couldn't bear to argue with him. She offered false validation because she cared for Ciel, not because she saw the same truth.

  And to Ciel, that was far more painful than Denes’ laughter.

  Denes thought he misaw. Elsie thought he was sick.

  "You are all blind..." Ciel whispered softly to the silent photo.

  A cold loneliness crept up his spine. In the middle of a crowded city, among the friends he cared for, Ciel Evans felt like the only man with open eyes in a world of the blind.

  He was alone. Truly alone with this terrifying truth.

  That curiosity was like an itch beneath the skin that couldn't be scratched. The more Ciel tried to ignore it, the more inflamed it became, forcing him to do something that violated the highest boundary of privacy in this house.

  Ciel stood before the dark mahogany door. His heart beat irregularly, as if he were a thief about to crack a bank vault, even though this was his own home.

  Slowly, his hand turned the cold doorknob.

  Click. Unlocked.

  Ciel pushed the door open.

  A sharp masculine scent instantly assaulted his olfaction. The smell of shoe polish, cheap sandalwood cologne, and a faint tang of metal. Hannes Evans’ room was exactly as Ciel remembered: sterile.

  There were no warm family photos on the nightstand, only an analog alarm clock and a dried-up glass of water. The bedsheets were pulled so tight a dropped coin might bounce off them. The walls were bare, painted light gray without adornment. This wasn't a father's bedroom; it was a soldier's barracks that happened to be in a civilian house.

  Ciel stepped inside, closing the door behind him carefully. He felt watched by those mute walls.

  He began his search.

  He opened his father's desk drawers. Empty. Only standard military pens, a stapler, and stacks of boring logistics reports about combat vehicle fuel procurement.

  He moved to the main wardrobe. Daily uniforms hung neatly by color gradation: olive green, desert camo, down to black for night duty.

  He checked the tactical suitcase under the bed. Password locked. Ciel tried his birth date, his mother's birth date, their wedding anniversary. Failed. He shook it. Light. Probably only contained spare clothes.

  Ciel checked every corner, every crevice, flipped pillows, felt the undersides of drawers.

  Nothing.

  No secret documents labeled "FIREWORKS PROJECT". No alien invasion maps. No media gag orders. Just the boring belongings of an obedient mid-ranking officer.

  "Damn it..." Ciel hissed in frustration.

  He threw his body onto his father's hard mattress. The old springs inside creaked in protest.

  Ciel stared at the bedroom ceiling, exhaling roughly. What am I actually looking for? Do I hope to find proof my father is a criminal? Or do I just want validation that I'm not crazy?

  His eyes roamed aimlessly around the room, until his gaze stopped on an object in a dim corner.

  An old teakwood wardrobe carved with lilies.

  It was his late mother's wardrobe.

  The only place he hadn't checked. Since his mother died five years ago, Hannes forbade Ciel from touching that wardrobe. "Let her memories remain there," his father had said.

  Ciel rose slowly, as if pulled by an invisible magnet.

  His footsteps dragged softly across the wooden floor. He stood before the wardrobe, swallowed hard, then pulled both doors open.

  Creeeeak...

  The thick, pungent smell of camphor instantly pierced his nose, making his eyes water slightly. The smell of preserved memories.

  However, as his eyes adapted to the darkness inside, his heart sank.

  There were no more of his mother's floral dresses. No lavender-scented silk scarves. The wardrobe had been emptied of feminine traces.

  Instead, hung several formal civilian suits and old military ceremonial uniforms belonging to Hannes that were rarely worn. Thick, stiff fabrics, lined up like headless ghosts.

  Ciel snorted in disappointment. Even here, his father had erased traces of the past.

  Ciel’s hand reached out randomly, feeling one of the thick black suits hanging at the very end. The wool fabric felt rough against his fingertips.

  Idly, he slipped his hand into the suit's outer pocket. Empty. Only cigarette tobacco crumbs.

  He moved to the next suit. A dark blue ceremonial uniform. He reached into its inner pocket.

  His fingertips brushed against something.

  Not fabric. Paper.

  Ciel’s heart leaped. He pulled his hand out.

  A folded piece of yellowish-white paper rested between his index and middle fingers.

  The paper was in a pathetic condition. Its texture had turned to fuzz, its fibers raised and brittle. The black ink on it had faded into faint purple stains seeping into the paper fibers. It was obvious this paper had once been left inside the pocket, submerged in a washing machine, spun, rinsed, dried, and perhaps even pressed by a hot iron, until it fused and dried within the folds of that pocket.

  Forgotten trash.

  But to Ciel right now, it was treasure.

  His hands trembled violently. The "agitation" exploded in his chest—a mix of fear the paper would crumble when opened, and fear of what might remain of the writing on it.

  With bated breath, Ciel began unfolding the fragile paper slowly, very slowly, terrified a small tear would erase the only clue he possessed.