Something in the darkness had woken up.
Allen didn't know how to describe the feeling. It was as if his whole self were soaking in a very deep, very still pool, and someone had lightly stirred its surface. That ripple rose from the soles of his feet, washing over his calves, his waist and stomach, his chest, and finally stopping at the nape of his neck. His mind had already all but dissolved, floating in the darkness like soggy breadcrumbs. But in that instant, every scattered part of him was dragged back and forcibly squeezed into the shape of a person. It hurt. Not a pain of the body, but the dull ache of a soul being clenched in a fist, as if someone had reached through his skin and seized him by the spine.
He let out an "Ah." There was no sound. But he knew he had cried out.
That "hand" didn't let go.
It closed in from every direction, with a force so great that Allen felt he was slowly being crushed into a single point. The darkness around him was no longer flowing. It had become threads, strand after strand, winding around his hands and feet, his waist, his neck, pulled painfully tight. The threads were alive, pulsing with a heartbeat, throbbing again and again, like snakes, or like blood vessels. Allen twisted desperately, but every time his "body" moved, the threads cut in deeper. He was like an insect wrapped in a spider's web: the harder he struggled, the less chance he had of escape.
"Still wriggling." The voice spoke with a very faint, keenly interested laugh.
Next, Allen felt his body being hauled upward by some force. Not flying; being dragged. As if a hook had been run through his chest and was reeling him bodily up from the bottom of this darkness. The darkness around him peeled away from him layer by layer like thick oil. He saw his hands, his arms, his half-transparent "body" still giving off a faint glow, surfacing out of the darkness bit by bit. The threads wrapped around him grew clearer too. They weren't threads; they were light. Dark purple, incredibly fine, like some sort of luminous silk. And every single one of them stretched out from the direction of those red pupils.
The thing was catching him.
He suddenly understood... From start to finish, that voice, those eyes, that face so like his own, had all been doing the same thing—fishing him, alone, out of this boundless darkness, out of this "river" in which countless people were drifting.
"Let go... Let go of me!" Allen had no idea where the strength came from, but he actually managed to shout it out loud. The moment the words left him, he startled himself. It was a real shout, coming out of a real throat, cracking as it went. He seemed to have a body again. Lungs, a throat, air rushing in through his mouth. But he wasn't the one breathing. The purple threads were squeezing it into him by force. Every breath made his chest hurt as if it would split apart.
The voice seemed even more pleased. "Oh? You recover quickly. It seems your soul is even better suited to this side than I thought."
"What do you want from me!" Allen shouted. His voice crashed around him, but the darkness was too empty to even echo. The sound died the moment it left him, as if the darkness had swallowed it in one gulp.
The voice didn't answer right away... The purple lines of light around him drew tighter and tighter, like countless incredibly fine needles slowly sinking into his soul. Allen felt himself being dragged by those threads in one fixed direction. That direction was where the red pupils were. That red was no longer just two points of light. It spread out before him like a slowly opening door, and beyond the door was a deeper, more viscous dark red, like old blood.
"When you were swept into the Interstice, you were supposed to end up like that crowd, washed up somewhere at random." The voice was unhurried, as if it were making small talk with Allen. "But the scent on you was too distinctive. In all that chaos, I spotted you at a single glance."
As Allen listened, his teeth chattered. He didn't want to hear any of this. What Interstice, what scent, what distinctive. He just wanted to go back. Back to the plane, back beside those two old people, back to that world which was bumpy, but where he at least still knew "who he was."
"I don't belong to you." Allen ground the words out through his teeth, glaring fixedly into that dark red.
In the darkness, the red pupils narrowed slightly. As if smiling. Or as if appraising him. A few seconds passed before the voice came again, so soft it almost melted into the wind: "No, you don't yet... But you will very soon."
The instant the words were spoken, Allen felt every thread on him pull tight. His mind was yanked violently, and his whole self shot out of the darkness with a whoosh, as if pulled up from the bottom of the water. The world spun. The purple, blue and silver lights had come back, streak after streak, sheet after sheet, rushing past him like colored glass at high speed. Far away he saw countless little points of light, just like himself, drifting and floating in the current. They were very quiet, as if asleep. Some were bright, some were dim, and some clustered together like a trembling flame. When Allen saw those points of light, he suddenly remembered.
The plane, the passengers, all the people who'd been swept in along with him.
They were still there. They were still in that enormous current of light, slowly drifting along in some direction. They hadn't been caught by red threads, hadn't been marked by red pupils. They just drifted along like harmless, peaceful dreams. Allen watched those points of light grow farther and smaller, and his heart felt as if something were carving into it. He suddenly wanted very badly to call out to them. To tell them he was here, that he'd been caught. But when he opened his mouth, only cold wind poured in, choking every sound in his throat.
"Stop looking." The voice came again, so close it was nearly touching his forehead. "You and they are no longer on the same road."
Allen's heart sank... He knew. He knew what it said was true. Those points of light were disappearing into the distance one after another, as if they had never existed. From now on, maybe he would never see the people from the plane again. He'd never see the old woman, never see the old man, never see the little kid who'd cried himself hoarse, never see the flight attendant who kept saying "It's fine." They were all over there, drifting downstream toward some place whose name he didn't even know.
And he was here, carried away by a different river.
"Go." The voice suddenly softened, as if seeing someone off. "When you get down there, you'll sleep for a while. When you wake up, everything will be different."
"I won't—" Allen tried to shout.
But a force abruptly seized him, not downward, but inward. His mind was sucked through that dark red "door." Countless red, warm things, like blood and like light, surged in from every direction, wrapping around his face, his mouth, his chest. He couldn't breathe, but he could hear his heartbeat, racing madly and then slowing as if about to stop. He heard the voice, very, very far above him, give a soft laugh.
"You're the most suitable one I've ever seen," it said.
"So don't let me down."
Allen's mind was swept into a deeper, stiller red. The last thing he felt was his "body" falling, falling fast. Wind rushed past his ears, but it was hot, carrying the smell of rust and old dreams. He desperately tried to grab hold of something, his fingers clawing at the air... and all they caught were the dark red filaments of light seeping out of his own body.
One... two, more and more.
They slowly wound around his wrists, as though pulling him toward a place that had long been prepared for him.