Book 5 Chapter 3
Part 1
Back-to-back rounds.
We had to play two rounds back-to-back.
“Cough.”
I couldn’t breathe.
I couldn’t see either. My eyes, nose, and mouth stung like they were being rubbed with coarse salt. By the time I realized I had been thrown into the seawater, my body was tugged by an incredible force.
“Cough, cough! Ghwah!?”
I flailed my arms and legs wildly, but it was no use. I eventually realized that multiple currents were intertwining like living creatures and I was trapped between them.
I reached into my bag and pulled a thin cord.
Two pillow-sized balloons inflated. I had obtained them by taking apart a cheap life jacket. I clung to them as I made my way to the surface.
I had been caught at ground level this time and the water was about 5 floors’ worth. That was 15 meters. Would I make it? I had to! I prayed and clenched my teeth.
“Bwah!?”
My mouth finally breached the surface. I felt dizzy, but I wasn’t sure if it was simply oxygen deprivation or if the water pressure had caused a minor case of decompression sickness.
I did not at all feel like I was saved.
After all, this dark sea was full of who-knows-how-many people infected with parasites. We still did not know how the infections occurred, but I couldn’t be optimistic. I had to assume the water was infected.
And…
“Himatsuri-san?”
The current swept me along as I clung to the balloons and glanced around.
Himatsuri-san, where are you!? Dammit!!”
There was no response as I called for her.
The surging water glowed with a sticky bluish light much like glow-in-the-dark paint. I was tossed around on the surface but somehow managed to grab onto an electronic sign sticking out from the side of a building.
Where was she?
Dammit, there was no way I could overlook that bright blonde hair and champagne-colored dress!!
What would I do?
Stay put, or dive down to search for her?
“…I can’t.”
I shook my head. There was zero visibility in that muddy water, so searching through it in the middle of the night without a proper light would be suicide. I had no way of staying in one spot and I had no oxygen tank.
But there was something I could do.
I clenched my teeth and tightened my grip on the sign. Over and over, like some kind of magic words, I told myself it would be okay while thinking back to that fight in the simulator. A small sign was attached at each floor, creating a vertical row of signs saying Harumi’s Yakiniku, Marukawa Detective Agency, and so on. I used them as a ladder to reach the roof. I had to climb about three floors. I endured the blowing rain and somehow made it to the top.
I aimed my smartphone’s lens around the roof.
“Maxwell, find something I can use as a rope. And a float!”
“Sure. In the home garden space, I see a vinyl rope and a fertilizer bottle. If the latter is empty, it should supply buoyancy.”
Every second counted, so I pulled out the rope, tied one end to the bottle, leaned over the roof’s railing, and stared into the surging water.
“Is Himatsuri-san there?”
“I do not see her.”
The flow of water was swift and complex. Had she already been swept far away?
That might not be so bad if she had managed to escape to safety on her own.
But just as I thought that…
The water split before my eyes and an enormous mass leaped out toward me.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”
I screamed and fell on my ass.
It was the giant shark.
The Leviathan.
It could pull this off just by using its ridiculous mass of muscles as a spring. Tripping was the only reason I dodged the jagged rows of teeth that passed right above my head. The 30m beast flew in an arc that passed just above the roof, bit right through the water tank, and dropped down the other side.
That was way too close!
Is it attacking directly instead of using its parasites!?
“Warning!”
“I know!!”
And I could not have the shark kill me here. I had to find Himatsuri-san and pull her out of the water.
I heard the water parting once more. That giant form may have been turning around before building up speed for another leap.
I did not have the firepower to directly defeat the Leviathan. That left only one thing to do.
“Dammit!!”
I got up and ran with all my might. I used all my weight to tackle the door into the building and broke the lock. Just as I collapsed inside, a violent wind roared behind me and I heard more and more metal being destroyed. The Leviathan must have charged in and crushed the industrial air conditioner unit that was the size of a small storeroom.
My legs locked up with fear, but I forced myself to run down the stairs.
“What are you going to do?” asked Maxwell.
“Divert its attention elsewhere.”
Fortunately, I had seen a certain name on the signs I used to climb up the building.
“Harumi’s Yakiniku. Is this it!?”
On the 6th floor of the multi-tenant building, my body scraped along the walls of a narrow hallway and I ran into the empty restaurant. I ignored the customer floor full of grill-equipped tables and entered the kitchen. I pulled out a hunk of beef from a giant silver fridge and opened the lid to the kitchen garbage bucket.
