Chapter 13 - Next Stage

1

Shun’s memories came flooding back in an instant. The dam had burst.

Earlier in the day, Shun had been sitting peacefully in the hills behind the school when Takuro suddenly appeared. He’d torn Shun’s bag away from him and thrown it callously into the marsh. His computer game’s program data, a letter from a friend at his old school, the shiba inu keychain Anna had given him... So many precious things were in that bag. He couldn’t bear to lose it.

In a frantic state, Shun forgot that he couldn’t swim. He almost instinctively jumped in the marsh to go after his bag and soon drowned. Whatever Takuro did after that, Shun wouldn’t know. He was dead. But seeing his own corpse stuffed in cardboard boxes, he could roughly fill in the blanks.

Takuro must have panicked seeing Shun sink into the marsh. He probably went in after him and pulled him out. Maybe even tried to resuscitate him. But it was no use. However, it went without saying that the only reason someone like Takuro who had no regard for human life would try and save someone would be to save his own ass. When he’d ordered Shun to jump from a third-floor window the week before, he’d had a perfect alibi prepared in order to deflect all suspicion. But this was different. He hadn’t predicted Shun’s actions at all. He realized there could be trouble and panicked. A lot of adults must have seen him head out to the marsh. If Shun’s corpse was discovered there, he would surely be a suspect.

So in order to cover up Shun’s death, he hatched a plan to chop the body up into small pieces, stuff them in cardboard boxes, and transport them to the Jailhouse. It would be difficult on his own, but his father was the proprietor of a famous chain of hardware stores. He’d have no trouble finding the right tools.

Shun closed the bag and backed away from it. Takeshi, Anna, Takuro, Mika... Their gruesome deaths had completely paralyzed Shun’s emotions, but seeing his own corpse was still unpleasant.

Shun ran, fleeing up the stairs and out of the basement. Collapsing to his knees on the tatami mats, he took deep breaths to calm himself and then looked at his palms.

I didn’t expect to be the first one dead.

He shook his head. There was no way he could just accept something so farfetched.

If I’m dead, what am I doing here now? I thought ghosts haunted dark, creepy places like graves or abandoned roads. I guess I was wrong...

Shun recalled what Anna said to him.

“Maybe it’s because I took a tiny step into the world beyond, but ever since the accident, I... I’ve been able to see lots of things.”

Does that mean...

“But whenever I’m about to, I start shivering and it’s like all the blood in my body freezes. I’ve been feeling that sensation since the moment I laid eyes on the Jailhouse walls. Normally it’s not like that... I think something mysterious definitely snuck in here.”

It wasn’t the monster’s presence that she’d picked up on. Her sixth sense was responding to Shun, who was no longer of this world.

...I’m really a ghost?

Shun shook his head vigorously.

It can’t be true. No way. My heart’s beating so fast. My body’s not translucent. And I can pick up this key just fine.

“If a spirit can open doors, maybe it can do things like clean too. It’s not like we know what their habits are or what they’re capable of.”

Wait a minute...

It finally dawned on him that he’d only ever really had a conversation with Anna since coming to the mansion.

Did they... not know I was there?

As Shun thought back through what had happened, it seemed weirder and weirder. All the signs pointed to him having some kind of otherworldly existence. And with the evidence mounting against him, he had no choice but to accept it.

He’d lost count of how many times Takuro had tortured him. In order to be able to bear the inhuman cruelties inflicted on him, he’d learned to bottle up his negative emotions. Those pent-up emotions exploded the moment he drowned, creating this world in the likeness of his game. At least, that was his theory.

“Enough...” Shun closed his eyes and muttered. He understood everything now. “Takuro is dead, so let’s end this. I don’t want to get any more innocent people mixed up in this. Hiroshi... Hiroshi said the game I made was interesting. If I’d lived, I bet he’d have been a good friend. So... So please... At least let Hiroshi go home. Return us to our own world.”

Shun slowly opened his eyes. He’d hoped everything would just disappear, but nothing at all had changed.

