1:37 P.M.

1:37 P.M.

 

“If Teratsuki Kyoichiro is the culprit, what exactly did he do?” Shiro asked.

“We can come up with any number of explanations,” I said. “Spread a psychotropic gas of some kind. Whatever.”

We were searching the floors, in the darkness.

“Gas?”

Like me, Shiro was trying to find a way into the back channels of this strange building, any sort of passage below the floors or above the ceilings. There were sleeping bodies all around us, but we didn’t have time to check on each of them.

We’d decided instead to do what we could to solve this mess on our own. Shiro seemed to feel like we had no choice, since we couldn’t make contact with anyone outside, but I actually had a cell phone with me. If I wanted, I could call for help. But I wanted to avoid that as long as I could.

“Thank about it. Why else would this building be hermetically sealed like this? There aren’t even any windows! Perfect design to spread gas around.”

“I supposed that makes sense… but basically any high-rise building is the same. Even if they have windows, you can’t open them.”

“That’s true… but what’s the point of making it so dark in here? There has to be one, right?”

“Hmm…”

Neither of us could think of anything.

“And why make the whole building into one giant staircase? Was he just crazy?”

“Reminds me of those games where you climb the demon lord’s tower.”

“Ugh, don’t remind me.”

It really did feel like that. Teratsuki Kyoichiro had owned game companies, too. He’d probably played a few.

But this wasn’t a game. I was taking this pretty seriously. If I could solve this mess on my own, maybe Nagi would respect me a little more.

Sure, go ahead, tell me how selfish that motive is. But I was serious about solving this myself.

“Oh, there’s a door over here!” Shiro said. I ran over to him.

“Is it locked?”

“The lock’s busted,” he said, opening the door. “Guess somebody already came through.”

“Already?” I clicked my tongue. There was no point if someone beat me to it.

But Shiro wasn’t thinking along those lines at all.

“We’d better get after them,” he said, nodding at me. “We might be able to help.”

“Sure,” I said. I wasn’t thrilled, but what else could I do?

Inside the door, even the exit sign was off. It was truly pitch black.

I lit our way with a pen-sized high-beam light I’d brought with me. Spending time with Nagi led directly to carrying stuff like this around with you. I’d avoided using it until now to avoid draining the battery too fast, but with this darkness, we needed it.

There were rows of bizarre…art projects? Shaped like humans, but twisted, seemingly at random.

“What are these?” Shiro said, as baffled as he was surprised to discover them.

“Teratsuki Kyoichiro’s hobby,” I shrugged. “He was sort of famous for it, even held a few exhibitions.”

“Sick.”

“I agree! And it sounds like he used his artistic side to help him seduce a lot of women. According to the gossip pages, anyway.”

“Hunh… does that really work?”

Shiro seemed skeptical. He was the kind of guy who’d show up in a place like this just to pay his respects to one girl, so how could he understand how a playboy who went from one girl to another thought? Not that I did, either.

We moved through the art projects, proceeding downward in the hopes of finding the control room.

But we soon hit a dead end. There was nothing down below. Just a storeroom.

“So…maybe above us? Like the top floor? Even more like a video game…” I muttered.

Shiro was still rummaging around.

“Mm? Looking for something?”

“Wondering if we can get out here. I feel like there should be an exit somewhere…”

Practical. But I hoped he was wrong. If we could get out and call for help, I’d lose my chance to show Nagi what I could do.

“Y-you think? He went and sealed everything off pretty thoroughly. Doubt he’d leave an exit down here.”

“Yeah?” Shiro sounded disappointed. “But if what she said is true, he got in here somehow. Might be a clue there,” he muttered.

“Let’s not waste our time. C’mon, we got a long climb ahead of us.”

I was being a little too pushy, but Shiro just nodded.

“Yeah, okay.”

We started moving back up, but soon hit another dead end. There was a support pillar crossing the passage and the gap left was too narrow for a person to fit through.

“Well, crap. Guess we’ve got to leave the way we came in, and find a different entrance.”

