Chapter 1: Beginning and Choice

Chapter 1:
Beginning and Choice

BY THE TIME I REALIZED IT, I was standing smack-dab in the middle of a field, wearing my stupidly lame pajamas.

The pajamas had yellow cats printed on them… No, wait, were they tanuki? Anyway, the repeating faces of this yellow mystery creature were printed close together. These were my cheaply made, blue, long-sleeved pajamas. And they were pretty awful-looking. This was definitely not a design a forward-thinking youth should consider acceptable sleepwear.

Well, I had bought them myself the other day at my neighborhood shopping mall. I chose them, of course, because they were cheap. But that wasn’t the only reason. Left at the bottom of the barrel with no one willing to take a chance on these ugly cats…or, hmm. Were they perhaps pigs? Anyway, I felt some kind of deep pity toward these animals.

But let’s put that aside for a bit. It wasn’t the time to be mulling the lame-factor of my pajamas. The real issue was why I was standing in the middle of this field. I thought I had been sleeping on my futon back at home, but I appeared to be in an open meadow.

“Where the heck is this? Is this…a dream…?”

The sun had risen quite a bit already. The meadow was encircled by groves of verdant, broad-leaved trees. The wind trailed through the branches and blew delicate waves in the prolific undergrowth.

I was left with the impression of pastoral beauty. Although this place did seem uninhabited and a bit lonely, it also felt like a garden of sorts.

At that moment, I suddenly realized my feet were uncomfortable. It appeared that the only area not covered with grass was under my feet. I wasn’t wearing any shoes, so my bare soles were cold. I wasn’t standing on dirt, either; it felt like concrete, or possibly stone. Then, as I casually dropped my gaze to get a better look, I started.

“Whoa, what the heck is this?!” I unintentionally shouted.

I was standing on top of a blood-red stone floor. Furthermore, an eerie geometric pattern had been drawn on it in a circle. The diameter of this enigmatic pattern was probably roughly 150 centimeters, and it just screamed “magic circle.” I didn’t know any other more suitable phrase.

Also, no matter how I looked at it, it wasn’t exactly evocative of magic from some dreamy, fantasy fairy tale. What was a more appropriate description for this creepy thing…? If I had to, I’d say it gave off the impression of the setting for a human sacrifice ritual by a devil-worshipping cult. All in all, it was clear at first glance that this magic circle was ominous as hell.

Rust-red lines were painted—though don’t ask me with what kind of paint—close together in an intricate pattern, as if a bunch of snakes had slithered around each other. Even more minute patterns were drawn in the minuscule blank spaces between these lines, further filling the pattern.

Even if none of these patterns had a particular meaning, drawing them must have taken a ton of time and energy. I didn’t understand any of them, but I knew the person who drew them must have been incredibly tenacious. Kind of scary. Moreover, I was the one standing in the middle of the unsettling end product. Even scarier.

To tell you the truth, at that point in time, I was getting some pretty bad vibes. That being said, I was also pretty bewildered by my entire predicament. To put it bluntly, other than the fact that I was standing in the middle of a mysterious circle in my lame pajamas, I knew zip, zero, zilch, and nada.

I did know I didn’t want to stand another second longer on that uncanny circle, so I tried to step off.

My toes hit an invisible wall. Though I’m not really sure if “wall” is the correct term for what it was. Let’s say I felt resistance, like I’d hit a thick membrane of static electricity or something. This incomprehensible force field ran along the perimeter of the circular stone, surrounding me.

Eh? Wait a sec. Did that mean…I was trapped?

Are you kidding me?!

I pressed my palms against the wall and tried to push my way through—and in the very next moment, the resistance anticlimactically vanished. I staggered a few steps forward, tottering over the stone floor until forward momentum brought me outside the circle.

All of a sudden, floral scents flooded my nostrils, the dazzling sunlight of a clear day left me dizzy, and a gentle breeze caressed my cheek. It felt like I had surfaced from deep underwater, and only now were my five senses clear.

It appeared that the invisible wall surrounding the stone circle blocked even outside stimulus. At that point, I had no idea under what principle of physics it operated, but I had no other words to explain what I had just experienced.

Needless to say, I was perplexed.

The clean air and the warmth of the sun played on my senses. The all-too-real tickle of grass rustled against my feet. All these sensations combined suggested only one possible reason for everything. Simply put…

“This isn’t a dream…”

I was terribly rattled by this unfathomable turn of events. But neither did I feel like I was in any immediate danger where I stood. At least I could say this field felt peaceful. The sky was blindingly blue. The whole area was quiet; there were no signs of any other living creatures, not even birdsong. The sun was sweet on my skin, the greenery idyllic, and the wind soothing.

If I ignored that clearly evil magic circle, I would’ve thought I’d come to enjoy a picnic.

In this relaxed state, I surveyed the surrounding trees and my eyes landed on a single troubling spot. Though trees otherwise encircled the meadow, one spot broke the line of green: a sliver of auburn rock face with a gaping hole in it. A cave.