“What do I do?” he half-sobbed, half-whispered.

There were only two outcomes in the game: game over or game cleared—in other words, getting killed by the monster or safely escaping. Shun may have been the creator of this world, but he had no control over the monster once it was set loose.

“Please... someone end this game.”

All Shun could do now was pray with all his might. But... Then he suddenly felt the presence of someone nearby and lifted his head.

“...Who’s there?”

Before Shun’s eyes stood Hiroshi. How long he’d been there, Shun wasn’t sure. Hiroshi squatted down and inspected one of the tatami mats.

“I’m sorry, Hiroshi.”

Shun knew he couldn’t hear him, but he had to apologize.

“Everything’s my fault. Takeshi, Takuro, Mika, Anna... I killed them all. I know an apology won’t fix it, but... I’m sorry. Hiroshi, I thought we could be friends. I’m sorry I got you mixed up in this too.”

Tears streamed down Shun’s face, tumbling onto Hiroshi’s jacket that he was still holding tightly with his right hand. Hiroshi leaned forward, touched the moist spots on his jacket, and cocked his head slightly.

“...Tears?” he breathed.

Shun’s eyes went wide.

“You can see these tears too? How? I’m not of this world anymore...”

Shun didn’t really understand the logic, but the tears he’d shed were undeniably real. That Hiroshi could see them was proof. But the surprises weren’t over. The most unexpected words of all came out of Hiroshi’s mouth next.

“Is that you, Shun?”

“What... did you say?”

“If you’re there, please answer me. Are you around?”

“...You can’t see me, can you?”

Shun tried waving his hand in front of Hiroshi’s face, but there was no reaction. He then tried poking his right cheek. With a shocked look on his face, Hiroshi reached out and grabbed Shun’s hand.

“So you are here.”

Hiroshi’s cheeks slackened just a little. Was he smiling?

“Answer me, please. Is this you, Shun? Poke my right cheek for yes and my left cheek for no.”

“Y-Yes.”

Shun poked Hiroshi’s right cheek and could see him smile. He’d never seen such a kind look in his eyes. Shun found himself smiling too.

“Are you wondering how I knew it was you even though I can’t see or hear you?”

“Yeah. How’d you know?”

“It was the calluses on your right thumb and index finger. I realized it when you grabbed my arm and dragged me to the basement. All the strange phenomena that’s happened here very closely resembles the game you made.”

No way... The calluses on my fingers?

“You really are amazing, Hiroshi,” Shun whispered, wiping tears from his eyes.

“You brought my jacket up from the basement, did you? Thank you very much.”

“Oh, no, it was nothing. You ripped your shirt up, so I thought you’d be cold running around like that.”

Shun picked up the jacket and held it out to him. A look of shock came over Hiroshi’s face, but it was only natural. From his perspective, the jacket appeared to move on its own.

“I still don’t know why I can’t see you though. The right arm I found on the second floor had the same calluses, which leads me to suspect that you’ve left your physical body and now exist in some sort of ethereal form. It’s... all quite unscientific, but so much has happened that can’t be explained with the knowledge I have. I’ve seen with my very eyes doors opening on their own and keys floating in the air, so I must accept it,” Hiroshi said, slipping into his jacket. “I’d always believed that there was nothing science couldn’t explain. No, that’s not really true. I suppose it’s more that whenever I encountered something that couldn’t be explained, I simply chose to ignore what I was feeling. The human heart is the most difficult thing for me to understand, you see. Perhaps that’s just how I came to be after being raised by parents who only appeared to be perfect when others were around. They’d seem so intimate, but the second they were alone, out came the curses and fighting. Yet they sacrificed themselves for me even though we were not particularly close, just like Mika did...”

Hiroshi paused there for a second, wiped his eye with a fingertip, then continued.

“From now on, even if I can’t explain it with science, I won’t shy away anymore. I’ll dive into whatever it is head first.”

As Hiroshi took his glasses off and was wiping the fogged-up lenses, the monster appeared at the entrance to the room.

