Twisted pathways and grotesque pieces of furniture that could never exist in reality overlapped layer upon layer, blocking their vision almost completely, making it nearly impossible to distinguish the road ahead.
Footsteps of unseen figures echoed down the corridor, one after another.
Childlike figures resembling porcelain dolls giggled and played, appearing and vanishing from all directions.
And those wide-open windows—beyond which shone stars and a moon… or were those bloated corpses floating underwater?
The situation here was far more dangerous than expected.
Even though Takumi and Kaguya were extremely cautious in concealing their presence, they had still come close to being discovered several times. Particularly those that looked almost adorable—those children seemingly transformed from porcelain or rag dolls—if they didn't make any sound, Takumi and Kaguya had no way of sensing their approach. Once those things got within a certain distance, the victim would instantly fall into a daze, making escape extraordinarily difficult.
Fortunately, having already experienced being caught and scalded to death with boiling water by those dolls once before, Takumi now possessed a certain level of resistance against them. Every time they encountered such a situation, he could break free, pull Kaguya away from their encirclement, and find a tall cabinet beyond the creatures' reach to hide upon in time.
Shinomiya Kaguya's calm expression from the start of their exploration quickly began to crack as they repeatedly encountered all manner of grotesque beings.
After escaping from five or six of those "children" once again, she shrank beside Takumi atop a tall cabinet, turned her pale face toward him, and couldn't help but ask:
"Dealing with these things… don't you feel any psychological pressure at all?"
Such eerie, unspeakably terrifying entities—
Especially that strange laughter that seemed to contaminate the mind; every time she heard it, she would fall into a trance-like confusion.
Yet this man managed to react in time every single time—always breaking free, always pulling her along to escape swiftly.
In that moment, Shinomiya Kaguya felt a frustration beyond words.
She seemed to somewhat understand now why Maki had such strong confidence in this man, and why, when it was decided that she and Takumi would act together, Maki had shown an expression that said, "If Takumi's leading, there's no problem."
When facing these bizarre existences that lay beyond the scope of human understanding, the abilities this man displayed were utterly incomparable to those of her inexperienced self.
"There's pressure, of course there's pressure. How could there not be? But no matter how much there is, we still have to keep moving, right?"
Takumi smiled at Kaguya, wearing a relaxed expression, then continued walking forward.
At this moment, he wasn't overthinking things—just reflecting on the differences he'd felt this time upon reaching the third floor compared to the previous two times.
The most direct and obvious change was that the number of monsters had clearly increased.
During the first loop, when he and Maki entered the third floor, they were first trapped inside a room, then suffered information contamination from the fake Kaguya and her group, and finally got caught in the massive explosion caused by Tanaka. Although Takumi had noticed that the entire third floor was filled with eerie presences, he hadn't actually encountered that many of them.
In the second loop, when he came in again, he was directly contaminated by the core of the apartment. By the time he escaped, he was already on the verge of being completely transformed into part of the rescue team's horror. Perhaps because he was no longer entirely human then, those things didn't seem to notice him.
But this time, he had entered the apartment without being contaminated or transformed, and without anything to help divert attention. He was stepping into this place purely as a normal person—and that was precisely why the biggest difference he felt from the previous two times was this: every few steps, he would encounter something terrifying.
[Hehehehe—]
[Those children were running around again.]
[They were laughing—laughing loudly and without restraint.]
[They had new clothes to wear, toys to play with, clean faces, and bodies without wounds.]
[Hahaha—]
[Those children laughed even louder.]
[They were laughing at another child—]
[A child unlike them, always filthy, with bruises all over their face and body.]
No… something was wrong. Why was he seeing these things?
Frowning, Takumi forced himself not to listen to their voices, desperately trying to think of other things to distract himself. He endured like that until those sounds finally drifted away again, and only then did he let out a slow breath of relief.
From the moment they had entered the third floor until now, 13 minutes had already passed.
In that time, he and Kaguya had encountered four "children" and three "footsteps."
Avoiding the footsteps wasn't particularly difficult—though their forms were invisible, their sounds were distinct enough to hear from afar and hide in advance. The problem lay with those children. Their vision seemed extraordinarily sharp; whenever Takumi and Kaguya spotted them, those things would inevitably spot the two of them as well. The result was always a chase—Takumi and Kaguya fleeing, then being forced to hide atop cabinets or other high places beyond the children's reach.