“Sharks are sensitive to the scent of blood, aren’t they? I hope that isn’t one of those common beliefs that isn’t actually true.”
I had to try anything I could. I wouldn’t be able to search for Himatsuri-san with the Leviathan locked onto me.
I headed to the window in the kitchen. As the rain blew onto it, the usual messy hand-drawn map covered the glass: today’s exit.
That was our one and only means of survival since we had no way of fighting, but I didn’t have time to compare it with my map app at the moment.
“Maxwell. I’ll take a photo, so you analyze it and check it against the map app. If that doesn’t work, use the maps from pamphlets and sites you find in the web cache like before.”
“Sure.”
I grabbed the fire extinguisher installed by the floor and smashed the window with the thick metal container. The blowing wind and rain rushed in and I was hit by the shards of glass I had just created.
“Uehp! Dammit!!”
But I couldn’t worry about that. I took the beef, the fat which couldn’t be sold, the garbage, and the juices and blood that oozed from damaged meat and I dumped them all out into the water.
If that drew the Leviathan’s attention, I could get away from it. Once I had my freedom, I could resume my search for Himatsuri-san.
Please.
Please fall for it!!
Just then, the wall to the side was blown away.
It was…the Leviathan.
Despite the bait, it tackled into the multi-tenant building and destroyed the wall. The kitchen was not all that large, but I was still blown from one end to the other.
“Gbah! Ggehah, ubwah!!”
I crashed into the tile wall, fell to the floor, and writhed around in pain. I couldn’t breathe… It felt like an invisible hand was pressing on the center of my chest, so I couldn’t draw in any air!!
…But I was still lucky.
I had not been hit by the giant shark’s teeth. If it had bit me, my torso would have been split in two. I had only been hit by a piece of the building that had broken off when the shark broke through the wall.
“…”
That thing was more than 30m long. Only its nose could fit inside the cramped kitchen, but I was still hit by some kind of invisible pressure that threatened to crush me.
And I heard an odd sound of moving air. At first, I thought it was the Leviathan breathing, but it couldn’t be. It was a fish. I did not produce air bubbles when breathing.
Which meant…
“Warning: the gas line has been ruptured. If the pipe itself is damaged during a power outage, the gas will leak out.”
“!!”
I did not have time to follow along with the smartphone text any further. I practically rolled through the half-collapsed and rain-filled kitchen to reach the customer area. The giant shark moved its nose to follow along and I heard some kind of small snapping sound. It had likely crushed some kind of metal.
It happened just as I moved out of the kitchen.
I was rolling along the floor, but a powerful blow hit me in the back and sent me flying through the air. It was a gas explosion. There was heat, noise, light, and a shockwave, but it was the sound that came from my neck that frightened me most of all!!
“Gbwah!?”
I couldn’t brace for impact and rolled across the floor. I only stopped after breaking through the thin partition between tables.
I looked back toward the kitchen and saw fire spewing from the rectangular entrance. But that wouldn’t be enough to kill the Leviathan. It had charged toward us while explosive flames erupted all around it in the industrial complex.
“It will be coming soon,” said Maxwell. “Prepare yourself.”
“Why didn’t it go for the bait!? I thought a shark’s nose was better than its eyes or ears!”
For one thing, the seawater was not perfectly transparent, so marine lifeforms could not focus too much on sight. Or so I thought. Had that trivia quiz show been making things up!?
“I have not confirmed any of the details, but I could make an educated guess here.”
“That’s fine. You are a simulator, after all.”
“In addition to blood, sharks use the specialized ampullae of Lorenzini on the sides of their head to read the faint electric currents in the seawater.”
“Electric currents?”
“Sure. A living being such as yourself has bioelectricity, so a shark would be able to distinguish you from some frozen meat.”
So it only ate live bait. This lord of the ocean was quite the gourmet. But that did make sense. I still didn’t understand the logic behind the glowing ocean, but it was made to be a convenient feeding ground for the Leviathan. That was why the city was entirely flooded, so there also had to be a reason for the blackout.
In that case…
“Where would the employees be a lot…? I know, the register counter.”
“Could you tell what you intend to do?”
I climbed over the counter as I replied.