“Look out! Behind you!”

Shun pulled on Hiroshi’s arm and stood up. That seemed to tip Hiroshi off as to what was happening.

“I have a ton of questions, but it seems ending this game comes first,” Hiroshi said, swiftly putting his glasses back on. “Will you help me escape?”

“Of course.”

Shun poked Hiroshi’s right cheek and pressed the key he’d taken from the basement into his hand.

“Let’s see. If we’re following the game, this key unlocks the second-floor parlor. There I’ll find a secret code on the piano’s keyboard. Then I’ll proceed to the study, where I can put that four-digit code into a safe to obtain the attic key. Do I have that right?”

His recollection of the game was impressive for someone who’d only played it a few times. Hiroshi’s memory was really something else.

But it was no time to celebrate. The blue monster slunk lazily over to them. Suddenly its right middle finger dropped off with a sickening popping sound. It flopped around on the floor, changed shape, and transformed into an entirely different creature. It looked like the rats that had congregated around Takeshi’s corpse. The other fingers followed suit, dropping to the floor and turning into more blue rats.

The monster then scratched at its face, and the peeled off skin that transformed into grasshoppers. And that wasn’t all. Its already bulging arm muscles swelled into a snake monster. Flesh separated from its head became a gelatinous, mollusk-like creature. A cuboid entity crawled out of its chest and became a monster with countless fine, sharp fangs. In mere seconds, the southern-facing first floor hall was filled with multiple creatures that had all sprung from the original monster.

Shun gulped at the nightmarish spectacle. Every monster shared the same blue skin and giant eyes. The ooze-like monster was covered with more than thirty such eyes, all looking in different directions.

“Whoa. So it’s hard mode from now on, huh?”

Giving the multiplying monsters a sidelong glance, Hiroshi shrugged slightly.

“Well, all right. A higher difficulty setting just makes winning that much more satisfying.”

Hiroshi turned to Shun and smiled.

“Now, Shun, let’s beat this game.”

“Yeah.”

Shun took that as the signal to start running and kicked off hard against the straw mat. The many monsters’ eyes all followed them as they ran. Shun slipped through the clamoring monsters and hurried to the stairs. The hideous blue creatures quickly gave chase. But he couldn’t stop. He couldn’t hesitate. Fighting them was not an option.

Run. Run and run some more.

He told himself over and over again just to keep moving forward.

If you keep running, you can surely make it to the next stage.

How many times had he played this game? He knew it like the back of his hand. Plus, he was working with Hiroshi, the smartest kid in their year. They were pretty much unstoppable.

Hiroshi would be able to figure out the randomly generated password in a matter of seconds. And Shun could almost perfectly predict when and where the monsters would appear. Pulling on Hiroshi’s hand, he guided him along. If Hiroshi stumbled, Shun was right there to lend him a shoulder. And when they stumbled upon something unexpected and Shun became flustered, Hiroshi’s flexible mind and quick thinking got them back on track.

It was a fraught run, but they finally reached the attic room. Grabbing the key on the wall, they made their way back down the stairs to the entrance hall, tightly holding hands all the while. The great mass of monsters followed them the whole way, but there was nothing to fear. There was calm in their hearts.

“Let’s go,” Hiroshi said as he unlocked the door and smiled at Shun.

“Okay,” Shun said with an emphatic nod as he gave the door a push.

The door swung open for them. Shun had to squint his eyes in the bright light of sunshine and victory.

2

A flurry of fanfare resounded as the word “clear” flashed across his laptop screen.

“Done,” Hiroshi commented in his usual monotone voice as he pushed up his glasses.

“...Huh?”

Confused, Shun looked around. He and Hiroshi were sitting in the hills behind school like usual. He checked his watch and discovered that, somehow, time had reversed. The laptop Takuro had destroyed was just fine and the bag that had sunk to the bottom of the marsh was slung snugly over his shoulder.

What is this? I don’t understand.

He had the silliest look on his face.

“What’s the matter?” Hiroshi asked, peering suspiciously at Shun.