[Just like she had been in the apartment before—once those children found her, she became their plaything. No matter where she hid, it was useless. Only by climbing up a tree or onto tall furniture they couldn't reach could she avoid further torment.]
Takumi frowned, raising a hand to rub his temples.
"Is something wrong?"
Kaguya noticed that something seemed off with Takumi's side and stopped to frown and ask.
"It feels like some kind of illusion—one that unconsciously draws in a person's emotions. For now, it's not enough to affect my actions. In any case, be careful. If I start showing any obvious abnormalities, we might have to rewind early."
Shaking his head as he said this, Takumi then continued walking forward.
The paths ahead intertwined with each other. A refrigerator, twisted inexplicably by one hundred and eighty degrees in the middle, stood with its door wide open, revealing inside food that was rotting and crawling with maggots.
Various adult and children's clothes hung from human hands that extended out from the walls, and in some cracks of the walls, there even seemed to be eye-like things blinking now and then.
Footsteps sounded once again.
The footsteps heading toward Room 304 began to echo like that.
Takumi and Kaguya hid in a corner, holding their breath in silence, pretending not to hear those footsteps.
[Just like the other residents living in this apartment, they feigned ignorance of those footsteps, their hearts filled with disgust.]1
[That damned gambler.]
[It was because of him that those debt collectors kept coming to the apartment, knocking and pounding on doors day and night, disturbing everyone's rest.]
[His wife was detestable too—always talking about this rule or that rule, wasn't it just to find an excuse to control people? But she couldn't control anyone. Her husband beat her like a dog. Only her foolish daughter listened to her and let herself be controlled. She didn't even dare to discipline her son, just because her husband treasured that precious two-year-old boy, so she didn't dare interfere.]
[That daughter was annoying too. Maybe it was because of being beaten—she wet herself from time to time, and often just stood there blankly, not moving. If anyone spoke to her once or twice, she'd start avoiding them.]
[Did she ever take a bath? She reeked, and there were fleas in her hair.]
[Disgusting.]
[Truly disgusting.]
[If not for that family, everyone wouldn't have to suffer such trouble. Many children had even been frightened to tears by those fierce debt collectors. All they ever did was cause trouble—constantly causing trouble. That family might as well just all die.]
"…"
Takumi opened his eyes and looked beside him.
On the wall next to him hung a family photo—it seemed to be a rather happy family of five.
Only, in the photo, all five people were showing expressions of disgust, each one looking in a certain direction with an extremely hateful look.
That direction was the one those footsteps were heading toward.
That direction was where Room 304 was located.
"…Ugh."
Having heard the footsteps and children's laughter too many times, Kaguya—whose mental state was also deteriorating—pressed a hand to her forehead and let out a low breath.
Takumi still remained silent, not making a sound, only enduring that feeling of discomfort in silence.
By now, half an hour had already passed.
One-sixth of their allotted exploration time was gone, and during that one-sixth of the time, Takumi and Kaguya had only been walking and wandering through the disordered corridors, unable to truly locate the position of Room 304.
"There seems to be a relatively intact room here."
At this moment, Kaguya, whose eyesight was sharper, found a room where the distortion didn't seem too severe.
The two of them walked up to the room and found that the door bore the number plate 305, so they decided to go in for a while to hide and take a short rest.
[Creak—]
They opened the door, revealing a dark corridor beyond.
[Those debt collectors seemed to have come again last night, didn't they?]
[They splashed paint on 304—tsk, it got on our door too. Damn it, it's not like we owe them money.]
[What can you do? You dare go confront Takeda Yūsuke? That bastard would love an excuse to beat someone and spend a few days in detention—then he could avoid those collectors for a while.]
[That disgusting bastard… Oh, by the way, did you hear? The young guy who just moved into 309 seems to be gone.]
[Ah, that matter. What can I say? The kid was too young, thinking he could meddle in that rotten family's business. Forget it, forget it—it's none of our concern.]
The hallucinated voices were even clearer than before, as if they were echoing right beside their ears.
It seemed as though Takumi could see people gathered in the room, eating and chatting together at the dining table.
But when Kaguya fully opened the door and he looked again, what he saw was an empty, abandoned room—no sign of anyone there.
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