Child of Taboo
It was a great war, shaking the foundation of the world. A war upon which humanity’s very existence had been staked. A battle between those who controlled the majority of the planet (the modern humans who ruled through intellect and science) and those who worked from the darkness to overthrow it all with mystery and the supernatural.
Of course, ordinary people had no knowledge of these events. It was something only known by those who lived on the underside, within the shadows of the world. Only a precious few in the religious community were aware of it.
The battle was meant to decide everything. It was the kind of war that would only end when one side had been completely wiped out. For the majority, that would have seemed unreasonable. While they remained blissfully unaware, one small group was fighting for the continued survival of the entire race. But there was nothing they could do about it. The threats lurking in the darkness were imperceptible to most.
It was hard to call it anything but despair. The infamous Dark Gods, Evil Gods, and Great Demon, beings that seemed at home in fairy tales and myths, had begun a simultaneous all-out assault on the world, as if they had planned it together.
Humanity was quickly pushed onto the defensive. Until that point, they had been able to resist these dark forces because the attacks had been sporadic and incidental. But humans were weak, fragile things. Only by gathering in large numbers and squeezing out as much knowledge as possible could they just barely keep the evil under control.
Someone must have appeared to take control of that evil. Those dark beings had no reason or will to cooperate with each other. They were ruled only by their whims, sharing no commonalities in disposition or physical form. The appearance of one who could unite them was enough to spell the end.
And yet one could say that humanity did well. They didn’t give up. Although there was nothing they could do but struggle in vain, delaying that final hour only slightly, they fought with unparalleled conviction, determined to be victorious in the end. And their futile struggles, which did nothing more than buy them time, ultimately bore fruit.
In a baffling turn of events, the battle suddenly came to an end. For the humans, on the brink of annihilation, it was cause for rejoicing. The war that had been waged without the knowledge of the general public came to an end with most of the population none the wiser. Few ever knew that their world had been perched on the edge of the abyss.
But even those who had been fighting to save it all had no idea what had actually happened. How had they won? Why had the dark powers stopped their assault? Why had they suddenly disappeared?
They would not discover the answers to these questions for some time.
A man wearing the robes of a Buddhist priest was walking through the mountains under the light of the sun. His name was Dougen, a man in the prime of his life, and he had become a central figure in Japan’s fight against the darkness.
He doubted that the fight had truly come to an end. He couldn’t celebrate the fact that humanity had avoided destruction. He knew full well how fickle the dark beings were. It wasn’t impossible that they had, for some reason, simply given up a fight they were all but certain to win. But if that decision had been based on a whim, they could just as easily resume their attack at any time.
There was no way of predicting their movements. That’s what Dougen had learned from his battles against them. They were merciless and cruel, toying with humanity, tearing them apart, and bringing them to ruin. But in the same way, depending on their mood, they would occasionally hold back, letting the humans go unharmed. Dougen’s expectations had been betrayed plenty of times. He had personally been shown a humiliating amount of mercy in the past.
Was it because they now had a leader? If that leader was involved in the current ceasefire, it was possible that it was a trap or scheme of some sort. They couldn’t afford to relax just because the previous fight was over.
Dougen searched for signs of the dark powers. He had found one such Great Demon that had been attacking Japan. That discovery had brought him here. He had sensed an unearthly force coming from these mountains. Looking at maps of the area, he saw that there was nothing of particular note in the region, but being in the mountains, there were any number of places a Great Demon could hide itself. There was nothing to do but go there and investigate.
When he arrived, he could immediately tell that something was wrong. After all, the army had been deployed to the surrounding area to guard against any intruders.
I suppose I did hear rumors of villages passing down secret rituals, he thought. He figured this must have been one of those places. Dougen had a thorough knowledge of the hidden side of the world. He was well aware that the government was keeping the existence of certain villages secret, and although he didn’t know why they were being concealed, he didn’t mind being in the dark. By the unbroken vigil of these villages, something had been safely locked away since ancient times, which meant they were doing well. There was no need for him to intrude.
