Chapter 1 - New Version

1

Time is unfair. It never works in my favor.

Shun sighed for the millionth time as he looked up at the dodecahedron-shaped clock on the wall. He picked up the 500-milliliter plastic bottle next to his keyboard and drank the last of the dark liquid in one gulp. It was totally flat, basically just sugar water at this point.

He rubbed his eyelids and turned back to the monitor. A dull pain undulated from the center of his head with every beat of his heart. He realized he’d been sitting in front of his computer for over 30 hours. He hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep in that time, so it was no surprise that he was tired.

More than ten empty plastic bottles lay at his feet, but he still felt sleepy. He must have been too exhausted for the caffeine to even have any hope of working. If he’d just lain down in bed for an hour, he would have felt drastically better. But he didn’t have the leisure of rest. He needed to finish all of his work before the next morning.

To his surprise, the clock read 5:00 P.M. He could have sworn he’d just eaten breakfast, but it was already dark outside. He only had half a day left now.

Shun pursed his lips as he typed away at the keyboard. Time always seemed to speed up and pass by in an instant when he was sweating over a job. Yet whenever he was bored, it slowed to a crawl.

If this isn’t unfair, what is?

For the past two weeks, Shun had been entirely focused on finishing the latest version of the computer game he’d made. It was an escape game where the player had to find their way out of a mansion inhabited by a creepy monster. And one day in early February, this game of his had somehow become linked to the real world, leading to a string of tragedies.

The game was based on the Jailhouse, a real-life mansion in the town where Shun now lived that was reportedly haunted. And the main enemy, a blue-skinned monster, was designed based on the near-believable rumors about the creature that roamed the halls of the Jailhouse.

Most likely this monster had existed long before Shun had ever thought of making a game about it. So, why was it conforming to his creation? He still had no idea. Yet the relationship was undeniable. He’d seen it. Whatever happened in the Jailhouse played out on his game screen as if it were a live broadcast.

If a game character got eaten by the monster, he knew that it meant a real person had been attacked and killed by the Jailhouse monster after getting trapped in the mansion. It was too dangerous to ignore any longer. He had to do something.

But deleting the game wouldn’t erase the monster from reality. At least, that’s what Shun suspected. There was no way to know for sure, but he had a gut feeling about it.

For starters, it was impossible to completely delete the game. He’d uploaded it to the internet and, thanks to the effect of the Jailhouse rumors, it had swiftly racked up downloads. The game was also free to share, so it spread much quicker and further than he had anticipated. So even if he took down the official site, there would still be mirrors and rehosts everywhere. There was no stopping people from getting access to it.

That’s why Shun had decided to take a different route. He decided to update and improve the game.

He placed a tablet PC at the game mansion’s entrance. Attached was a key to unlock the front door. His thought was that if the game and reality were linked, then the same objects should now exist within the Jailhouse. This way, even if someone did get locked inside, they could quickly contact the outside world or use the key to open the door and escape. That was his thought, anyway.

But what he thought would be a simple patch turned out to be something of a nightmare. Updating a program always caused a few bugs to pop up here and there, but this update was swimming with them. Whenever he messed with one part of the game, errors would crop up in another. And fixing those would only cause more to appear somewhere else, sometimes doubling or tripling in multitude. The debug list just grew and grew.

In order to discover the root of the problem, he pored over the game’s data, including the map and events he’d cut during development. It was possible that some old, leftover data was causing things to go haywire. There were seemingly endless files he’d scrapped before uploading them, and failed experiments to sift through. Shun scratched his head as he desperately tried to remain calm, investigating each and every possible offender.

Don’t panic, he told himself at every interval. It might take some time, but if I stay calm and fix these bugs, surely I can finish the final version of the game. Then no one will ever fall victim to that monster again.

He’d worked tirelessly, believing that day would come. However, the situation took a dire turn yesterday. Since he’d been skipping school for so long, Anna, his class representative, had come by to check on him and deliver a flyer for a school event. Something she’d said during her visit had sent him into a panic.

“The Jailhouse is finally going to be leveled, apparently,” Anna had suddenly said while peering curiously at Shun’s bookshelf.

“...Huh?” Shun lifted his fingers from the keyboard and looked at her. “What do you mean?”

“Takuro mentioned it today. They’re going to knock down the Jailhouse and build a new store on the site. He was complaining that his father was crazy, though, and saying that no one would come to such a creepy place.”

Takuro’s father was the president of Smile, a hardware store chain with over a hundred locations throughout the country. Shun had seen him on TV many times. Unlike Takuro, who had delicate features, his father’s face was big and manly. That alone gave him something of an intimidating presence, but combined with his sharp, hawk-like eyes and booming, threatening voice, Shun found himself completely cowed by him even through the TV.