“If we send electricity into the water, we can take out its prized nose. It’s sensitive enough to detect the faint current from a human body, so it doesn’t even have to be as powerful as a stun gun.”
“No. The power is out, so I doubt you could find such a power source.”
“Have you forgotten, Maxwell?” I rummaged through the things below the register. “This is Kukyou City, home of disaster prevention. There’s always at least a flashlight around.”
Once I switched it on, I slammed the lightbulb’s protective cover against the corner of the counter.
With an explosive noise, the customer area’s wall was broken through from outside and the giant shark crashed through the opposite wall and escaped into the ocean. The tables and chairs were a complete mess. If I had not moved to the register on one end, I would have been killed instantly.
And that open hole was actually convenient.
The flashlight was broken and the wiring exposed, so I chucked it through the hole in the wall and into the water.
The giant shark veered from its path as it made a U-turn and tried to charge back this way. It swam diagonally and broke through the neighboring building instead.
I shrank back and whispered into my smartphone.
“Let’s get going. This won’t last forever.”
The Leviathan was an Archenemy with a basic structure very much like a shark’s, but it was not actually a shark. For example, a vampire might look like a bat, but they were tougher and cleverer than a mere bat. Similarly, the Leviathan might have sensory organs a real shark did not.
To find Himatsuri-san, I made my way to the roof where I would have a better view. Meanwhile, Maxwell used a social media speech bubble to speak.
“User, I have found a region of the map app that matches the window map.”
“Where’s the exit this time?” I asked as the rain blew against me on the roof.
“Shinryoku Inn in the mountains.”
“…Wait. What did you say?”
“There is no doubting it. The door marked ‘today’s exit’ is there.”
…That was too far away.
I glanced down at the roaring blue water and desperately gathered strength in my legs as they threatened to give out.
First of all, traveling from the coast to the mountains required crossing the entire city. But there was only so far you could go while jumping from building to building. It was possible in the dense areas like the shopping district, but the residential areas filled with more separated houses would be entirely flooded. I could not travel far just using roofs.
But would I have to do it anyway?
No matter how unreasonable it was, death was the only option if I stopped here.
“In that case…”
I looked around the roof that had been torn apart by the giant shark’s repeated attacks and I spotted a metal box. I would have been screwed if this was a normal regional city, but this was Kukyou City, home of disaster prevention.
Any commercial facility that gathered a certain number of people would have one of these: a motor-equipped rubber boat that inflated like an airbag at the push of a button.
I had used one during the fight between Erika and Ayumi in the simulation. Even though entering the water had been close to suicide, so I had wanted to avoid it if possible.
I removed the large clasp in the metal box.
“Maxwell, simulate the flow of water. Calculate out where Himatsuri-san would have been taken from our starting point.”
“Sure.”
With a “poof!”, the rubber boat took shape just like in a crash test scene on a car commercial.
I tossed the inflated rubber boat in the water and climbed in myself. It would be carried by the current even without the motor running. My only complaint was the lack of brakes.
“Based on the speed of the water and the passage of time, the most likely location is by the trees of the train station plaza 400 meters ahead.”
“She really was swept away…!”
I used the motor which doubled as a rudder to steer the boat through the current. A great mass seemed to split the water’s surface behind me. That squeezed at my heart, but there was no turning back now.
What about Himatsuri-san?
Where was she?
Where the hell was she!?
My panic threatened to make me overlook her. I swung my smartphone’s backlight left and right before aiming it forward again.
I saw what looked like golden fabric tangled around the top of a tree sticking up above the water.
It was her dress.
“Himatsuri-san!!”
I shouted her name, but she did not seem to have the energy to respond. I controlled the motorboat and somehow managed to get close to the treetop. I made sure the boat wasn’t swept away while also making sure I didn’t injure her with the propeller and I pulled half-conscious Himatsuri-san into the rubber boat.
“Pwah! Pant, pant…”
In her drenched dress, Himatsuri-san lay sprawled out in the boat, gasping for breath. The cabaret girl style of dress left her thighs exposed up to the base, but she did not seem in any state of mind to care.
And this was no time to be focusing intently on human observation.
This time, the water split apart directly behind us.
“Dammit! Maxwell, navigate us!!”
“Sure. But there is an overwhelming difference in speed between the disaster-relief rubber boat and the Leviathan. The rubber boat can only move at 100kph, but you cannot escape the Leviathan by moving in a straight line. It is not a mere shark.”
