“Awaken.”
I opened my eyes, feeling like I’d heard someone’s voice.
I was in a dark place. Where was this? It wasn’t pitch black. There was light. I stood up and looked above me. There were candles affixed to the wall, a line of them stretching far into the distance.
The walls and floor were hard. They were rock. Was this a cave?
If there were candles, this cave had clearly been touched by human hands. A mine shaft, maybe?
There were people. Several of them, in addition to me. More than just two or three. It seemed there were about ten of us lying down, sitting with our backs to the walls, or sitting up.
“Is anyone there?” one person asked.
I reflexively replied, “Uh, yeah.”
“I’m here...”
“Yeah.”
“I figured as much.”
“How many of us are there?”
“Should we count?”
“And... where are we, anyway?”
“Dunno...”
“What? Doesn’t anyone know where we are?”
“What’s going on?”
“What is this?”
Hearing one voice after another, I thought, That’s strange.
I didn’t know. Didn’t know where this was. Why I was here. Who these people with me were.
“Sitting here won’t solve anything,” one man said, standing up.
“Going somewhere...?” a woman’s voice asked.
“Following the wall,” the man answered in a calm tone. “Going to try heading towards the light.”
That man, his hair was white—no, silver?
My eyes met the silver-haired man’s for a moment. He may have just happened to be looking this way. But he looked at me like I was lower than him.
I don’t like it.
Like the silver-haired man, I’d been thinking of following the wall. But he acted faster than I did. It wasn’t that this frustrated me or anything of the sort. That wasn’t it, but—what was it? It gave me a bad feeling.
“I’m going, too,” the woman said.
“Me too, I guess,” someone said.
“H-Hold on, guys! I’m coming, too, then!” called another man.
One man pointed out that the path continued in the direction without candles, too, but no one was going to go that way. I could tell that.
Everyone here was going to follow the man with silver hair. I was going to have no choice but to do the same.
And in the end, that was exactly how it went.
Eventually, we ran into an iron grate door. When the silver-haired man opened the door, the path stretched onwards, and there were stairs leading up.
Still, you know, I’m not that surprised, I thought. That’s kind of strange. I mean, I have no clue what’s up here, but the one thing I do know is that it’s not normal. This is clearly an abnormal situation.
There was another iron grate at the top of the stairs.
The silver haired man pounded on the grate, loudly shouting, “Is nobody there?! Open the door!” A number of the others started shouting, too, until someone opened the iron grate which had apparently been locked.
Whoever it was indicated that we should “Get out.”
When I passed through the door, this time I was a little surprised. I didn’t think much of anything about the stonework room, but the man who’d opened the door was dressed in a funny way. He wore armor, and a helmet. He even had what looked like a sword hanging at his hip.
What kind of joke was this? Though, the real problem lay beyond that.
Why had I thought, “What kind of joke is this?”
I felt like I could explain, but I couldn’t. Words floated up in the back of my head. Yet before they could surface, they vanished like bubbles.
That was how it felt. It felt pretty unpleasant. This was seriously weird. Which was weirder, what was happening inside me, or what was happening outside me?
The man in armor triggered some sort of mechanism, causing a part of the wall to sink in and an exit to appear.
“Get out.”
When we headed outside, the dimly lit sky stretched out as far as the eye could see. This was the top of a small hill. We had been inside a tower on top of a hill all this time, and we’d just come out of it.
I tried counting our numbers. There were eight men, myself included, and four women. Twelve people in total. Not one of them a familiar face.
I looked to the other side of the hill. There were many buildings packed close together, surrounded by sturdy walls.
“You think that’s a city?” one of them said.
“Rather than a town,” said a thin man wearing black-rimmed glasses, “it’s almost like a castle.”
“A castle...” the sleepy-eyed man whispered to himself.
“Um...” a timid-looking girl asked the sleepy-eyed man, “where is this, do you think?”
“Look, asking me isn’t going to help.”
“...Right, of course. Um, d-does anyone... know? Where is this place?”
The curly-haired man scratched at his curly hair and said, “Seriously?”