“He’s going to be meeting with the demolition crew on-site before they tear it down. Apparently that’s two days from now, in the morning...”

Shun gulped when he heard that.

“In two days?” he asked. “Are they planning on going inside the building?”

“Probably. I mean, they have to inspect the supports in order to knock it down.”

“No! A horrible monster lives there—”

“Apparently Takuro said the same thing, but his father wouldn’t listen. He just called him silly for believing the rumors.”

Of course. That was the natural reaction. If Shun hadn’t been attacked by that giant-headed blue monster himself, he’d never have believed it really existed, either.

But multiple people had already been killed at the hands of the Jailhouse monster. The most recent victims were likely two classmates of theirs who’d been missing for the past two weeks. Shun had called their homeroom teacher and tried to inform him of this, but he never took Shun seriously. Desperate, Shun had even called the police. But as of yet, he hadn’t heard anything about them conducting an investigation into the Jailhouse. Were they all just brushing him off as a foolish child? No, the biggest factor holding them back was probably that the owner of the Jailhouse was the most powerful man in town.

And now Takuro’s father was personally going to set foot on the property. This news shook Shun. If he witnessed the monster for himself, everyone would finally believe their story. That was what they had wanted all along. But it would all be for naught if he got trapped inside the Jailhouse and killed instead. Without weapons and preparation, he’d just end up a quick snack for the horrible beast that lived there.

What do I do?

Shun racked his brain. This man hadn’t believed his own son when he’d tried to convince him. So no matter what Shun did, it would just be a waste of time. That left him with only one option. He had to finish the new update before Takuro’s father entered the mansion in two days.

“It’ll be okay. I’ll figure something out,” he said to Anna before turning back to his computer.

By the time his mother came home and called him to dinner that night, the sun had completely set and Anna was long gone. He must have been so engrossed in his work that he hadn’t even heard her leave.

On his bed where she’d been sitting was a small paper crane. Shun got up from his desk and picked up the skillfully folded creation. It appeared to be made from a piece of notebook paper. He recognized the small words scrawled across the wings as Anna’s handwriting. Careful not to destroy the crane, he slowly unfolded it to reveal a message from her. “Shun, don’t push yourself too hard. Don’t try to shoulder this burden yourself. Please rely on your classmates once in a while,” it read.

Smoothing out the creases with his left hand, he lightly punched himself in the temple with his right.

For the sake of the people who care about me... For their sake, too, I can’t allow another tragedy to occur in the Jailhouse.

He tucked Anna’s note into his desk drawer, sat back down, and once again faced the bluish-white light of the monitor. He could then hear his mother’s voice coming from the kitchen.

“Sorry, mom. I’m busy right now,” he shouted towards the door.

With that, she stopped calling for him.

His mother had been treating him like a fragile vase ever since he’d stopped going to school. She must have been at a loss for how to interact with her son after he leaped from the school’s third floor in what appeared to be a suicide attempt and, in the aftermath, refused to come out of his room. After discussing it with his father, they’d apparently decided just to wait and watch over him for the time being.

“Mom... I’m sorry,” Shun apologized again, though he knew she couldn’t hear him. “I swear I’ll finish this in two days... so please put up with me for just a little longer.”

As long as he could finish this patch, no one would ever end up trapped inside the Jailhouse again. Once there was no need to fear the monster—once peace had returned to their lives—he’d go back to school. That was the promise Shun made to himself.

Before he knew it, the clock on the wall read 10:00 P.M. He seriously thought it might be broken, but upon checking his computer’s clock to confirm, he realized it had just gotten that late.

It’s okay.

Slapping his cheeks, he did his best to rally the fading fire in his belly. It was faint, but he was starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Six more hours, and he could finish. He’d be able to figure something out before morning. Just one more push.

However, unbeknownst to Shun as he waged his lonely war against the endless bugs, Takuro’s father was pushing ahead of schedule and heading for the Jailhouse.

2

A lingering chill had been creeping down Kinoshita’s spine ever since he’d parked the car in front of the rusted iron gate. Had he caught a cold? It would be terrible if the president came down with it, too. He recalled there being a drug store nearby. Once the president was on his way, he’d run off and buy a surgical mask.

Concerned thoughts running through his mind, Kinoshita went to open the car door. It was then that he realized his feeling was justified.

He looked up at the towering ancient mansion on the other side of the gate. The dilapidated yard exuded an otherworldly spookiness. The hair on the back of his neck stood on end, and his pulse quickened. Just looking at the mansion quickly made him feel sick. He wanted to leave immediately.

