He reached the top of the stairs, stumbled down them, He was back in the mountains of trash. His territory.
He scanned the apocalyptic landscape. He needed to be invisible. He needed a hiding spot so cliché, so ridiculous, that no high-tech alien cop would bother looking.
And there it was.
Tilted against a rusted car chassis, half-buried in a hill of plastic bottles: a giant, white, industrial FREEZER. The kind that belongs in a butcher's shop or a horror movie.
Adam scrambled over the trash, threw open the freezer lid, it groaned in protest like an elderly demon, and was about to leap in when a thought, as sharp and cold as the metal, hit him.
'MY FOOTPRINTS, YOU IDIOT!'
He had left a clear footprints all the way from the Junk Fortress to the Scene of Verbal Crime and back. The police would just follow the golden path straight to his fridge-coffin.
PANIC 100%
He couldn't use his hands, that would leave new prints.
He needed something wide.
Something soft.
Something round...ahem
Something that could erase sand without leaving its own distinctive pattern.
His eyes scanned the junks with frantic urgency.
Then...he saw it.
Half-buried under a fishing net and a broken PVC pipe, like a treasure...
A large, deflated rubber dinghy.
The cheap, floppy kind kids kick around in the summer.
Six feet long. Wide. Soft. Perfect.
A plan formed in his head.
He yanked the dinghy by its rope handle and dragged the sad, floppy rubber corpse toward the start of his footprint trail.
He dropped the dinghy over his earliest prints.
Then, climbing onto the edges of the dinghy like he was operating a gigantic, soggy sandal, he slowly painstakingly dragged the deflated rubber boat backward over his own tracks.
The effect was… shockingly good.
The soft underside didn't create new prints, it just smoothed the sand into a natural, slightly messy patch.
It looked less like someone erased something and more like:
"Hmm, perhaps a large piece of garbage gently rolled here."
Nature at work.
Totally innocent.
No possible forensic value.
It took minutes. Agonizing minutes.
Every few feet, he had to stop:
reposition the dinghy,
drag it again,
pray no one was watching this crime-scene-tampering interpretive dance.
By the time he neared the freezer, sweat dripped down his face, his arms shook, and the dinghy looked more tired than he did.
Adam, whispering, panting : "This is the most stressful thing I've done… since my last Calculus exam…"
He positioned the dinghy for the final sweep, erased the last footprint, and slid headfirst into the freezer like a man escaping Hell.
Operation Footprints Erasure: Completed.
Crime trail: obliterated.
Dignity: questionable.
Inside the metal tomb, it was pitch black, cold, and faintly smelled of fish.
He Curled up like a terrified shrimp.
Darkness. Silence. Only his own panting breath.
'…Okay… okay… this is fine… they won't find me here, probably.'
He hugged his knees tightly.
Adam finally exhaled, a shaky sigh of relief.
Every breath came out shaky, Now that the adrenaline was draining out of his system, exhaustion suppressed until now by sheer survival instinct crashed into him like a tsunami.
'so tired...as if I sacrificed ten years of lifespan.'
He closed his eyes, trying to steady his breathing, trying to gather even a sliver of strength.
But the lack of oxygen in the enclosed freezer made it impossible. His lungs struggled. His head spun. A dizzy fog swallowed his thoughts.
'No, I can't faint...If I close my eyes, I might never wake up again!'
Using the same stubborn willpower forged through countless sleepless nights binge-reading webnovels, he fought the suffocating tide of sleep.
He didn't know how long he stayed like that before...
WEEWOO—WEEWOO—WEEWOO—
The sharp wail of a police siren stabbed through the silence.
Adam's eyes widened inside the freezer, his blood turned to ice.
'Ya rabi… they found me already?!'
The siren grew louder.
Closer.
Until it stopped.
'Probably near the stairs' Adam pictured the map of the area in his mind, estimating the position of the car from memory alone.
Adam slammed both hands over his mouth to hold his breath, in hope to lower his presence.
His heart pounded so violently that he was sure even the freezer walls could hear it.
He heard the sound of car doors being opened and closed.
Footsteps descended the stairs, crunched over sand.
Two men.
Two deep, muffled Japanese voices.
"Sector C, eastern shore. Witnesses said the foreign kid ran this way. We're checking for any traces," the older one said into his walkie-talkie.
"The footprints end before the stairs. Either he jumped into this junk heap or he deliberately misled us," the younger muttered, bending to inspect the sand.
Adam, curled in the freezer, understood nothing.
Even after all the anime he'd watched.
'If only there were subtitles...' He thought
he heard the footsteps and the dialogue getting closer to his hiding area.
"Tamagi-san, if he choose to hide in this junks, how are we supposed to find him?"
Adam felt his soul evaporate.
'Ya Rabbi, I'm finished… they gonna dissect me… take my kidneys… feed my organs to alien dogs…'
Adam's squeezed his eyes shut.
He pressed his sweaty forehead against the cold metal, fingers clenched, and started a frantic, silent prayer, a desperate plea to the only one who could truly hide him.
'Ya Allah. Ya Rabbi. Ya Rabbi!'
He repeated the Dua (supplication) of protection, the one he had read about, the one about concealment from evil.
"Wa ja'alnā min bayni aydīhim saddan wa min khalfihim saddan fa-aghshaynāhum fahum lā yubṣirūn."
(And We have placed before them a barrier and behind them a barrier and covered them, so they do not see.)
He repeated it. Again. And again. Louder in his heart. A desperate mantra.
'Ya Rabb, please hide me. I promise! I promise, I will never watch haram graphics again! I will delete everything haram, I'll block those sites, I'll start praying! I will fast every Monday and Thursday! Just please, please blind them to this freezer!'