“Where… am I, huh?!”
A young man stood there in a daze, a plastic bag hanging from one hand.
There was nothing especially unusual about his appearance.
He had short black hair, an average height that was neither tall nor short, and a body that seemed to have gone through some training.
His muscles were fairly firm, and with his cheap gray tracksuit, he looked somewhat like an athlete.
The most eye catching part about him was his sharp sanpaku eyes.
They left a strong impression on people.
Right now, however, the corners of those eyes drooped helplessly, and there was not the slightest trace of intimidation in them.
His name was Natsuki Subaru.
Born in the Heisei era, he was part of Japan’s relaxed education generation.(TL: Yutori generation:Japanese individuals who went to school between the late 1980s and early 2000s.
They were educated under a curriculum reform aimed at reducing academic pressure, fostering creativity, and promoting work-life balance)
If one wanted to tell the story of all seventeen years of his life, it would probably take seventeen years to finish.
So, skipping all of that and simply explaining his current position, he was a third year high school hikikomori.
Of course, the reason he had become a shut in was extremely complicated.
But this was clearly not the time to talk about that.
After all, Subaru only remembered that he had just finished buying things at a convenience store and was about to head home.
So why, when he came back to his senses, had he appeared here?
This place had no light at all.
It was completely, unbelievably dark.
Subaru took out his cellphone.
It was an extremely old model, but its basic functions still worked well enough.
He turned on the flashlight, and a thin beam of light shot out, barely lighting up the area in front of him.
“Rocks everywhere… Even the ceiling is stone.
Am I in some kind of underground cave?
This is bad.
Really, really bad.”
Subaru muttered to himself.
Had he been kidnapped?
If that was the case, then why did he have absolutely no memory of anything related to it?
It was a situation that gave him nothing but a headache.
All he could do was sigh inwardly.
“Don’t tell me… when I left the convenience store, some unknown bastard came up behind me and hit me with a bat?
That does sound like the most likely possibility…”
Whatever the reason was, Subaru had no choice but to follow the path and keep moving forward.
This place was terrifyingly dark.
It was dark enough to scare a person out of their mind.
If his cellphone had not still been able to give him even the smallest comfort, he probably would not have had the courage to keep walking.
“Hellooo—!”
“Is anyone there—?!”
“Anyone at all—?!”
“Where the heck is this place?!”
His voice echoed through the underground palace, but no one gave Natsuki Subaru even the slightest response.
That only made him feel even more afraid.
Subaru continued down the endless path ahead, holding up the weak flashlight from his phone.
All he could feel was a cold wind brushing against his back.
It was probably night right now, wasn’t it?
No wonder it was so cold.
He looked down at himself and thought that his tracksuit was not exactly made to resist the cold.
Fortunately, his body was one he exercised regularly, so at the very least, he would not catch a cold from something like this.
“In the end, I’ve just been walking around aimlessly for ages and haven’t found anything.
Where even is this place?
Is this somebody’s prank?
If it is, please stop messing with me already.
At least answer me, you bastard.”
Subaru was starting to grow irritated.
He still could not see an exit, nor could he see any hope.
A heavy sense of fear pressed down on his heart.
Was he going to have to stay here until he starved to death?
There was no water among his snacks.
If he still could not find a way out…
Subaru quickly shook his head.
He absolutely could not let that kind of thinking take over his mind.
If he did, then he really would never make it out.
Suddenly, the path in front of him was no longer a straight road.
Instead, it split into two.
“A split road?
You’re making me choose at a time like this?”
The corner of Subaru’s mouth twitched.
Wasn’t this basically trying to kill him?
If both paths led to exits, then it would be fine.
But if one of them was a dead end, then his already limited stamina would be wasted even more by having to turn back.
In other words, this was practically a choice between life and death.
“At times like this…”
From the perspective of behavioral science, people who got lost tended to unconsciously choose the right path.
It probably involved all kinds of complicated factors, like dominant eye, dominant hand, dominant leg, and so on.
Either way, that kind of thinking did exist.
“So…”
Subaru waved his hand and made his decision.
“This path!
The left!”
Why not the right?
Subaru himself did not know.
He just had a strange feeling that if he went right, something very, very bad would be waiting for him.
It was as if a visible fear was roaring at him from that direction.
So, with his flashlight still raised, he walked toward the left.
Although he was still full of doubt, he continued forward.
As he put distance between himself and the path on the right, even through the thick stone walls, he could feel that pressure slowly fading away.
The crushing sense of fear gradually disappeared.
“Looks like I picked the right one…”
Subaru said, still shaken.
Even so, if he continued staying in this pitch-black place, he would definitely suffer a mental breakdown at some point.