“Yeah…no help for it.”

We limped back down.

Shiro stepped out on the main floor first.

“What the…?” he said, looking ahead of us.

“What? What’s wrong?” I asked, and pushed past him.

My jaw dropped.

The floor was still shrouded in darkness. The only thing lighting the good-for-the-soul geometric unbalance of the design was the green lights of the exit signs.

But there was one thing radically different.

There was nobody here.

Every single person who’d been lying on the floor was gone.

“Where’d they go?” Shiro asked me. Like I’d know.

“Did they all wake up and evacuate down below?” I wondered. But if they had, we’d still be able to hear them underneath us. But the place was dead quiet, like a deserted theater.

The sound of my footsteps echoed loudly.

But the seventh step…

Was a thunderous rumble.

“…?!”

I jumped, and retracted the step.

But as my foot touched the floor again, there was another impact, one that shook the entire building.

“Wh-what the…?!”

Spooked, I took a few quick steps, and every one of them shook the building. Like I’d become…some sort of giant monster.

A monster…?!

The name “Zoragi” floated across my mind. What was that again? I knew that name from somewhere. But I couldn’t quite place it.

I lost my balance, and fell to the ground.

But the massive footsteps went on. No longer matching mine. They were getting bigger. Closer.

My fingers touched something. I looked down, and froze.

“…?!”

It was super thin and I hadn’t even seen it was there when I was walking around. I didn’t notice that wafer-thin layer until I touched it.

It was a person.

A human body, smashed flat, as if crushed under a colossal weight.

Looking around, there were lots of them. Covering the floor.

“J-Jesus…!”

The people hadn’t vanished. They’d been here all along. We just hadn’t noticed.

“Aughhhhh…!”

I panicked. I tried to kick the flattened human away. But it didn’t budge. And—it didn’t smell. It was like it was out of sync with where I was.

“…elp,” one of the flattened people said. “…help…help me…!”

It reached its flattened arm out towards me. It had no joints or bones left, but the paper-thin arm lifted off the floor, reaching for me.

“Wh… wh-wh-what the hell is going on?!” I screamed.

The massive footsteps were almost on top of me.

Terrified, I scrambled across the floor. As I did, something fell out of my pocket.

My cell phone.

“…!”

Oh, I thought.

This was no time to be a show-off. Nagi. Kirima Nagi, the Fire Witch…she could do something about this waking nightmare.

I had her on quick dial, so it took less than a second.

The ringtone sounded severely lacking in urgency.

Come on! Answer! What are you doing?

Just as my panic reached its peak, there was a faint click, and someone answered.

“Taniguchi speaking.” A boy’s voice.

“Masaki?!” I yelled.

Taniguchi Masaki. Different last name, but he was Nagi’s half-brother. I’d met him a few times.

“Oh, Kentaro-san? What’s up? How you been?”

I didn’t have time for this. I yelled over him, “Where’s Nagi?! Is she there?!”

“Nagi? Why? Weird time of day to call begging for a date!”

Masaki thought I was Nagi’s boyfriend, so this wasn’t completely crazy. I usually sort of enjoyed playing along, but this was really not the time.

“Just put her on! Hurry!”

“Your funeral.”

“What?!”

“I mean…” he chuckled. “Kentaro-san, what number did you call?”

“Hunh…?”

For a minute, I didn’t catch his drift. But then my brain caught up to me.

Nagi had a cell phone. She never went anywhere without it. That was the number I called in emergencies.

Why would Masaki ever answer that phone?

“Heh heh heh…”

His laugh echoed over the line.

“Wh-who are you?!”

“Now, now, Kentaro-san. I’m sure you already know! Are you just pretending you don’t? I understand. Sometimes you just have to hear the truth out loud.”

His laugh mingled with a jangly rocky song, one I’d already grown really sick of.

 

 

Dahhdadadan, dan da-dan…

 

“Custard Pie.”

That voice again.

“See, I can’t let you call for help. My ‘experiment’ has only just begun! It would never do to ruin it now.”

I screamed.