"Honey, I'm worried for our lad. A madcap on the controller I will admit, but running away from home isn't his typical suit of clothing. Wouldn't you agree?"

A father who hasn't bonded with his beloved son as much as he should have. It's a tale done to death, such that one can hardly be moved by it when exploring the emotional turmoil the fictional son always goes through for the readers' convenience.

Luckily, in this book, the protagonist and his family will suffer through plenty of anguish. Forced, yes — but an inevitable fate.

It wasn't like the author of this book intended to dish out his sadistic tendencies on some defenseless individuals all for the sake of curiosity, right?

Right. . .?

How perverse.

"Couldn't he just be playing with his friends? You know how much of a raijū he is, don't you? It's fine! Stop worrying too much, Tsutsumi."

The wife patted her husband's back, attempting to ease his concern. Terada and Tsutsumi's dynamic was as generic as can be; a loving, soft-mannered woman and an overprotective, but caring man. Little did they know their happiness was bound to cease in minute succession.

Fate could be as elegiacal as it was dolorous, after all.

"Maybe giving him a call would be fine just this once," Tsutsumi grabbed his mobile and did so. The monotone beep repeated for a notable period, causing the air to tense further than it already had.

"Maybe his phone is off. we'll try calling Saito later, alright?" Terada spoke with certainty in her tone, as if she knew everything would surely be fine.

Naively — and perhaps foolishly, Tsutsumi was convinced by his wife's firm reassurance.

Maybe he was overreacting, and should just let his son have some fun for a little longer. Who knows, perhaps he would jump back into the door lamenting his hasty decision to leave while carrying an uncharged phone?

He reasoned to himself that it was only this, and not that his child had left their dimension completely. Who would assume such a thing in their right mind?

Such people were branded as outcasts; fools who had no chance of deliverance from the insanity grasping their very cores.

"It seems like your own words aren't believable at all. Listen, anata, our baby is just fine and okay. Accept the truth and. . . stop wearing that stupid face!" she chided.

While on the logical side of his brain, Tsutsumi could accept the convenient words, the emotional side was rather contrasting.

Imagination ran wild; no limit to the possibilities existed in this realm, so he kept thinking. . . and thinking. . . and thinking. . . such that even a dragon from Zeus' bathtub kidnapping the young boy was a theory that existed.

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"Hey!"

The intemperate screams grew in volume by the second. Terada was no longer thinking about her son's outcome, but instead, had her attention focused on her husband's oddly deranged expression. It was one never seen before, as if he had just smoked marijuana. This set off multiple alarms in her head, and she grew a newfound determination to put an end to it.

Many promising ideas came to mind, ranging from; pulling the ears, smacking his cheeks, and even licking him among others. Sad to say, while these were all exotic ways to resort to, none had the effectiveness required to pull this overgrown baby from this palpable trance.

That was a tame comparison — after all, bacchanalias individuals deserve no respect to be handed to them. Just like vagabonds on the street.

"Fine, looks like something more sinister will be necessary." She rose from the couch, her mood soured by the retreating comfort of warmness on her ass as a sensation. Regardless, the mission took a greater priority at that moment.

The narrator could only make out the sound of fluid pouring into a container of sorts, muffled greatly, courtesy of the shut doors and the likely. . . hot temperature of whatever this was.

Any observer would be cast into a disarray of deliberation when presented with a scene this ambiguously performed.

The door winded apart, revealing a focused lady with a pot of hot water. The steam emitted heated the place quickly, undoing the coolness of the air as if a magical spell was cast by an all-powerful wizard or witch. While she was moving forward, the large plank of wood creaked backwards due to gravity.

The moment of truth arrived finally.

"I'm pouring this hot water on you if you don't wake up right now."

"Huh...?" the man finally returned from his vice, looking around him similarly to a newborn baby's awkward disposition.

"Good, so you finally heard me, aye? I was starting to get worried now; maybe a demon had possessed you or something along those lines! mind telling me what the matter is?" She locked eyes with him, trading a staredown just as — or even fiercer than. . . that time. . .

"I don't know, I can't even explain!" he blurted out these words. "Sweetie, Junichiro is everything to me. You understand it, don't you? You do, right?" in his alternating frenzy of mind operation, he repeated these final words.

Terada closed her eyes and huffed a deep breath — after all, she knew exactly what the man in front of her was saying, albeit a little taken aback by his sudden admittance. She inhaled through the nose and exhaled through the mouth, just like motivational speakers always instructed their fans to do.

Her lips curled upwards at their ends, and she let out a small chuckle. "You're asking me that? Out of all people on this dusty blue marble, you asked me that? I don't even need to explain the absurdity of it, because I'm his mother! Of course I understand!" she raised her voice at the end.

Tsutsumi gasped at the sudden tone his lover took. "Okay. Okay, anata. I was not implying anything by it, okay?" he attempted to placate her obvious fury. "It's just. . . I'm worried."

"You already said that before," she quipped, shaking her head with amusement in the process. "This is one of your flaws; you struggle with expressing yourself. We've gone over this time and time again."

"Yeah, God forbid I'm not a flexible wordsmith," he commented sarcastically. "We men aren't very good at talking about emotions and. . . feelings and stuff. You're forgetting that I don't do therapy; I do physics. The former concerns mental health exploration while the latter deals with conceptual mathematics. I'm trying not to be insufferable here, love!"

"I'm not thrashing you for that. I just wish you'd stop being so dramatic for once. Junichiro is fine! I know he's fine! We should avoid bothering his playtime. We'll talk to him tomorrow," she insisted on the matter.

"Fine. if you say so, Terada."

Oh what a foolish choice that was. . .

Beyond the closed curtains, the clouds rubbed against each other and produced a sharp lightning strike — talk about negative energy.

It zaps anything and everything, true to its nature, forever and ever.

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