“I know…that!!”
But we had no hope if we abandoned the boat either. If we were going to cross the flooded city to reach the mountains, we needed the boat to follow a course across the water. So we could not abandon it if we were to reach the “today’s exit” door.
“Maxwell, analyze the images from the smartphone lens! Locate any power sources other than the home power, like battery-powered products!!”
“Sure. The first on the list would be this smartphone and rubber boat.”
That could have been interpreted as sarcasm or a joke, but unfortunately, the simulator was entirely serious.
Yes.
This was not the only boat. They were stored all around the city, so we could always use a different one. The problem was that we had no time to come to a stop and I couldn’t think of any projectiles capable of destroying a distant box. But even so…
“Maxwell, mark any targets on the footage!”
“Sure. I will display them based on their proximity to the Leviathan’s predicted path.”
I viewed the scenery through my smartphone and saw a glowing outline around a rubber boat storage box. That just meant I had to steer the boat so the area representing the shark’s course aligned with the box.
It could maintain perfect balance and charge straight forward even in such a powerful current.
It tore through the half-submerged rooftop and its belly turned the boat storage box into scrap metal. Once the damaged battery fell in the water, the giant shark began veering unnaturally off course once more.
The effects did not last long, but they were there all the same. Sending electricity into the seawater apparently messed with its sensory organs. It didn’t really matter if this was true of all sharks or if it was unique to the Leviathan.
“If we could predict how it would veer off course, we could probably get it to skewer itself on a piece of rebar sticking out. Its own ridiculous strength could probably break through its muscles.”
Himatsuri-san must have been exhausted and pissed off because her thoughts had shifted toward attack. But we could not hope for that much. Getting back alive came first. We could use the information we received here to put together a plan once we got back. We did not have to challenge this 30m shark in an all-or-nothing gamble. We knew our odds were poor and we only had one life to work with.
We left the shopping district and cut across the residential district. The entire area was flooded and we could not see any tall obstacles that stuck up above the water’s surface. I knew my house and the Class Rep’s house had to be below that water, but it did not seem real.
“This is bad,” said Himatsuri-san. “We can’t slow down the shark here!!”
The boat batteries were waterproof, so the flooding would not be enough for their power to leak out. Plus, we could not destroy the boxes deep underwater while traveling along the surface.
And if we could not divert the giant shark’s path, it would catch up and swallow us whole. The intense current would not slow it down.
I estimated we had about 30 seconds.
Maxwell did not have an answer, so what were we supposed to do in this fruitless current? Where were we supposed to go!?
“Himatsuri-san, do you have a phone!?”
“Eh? Well, I have my smartphone…”
“You’ve backed up what’s on it, right?”
“Hey, wait! I need that address book and the photo I took with that girl!!”
Before she could fight back, I snatched the smartphone from her hand, prepared the nail file I used as a screwdriver, stabbed it into the center of the screen to split open the LCD, and tossed it into the water.
The approaching shark veered off target again. The Leviathan’s diagonal path took it just barely past us and we felt the same powerful wind as when a dump truck drove by.
But survival was a win.
We weren’t as fast as the shark, but the boat was bouncing along the choppy waves at more than 100kph. We quickly made it to the other side of the quiet residential district.
We would next find ourselves at the mountains.
Tall conifer trees poked their heads up above the water. I skillfully weaved left and right so the shark would collide with them and we finally reached the slope that rose up from the water.
“Himatsuri-san!”
“You owe me for that smartphone!!”
We held hands like friends and dove inside a narrow hand-dug tunnel.
The giant shark made a jump directly behind us.
We heard a roar like a head-on collision between a tractor-trailer and a bus. I flipped over, felt my heart pounding, and looked back to see the giant shark’s mouth covering the entrance to the tunnel.
The large teeth snapped shut a few times, but they could not reach us. Unlike the hollow buildings, the tunnel was contained solidly in the mountain slope.
After some resistance, the Leviathan pulled back.
“…”
“…”
Himatsuri-san was collapsed next to me and we exchanged a glance, but we could not exactly take a peek outside of the entrance to see what was happening. If the shark made another jump, it was all over.
“For now…let’s go further in.”
“Yes.”
The tunnel itself was a portion of the path up the mountain, so it ascended. Once we exited the tunnel, the water would be far below us and the giant shark would have a harder time targeting us. …Although that was not a guarantee of safety when it could perform a dolphin jump several times the length of its 30m body.