But this time it was different. If there was a Great Demon hiding there that could potentially destroy Japan, or even the entire world, he couldn’t simply let things lie. Sneaking into the village was easy enough. His opponents were soldiers who had rarely been required to kill others. Passing through without alerting them was no issue for him.
Within the mountains, he found a compact settlement. It seemed like a wholly unremarkable rural village—a poor community that had been stopped in time at the beginning of the twentieth century. If it continued this way, it might eventually develop some sort of cultural value, but right now it was merely old.
They are clearly isolated from the outside world. If I’m not careful, contact with the residents could mean trouble.
Dougen watched the locals from his hiding spot in the trees as they worked in the fields and orchards. In such an isolated place, they would recognize Dougen as an outsider in an instant. He decided it would be best to try to sneak in under the cover of night.
There was a larger building in the center of the settlement. Its architectural style was unfamiliar to him, but it likely served some sort of religious function. He could feel an unnatural presence or aura emanating from the building. If he wanted to reach it, he would need to pass through the open fields.
If he’d only had some sort of concealing magic, he might have been able to manage it, but Dougen’s abilities were specialized for combat. In other words, it was highly unlikely that he could get through unnoticed. So he decided to turn back. But when he did, he found a young man standing in front of him, wearing overalls and holding a hoe, looking like he had just returned from working in the fields.
“Wait, I don’t want to fight,” the man said as he saw Dougen instinctively draw his weapon, a vajra. “I couldn’t beat you anyway. Judging from your appearance, you’re from the mountains, right? There’s only one reason for a stranger to show up here these days. I’ll take you there, so please put that away.”
Feeling no hostility from the man, Dougen sheathed his weapon.
“By the way,” the local continued, “there’s no way you could have snuck into the village. Everyone knew you were here from the moment you passed the barrier. So the only options you have are to kill everyone on your way to your target or let me guide you.”
Dougen accepted the man’s offer. “Please guide me there, then.”
His primary objective was to determine the source of the unnatural presence, but he had no interest in gratuitous killing. His appearance as a Buddhist priest was no more than a show, but he still had respect for the teachings he was mimicking.
Dougen followed the young man through the fields and into the center of the settlement. The structure was much larger than it appeared from a distance. It had such an imposing presence that it felt like the village had been created for the sake of this one building. While it seemed to be a shrine, it didn’t appear to have any connection to Shinto. The cylindrical structure seemed somehow more foreign than that.
“You can go in from there,” the man said, pointing to a door. Clearly, he didn’t intend to accompany the stranger.
Climbing the stone steps, Dougen pushed the door open and went inside. The interior was built like a monastery. It had wooden floors and a high ceiling. Just as it appeared from the outside, the inside was a cylinder.
Lining the edge of the space were numerous candlesticks, casting a dim light over the room. Despite the light coming from the door behind him and the plentiful candles around him, the illumination they offered didn’t reach the center of the room.
Dougen took out a penlight and pointed it into the darkness. As he’d expected, the light vanished before reaching the center of the room. It seemed there was some sort of barrier set up there, a boundary dividing the center of the cylinder from the exterior. He could feel a faint unearthly energy emanating from within. Just as he’d thought, there was indeed something inside, and it was most definitely doing something. Something that had required the dark beings to stop fighting just before they had won. There was a distinct possibility that this being would be its own disaster for humanity.
Steeling himself, Dougen stepped into the darkness.
His breath stopped.
What is this?
His sense of time became vague, as did his sense of up and down. He couldn’t tell if he was even standing anymore. His vision warped and flickered, preventing him from seeing anything around him. But that was probably for the best. He instinctively recognized that if he looked upon what was sitting before him, he would go insane.
Whatever was down there with him was pure terror. He could only describe it as all the evils of the universe distilled into a single place. The Dark Gods that individually threatened the world were only a part of what he was witnessing. It was as if they had been condensed, mixed together, and packed tightly into this space. Just by existing here, they could likely curse the entire world. If they were to be released, humanity would be corrupted in an instant.