“What are you doing, Kinoshita?”

A fat man—the president of Smile—irritatedly stepped out of the car, having run out of patience waiting for a doorman that wasn’t doing his job.

“How many times do I have to tell you, you halfwit? One second of my time is worth astronomically more than yours. Get that through your skull. While you’re standing there spacing out, I could be making boatloads of cash!” he shouted in his usual threatening manner.

“I’m terribly sorry.”

Kinoshita bowed apologetically at a perfect 45-degree angle. It had been two years since he’d started working for this man as his driver. Just hearing him shout was enough to make him reflexively assume this position.

The president continued to grumble, but Kinoshita had mastered the art of “in one ear, out the other,” and he didn’t hear a single word of it. All he had to do was respond with a properly timed, “Yes, sir!”

Two more men then got out of the car. One was a famous management consultant who had been featured on TV and in magazines multiple times. The president placed enormous trust in him, but he just seemed like a sketchy character to Kinoshita. He couldn’t stand that idiotic smile and high-pitched voice.

The other man was the chief businessman of a giant construction company that had been involved with the building of all of Smile’s previous branches. He was solidly-built and muscular, and he looked to be better suited for working in the field than behind a desk. In order to build a new store at this location, the old mansion would need to be torn down first. He was here to get an idea of what the demolition job would take.

A warm wind blew through, kicking up dust clouds. The chief demolitionist looked up at the mansion before him and rubbed his muscular arms.

It was oddly warm for the dead of winter. The weather report had once again called for temperatures that made it feel like it was early April. It certainly wasn’t cold, but the man couldn’t stop rubbing his arms. Perhaps he, like Kinoshita, also sensed something ominous about the mansion.

“This place is a little creepy,” the chief demolitionist let slip.

An angry look flashed across the president’s face.

“You only feel that way because you let stupid rumors get to you. Let’s go,” he spat curtly.

He then walked over to the iron gate, removed a very sturdy-looking padlock, and stepped onto the property.

“We’ll finish this in exactly 20 minutes. Wait here until we’re back,” he barked at Kinoshita as he walked off.

The unsavory management consultant followed hot on his heels, while the chief demolitionist trailed behind with a hesitant look on his face.

Kinoshita turned his back to the mansion and looked up at the sky. He let out a sigh of relief. It was hard to breathe with the president nearby. That was something he still hadn’t gotten used to, even after two years as his driver.

Takuro’s father had built up his huge company from nothing. There was no doubt he was talented. Kinoshita had been at a complete loss when the tool company he’d worked for more than 30 years suddenly notified him they were downsizing. He was only where he was now because, by luck, the president happened to be an acquaintance and had decided to take him in.

Kinoshita would always be grateful for that, especially considering how bad the economy was. It wasn’t easy for a beaten-down, middle-aged man in his late fifties to find work. If he’d remained unemployed, he was sure he’d probably have died on the streets by now. That’s why he thought of the president as his savior.

As a businessman, he was first-class. And as men of the same generation, there was a great deal about him that Kinoshita thought was deserving of respect. But he’d never once wished to be like him. The president was a man who only thought of other humans as pawns. He ruled by fear, and that was what Kinoshita felt around him.

Kinoshita knew that, as the man who stood at the top of a vast empire of a business, the president had to be that way. But he wasn’t just like that at work. It was simply his personality. As his driver, Kinoshita had the opportunity to see him outside of work many times. Yet he’d never seen him relax around anyone, much less even offer a kind smile. Not even with his family.

He seemed to treat his wife, who’d been with him through everything, as nothing more than a servant. She obediently heeded his every command like a finely crafted robot—it was sickening to recall. And it wasn’t just her. The longer Kinoshita worked for the president, the more he came to realize that everyone around him was emotionless. Of course, that wasn’t to say they never laughed or looked troubled. But when they did, they were awkward displays, almost as if they were executing a program that had been input beforehand.

Would he become like that one day, too? No, perhaps he had already become a robot. It made him shudder to think about.

For what it was worth, however, the president’s son was incredibly attached to him. The boy’s eyes shone with the deepest respect whenever he looked up at his father. Yet even so, the president only seemed to think of him as another pawn to grow his empire.

Kinoshita recalled how, one day, the boy had gotten hurt in a soccer game. Upon receiving the news, the president went pale. He immediately demanded to know if his boy had been hit in the face and if he’d be able to keep playing soccer. Kinoshita had thought it was odd, though he remembered being relieved that the president at least had something of a fatherly side to him.