Was it naturally formed or man-made? The inside was dark, so I couldn’t make out its interior. An empty, black, gaping hole. A hole…that a person…could pass through.

At that thought, some kind of switch flipped and a strange buzzing gradually filled my head.

A hole…a person…could pass through.

Must…pass through…

Who must pass through? I-I must…?

I surrendered to this sudden, intense impulse. It was a relentless need, an obsessive desire. I wanted to enter that hole. For some reason, I could think of nothing else but doing so.

I began to walk toward the cave entrance. As I did, an unidentifiable irritation burned through me: Run. I clumsily tried to suppress this new compulsion, but my pace quickened.

Ten more meters till I reached the entrance.

I want to enter already.

Five meters.

Hurry up. Come on.

Two meters. My impatient feet stumbled. Four more steps. Three steps. Two steps. One step. Then—

In my haste, I slammed my pinky toe on the cave entrance.

“Owww! Urrrgghhhh!”

I let out a scream that cut the air before I began crying like a puppy. I collapsed on the ground in total agony. I hadn’t injured myself on the corner of a dresser—I’d been done in by the edge of a cave.

In my excited state, my field of vision had narrowed. On top of that, the cave entrance was only wide enough to fit one person. Of course I stubbed my toe on it. Moreover, I was barefoot, and I’d smacked into it with all that momentum. Ow. Ow. Ow! No more weird compulsions, only tears now.

After moaning on the floor for a time, I slowly stood up, trembling. Yeah, full-on trembling, just like a newborn fawn. Timidly, I checked my pinky toe. I thought I would die from the pain, but it didn’t seem like any bones were broken.

Now then. At this point, I realized something interesting. Even though just a moment before I had wanted nothing more than to enter the cave, driven by that indescribably intense urge, that same want had for some reason completely vanished the second I injured my pinky toe.

Strange. But at the time, it really had felt like entering the cave would be the greatest achievement of my entire life.

Yikes, what a sad life. I’m glad I came to my senses.

With my sanity retrieved, I peeked through the cave entrance. A light shone through from the other side. Huh. This wasn’t a cave. It was a tunnel. I could probably pass through it. It would take a bit to reach the exit, but I didn’t think it was too far.

I took a few steps back from the entrance to get a better look at the auburn rock face the cave was carved into. Aside from the tunnel, there were no other features. That meant this vertical rock face was actually a cliff. It was tall enough that you would probably faint if you tried to climb it all the way up. It easily exceeded ten meters.

On closer inspection, the auburn cliff appeared to encircle the entire area, just like the trees. In other words, I was—for some absurd reason—in the center of a basin surrounded by a cliff that was topographically isolated from the outside world. Okay, I had no way to know if I was completely isolated. At the very least there was that tunnel, which I suspected acted as a passageway connecting the basin to the outside.

The basin looked to be several times larger than Tokyo Dome. I wondered exactly how many times. Hmm…I couldn’t be sure. Rather, once I thought about it more, I realized I had never been to Tokyo Dome. So, yeah, I wouldn’t know. Why did you even use Tokyo Dome as a reference, past me?

Anyway.

To sum: This was a perfectly circular basin, several times larger than Tokyo Dome, surrounded by an auburn cliff. There appeared to be a small tunnel on the cliff connecting it to the outside, and a lonely, barefooted male in lame pajamas standing at its entrance. There were no other living creatures. The entire area was covered with a tranquil green, and the air felt delicious. The sky was clear and lovely.

This was the entirety of the extremely useful information I’d gathered from my investigation. In the end, I still hadn’t identified the reason why I was there, the cause, or any countermeasures…but I knew I had two choices.

One was, of course, to go through the tunnel and make it out on the other side. The other was to return to the magic circle and investigate the basin once more. The latter had a better chance of helping me understand my current situation. Also, because the inside of the tunnel was so dark that I couldn’t make it out, it was unsettling. However, if we were going to talk unsettling, that magic circle was in a class all of its own. In fact, visually speaking, it broke the definition of unsettling.

In short, both options were bad.

What should I do…?

I only hesitated for a second. For the time being, I decided to return to the field with the magic circle.

I didn’t make this choice for any particularly deep reason. What did you expect? This wasn’t a major fork in the road. The difference between the two options was as short as the distance from your eyes to your nose. The question was just which option I investigated first and which I postponed for later. Simply that. Just the order of events.

Or that was what it was supposed to be.

I turned on my heels and idly returned to the magic circle.

***

In the unfolding story, I will encounter countless critical crossroads that will alter fate. They will always appear suddenly and without warning. However, now that I look back on everything, the most important moment, the junction of fate…would have to be this one: the decision to not enter the tunnel and head back to the magic circle.

Merely that. I had no grand reason; I gave it no thought. And yet, it terrifies me to think that everything that occurs in the following pages began with this one decision.

The Wheel of Fate let out a grand creak before beginning to reverse.