But to Dougen, that was all trivial.
Something is here. That horrifying, calamitous presence was no more than a cover. It was only there to keep something even worse concealed. Dougen’s instincts screamed at him to stop. What point was there in confirming what lay even farther ahead? All that remained was despair. It was a dead end, something that no human could face or stop. What would he gain by looking inside?
But Dougen couldn’t help wanting to know. Ignoring this thing and turning back would have been the smart choice; he knew that. He didn’t know why he couldn’t walk away, but whatever was there was now within the barrier. Presumably, the village existed to keep it sealed beneath. If so, he should just leave it to them.
But then what? Could he live the rest of his life not knowing what was beyond? What existed in this place was the ultimate power. Whether good or bad, what was wrong with wanting to see such insanity with his own eyes?
Dougen crawled forward. He couldn’t stand anymore, but he still understood which direction he had to go in. As long as he could move his hands and feet, he would eventually reach it.
Suddenly, a clear voice called out, causing him to stop. “You must be quite passionate to have made it this far. I thought you guys hated us, but I guess that’s not the case.” It was coming from in front of him, from the heart of the darkness. “But maybe you should stop there. If you keep going, you’ll die, so why don’t we go somewhere else?”
Everything abruptly turned white. With his eyes accustomed to the deep darkness, the sudden sunlight blinded him. He realized that he was lying on the stone ground outside the shrine.
Once his eyes adjusted to the light, he found a woman sitting on the stone steps in front of him. She had an elegant air about her and was wearing a disheveled kimono. Although he had never seen her before, Dougen immediately recognized that this woman was the Great Demon he had been searching for.
“No need to lie there like that. Come on over.”
She smiled as she spoke, but Dougen felt strangely ill at ease. Standing face-to-face in broad daylight with an enemy he had only ever confronted in the dead of night struck him as humorous.
This woman was an enemy. His mission was to defeat her. But after seeing what was inside that building, he didn’t care anymore. She likely intended to tell him about what lay within. That was more than he could have asked for. So while he found it unpleasant to do as she instructed, he admittedly couldn’t talk to her while lying there on the ground.
With a click of his tongue, he got up and took a seat beside her.
“It’s a baby.”
“What is?”
“You’re curious about what’s in there, right? I’m saying it’s a baby.”
What on earth were they planning by locking up a baby in that temple?
“No, that’s not correct. We didn’t lock it in there.”
Either his thoughts had shown on his face or she had somehow read his mind. Either way, she answered his unspoken question.
“I’m sure that’s what you were going to ask. I’ll tell you, so please be satisfied with that and go home.”
She seemed to intend for this to be a lecture. That was fine with Dougen. He wasn’t even sure what he should ask.
“First, although it’s just a baby, the people of this village call it Lord Okakushi, the Taker of Souls.”
“Was it a child who was taken, then?” Stories of young children disappearing were commonly linked to supernatural events.
“No, the child is the one making others disappear. And it is quite the strange power that does so as well. As far as we can tell, it is the power to make anything and everything disappear.”
By “making things disappear,” she must have meant it was killing them, but “anything and everything” seemed like an awfully wide scope for such an ability.
“I don’t know its true form,” she continued, “but it lives for about a hundred years before dying and returning in a new form. When the previous incarnation dies, a new one is created. That’s what this child is.”
“And why have you taken an interest in it?”
“Because if left alone, it’s not only humans or the supernatural who will be affected—the entire world will die. We’re protecting it all, you know? And you wanted to ask why we stopped fighting, right? That’s the reason. What we want is a world where we can walk around and live freely. There’s no point in obtaining that if the world dies in the process.”
If what she was saying was true, it made sense for them to have changed their priorities. If the world they wanted to rule was going to be destroyed anyway, there was no point in defeating humanity.
“You might think we should simply kill off such an annoying creature, but it retaliates against anyone who tries. No one can beat it.”
Dougen found that hard to believe. It was impossible for him to fathom that the infamous monsters he knew would be helpless against a single baby.
