Chapter 5

Chapter 5 . When the Siren Sounds (5)

When we came out of the restroom, the corridor had already been cleaned.

Even when I had rushed out gagging, it had been a mess of blood and shards of glass.

The Cleaner here really seemed diligent about erasing traces.

That was why people could not know what had happened here.

The fact struck me as newly chilling, and my steps slowed for a moment.

Then Sol passed beside me and glanced back.

Her eyes seemed to ask why I wasn’t coming quickly.

For some reason, that put me at ease.

But when we came down to the first floor, the situation reversed.

This time, Sol grew visibly tense.

I followed Sol’s gaze and found the Storage Lockers along the wall.

So while walking ahead, I slowed my steps.

Like that, I blocked those Storage Lockers from Sol’s view.

Sol stared at me, then gave a little huff of a snort.

Fine. I’ll respect that, you pubescent child.

As I walked side by side with Lee Sol, I searched with my eyes for the locker in row 7, column 1, the one that supposedly exchanged items for money.

Finding it was easy.

Only, the actual thing was rather unexpected.

Whether they were Storage Lockers or bookshelves, nearly all cabinets had the widest compartments at the bottom and grew smaller toward the top.

That was because it was convenient and safe to store large, heavy objects below.

It was common sense, but I had not thought of it until I saw it for myself.

The Storage Locker in question was in column 1.

It occupied the highest compartment.

So it was the smallest.

It was far too small for a person to fit inside.

Then how on earth had they put people in there?

I ended up imagining what must have happened there.

But now, the area around that Storage Locker was perfectly clean too.

As if nothing had happened.

Passing through that cold space, we entered the corridor leading to the Lost and Found Center.

The farther inside the corridor went, the darker it became.

On top of that, there was an acrid smell.

How should I put it? It smelled like old ash.

When we kept walking into the pitch-dark corridor, the Lost and Found Center came into view.

It was buried in an even more distinct darkness.

Only, in the middle of it, something faint was standing.

By instinct, we realized that it was the 「Cloth Doll」.

“Mister, make sure we see each other outside. Okay?”

Sol stopped walking and whispered.

It sounded too much like a classic death flag, so I frowned and laughed.

Then I handed Sol the small scissors from the emergency kit.

Sol held the scissors and headed toward the Lost and Found Center.

---

When the 「Cloth Doll」 appears, cut off your hair and offer it.

After that, kneel down, bow low, and ask, “Please send me to my dad.”

This is the only thing you may say in front of the 「Cloth Doll」.

Do not move, and continue asking until the 「Cloth Doll」 grants your request.

Once your request reaches 121 times, the 「Cloth Doll」 will return you to reality.

---

It was something even a child could do as long as they kept their head.

Sol was a middle schooler and a kid who could even roundhouse-kick an adult, so she should manage easily.

I watched Sol enter the darkness, then turned around.

It would have been nice to confirm Sol’s escape too, but I could not afford to take my time forever.

I also needed to go board the train.

Before that siren sounded again.

But the moment I took a few steps, the space behind me grew bright.

Startled, I turned back and saw a pure-white figure.

It was shaped like a little girl, the color of unbleached cotton from head to toe.

Transparent and pale, as if made of candle wax.

Is that the 「Cloth Doll」?

As the doll brightened, I could see Sol lying prostrate before it.

I watched that strange phenomenon as if entranced.

But then Sol suddenly twitched.

What are you doing? You’re not supposed to move.

I anxiously watched Sol, who had abruptly turned strange.

Sol seemed to be trying to maintain her prostrate posture too.

But only for a moment.

“Agh……!”

At Sol’s short scream, I realized something had gone wrong.

Sol jumped up as if she had been burned and ran out of there.

And almost at the same time, an explosion occurred.

BANG—!

“Aaah!”

Sol screamed and clung to me, and I caught hold of her as well.

When flames surged up in the Lost and Found Center, its interior grew even brighter.

Because of that, the true nature of the darkness surrounding the 「Cloth Doll」 was revealed.

What filled that place was not empty air with the light blocked out.

It was blackness with substance.

Inside the Lost and Found Center, pitch-black twisted forms were stacked in layers, interlocked with one another.

“What the hell is that…….”

A groan escaped me without my realizing it.

They began to move.

They tore their tangled limbs free and struggled to come outside.

One of the things that looked like a fire-charred corpse finally stretched an arm outside.

Then the flames flickering within were pushed out into the corridor as well, and the fire began spreading like spilled water.

For now, I grabbed Sol’s arm and ran.

“What happened?!”

“I-I don’t know! I did everything it told me to……!”

Sol shouted, nearly sobbing.

Then her face suddenly turned pale.

“My dad is already dead.”

“What?”

At Sol’s confession, I was left blank.

The words written in the Survival Rules that she was supposed to say to the 「Cloth Doll」.

“Please send me to my dad.”

No way. Is it trying to send her to her father in heaven?

Then children without fathers should never use this method in the first place!

But there was nothing like that written in the Survival Rules.

Something this important should have been figured out and written down long ago……!

I ran with fury boiling inside me.

But the flames chasing us were too fast.

In the end, the fire began to overtake us little by little.

Fortunately, the fire did not harm us.

Instead, everything in the railway station began to burn and melt the moment the fire touched it.