“I’ve got it!” said a man who looked like a playboy, clapping his hands together. “Why don’t we just ask that dude?! Y’know, the one who was in, like, armor or whatever!”
When we all turned to look at the tower, the entrance began to close.
“Whoa, whoa, wai—”
Playboy made a run for it. He was too late. The entrance vanished, leaving the spot where it had once been indistinguishable from the surrounding wall.
Playboy tried touching and hitting the wall in all sorts of places, but soon enough he slumped to the ground, dejected.
“Well, this is a problem,” said a girl with her long hair in two braids. She said the word “problem” with a funny accent.
Is she from xxxxxx? I wondered. —xxxxxx...? It’s no good. It won’t come to me.
“You said it,” replied Curly, crouching down, “Seriously...? Seriously?”
“And, now, with that perfect tiiiiiiiming!” a high-pitched woman’s voice rang out. “I appear, you know. I take the stage, you know. Where am I? I’m right heeeere!”
“Right where?!” cried Playboy, standing up and shouting.
“Don’t paaaanic! Don’t be alaaaarmed! But, still, don’t relaaaax. Don’t pull out your hair, eiiiither!”
From the shadow of the tower, a woman with her hair in twintails poked her head out, singing a strange tune. “Charararararahn, charararararahnrarahn. Heeeey. Is everyone feeling fiiiine? Welcome to Grimgar. I’m your guide, Hiyomuuuu. Nice to meet youuuu. Let’s get along? Kyapii!”
“What an annoying speech style,” a man with a buzz-cut said, grinding his back teeth.
“Eek!” Hiyomu ducked her head back into the tower, but soon stuck it out again. “You’re so scary. So dangerous. Don’t get so maaaad. Okay? Okay? Okay? Okay?”
Buzz-Cut clicked his tongue in distaste. “Then don’t piss me off.”
“Yes, sirreeee!” Hiyomu hopped out next to the tower, raising her hand in a salute. “I’ll be careful from now on, sir! I’ll be reeeeal careful, sir? Is this okay? It’s okay, right? Teehee.”
“You’re doing that on purpose, aren’t you?”
“Aw, you could teeeell? Ah, ah! Don’t get mad! Don’t punch me, don’t kick me! I don’t like being hurt! Generally, I want you to be niiiice to me! Anyway, is it okay if I move things along now? Can I do my job now?”
“Hurry it up,” said Silver Hair in a low, menacing voice.
“All righty, then,” Hiyomu began with an undaunted grin. “I’m gonna do my job now, okay? For now, just follow after meeee. Don’t get left behiiiind!”
Hiyomu walked along the well-trodden, black dirt path that led down the hill. There was grass on either side of the path. But it wasn’t just a grassy field. There were tens, hundreds, or maybe more, large white stones lined up.
“Hey, are those...” Curly asked, pointing at the white stones. “Could they be... graves?”
“Hee hee heeee,” Hiyomu giggled without turning around. “I wondeeeer. Well, don’t you worry about that now. Don’t woooorry. It’s too soon for any of you. I hope it’s too soon for any of youuuu. Hee hee hee...”
Buzz-Cut clicked his tongue in distaste again, kicking the dirt. He was ready to snap, but it looked like he planned to follow Hiyomu.
Silver Hair was already walking. Glasses, a woman in flashy clothes, and another much more petite girl followed him.
Playboy shouted, “Whoa! Me too, me too! Me too!” and began chasing after them, then tripped.
I turned back to the tower. If I didn’t follow Hiyomu, and I ran off instead, what would happen?
“Ah...” The sleepy-eyed man groaned. “...It’s red.”
The timid-looking girl gulped audibly.
“Ahh,” said the girl with braids. “Mr. Moon is red. That’s super pretty.”
A red moon? That was absurd.
But it was true.
It was somewhere between a half and a crescent moon, maybe.
The moon hanging in the slightly bright sky was so red that it seemed unreal.
Curly said, “Whoa...”
An awfully large man let out a low groan.
It’s different, I thought. This place, it’s different.
The moon, it’s red.
This must be a different place. I’m sure of it.
Isn’t this what I was hoping for?
For some reason, I felt that was true.
No Comments Yet
Post a new comment
Register or Login