“And babies don’t really think much, right?” she went on. “So we have no way of knowing when and where it’s going to use its power. There’s always a possibility it could destroy the world just because it’s hungry.”
Babies were beings that could do nothing but cry about things they wanted and things they didn’t like. If a life form in that limited mental state had a power that could affect the entire world, the implications were terrifying.
“That’s why we’re risking our lives to take care of it. I know I said it was an invincible monster, but it’s vulnerable at the moment it’s born. So we’ve been keeping it in a dream state since birth.”
“A dream where it has everything it could ever want?” Dougen asked.
“Very close. But that would just make it grow up to be spoiled. What we’re doing is hiding him within the dream world. If by a one-in-a-million chance it turns its powers against that world, it won’t even know that ours exists. No matter how powerful it is, there’s no way it can kill something it has never seen and doesn’t know about.”
Dougen thought that was a pretty roundabout way of handling the situation. If they could do that much, they could surely keep it trapped in the dream forever.
“But you know, once it gets older, we actually need that child to keep the world safe. So we can’t have it stuck in its own head forever.”
“‘Keeping the world safe’ isn’t something I expected to hear from the likes of you,” he retorted.
“Oh, our little scuffles of the past were nothing more than siblings squabbling with each other. There are far more terrifying things squirming about outside our world.” The woman stood up, signaling the end of the conversation. “So, until the child is old enough to make better judgments on its own, we’re taking care of it. I don’t think you will now, but please try not to do anything stupid.”
Even if she was lying, the concentration of evil within the shrine was something that Dougen couldn’t stand up to regardless. The woman headed inside, turning around at the last second as if having just remembered something.
“Oh, by the way, this is probably the last time we’ll ever meet, so if you’d like to confess your love for me, this is your last chance.”
“No, thank you!” Dougen replied angrily.
“As I thought. Well, my job here will probably last for about ten more years, so if you’re still alive, let’s play then.”
With that, she headed back inside. It was a while before Dougen was able to move again.
“You damn fox! Why are you here?!” Dougen shouted.
They were in a conference room set up by the government of the Restricted Territory Disaster Management Task Force. Dougen had been informally invited as Japan’s greatest practitioner of the mystical arts, although just about everything regarding this meeting was informal. The government didn’t recognize the existence of the village, which was not shown on any maps in the first place, and neither did they admit to the existence of the transcendent being that had appeared from there and was even now killing people as it wandered around.
“I know that child better than anyone else, so I was asked to come as an advisor.” The woman in the kimono was sitting on a chair, tapping away on the laptop set up in front of her. She looked entirely unchanged from when Dougen had seen her ten years earlier.
“Hello. My name is Masamichi Shidou,” a man at the far end of the room called out to Dougen, urging him to take a seat. “I am currently in charge of this task force. You may think it presumptuous for someone like me to be in charge, but I assure you there is a reason for it. I am from a branch family of the village in question. Since time immemorial, we have been in charge of handling things should the village ever be wiped out.”
There was always a possibility of the village being destroyed. In order to address that risk, they had dispersed relevant personnel to various locations.
“I heard the village was wiped out. Was that thing responsible?” Dougen asked.
“We’re all here, so let’s start the briefing. To answer Mr. Dougen’s question first, he was not the cause of the village’s destruction.” Shidou started typing on the keyboard in front of him. As he did, an image appeared on the monitor in front of them. It showed a number of people lying on the floor of a traditional Japanese-style room. The straw mats were soaked in blood, and each of the victims had expressions of suffering on their faces.
“They were all killed with swords. This creature being set free was part of someone’s plan.”
“Okay, but I thought it was a monster of inconceivable evil and power. Can you even make a plan for dealing with such a thing?”
At this point, the cause of the incident hardly mattered. The top priority was to find a way of neutralizing the threat that even the combined supernatural forces of the world couldn’t defeat.
“Of course. We haven’t been keeping up our ancient traditions for nothing,” Shidou answered, full of pride.