We hesitantly left the other end of the tunnel.
It was still pouring rain.
But there was no sign of that giant shark. Except for a fin that looked like a giant boulder as it parted the water’s surface far below and moved off into the distance.
“Did it give up…? Has it decided to focus on another target on this field?”
“I’m not sure. Maxwell, do you know what’s in that direction?”
“Your search conditions are too vague and have received a great many hits, but the greatest risk among them would be the Kukyou Dam.”
“…The dam?”
“If it destroys that to raise the water level, this area could flood as well.”
I felt dizzy.
My face had to be as pale as Himatsuri-san’s.
“Maxwell, display the route to the inn where the ‘today’s exit’ door is! We need to get out of here while we still can!!”
“Sure.”
“Wait…why!?” asked Himatsuri-san. “It couldn’t destroy this hand-dug tunnel, so tackling that thick dam isn’t going to-…”
“A dam’s strength isn’t the same everywhere. If it pinpoint targets the water gates, the one point of destruction could spread to the entire dam.”
“Due to the great pressure, it only need be a single crack,” explained Maxwell. “It might be best to think of it like a passenger plane falling apart in flight due to the smallest hole.”
Whatever the case, this was not good. We followed Maxwell’s instructions to move off the asphalt mountain road and walk along an animal trail created by parting the underbrush. It was a pitch-black route right out of a test of courage. If the situation hadn’t called for it, I would have avoided walking down it even with Maxwell’s guidance.
And there was something up ahead.
I heard something stepping on the underbrush, sensed a presence, and saw a silhouette between the trees.
“…Who is it?”
We were not the only ones dragged into this demon lord’s ocean. We had no way of determining whether there was a single “today’s exit” door or multiple, but if the other participants were following the map in the windows and mirrors to find the goal, then it was possible a large number of people would be gathered at the same inn.
But something wasn’t right.
It was odd.
I immediately turned off the smartphone backlight. Himatsuri-san’s face remained tense and she did not run over to whoever it was. In fact, her wet hand grabbed at my coat. Her fingertips were trembling.
The human silhouette’s head was wobbling unsteadily and their shoulders were at mismatched heights as the blowing rain hit them.
Something dripped from their face. At first I thought it was raindrops or possibly tears or snot running down their face.
But it was not.
They were fat, balled-up leeches.
They pried open the eyelids, descended from the nostrils, and dropped dropped dropped dropped…
“Gh, ahhh!?”
I cried out and moved back, but the sole of my shoe slipped and my back hit the tree trunk behind me.
They must have noticed that because their head clearly turned to face us.
…Damn!
“A parasite host!? Are they stationed near the goal to stop us!?”
The path no longer mattered. I grabbed Himatsuri-san’s hand and ran out into the full undergrowth.
The infected people were used to enter areas the Leviathan’s giant body could not and drive out its prey. They were like hunting dogs. They had handled narrow passageways and the insides of buildings, but it seemed they also covered the elevated mountains.
So if we just let them chase us around, we would be pushed back to the flooded area.
Plus, I heard a deep roar in the distance.
“Eek! Wh-what?”
Himatsuri-san cowered down and jumped.
The giant shark seemed to have begun its attack on the dam. Even if both locations were in the mountains, the fact that we could hear it meant those attacks were more powerful than civil engineering explosives. I doubted just one or two hits was going to break it, but with no way of stopping it, it was only a matter of time. It would eventually collapse, so we had to reach the exit at the inn before that happened. The infected hiding in the forest were a threat, but if we held back out of fear, the water level would rise and this area would flood.
“Maxwell, do leeches have any kind of weaknesses?”
“They are generally weak to fire and will apparently let go of your skin if you burn them with a lighter…but that is true of most any lifeform. It is unusual for fire exposure to make something more active.”
Besides, we could not light much of a fire in this pouring rain. And even if we did have plenty of firepower, we would probably start a largescale forest fire. Burning down the demon lord’s ocean did not really matter, but we had to avoid killing ourselves with the fire and smoke we started.
“But if you need something…”
“What is it, Maxwell?”
“Sure. As they were attached to a shark, they are likely a variety of sea leech. In that case, wouldn’t they be unfamiliar with this mountain forest environment with so many plants and trees?”
“Be more specific.”
