The knocking at the window had stopped.
Even the roaring rainstorm seemed to fall silent.
Everything was so quiet.
After the door opened—
After the only door in the room opened—
It was as if every other sound had been swallowed by something.
The room grew quieter.
And quieter.
Only one sound remained.
Tap—
Tap—
The footsteps entering the room rang out with terrifying clarity.
"..."
Takumi closed his eyes.
He remained perfectly still, curled beneath the single bed.
He stayed silent.
So silent that he had nearly stopped breathing altogether as he hid beneath the bed.
Tap—
He could hear the footsteps moving slowly through the room.
The thing first walked over to the wardrobe.
Then Takumi heard the harsh scraping sound of something rubbing against the wardrobe doors.
Next, the faint footsteps slowly shuffled toward the bookshelf.
Takumi heard the sound of pages turning, as though something were flipping through a book. Or perhaps it was only the wind lifting the pages.
Creak—
Creak—
The old wooden door swayed gently.
By then, the footsteps had reached the computer desk.
Then they continued forward, stopping directly beside the bed.
"..."
Takumi didn't move.
He remained silently beneath the bed.
The next moment, he heard the sound of bedding being moved.
What was that thing doing?
Amid the faint noises, Takumi realized that whatever had entered the room seemed to be straightening the bedding.
It was re-covering the blanket that had been disturbed when Takumi got out of bed.
As though someone were lying in the bed, and it was tucking that person in.
What kind of situation was this?
For a moment, Takumi couldn't figure out what the thing was doing.
Then the footsteps slowly began moving again, heading toward the door one step at a time.
Creak—
The heavily weathered door closed once more with a dull thud.
The footsteps gradually faded into the distance and soon disappeared altogether.
Then the sound of rainfall became clear again, accompanied by the rumbling of thunder.
Takumi opened his eyes and slowly crawled out from beneath the bed.
Using the power of his Blessing, he confirmed that the thing which had entered the room had already left.
That was surprisingly straightforward.
Takumi couldn't help marveling inwardly.
He had expected the thing to pull some kind of trick, but from beginning to end it hadn't opened the wardrobe, hadn't checked beneath the bed, and had only fiddled with the bedding for a while.
Honestly, its search effort was inferior to that of some Dusk-level Aberrations.
The pistol Takumi had been gripping the entire time never got a chance to be used.
Still, he couldn't let his guard down.
Who knew what that thing's deal was?
So he first inspected the bed.
He found nothing remotely suspicious.
He then checked the wardrobe—merely looking at it without recklessly trying to open it—and afterward examined the bookshelf.
Again, nothing unusual.
That thing...
It really seemed to have come solely to straighten the bedding.
So was the first encounter with the new Instance and its Aberration really over just like that?
Wasn't that a little too easy?
Shouldn't there have been some mental contamination? Some kind of cognitive distortion?
It showed up, then left.
Surely it couldn't be this simple, this effortless.
Or was this merely the appetizer before something much more terrifying arrived later?
Takumi couldn't shake the feeling that something was off.
He hadn't found a single trace.
The thing that had appeared and vanished—the thing whose appearance he had never actually seen—was like a phantom that didn't exist at all.
It had left behind no evidence proving it had ever been there.
Meanwhile, whatever had been outside the window was gone as well.
Peering through a gap in the curtains, Takumi could see light outside.
It was still raining, but...
Had the sky already cleared?
A distortion of time?
Or did the day-night cycle here change in response to certain events?
While thinking about it, Takumi returned to the computer and tried to continue investigating.
Only to discover that it had already shut down.
The machine had lost its power supply.
Realizing something, Takumi looked up.
The room's lights had gone out as well.
Had the room lost electricity when the outside world shifted from night to day?
After a brief period of silent contemplation, Takumi's gaze settled on the room's only door.
Kaguya's whereabouts were unknown.
He had to find her.
And he also needed to determine the location and condition of Hayasaka Ai, who was somewhere within the Instance.
The place was filled with mysteries, and he had absolutely no idea what was going on.
But no matter what, he had to start exploring.
After all, staying trapped here forever wasn't a solution.
I wonder how many days I've been missing in the real world.
Maybe my boss has already fired me.
And I wonder how my little sister is doing. If I disappeared, there wouldn't even be anyone to open the door for her.
Alright. Time to go.
I have to find a way out of here.
Yoshitaka reached out, grasped the doorknob, and slowly opened the door.
After cautiously looking outside, he turned back toward Takumi and said:
[It looks like a living room outside this time. I'll go check things out first. If there's no danger, you can come out afterward.]
Takumi nodded lightly and waited in the room for a short while.
Only after he saw a hand emerge through the crack in the doorway and wave at him did he step outside.
He carefully closed the door behind him and looked around the empty living room, which carried a faint musty smell of age.
"Hm?"
He frowned and looked back at the door behind him.
Just now... just now, I decided to leave because there were no more clues to gather in the room. I came out to look for Kaguya and Hayasaka. Right. That's how I remember it.
But for some reason, it felt as though that wasn't all.
It felt as though something else had happened during the process of leaving the room.
He couldn't remember what.
That portion of his memory seemed to have vanished from his mind entirely.
All he could sense was the discomfort of something missing.
He knew he had forgotten something.
Yet he couldn't recover whatever had disappeared.
Is it because of the room itself?
After a brief moment of thought, Takumi reached out and grabbed the doorknob again.
Patter—
Patter—
Within the curtain of rain that seemed as though it would never end, Takumi slowly crawled beneath the bed.
Tilting his head, he cautiously observed the figure sitting at the desk, browsing through a file on the computer.
Only after the person stood up, walked to the bed, and lay down did Takumi crawl out from underneath.
His clothes brushed against the floor, producing soft rustling sounds.
Yoshitaka was already asleep on the bed.
The girl outside the window was looking down at him.
Takumi slowly backed away, opened the door, and stepped into the living room outside.
"..."
Takumi released the doorknob and looked back at the shabby little living room behind him. It looked as though it had been abandoned for quite some time.
What was I just doing?
Frowning deeply, Takumi lowered his head and noticed a line of crooked handwriting scrawled across the back of his hand. It looked like something he himself had written at some point.
There was only a short sentence written there:
[Right Beside You]
So Takumi turned his head and looked at Yoshitaka, who was hanging dead right next to him.
Is there something beside me?
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