“No matter what you say, I can’t imagine it going well,” the woman muttered.
Dougen couldn’t help but agree.
“Why is it that you are only telling me these tiny fragments of information every time I come up to make my reports?” Asaka Takatou asked indignantly as she sat in the meeting room on the ground floor of the Institute.
“There is an awful lot of sensitive information involved, so I’m not sure divulging it all at once would be wise.”
They were chatting after Asaka had delivered her latest report. She had asked to learn more about Yogiri’s past, but no matter how many times she inquired, she was never given what she was actually looking for.
“We are concerned that if you learn everything, you may lose your motivation, so we feel it’s best to proceed slowly and carefully.”
“Well, that’s fine, I guess. You will tell me eventually, though, right?”
“Who knows? This is classified information.”
“Hey!”
“Even if I really wanted to tell you, I’d need permission from my superiors. Speaking of which, I seem to remember being yours.”
“Oh, right. Sorry.” Asaka had grown quite lax in her attitude towards Shiraishi, but recognized that she was overstepping her position. “Actually, an awful lot of your superiors have passed away now, haven’t they? Did you not get promoted or anything?”
“No, unfortunately not. They only ever shuffle high-ranking officials around in those top positions.”
“Is that how it’s done?”
Since their conversation seemed to be over, Asaka stood up. Leaving the meeting room, she headed for the elevator. It wasn’t exactly a short trip to the underground village—it required taking numerous elevators and traversing long hallways.
“I really can’t get used to this,” she muttered as she stepped into the dark hallway. As far as she could see, the ceiling, floors, and walls were all covered with black letters. “I won’t get bad karma for stepping on sutras like this, will I?”
According to Shiraishi’s explanation, the words were Buddhist sutras, used as a “countermeasure.”
“He never did explain what they were being used for, did he? Seems pretty unscientific to me.” Of course, in this place, the line between scientific and unscientific was rather blurred in general.
After walking for a while, she ended up in a hallway covered in paper talismans. They weren’t pasted on the floor, but the cryptic, unintelligible letters written all over them still gave off an unnerving air.
“It looks like they’re moving but...that’s just my imagination, right?”
If they’d been fluttering in the breeze, it would have been perfectly normal. It was believable that the light wind caused by Asaka walking past was enough to make them tremble. But it wasn’t the paper itself that was moving; it was the words written on the talismans. When she looked back at a talisman, she could have sworn that the writing on it had changed.
“Just my imagination. It’s just my imagination... Wait, they’re falling off!”
Two of the talismans fluttered down to the floor. Looking at the now exposed piece of wall, she could feel someone watching her back. It was just a plain, gray wall, but she clearly felt like someone was observing her from within.
“There is definitely something wrong with this place!”
Asaka began to run.
After returning from delivering her report, Asaka made it back to the mansion around noon, just as she had promised Yogiri.
“I wonder if there’s a way back that doesn’t pass through that hallway,” she muttered as she stepped into the garden.
Yogiri was playing there with his dog, Nikori, a Shetland Sheepdog.
“Welcome back, Asaka!” Seeing her return, Yogiri and the dog ran up to greet her.
“Thanks. I’m going to make some food, so go ahead and wash your hands.”
“Okay.”
The boy walked over to the hand pump in the corner of the garden. They had running water inside, but Yogiri had taken a liking to pumping the water himself.
“Why are you here?” Asaka asked, turning to a woman who was sitting on the porch.
“Because I was bored?”
“They let you out just because you’re bored? Seems like the security around here needs some work.”
In addition to Yogiri, the Institute housed a number of dangerous individuals. Asaka didn’t know all the details, but they seemed to be other people with supernatural powers.
“Hey, I’m the most beautiful person in the world, right?” their visitor said, puffing up with pride. True to her words, even the boring gray clothes that she’d been provided with did little to dull her attractiveness.
“And how does that relate to anything?”
“I’m so beautiful that people do whatever I ask. They even open the electronic locks for me.”
“Sounds ridiculous. Doesn’t that mean you could escape whenever you wanted?”