“Oh, uh... It’s nothing.”

Shun smiled and tried to cover it up. It was the only way for him to react.

“So... What do you think?”

“The controls feel all right, and the graphics and sound suit the ambiance of the world perfectly. I didn’t expect it to be so polished. It was so fun that I was able to fully immerse myself in it.”

Hiroshi repeated his lines from that afternoon.

“But I wonder about naming the characters after our classmates. All three get brutally murdered, so it will certainly come off as distasteful.”

“Oh... Yeah. You’re right.”

Shun was too confused to respond properly to the honest feedback.

Was I just daydreaming about the game?

Shun had to wonder. It made more sense that way, but Takuro appeared after Hiroshi left. Just the same way he had before. That was too much of a coincidence. So had he really gone back in time? A heavy blow struck him in the back of the head and he collapsed, stopping him from thinking about it further.

“Remember in geography class how we learned about cultures that practice geophagia? I just couldn’t believe it, man. I mean, it’s dirt you’re eating. There’s no way that tastes good. But I have to admit I am curious. So, new kid... Test it out for me, will you?”

Takuro ground his shoe into Shun’s head. His cheek scraped against the ground. The taste of blood spread through his mouth.

If he just sat and took it, the same fate was bound to befall him. He had to avoid that at all costs.

“Raaahhhhh!” Shun screamed and jumped up.

Takuro couldn’t have expected him to resist. He lost his balance and fell onto his butt, looking like an utter fool.

“What the hell?”

His expression darkened by the second. Shun hugged his laptop to his chest, turned on his heels, and took off running.

“Hey, come back here!” Takuro angrily yelled after him. “You’re gonna pay for this! Just you wait! I’ll make you regret defying me!”

The normal Shun would have stopped, frozen in fear. But there was nothing to be scared of now. Compared to the blue monster in the Jailhouse, Takuro was like a cute baby. In fact, Shun was relieved to see him alive and well.

Slipping through the trees, Shun continued to run. Before he knew it, he was smiling. Time was beginning to move in a different direction from the future he’d already experienced once. Takuro and his gang wouldn’t be killed now.

But that didn’t mean Shun’s normal life would change dramatically. He’d probably still be bullied. He’d probably even be worse off for what he’d just done. But Shun felt he could bear it. There was no need to take his own life just because he was suffering. Every problem has a solution. Even if his friends and family offered no assistance, even if not even a single person extended a helping hand... he could always run away. But not from living.

If he was going to be bullied forever, he could skip school. If hanging out with his friends became depressing, he could shut himself up in his room. If he grew tired of studying, he could simply stop. There were plenty of escape routes other than death. And if the day came that he knew he was down to his last resort, he now knew he’d have the courage to fight back.

It’ll be okay. There’s always a way out.

Shun nodded to himself. If life was a game, he was determined to beat it. It was then he realized he was standing in front of the stone walls of the Jailhouse.

“What’s the matter? You’re pouring sweat.”

Shun heard a sweet, familiar voice and turned around. Anna was looking at him, clearly surprised to see him. She was carrying a bag in her right hand with the name of her cram school emblazoned across the front.

“Anna,” Shun said between ragged breaths. “On your way to cram school? Study hard!”

He was so happy to see her alive that he naturally began to babble.

“And hey, if you’ve got something on your mind, don’t keep it bottled inside. You can talk to me. I might be able to help.”

“...Huh?” Anna cocked her head quizzically.

Shoot. I went a little too far and said something I shouldn’t have.

“No, it’s nothing. Just talking to myself,” Shun blurted out, trying to backpedal.

“You sure seem cheerful today. Did something happen?”

“Nope. I’m happy because nothing’s happened.”

Anna looked even more confused at his response.

“Well, don’t let me hold you up. You’ll be late for cram school. See ya!”

“Oh... Yeah, see you,” Anna said, confused.

Just then, a butterfly landed on her shoulder.

“It’s rare to see them this time of year,” she said with a smile.

The butterfly’s wings were the color of blueberries.