Somewhere else, from the window of a shabby third-floor apartment, Franz Laera looked at the sunset hide beneath the buildings.
The noises of the city down below were only overshadowed by a humming noise emanating from the inside of his room - which abruptly cut to the ring of a bell: dinner was ready.
Or well, almost ready.
Franz steps back from the window, grasping the cord and pulling it, causing the blinds to come crashing down to cover the sky away from him. Tip-toeing in the dark, Franz reaches the hot stove in the other side of the room and plugs it off, as he brazenly grasps the cup of noodles with his hands.
"Fuck, fuck, fuck, hot, hOOOOOOOOOOt." Franz leaves the cup of instant noodles nearby, blowing air at his hand in hopes that the tingling sensation of skin being scorching hot would subside.
With the food cooling down, he sits down in the lone chair in the whole room, the only other relevant furniture being an old mattress dumped on the ground and the table where the hot stove, the cup of noodles, a letter and a small kitchen timer rested upon. Yet his eyes were not focused in either of those, but on the corkboard hanging on the wall, littered with newspaper cutouts, post-it notes and crude photographies of both some students and some bizarre imagery - akumas, kaijin, many alike.
The clues were drawing him further to the truth. His hand scratched the pocket, frantically searching for his cellphone, the lamenting skin still sensitive to the touch.
The flip phone flips open, beep-boop-baap-biip, bee-boo-boop, bii-bup. And Franz then silently looked at the screen, the number he entered reflecting on his face in the darkness of the room.
Pressing the "call" button, Franz laid back on the comfy chair - his safe space - as he waited for the person he was calling back to pick it up back.
"I've got them in my grasp. I know it."