For the rest of the way, Subaru stopped muttering to himself.
Even his inner thoughts became fewer and fewer.
Fatigue was one reason, but inside this unchanging darkness, even the flow of time had become unclear.
The exhaustion wearing down his mind was another reason for his silence.
According to the time displayed on his phone, he had already been walking for three hours.
And yet, there was still no end to the road ahead.
He had no idea how far away his lifeline was.
This kind of mental torture was truly deadly.
The only thing he knew was that he had made no progress at all.
“Don’t tell me… I chose the wrong path?”
Subaru swallowed a dry mouthful of saliva.
A terrible thought surfaced in his mind.
If he really had chosen wrong, then it was over.
Going back would take several more hours.
The time and stamina wasted during that process would be enormous.
It might be enough to throw him straight into the abyss.
He could only follow this road to the end now.
Changing paths at this point was far too late.
Subaru suppressed the urge to turn back and continued walking forward with single-minded determination.
Gradually, however, he seemed to smell something.
“A burnt smell?”
“No, wait.
Is that… the smell of fire?!”
Subaru’s heart filled with wild joy.
If there was fire, then perhaps civilized people were here.
Otherwise, why would there be fire?
It did not matter who it was.
As long as there were people, that was good enough.
As long as there was civilization, he could be saved.
Finally.
Finally, he could escape this sunless, pitch black place.
Finally, he could get out.
He would not have to keep suffering in this godforsaken dump anymore.
Thinking that, Subaru’s steps became lighter.
Filled with excitement, he broke into a run, wanting to find out what lay ahead.
One step, two steps, three steps.
Then he ran.
As he advanced, he could see that the light was coming from around a corner.
The passage curved slightly to the left, and firelight leaked through from there.
“There’s definitely someone over there!”
Subaru rushed forward in excitement.
And then—
His foot suddenly stepped on empty air.
A slope made of sand sent him tumbling sideways.
He rolled heavily forward, unable to even keep himself upright.
Just like that, he slid down from above, falling into the area below.
What greeted him head-on was the heat of flames.
“Guh!
Pah, pah, pah!
Sand everywhere… Wait, no, more importantly…”
Subaru quickly got to his feet and shook his head, only to realize that his phone had gone flying somewhere.
He cursed his luck in his heart and had no choice but to grope around on the ground, searching for where his phone had fallen.
“Hm?
What’s this?”
He grabbed something hard, but it did not feel like his cellphone.
The surface was rough, almost like wood.
It felt light when he picked it up, but its size and length were about right.
Even when he narrowed his eyes and brought it closer, it was still too dark to tell what it was.
Subaru could only bring it near and sniff it.
It smelled like rotten charcoal.
A flame appeared behind Subaru, illuminating the entire hollow space.
Only then did Subaru realize that what he was holding was not his cellphone at all.
It was the foot of some unknown creature.
“Ah… AAAAAAAAHHHH!”
Subaru screamed in terror and hurled it away.
Only then did he notice.
Beneath him, around him, everywhere he looked, there were charred corpses.
They were all traces left behind after being burned by flames.
“What the hell?
What the hell?
What the hell?!”
No matter how many times he asked, no one could answer him.
The horrifying sight almost made him vomit on the spot, but there was already nothing left in his stomach to throw up.
“——!!!”
A shrill roar, like the crying of a baby, came from behind him.
Subaru realized it then.
There was something behind him.
Something incredibly terrifying.
“No…”
He covered his mouth and slowly turned around.
It was a monster.
Half human, half horse.
It had horns, and its entire body was bright red.
Subaru swore he had never seen anything so disgusting in his entire life.
The fear in his heart instantly shot to its peak.
“No… No, don’t…”
His legs trembled with fear.
But the primal fear of a living creature urged him to run.
He got up and tried to flee.
Based on Subaru’s knowledge, that thing was very close to a centaur, one of those fantasy creatures that were half man and half horse.
But the thing in front of him looked like someone had tried to recreate a centaur halfway through and then simply gave up, leaving behind only a twisted imitation.
The flames on the monster’s body already made it clear who had created the charred corpses.
Subaru had been wrong to think that fire meant civilized people.
That hope had been mistaken from the very beginning.
“Help me!
Help me!
Anyone, please save me!”
A scorching serpent of flame surged forth.
In a single instant, the roaring fire swept over him.
Subaru tried to run, but at most, his speed was only slightly better than an ordinary person’s.
He could not bend backward.
He could not roll around in agony.
His muscles and fat were scorched, burned, and melted.
He could feel his body gradually turning into sludge.
The pain drifted farther and farther away.
Subaru tasted the illusion of drowning inside the flames.
“No…”
“I don’t…”
“Want…”
“To die…”