“They normally keep me drugged, but ever since they slipped up a single time, I’ve basically been able to do whatever I want.”
“This place is terrifying. Your name is Estelle, right?”
It likely wasn’t her real name, although it was hard to say whether she was actually Japanese. She was fluent enough in the language and acted the part, but from her face alone it was difficult to guess where she was from. Perhaps when one was that beautiful, specific racial characteristics began to fade away.
“That’s just the code name they gave me here, but it works.”
“I know you said you were bored, but why come here, of all places?”
“Well, I figured if I tried to actually escape, they’d send someone after me. But if I came down here, they’d leave me alone.”
She was probably right. It was unlikely they’d send anyone after her if she went to where Yogiri was. The Institute was far too afraid of provoking him.
“And Yogiri is pretty cute too.”
“Yeah, please don’t get too close to him. He doesn’t need any bad influences.”
Estelle was the kind of woman who was likely to awaken sexual feelings in someone just by being present. She was the exact sort of person Asaka would never want around a child.
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that. Yogiri has already decided that my beauty is a sort of attack against him.”
So, while in front of Yogiri, she didn’t use her ability to appear as the most beautiful person in the world. What kind of power is that anyway? Asaka thought. The idea of beauty being a superpower was flat-out confusing to her.
“Then again, he might become a bit more interested once he’s around middle school age.”
“Can you not lick your lips when you say that?!” Even such blatantly wicked behavior had a bewitching quality coming from her. “Well, whatever. Do you feel like eating with us?”
“Sure.”
When Yogiri returned, they made their way from the porch into the living room. Asaka went straight to the kitchen and started preparing some cold noodles. Yogiri helped with setting the table, and the three of them were ready to eat in no time.
“Man, I love this stuff.” Yogiri seemed genuinely happy, but Asaka had mixed feelings. The meal was pretty minimal work, and she felt like she was slacking off by making it.
“It’s so simple to make that you end up cooking a lot, but you get tired of it quickly, don’t you?” she commented.
“That’s true,” Estelle replied. “When summer comes, we eat almost nothing else. Oh, but this is the first time I’ve had it in a while, so I’m happy to eat it.”
“So, you are Japanese after all.”
“Yes, Japanese through and through. But this facility is in Japan, so one would expect them to be using Japanese people, right?”
“What do they normally give you to eat?”
“Generally just a nutritional supplement from a tube.”
“That’s a lot worse than I thought!”
“Well, we’re normally drugged, so I didn’t think anything of it at the time.”
“Doesn’t that make it even worse?”
The fact that they didn’t treat their test subjects as humans only confirmed her suspicions that this was an evil research laboratory.
“Well, I kind of understand why they don’t let people like me roam free, so it’s hard to complain.”
“Are there a lot of people like you in here?”
“I think so. I don’t know much about the others.”
“I guess it would be a problem if they escaped.” The main point of this facility was to keep Yogiri isolated, but an awful lot of people had managed to come in from the outside lately.
“Hey, do you hear something?” Estelle asked.
Now that she’d mentioned it, Asaka could hear something like a small bell being struck from the hallway.
“What is that?” Putting her food aside, she stepped out into the hallway. It was the phone. “Wait, since when has this actually been connected to anything?”
There had always been an old landline set up in the mansion, but she’d been told it couldn’t contact the surface, so she had figured it was purely decorative.
She decided to answer it. “Hello?”
A burst of white noise greeted her. It sounded like there was someone talking on the other end, but she couldn’t understand a word of it through the static. It seemed like they were speaking from a huge distance away.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“Ah, I finally managed to get connected.” It was a deep, murmuring voice. It sounded like a man.
“Hello? Is that Shiraishi?”
“Yes. It’s me. Shiraishi.”
At his response, she decided it indeed sounded like him. “Since when can you call us?!”
“It’s an emergency. Please come to the surface immediately.” With those words, he abruptly hung up.
