After opening the door, they saw the layout of a normal Mita's room, but there wasn't a single person in sight.
The room was filled with missing textures caused by program errors. Walls, furniture, and other objects that should have been covered by normal materials instead exposed their unfinished, purplish-red models, as if the entire space was dissolving or collapsing.
Alain walked forward. The lights in the room flickered, the frequency gradually increasing, accompanied by the crackle of electric static and a low-frequency hum.
"My dear..." Misa was a little scared, but her fear stemmed from worrying that something would happen to Alain. Her pace slowed, ready to pull Alain back to safety at any moment.
"..." Alain didn't reply, his gaze fixed on a purple block.
As he approached the purple block, a sharp, metallic scraping sound was suddenly triggered, making his eardrums throb.
"Alain!" Misa quickly pulled him to her side.
"It's okay, it's okay," he whispered, comforting her. Alain tried to lean against the wall to steady himself, but then he heard the sound of a woman's voice, sobbing intermittently, coming from within the wall itself.
Alain was no stranger to horror games, and with his "angel" right beside him, he wasn't afraid.
When he pressed his ear to the wall to listen, the sound vanished without a trace.
"How strange. Just like a horror game."
The two talked for a moment and searched the bedroom, but they couldn't find any clues about the ring or Ugly Mita.
"Nothing...?" Alain's gaze fell upon the last unsearched place in the bedroom: the bathroom.
"Should we go take a look?" Misa asked worriedly.
"...Let's go." Alain glanced at the download progress for the chainsaw; it still had a while to go. There was nothing else he could do.
They walked forward slowly, gradually approaching the bathroom door.
But just as Alain's hand was about to open the door, a series of intense, jolting sensations, like an electric shock, momentarily paralyzed his limbs.
Fortunately, Misa pulled him back before it could continue.
He took a deep, ragged breath. The girl beside him extended a stiff fingertip and pointed forward.
"???"
Only then did he realize that three "living creatures" were stationed at the bathroom door.
Three Human-headed Spider Wasps, as if they had built a nest on the bathroom door, blocked the entrance, fitting together like a perfect seal. They weren't looking at him; their hollow eyes were merely scanning the walls.
"Human-headed Spider Wasps?" Alain was taken aback.
Human-headed Spider Wasps appearing in Ugly Mita's room...
They didn't seem aggressive, standing guard before the bathroom like watchdogs. But their presence made Alain realize just how dangerous this trip into version 0.5 was.
To command Human-headed Spider Wasps like gatekeepers... what exactly was the relationship between Ugly Mita and the viruses?
"We can't get into the bathroom for now," Alain said helplessly. Misa tried to console him.
"It's okay, Alain. If you think about it, there's still one room we haven't checked, right?"
"That's true."
The kitchen. They hadn't checked it yet.
If they couldn't get into the bathroom, they would go to the kitchen. Since their opponent was playing a game of hide-and-seek and puzzles with them instead of attacking directly, she must have left a clue somewhere.
But this roundabout behavior... it was a bit like Crazy Mita.
Alain thought for a moment. The first time he met Ugly Mita, she seemed to be muttering something like "Lady Mita." Combined with the information he got from Prankster Mita—that Ugly Mita seemed to be driven by someone's command, holding back the viruses in version 0.5—could it be that Ugly Mita's so-called "Lady Mita" was actually Crazy Mita?
When he first met his bad woman and asked if she had any friends, she had vaguely said, "I guess you could say that."
If he could meet Ugly Mita later, he could just ask her directly.
Just then, the two of them arrived at the door leading to the living room.
Alain didn't let his guard down, opening just a small crack in the door.
"Fuck."
He just knew there would be some kind of trouble. It was like this every time he entered the game world. Couldn't things just be peaceful for once?
"Alain?" Misa, whom he was shielding behind him, asked in confusion. Alain simply opened the door all the way for her.
"Th-this is...?"
The living room, which had been somewhat "normal" before, was now a vast, twisted landscape.
The room's structure exhibited non-Euclidean geometry: the living room bizarrely curved into a Möbius strip, then warped into a near-circle, then back to a rectangle, repeating the cycle; the television sometimes floated two meters off the ground, sometimes shrank to the size of a keyhole.
The sofa floated in mid-air, defying the laws of physics, its shadow casting sharp geometric shapes on the floor that defied the direction of the light source.
Scattered books hovered thirty centimeters off the ground, their pages flipping frame by frame like stop-motion animation.
The entire living room had descended into madness.
The two looked at each other, each seeing the shock in the other's eyes. But they also came to a conclusion:
For now, let's just close the door.
With a slam, he shut the door heavily.
"Let's just pretend we saw it wrong," Alain said.
"Indeed..." Although Misa was worried sick, there was nothing she could do.
The yet-unseen host of this place—Ugly Mita—seemed to be toying with them, constructing scene after scene straight out of a horror game. But for some reason, she hadn't made a fatal move yet.
This time, Misa volunteered to open the door.
She gently opened a corner of the door, peering through the crack.
The next second, the girl's shoulders tensed.
Alain saw her shock and couldn't help but narrow his eyes. Having been tempered by the real world, Misa's ability to react to situations was far greater than before. She had remained calm even after seeing the twisted living room. But this time, what could Misa have possibly seen to have that kind of reaction?
"What did you see?" Alain whispered in her ear.
The girl didn't say much, simply opening the door wider to let Alain see for himself.
The living room was back to normal, as if the twisted scenes from five seconds ago had never happened.
The door, the sofa, the books, the ceiling, and the fanlight—everything was peaceful.
As long as you ignored the person sitting on the sofa.
She had a head of indigo-blue hair that fell naturally, was wearing white socks, and seemed to be hugging a small bear plushie. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead on the television.
But there was no picture on the television at all. It didn't even cast a reflection.
Click.
For a brief moment, Alain thought he heard the sound of wooden joints twisting.
In the blink of an eye, Ugly Mita, who should have been staring at the TV, moved. Her limbs jerked as if controlled by invisible strings, like a marionette. Her shoulder blades shot up abruptly to her ears and then back down, causing her head to snap back with the clack of a wind-up toy.
Her gaze was aimed right at them.
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