The clean interior of the station became burning ruins in an instant.

Even the glittering glass ceiling all collapsed, revealing a hideous frame.

And beyond it, something was there.

Beyond a hazy veil that might have been fog or cloud.

Something enormously vast, and simply vast.

Something vast beyond reckoning.

Like a mountain that had never once been conquered.

Or like a god, it existed.

I stopped walking where I stood.

The urge to flee vanished.

My will to live was rapidly shaved away.

“What are you doing, mister!”

At the feeling of being dragged, I snapped awake and lowered my head.

Sol was pulling me with a desperate face.

Only then did I come back to my senses and look behind me. Black forms were pouring out of the corridor.

SCRAPE— SCRAAAPE—!

They were crawling across the floor, climbing the walls, rushing toward us on a single leg or on a crushed shoulder.

I ran with Sol again toward the entrance to the platform.

The moment we stepped onto the stairs leading down to the platform, the siren sounded.

WEEEEEE—!

Perhaps because the ceiling had collapsed, that roar pressed down on me even more heavily.

The cells throughout my body tingled, and my brain boiled as if it would evaporate.

Within that suffocating pressure, I realized it.

The thing making this siren sound was the something in the sky.

While we writhed helplessly, the siren stopped.

The child and I looked at each other with anxious eyes.

It shouldn’t have been time yet.

But there was no time to even wonder why the siren had already sounded.

SPLASH—!

A watery sound came from the shop beside the stairs.

When I looked back, blood was overflowing across the floor.

……It seemed someone had been hiding there.

Because if someone with a Ticket wanted to board the train, they had to pass through here.

With a feeling I could not describe, I ran down the stairs.

The black forms had already filled the concourse and were swarming toward us.

There were far too many of them.

Hundreds. No, it seemed like thousands.

We ran breathlessly all the way down to the platform.

But the moment I saw the place where the train was, my breath stopped again.

A certain hand was hanging beside the train.

It was a huge hand that made the railroad tracks look like toy rails.

---

Once you have obtained a Ticket, proceed down to the platform.

On the platform, the 「Severed Station Attendant」 is checking Tickets.

When boarding the train, please be sure to carry a Ticket.

A person without a Ticket who boards the train will be removed by the 「Severed Station Attendant」.

---

Now it felt as if this rulebook was enjoying my misfortune.

The 「Severed Station Attendant」 had the form of an ordinary hand.

Only, it had been cut clean off at the forearm, and it was so enormous that I did not want to look at it directly.

But we could not stop.

Because the black forms were rushing in right behind us.

So we were running recklessly, but we knew.

There was only one Ticket.

When we finally reached the train on the tracks, I looked back at Sol.

Sol was looking at me too.

She was gasping for breath from running at my pace.

Even through that, her gaze was fixed on me.

Sol’s young eyes were stained with despair and wavering helplessly.

The black forms had reached right behind us.

There was no time to hesitate.

Driven by instinct, I shook Sol off.

Sol let go of me more easily than I had expected.

As if she had known beforehand that I would do this.

So I snatched her arm again.

Then I threw her into the train.

“Agh……!”

Suddenly shoved forward, Sol lost her balance and fell.

Sol braced herself on the train floor and looked back at me.

“Later.”

I could not bring myself to smile as I spoke to the child.

“Pay it back to anyone.”

Sol stared blankly at me.

Then, when she found the Ticket lying at her feet, she cried out in shock.

“Mister!”

With that voice as the last thing I heard, I was devoured by the black forms.

---

Everything went dark and went out.

Just as I thought it was hot, a pressure I had never experienced crushed my whole body.

What followed after that was.

Fall

Darkness

Silence

Joy

Verity

Meeting with the Author

And the starting point of infinity.

“It’s okay, death may be kinder than you think.”

While I was still running, I kept thinking.

About what I would do once we reached the train.

What was certain was that no matter what I chose, it was my freedom.

The Ticket was mine, and Lee Sol was neither my family nor anything else.

She was a perfect stranger I had met for the first time today, someone whose name was the only thing I knew.

On top of that, I had helped as much as I could.

So even if I let go here, no one could criticize me.

In that way, the choice was entirely mine, so I chose as I pleased.

Between “escape while leaving a child in the jaws of death” and “get the child out first,” I chose the one I disliked less.

Of course, the former was not a bad choice either.

I had no intention of criticizing someone who chose that.

If they lived well that way, then that too was a blessing they were born with.

If anything, even if someone cursed the latter as hypocrisy, self-intoxication, or useless meddling, I would have nothing to say.

If I had family, I would not have made this choice either.

More than that, I was neither a hero nor anything else.

But every person has their own narrative.

I am the same.

It was simply that I was this kind of person.

I stood before two choices I disliked,

chose the one that appealed to me slightly more,

and died because of it.

That was all that happened.

So I would like it if they stopped watching and sent me on already.

Because this current state did not seem to fit words like rest or eternal sleep at all.

I wondered why death was so noisy and let out a deep sigh.

“Hoo…….”

……What?

Just as I wondered how I could breathe when I was dead, my eyes opened.

What I saw blurrily was not a beautiful afterlife, but a white ceiling.

Then I heard an unfamiliar voice.

“Rescued Person No. 12 has regained consciousness.”

It seemed I was still alive.