Chapter 13
Cold sweat ran down my body.
What had I done wrong?
Was there some gimmick I hadn't triggered?
If so...
What?
I desperately thought while looking at the corpses in front of me.
Four bodies.
Different ages.
Different sexes.
The only thing they had in common was...
"..."
Fear.
All of them wore terrified expressions.
As though something unknown had been chasing them.
I considered turning around.
Instead, I first searched the corpses.
They had probably been among the people recorded in the notebook.
Maybe they'd left something useful behind.
Stay calm.
Don't let fear swallow you.
And remember...
If necessary, I could die.
I squeezed my eyes shut.
Then opened them and reached toward the first corpse.
"I'm sorry."
I quietly apologized while searching its clothes.
A weapon.
An item.
Or at least some useful information.
"I'm sorry..."
While desperately searching, my fingers touched something different.
I immediately pulled it out.
A crumpled piece of paper.
"..."
I glanced behind me.
The unknown thing was still watching.
I quickly unfolded the paper.
[No. 61.]
[I chose the downward route and encountered various phenomena while descending endlessly.]
[I assume your eardrum has probably ruptured as well.]
[It is better this way. I repaired my eardrum once, only to rupture it again.]
[Be grateful that you cannot hear anything right now.]
[I don't know what to do.]
[Was choosing to go down a mistake?]
[But would anything have been different if I'd gone up?]
[I want to turn around and climb back up, but I'm terrified that if I make eye contact with the thing that keeps watching me, I'll die before reaching the top.]
[Look at that smile.]
[It smiles.]
[And smiles.]
[And keeps smiling...]
[I'm going up.]
[No. 103.]
[If this person died while climbing upward, then going up must mean that thing gets you, right?]
[I'm bleeding...]
[I can't hear...]
[My heart is pounding so hard it hurts.]
[I had hope...]
[Even after surviving all those hells, I truly believed I could live...]
[I don't want to die.]
[No. 117.]
[I GOT PAST IT!]
[NEVER GIVE UP HOPE!]
[WE CAN DO THIS!]
[WE HAVE TO GO HOME!]
[I MADE IT ALL THE WAY UP!]
[NEVERGOUPD O N T]
[No. 136.]
[Kill yourself.]
[Just die while you still have your human dignity.]
[I'm not telling you to die for no reason.]
[I tried everything you're trying.]
[Anyone who made it to the fourth floor has at least some ability to improvise.]
[Then why did everyone die here without taking even one more step?]
[Look at that smiling thing.]
[It's human.]
[Haven't you ever thought that was strange?]
[I never once believed this place was sane.]
[If you had to kill a creature you'd never seen before, how would you fight it?]
[Naturally, they shouldn't know anything about us.]
[If that's true, then they shouldn't know anything about humans.]
[And yet...]
[They take human form.]
[Do not go up.]
[Die here and prove that you are huma—]
I crumpled the paper again.
Then turned around.
The face was still watching me.
"..."
I met its gaze for a moment.
Then I stood.
The note might be right.
But I wouldn't know until I tried.
Besides...
This was my role.
Someone had to...
"..."
I swallowed hard and looked up the stairs.
According to those notes, my life was already over.
More precisely...
If I stayed here, I was dead anyway.
Then I needed to do something.
If I was going to die regardless, I should at least obtain information and record it.
And I prayed that whatever information I gained wouldn't cost too much.
I bit my lip hard.
Then stepped forward.
With every stair I climbed, heat spread around my ears.
My heart began pounding uncontrollably.
Was blood always this hot?
I climbed slowly.
Eventually, I reached the place where the thing had been peeking out at me.
Was this where I died?
Heart attack?
Or...
"..."
Slowly, I looked over.
A head was embedded in the wall.
A human head.
Only its eyes moved.
Rolling around to stare at me.
Nothing else moved.
"..."
I quickly continued upward.
Then I looked back.
It was still staring at me.
As though promising to kill me.
Maybe two hours passed.
"...Huff... huff..."
How many stairs had I climbed?
My leg muscles felt ready to burst.
My heart hurt so badly it seemed about to explode.
Was my heart always supposed to hurt like this?
Still...
"...Are you there...?"
I called for the mascot in a strained voice.
No response.
"..."
I continued upward.
Then...
"...!"
At some point, my vision began to distort.
My trembling legs gave out.
Is this it?
I collapsed on the stairs.
My heart hurt.
It was beyond pounding.
It felt ready to burst.
Maybe it really would.
Then...
"..."
I was standing at another dead end.
No corpses this time.
Only a wall.
And...
"..."
The face.
It was much closer now.
Still peeking out.
Still staring at me.
"So that's what it means."
I squeezed my eyes shut.
[There is no meaning.]
I understood.
The people who went down must have tried the same thing.
And failed just like me.
They wandered around.
Then eventually gave up.
Did they accept death?
Starvation?
Heart failure?
Would I die once that thing got close enough?
Then why hadn't anything happened when I'd passed it earlier?
I forced myself to ignore the noise in my head and moved.
"..."
I sat down and opened the notebook.
Let's read it again.
There had to be something.
I reread the pages over and over.
Eventually, several entries stood out.
[68. What the hell are the people above talking about? There are corpses here.]
[68. I moved all the corpses.]
[68. Ugh, how many bodies did I move?]
[68. Seriously, there are too many corpses.]
