"—In other news, the search continues today for the high school girl living in the prefecture who has been missing since the 25th of this month. Police are treating it as a kidnapping case—"

Only the cold light of the television illuminates the room, which is sealed shut by blackout curtains. My own name, read aloud by the anchor, sounds like someone from a far-off foreign land.

While the world outside is in an uproar, inside this room, it is incredibly quiet and warm.

That day. The quiet prep room after school. Only when I was in front of him, my teacher Takumi Asahina, could I truly breathe. I had loved him for a long time. He was the only one who knew about my hell. At my limit, wanting to trouble him, I muttered in a deliberately joking tone.

"I don't want to go home. ...I wish someone would just make me disappear from here."

I thought he would give a troubled smile or scold me like a teacher should. But the eyes behind his glasses distorted, becoming deeper and darker than I had ever seen.

"...Okay."

He comes home from school—my beloved kidnapper, who surely spent today nonchalantly talking to the police who accepted my missing person's report. The world would surely look at us with judgment. But no one even tries to know the truth. This is our sanctuary, the darkest and safest place in the world.