“Sure. Just like a papercut, wouldn’t they be shredding their body’s soft surface when they move around here?”
“…”
I looked down at the ground covered in underbrush.
…Were those plants their weakness? If so, would they grow weaker as time passed, unlike in the sunken city? It did make sense since the marine Leviathan was forcibly using what was available to it.
“But we can’t just wait until the spiked floor damage takes them out…”
Still, it could help that they were not at their best. If they disliked the forest and the mountain, we probably didn’t have to worry about the leeches leaving the infected people’s bodies and crawling along the ground.
We gathered a long stick from the ground and poked along ahead of us as we continued on. I didn’t want to use the stick for a fight since we didn’t know how powerful the infected people’s bodies were. I was just checking to make sure one of them wasn’t hiding behind a tree or below the underbrush.
Another loud roar rang out.
It sounded like a bell counting down to destruction.
We continued on while occasionally hiding behind cover to let a human silhouette move past.
“…That’s it.”
We walked between the trees and parted the tall underbrush to finally reach an open area. There was a wooden mansion on the mountain slope that had been intentionally made in an older style.
There were a few figures wandering around the parking lot and front entrance, but they did not seem very intelligent. I had asked Maxwell for course corrects a few times as we left the original route, but they did not seem to react much to the sound or light.
These were not the Leviathan’s primary means of attack. It was a lot like attacking with the lice in your hair. These infected people were clearly inferior to a vampire like Erika or a zombie like Ayumi.
“…It’s dangerous, but I guess we have to go for it. Himatsuri-san.”
“I know. The forest behind us has the infected wandering through it too, so it isn’t any less dangerous.”
We did not have the guts to approach the inn gate from the front.
We stayed low and walked quickly along the wall, but there was an unsteady infected person at the back entrance too. They could apparently be given simple instructions and stand guard. We turned back while making sure we were not spotted.
But they were only standing guard at the entrance points.
The wall between those points was about 2 meters tall.
Himatsuri-san could climb over if I gave her a boost from below.
“Nnnnnhh…!!”
I was a little worried about her pulling me up, but that worked too.
Once we were on the inn grounds, the hurdle was a lot lower. We did not know the total number of infected, but the inn was divided into many rooms, which gave it as many windows as a school or hospital. They could not post a guard at all of them, so we had plenty of ways in.
We located a window without an infected person looking out it and quietly approached. It was probably locked, but that just meant we had to break it without making much noise. I used the method Maxwell had taught me before. I stabbed the nail file screwdriver into the glass near the internal lock. I did it again a few centimeters away. After creating a small triangular shard, I removed it, stuck my finger through, and opened the internal lock. It was a burglar’s method, so I felt my heart pounding even though I wasn’t up to no good.
The dark Japanese-style building had deep shadows inside. It was impossible to tell where the infected might be wandering.
“…Maxwell, where is the ‘today’s exit’ door?”
“Sure. It is the door to the detached room bordering the courtyard.”
That was quite a noticeable spot. I wasn’t even sure we had needed to enter the main building, but cutting through it had to be shorter than circling around it.
Once inside, there were a lot more blind spots. The long stick was an absolute necessity. I would open a door, stick the stick through, and only poke my head through once there was no reaction.
We climbed out through a hallway window and entered the courtyard.
We spotted the detached room while the blowing rain hit us. Something like a small hut was located in the center of a Japanese garden. It felt more like a space for drinking tea than a guest room. It was connected back to the main building by narrow bridges across several ponds.
We ignored that path and rushed over to the detached room while remaining low to the ground.
That was when an explosive roar arrived from the distance. It was likely the giant shark’s attack on the dam. But this one sounded different – wetter. My instincts told me that was bad news. The water gate must have been smashed enough for the dam to break.
“Himatsuri-san!!”
“Yes!!”
We could not worry about appearances. We could not predict how long it would take for the water to reach this level. All the noise caused windows to open or shatter as several infected people crawled out of the main building. They were not just on the first floor. They dropped down from the second and third floors as well. If we were caught it was all over, so we ran full speed toward the detached building.
today’s exit.
We saw the glowing orange light of that door. A deluge of water and so many hands pursued us as we tackled that wood-paneled sliding door…
Part 2
“Bwah!!”
Even back in reality, it took me a while to get up. Earlier, I probably would have been trembling with the joy of survival, but I didn’t feel that this time. It was lucky there was no one around this detached room, but I