[77. What is everyone talking about? I just climbed one flight of stairs and arrived.]
[77. No, maybe it's because of my ability?]
[138. Something feels strange the longer I climb... I've been walking roughly six hours, and I'm starting to hear strange sounds.]
[138. Something feels wrong the farther up I go...]
[138. I can't see ahead.]
[138. I can get out!]
Those three.
First...
There were many corpses.
Maybe No. 68 had gotten trapped here.
Then shouldn't No. 68's corpse...
Or at least another message...
Be here?
No. 77 said they climbed one flight and escaped.
They suspected it was due to their ability.
No. 138 walked for six hours before finally finding the exit.
"..."
After thinking for a while, I took out the pen and started writing on a blank page.
[150. The results differ too much.]
[150. Some succeed while others fail, but I cannot identify the relationship.]
[150. There is no consistently shared factor.]
[150. Is it related to how one walks? Up versus down? That does not seem to be it either.]
[150. I will continue going downward.]
I slowly stood and went back down.
Beyond my muffled ears, I felt like I could hear laughter.
After walking for some time...
"..."
I stood once again before the familiar corpses.
I turned around.
The thing was now close enough that I could almost feel its breath.
Slowly, its mouth opened.
Its jaw spread wider than any human jaw should.
Crack. Crack.
It widened enough to swallow my entire head.
What was different?
Where had things gone wrong?
Even as the mouth opened, I refused to stop thinking.
Then a thought pierced my mind.
"...Wait."
I stared directly at it.
"Next time..."
"I'll definitely solve this."
Snap!
Its jaws closed.
"U-UAAAGH!"
My neck came off.
I couldn't breathe.
Obviously, I shouldn't have been able to.
"AAAAAAGH!"
My body collapsed in a spray of blood.
And I watched it from below.
Only my severed head remained.
I screamed until my throat should have torn apart.
My arms and legs twitched uselessly, already ignoring me like a corpse in rigor mortis.
It was suffocating.
I couldn't breathe.
No matter how desperately I gasped...
Nothing entered my lungs.
The face slowly approached.
Deep wrinkles covered it.
Its teeth tore off my nose.
Before I could properly process that sharp pain...
CRUNCH!
The flesh of my face was slowly eaten away.
I screamed over and over.
But nobody came.
That was my final memory of that regression.
Ding!
"Haaah...! Cough! Cough!"
I woke to the sharp elevator bell.
The mascot was staring at me as usual.
"..."
"?"
I ignored it for now and started reading the notebook again.
A straight staircase.
The only things I could do were climb or descend.
Then the problem had to be connected to one of those two actions.
"..."
"??"
When I continued staring at the notebook without moving, the mascot poked my back.
As if asking what I was doing.
"If there were even a railing I could jump over, I'd try jumping."
"?"
A narrow stairwell.
The choices were only up or down.
"..."
I picked up the notebook.
"Let's record it."
"?"
"Right. Don't walk ahead this time. Stay beside me."
"?"
"If something happens to me, I want you to see it from right next to me."
"!"
The mascot nodded.
Slowly, we started climbing.
At first, I'd thought this floor worked like the second.
Either you passed through luck...
Or found the hidden solution.
But after reading enough records, I realized that wasn't it.
"Are you lucky?"
"!!"
The mascot immediately shook its head.
"Right. If you were lucky, you wouldn't be wearing a mascot suit in a place like this and following some stranger around."
"!"
It flapped its hands and nodded.
I kept walking beside it.
"But I'm just as unlucky."
"?"
One.
Two.
Three.
I counted each stair in my head.
"I mean, obviously. Look at me. If I were lucky, would I have ended up here?"
"..."
"Don't nod like you're saying, Exactly."
Thirty.
Thirty-one.
"By the way, do you even have eardrums?"
"??"
"How do you not know your own body?"
"???"
"Fine. Stop pushing me. It's hot."
One hundred.
One hundred and one.
"Hmm. Should be happening soon."
"?"
Three hundred.
Huuum...
The elevator sound began.
Tinnitus slowly appeared in my right ear.
I touched it.
As expected, something sticky coated my fingers.
"...!"
The mascot looked alarmed and reached over to wipe away the blood.
I opened the notebook and began writing.
First, in very large letters...
[150. WARNING.]
[150. IF YOU READ THE FOLLOWING ENTRIES, ESCAPING THROUGH THE NORMAL METHOD WILL BECOME IMPOSSIBLE.]
[150. ONLY READ THIS IF YOU BELIEVE SOMETHING HAS ALREADY GONE WRONG.]
Then I turned the page and deliberately wrote on a new sheet.
[150. If you fail to find the exit within 300 steps, one eardrum will be damaged. Any elevator sound heard afterward is tinnitus.]
"Let's keep walking."
"...!"
"Don't worry. I think I understand."
I stopped the mascot from fussing over the blood and continued.
Five hundred steps.
"..."
I turned around.
The face was watching from far away.
Still half-hidden.
Still smiling so widely its mouth looked ready to split.
I looked back at it and wrote.
[150. If you fail to find the exit within 500 steps, something will appear behind you and follow you.]
[150. Do not panic. At this stage, it does not harm you.]
I snapped the notebook shut.
"Let's go."
If moving forward was all I needed...
Then this wasn't difficult.
Now that I understood the pattern...
I could record everything about the fourth floor.