“Huh? What’s going on?” Asaka asked in confusion. “They said we couldn’t contact anyone upstairs from here, but I guess in emergencies, they can contact us?” It seemed possible, but she felt like they should have informed her of it beforehand. “I guess we should go see what’s up.”
She wasn’t too pleased about being called back to the surface after having only gotten back, though.
After telling Yogiri to clear up lunch, Asaka headed back upstairs.
In the end, it was a matter of coincidence. It wasn’t because Asaka was underground nor did it have anything to do with her connection to Yogiri. It could have appeared anywhere, and its prey could have been anyone. The traps of darkness existed all around.
To put it in simpler terms, Asaka had terrible luck.
Asaka continued down the endless, lifeless hallway. She had taken her usual route to the surface, but no matter how far she walked, the elevator didn’t come into view.
It’s not like there are any turns for me to have missed.
She stopped and turned back. The hallway behind her seemed to continue on forever with no end in sight.
“Huh? Wait a second!”
She knew for a fact that there were no branching paths along the way to the elevator, but neither was the hallway straight. There were plenty of sections where the corridor turned and curved, but she couldn’t see anything like that now.
Asaka struggled to figure out what she should do. Such a bewildering situation was beyond her. Checking her shoulder bag, she found only a water bottle and some writing instruments inside.
“What am I supposed to do?”
She really only had three options: keep going, head back, or wait where she was.
If I wait here, someone might come. But the phone call that had started all of this was too bizarre. If it hadn’t actually been Shiraishi on the line, no matter how long she waited, no one would come for her. So she decided to head back. She hadn’t even made it to the first elevator yet, so returning home seemed like the best choice. Assuming I even can make it back.
She walked in a straight line, but with the end nowhere in sight, she didn’t seem to be making any progress. She walked and walked, but not even one of the normal turns in the hallway appeared.
At some point, the walls began to look old and crumbled. Rusted iron bars became visible, jutting out from the concrete. The lights in the ceiling grew gradually weaker until they barely illuminated the hallway at all. The scent of rusted metal began to fill the air as something like traces of old blood appeared on the floor and walls. This was obviously not the direction she had come from.
“I seem to remember seeing something like this in a game before...”
Asaka couldn’t stop now. If she didn’t keep walking, she felt like she’d get sucked into the changing world and rot away herself. That thought compelled her to continue moving.
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
Next it began to grow foggy. A white mist clouded her vision, the uncomfortably warm and muggy atmosphere clinging to her skin. Each mechanical step forward seemed to sink into the ground with a squelch, giving off the sound of a faint cry every time, but she pushed it all from her mind and forced herself to keep going.
Faint voices began to whisper directly into her ear. She didn’t recognize the language, but the words felt like some sort of spell. Unable to handle it, she turned to see where they were coming from, but no one was there. Then she heard a sound from nowhere in particular, like someone trying to stifle a laugh. As soon as she thought that she had reached her limit, that she couldn’t take another second of this, a bright, rectangular light came into view.
The exit.
Asaka ran. Passing through the hole, she left the hallway behind. The mist suddenly cleared, and the scenery that appeared in front of her brought her to her knees.
This was hell. She couldn’t think of any other way to describe such a place.
The ground was a rusty metal grate that seemed like it might collapse at any moment. Below it was a dark sea of what looked like blood, with white bones sticking out from it. From the sea of blood rose a number of black metal towers, stretching up through the metal grating and into the sky. In that crimson sky was a similarly crimson moon, filling the world with blood-red light.
She turned back, and just as she had expected, the hallway was nowhere to be seen. Even the metal floor just stopped, nothing but that red sea continuing into the distance. Something like boats were floating there, drawing closer. Wriggling.
As they approached, she realized they weren’t boats at all but some sort of insect. Covered in a glittering black exoskeleton, their multi-jointed legs carried them in chaotic paths across the red surface.
As she watched the surreal sight of the bugs crawling towards her, countless tentacles burst out from the blood. They grabbed the edge of the metal flooring she was on, using it to pull themselves up.