But his next words had made Kinoshita doubt his own ears.

“That boy’s face is going to be in our ads as part of our next marketing campaign. An injury would ruin my plans.”

What would his son think if he knew how his father really felt?

Hearing something like a siren in the distance, Kinoshita looked up. He glanced around, but nothing was different. The warm wind continued to blow, as if to spread the strange, spooky aura of the mansion even further.

Kinoshita’s eyes dropped to his watch, and he cocked his head to the side. It had already been 30 minutes since the president had entered the premises. He looked back to the mansion, but there was no sign of anyone coming out.

The president had explicitly said that he’d be back in exactly 20 minutes, and he was the strictest man in the world when it came to punctuality. If he said 20 minutes, he’d be back in 20 minutes come hell or high water. And if the unthinkable had really happened and he wouldn’t be on time, he’d at least call to say so.

Unease came over Kinoshita. Too nervous to think, he rushed through the untamed weeds, forging a path toward the mansion.

“Sir, is everything all right?”

He knocked on the front door, but there was no answer. He tried the knob, but it appeared to be locked from the inside and wouldn’t open.

“Sir! It’s well past the time you stated you would be back!”

He tried shouting loudly this time, yet nothing but the wind echoed in his ears in reply.

Maybe they went out a back entrance. If he comes back and I’m not at the car, he’ll be furious.

Kinoshita turned from the mansion and began to rush back to the car when he heard the siren again—this time it was clear as a bell. His body went cold to the core. The siren continued to sound. No, it wasn’t a siren... It was someone’s voice.

“Waaaaaaaaaaah!”

Kinoshita turned around and looked up at the mansion. The scream was coming from the second floor. Its husky echo made it sound like the president.

“Sir!” Kinoshita called out.

But the screaming stopped, and silence fell over the yard once more.

“Sir! Are you okay?”

Kinoshita waited for a reply, but heard nothing.

“Please! Someone answer me!”

As if in response, the front door suddenly burst open. He assumed the president and his crew were about to come out, but the door simply swayed in the wind. Not a soul was to be seen.

“...Sir?”

Kinoshita cautiously approached. He peered inside, but there was no sign of movement other than the chandelier hanging from the ceiling swinging slightly from the breeze blowing through the door.

Kinoshita barged right in, not bothering to take off his shoes, and ascended the stairs covered in red carpeting. A fetid smell began to fill the air. Kinoshita had never smelled anything so foul, and the stench drove him backward a step. He tried covering his nose with his right hand, but it didn’t help.

Upon reaching the second floor, he spotted the management consultant out of the corner of his eye.

“What the heck happened—”

He turned to the man, then swallowed his next words. It was, without a doubt, the same creepy guy that Kinoshita knew all too well. However, he was hardly recognizable from 30 minutes ago. His slack smile was completely gone. His eyes were open wide, pupils staring off into different directions. A long tongue hung lazily from his mouth. His head was facing Kinoshita, but underneath it appeared to be his back rather than his chest. His arms were gone, and his legs dangled in the air, swaying back and forth.

Behind him, a giant figure shifted. It wasn’t human in the least. Its skin was a strange color. Its head was abnormally developed, with massive eyes that took up half its face. A blue monster. That was the perfect name for it.

The blue monster, holding the consultant’s head tightly in its hand, continued to swing his body from side to side like a child playing with a doll. From the corner of its mouth protruded a human arm. It was most likely the consultant’s. The sound of splintering bones echoed in Kinoshita’s ears each time the monster moved its jaw up and down, and it continued to do so over and over as if relishing the texture.

“Waaaaaaaah!”

Kinoshita screamed, unable to help himself. The monster went still for a moment, and then its two giant eyes swiveled in his direction.

“Help! Help me, please!”

Kinoshita ran, nearly tumbling down the stairs. Deep down he knew that no matter how much he screamed, no one would come. In all likelihood, the president and the other man had met the same fate as the consultant. And hardly anyone ever passed by the mansion. No one would ever hear him. Yet he couldn’t stop screaming.

“Someone! Please, anyone! There’s a monster! There’s a monster in here!”

He tried the front door, but for some reason the knob wouldn’t turn. Had it locked automatically? He looked for a panel, a switch, a button, or anything else that might unlock it, but there was only an empty keyhole beneath the doorknob.

Sensing a horrifying presence behind him, he spun around. There stood the monster from earlier. Still chewing the consultant’s arm like a piece of jerky, it gazed down at him from above.

“Please... Let me go...” Kinoshita whispered hoarsely, his back pressed against the door.

The monster cocked its head quizzically and stared at him blankly as though it didn’t understand.