Asaka fell onto her backside and skittered away from the edge. They were grotesque. They looked like enormous fish with human faces, hands, and feet, and countless tentacles.
The monsters began climbing up onto the metal grating one after another. And then like a mountain emerging from the sea, something else split the surface. It was equally revolting, like a creature that someone had slapped together haphazardly. It was a lump of flesh that seemed to be made out of centipedes, floating far above her in the sky.
The moment she saw that, Asaka truly understood that there was nothing she could do. These things existed on an entirely different level. She was just a sacrifice, an offering to some twisted god. And something in her mind snapped.
“Who the hell would be scared of you?!”
If these monsters had really wanted to, they could have killed a lone human without the slightest effort. But they didn’t. Instead, it seemed like they were trying to scare her, to enjoy her terror. And that made her angry.
Tears began to blur her vision, and her teeth were chattering, but even so she shouted back at them. She refused to give these creatures satisfaction. Of course, it was nothing more than a bluff, and it wouldn’t even buy her time. She had a better chance of surviving simply by running in fear. But she didn’t want to give in to this completely irrational situation.
“Asaka, it’s almost dinnertime.”
The atmosphere suddenly changed. It was hard to say how much intelligence the nightmares before her possessed, but they seemed to be equally confused.
“Yogiri?!”
At some point, the boy had appeared beside her. As she wondered how on earth he had gotten there, she noticed a hole in the air behind him. She didn’t know why it was there, but she could see their underground village bathed in the light of the sunset beyond it.
“How did you know I was here?!”
“You didn’t come back, so I went to ask where you were. They told me the cameras weren’t working in one spot.”
“And you figured it out just from that?”
“Yeah. I knew if you weren’t there, you were probably here.”
This was some sort of other world, so in theory, if there was a sort of wall separating their two worlds, Yogiri could kill part of it to open up a hole. That may have been what was going on, but Asaka didn’t understand the logic behind it.
“Are you crying, Asaka?”
“What? No, umm...” She immediately grew embarrassed, wiping away her tears.
As if her actions were a signal, the confused monsters began to move again. They must have given up on trying to scare her. The clear killing intent now coming from them made Asaka freeze. They were done playing. They were interested in nothing less than slaughter now.
“Stop bullying her!”
But with Yogiri’s words, everything stopped. The bizarre fish creatures fell over, and the bugs skittering across the surface of the blood instantly sank. The moon hanging in the sky fell, and the centipede-like monstrosity crumbled. The entire world began to shake. Asaka felt like an invisible layer of evil that had been cloaking the world had been removed.
“I’m hungry. Let’s go.”
“Y-Yeah...”
Rising unsteadily to her feet, she took Yogiri’s hand. They stepped through the hole in the world and were suddenly back in the village. She had left while they were eating lunch, but it was evening now. She hadn’t realized that she had been wandering around for that long, but it was a fair assumption that her perception of time within that bizarre space had been warped.
“I’ve experienced all sorts of weird things since coming here, but that really takes the cake...” If Yogiri had been any later, she might have gone insane. “Is there anything special you want for dinner, Yogiri?”
“I want hamburger steak.”
“Well, that might take a long time to make. How about some sort of Korean barbecue?”
“That sounds good too.”
What the hell was that place? Glancing back at the hole they had emerged from, she could still see into that other world. It was quite possible that the hole would remain open forever. If Yogiri hadn’t come to save her, she would most certainly have died there. She’d had no way of saving herself.
Although Asaka was absolutely thankful for his intervention, she felt that his abilities were terrifying. If he could go so far as to punch holes in the world, just how far did his powers go? If he were to turn that power against humanity, they would be helpless against him.
Well, if that happens, I’m sure it’ll be humanity’s fault anyway.
Asaka decided to leave it at that.
There was no particular reason for this to have happened to Asaka. Once again, she just had terrible luck. And whatever had attacked her had even worse luck. The prey it had set its sights on just happened to be someone close to Yogiri. The monsters writhing just outside her own world hadn’t had a clue what they were up against.
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