“I swear I won’t tell anyone about what I’ve seen. So... please... spare me...”

The monster swallowed the arm in one gulp and began slowly walking forward, extending its arms and licking its lips.

Kinoshita had never experienced anything so nightmarish. He was in full-on panic mode and had lost all ability to resist. Tears and mucus streamed down his face as he repeated the same words over and over and over again.

“Help me, help me, help me...”

The monster grabbed his chest with its left hand and slowly, deliberately inched its face closer. His nose was flooded with the stench of what smelled like buckets of blood and excrement. He nearly fainted. But if he did that, it would be the end. Kinoshita bit down on his lower lip hard, doing his best to stay conscious.

Maybe it would be less painful to die while I’m passed out, though...

Pressure began to constrict his chest, cutting off his airway. He could hear the sounds of his bones breaking, echoing throughout his body. A rib must have pierced his lung, because he began violently coughing up blood.

It hurts.

Kinoshita desperately moved his mouth, trying to suck in some oxygen, but the situation remained unchanged. All he could do was struggle for air, tongue hanging pathetically out of his mouth. His poor lungs, however, had now lost the ability to inflate and deflate.

His arms and legs began to spasm as if possessed.

Its left hand still tightly wrapped around Kinoshita’s chest, the monster pinched the top of his head with its right and gave it a quick twist to the left as if opening a plastic bottle.

...

Kinoshita heard the sound of his own spine snapping before plunging into a deep darkness.

As Kinoshita breathed his last, the steadfastly locked mansion door slowly swung open... as if to beckon the next victim into its waiting embrace.

3

Shun finally finished debugging the game in its entirety as the sky in the east began to brighten.

Upon finishing his final checks, an intense wave of exhaustion assaulted him. He had no strength left to resist it. Stepping away from his desk, he collapsed onto his bed. Within five seconds, the sounds of light snoring echoed through the room. It was no surprise, however, considering he’d been awake for nearly 40 hours now.

With Shun’s completion of the newest version of his game, things began to change within the Jailhouse, as well.

Atop the shoebox in a corner of the entrance hall suddenly appeared a book-sized tablet PC. On it was an app that allowed video calls via the internet. It would boot up automatically when the tablet was turned on, and it was programmed to immediately contact Shun. In addition, there was a blue keycard attached to the back of the device. Next to the front door, a cylinder for inserting the keycard appeared. Everything was just as Shun had intended it.

Now if anyone got trapped inside, they could just turn on the tablet and get in touch with Shun for help. He would tell them that the keycard would open the front door, and all should be well. They would be able to get out with that. And as long as the victim escaped quickly, they would be able to avoid the monster.

Shun was convinced his plan was perfect. However, even the best-laid plans of mice and men go oft awry. He’d made one mistake: assuming the Jailhouse monster had, at best, the brains of a chimpanzee.

The blue giant descended the stairs. Day was breaking, yet almost no light reached inside the mansion. Darkness shrouded everything, obscuring all from view. For a normal person, just navigating the place would be an ordeal.

However, the monster strolled without hesitation toward the shoebox, not even bothering to turn on a light. It picked up the tablet and turned it on. The white light that shone from the LCD panel made it recoil for a moment, but, squinting its eyes, it peered carefully at the screen. The communication app had started up and was trying to contact Shun.

His desktop began to play the jingle to alert him to the incoming call, but Shun was fast asleep. Perhaps if the call had awoken him, the future would have played out much differently.

The game window popped up on his monitor. It showed the entrance hall. The blue-skinned monster was standing there, tablet in hand. With a faint beep, the screen suddenly morphed. A vortex began to swirl outward from the in-game tablet. Shun’s background, a picture of a shiba inu, quickly devolved into a mess.

The desktop icons, the files on the hard drive, the information flowing to and from the computer via the internet—all of it was being sucked into the tablet at the center of the screen. The light on the broadband router connected to the computer began to flash rapidly. The hard drive began emitting a strange sound like the scratching of nails against a blackboard.

Pop!

With a sound like a fuse blowing, the monitor went black and the hard drive stopped spinning. A red light flashed on the router, indicating an abnormality. Silence returned to the room. Shun’s computer sat there as if nothing had happened.

If he’d noticed this mystery and started up the game from a different computer, he would have witnessed something quite shocking. The monster was standing in the entrance hall, staring intently at the tablet. Images of the Kallima inachus and other such insects that mimicked the look of dead leaves and twigs in order to hide themselves from predators flashed across the screen one after another. It must have found them quite fascinating, for the monster’s gaze remained fixated on the tablet for quite some time.