Everyone saw a strange place, yet none of them could understand what it truly was.
To their left stretched absolute darkness; it was not ordinary darkness, but a completely featureless expanse of black, as though light itself were incapable of reaching it.
To their right stretched a modern interior corridor inside an unknown building, surrounded by immaculate white walls and a highly polished floor that reflected the light clearly, while strange rainbow colors shimmered across its surface, though no one knew where they came from.
Ben, Guanda, and White felt a growing unease, beads of sweat beginning to gather on their faces, while Clark and Nerv slowly moved forward.
After a short distance, they came upon a red sign hanging on the wall, its arrow pointing toward a door on the left.
It bore a single word:
“EXIT”
Everyone stopped.
They exchanged glances, then turned their eyes toward the door, which was already open.
No one dared take another step.
Beyond the doorway, there was no city, no street, nothing that could possibly belong to their world.
There was a sky covered in tranquil pink clouds, and beneath it stretched a vast green landscape that extended farther than their eyes could follow.
The grass was not merely green; various colors spread naturally throughout it, as though the earth itself had never known that it was supposed to obey a single color.
Everyone remained silent.
The sight was beautiful beyond belief…
But what frightened them most was not the strangeness of the place…
It was the fact that it seemed disturbingly real.
Everything around them was so vivid that it left them no room to convince themselves they were inside a dream.
Ben smiled excitedly and said:
“This is absolutely incredible!”
Everyone nodded in agreement at the same moment before rushing forward with excitement, as though their fear had momentarily retreated in the face of the world’s beauty.
Only Clark did not go very far.
He remained where he was, carefully studying his surroundings with alert eyes before whispering:
“I feel like there’s something dangerous and far greater behind the existence of this gate.”
Suddenly, Ben’s voice came from a distance:
“Clark!
Clark!
I’m flying, dude…
I’m actually flying!”
Clark’s eyes widened in astonishment, and he immediately rushed toward him.
Nerv was running beside him, while Guanda and White remained where they were, hesitant to go any farther.
The place gave them a strange sense of safety, but it was a safety mixed with a fear they could not explain.
Clark looked up.
Ben was floating through the air, moving however he pleased without falling.
Clark shouted in amazement:
“How did you do that?!”
Ben laughed as he spun through the air:
“I don’t know!
I crossed that area over there, and suddenly I could fly!”
Clark looked toward the place Ben had pointed to, then cautiously stepped forward and tried it himself.
The moment he crossed the same point, he felt his body suddenly become weightless.
His feet lifted off the ground.
“No way…”
A small smile slowly appeared on his face as he rose higher.
Nerv stood behind him, excitement shining in her eyes, while her body still trembled with fear.
She said hesitantly:
“You go ahead…
I’ll stay here.”
Clark turned toward her, then gave her a mischievous smile.
“Really?”
Before she could respond, he grabbed her hand and pulled her along with him.
“Clark!”
Nerv suddenly rose from the ground, her eyes widening in shock before her scream turned into laughter mixed with fear.
Guanda and White looked around them in astonishment and excitement, as though they could hardly believe what they were seeing.
Guanda said as she stared into the empty space around her:
“This place completely defies the laws of physics…
It seems that, in the end, everything we know is nothing more than a set of relative laws governing our world.”
White smiled as she gazed at the unknown expanses stretching before her.
“This place is beautiful…
but frightening at the same time because it’s unknown.
And perhaps there is nothing truly terrifying here, except for the fact that human beings are naturally afraid of the unknown.”
The two exchanged a smile, then rushed toward the rest of their friends.
Moments later, the five friends found themselves soaring through the vast space of the corridor, with no ground beneath their feet and no sky above their heads, as though gravity itself had lost all meaning in this place.
For the first time since they had entered that world…
None of them wanted to leave.
And yet, none of them wanted to remain for too long, either.
It was a strangely conflicting feeling; a mixture of wonder, curiosity, and fear, a desire to keep going intertwined with a hidden urge to escape.
Why did that door exist in the first place?
And why had that door appeared in their world this time?
After several hours had passed, night began to fall over that strange world.
The sun slowly descended until it disappeared beyond the horizon, and the gentle colors that had blanketed the land throughout the day gradually began to fade.
Guanda looked up at the sky, then said firmly:
“All right, everyone, that’s enough.
We’ve been here for hours, and honestly, I don’t want to stay in this place after dark.”
Ben and Clark began descending, followed by Nerv and White, and everyone agreed to return to the corridor and leave that world.
Ben placed a hand on Clark’s shoulder and smiled.
“Turns out you were right, my friend.
This place really is real, even though I still feel like I’m trapped inside a long dream.”
Everyone laughed softly, while Clark merely gave a small smile.
Ben continued:
“But honestly…
I had a great time.
Still, I don’t think any of us wants to find out what happens here after dark.”
They continued walking.
Then Clark suddenly stopped.
He looked at the path ahead and said:
“Have you thought about something?”
Everyone turned toward him.
He continued, his voice more serious now:
“Did the gate appear in this world just so we could have fun…
or for some other reason?”
No one answered.
The smiles disappeared from their faces.
They exchanged uneasy glances, and a cold feeling began to seep into their chests.
Throughout the past several hours, they had treated this place like an incredible discovery, as though the gate had opened a new world for them simply to explore.
But not once had they asked themselves…
Why had the gate appeared in the first place?
Why had it led them to this world?
And why had they been able to enter it so easily?
More importantly…
Had they been the ones who chose to enter?
Horror slowly began to creep over them.
As though they had never been the ones to discover the gate…
but rather, the gate had discovered them.
Then Clark said:
“I dreamed about this place before…
and Nerv said she had a similar dream.
Could all of this really be a coincidence?”
He stared at the door for a few moments before continuing in a more serious voice:
“I don’t think so.”
He fell silent for a moment before saying:
“I feel like the gate looked at us…
before we ever looked at it.”
Everyone left the corridor one after another, then Clark turned back, took hold of the door handle, and slowly closed it.
The moment the door shut, everything returned to its strange stillness.
The friends remained inside the same mysterious room; a vast chamber drowned in shadows, where a large bed lay beneath wrinkled white sheets, and tall doors lined the walls, each one firmly closed.
Above them, enormous paintings and pictures remained suspended from the ceiling, depicting strange entities whose nature none of them could understand, with names and symbols beneath each one that were impossible for them to read.
Everyone looked around in silence.
The room no longer seemed the same as it had before they entered the corridor.
Now they knew that one of those doors truly led somewhere else.
Ben looked around and said:
“So, what do we do now?”
Guanda answered without taking her eyes off the doors:
“I don’t know…
Should we go home, or stay here a little longer?”
Ben said anxiously:
“I’m afraid the government will discover this place, then seal it off and cover up its existence, and we may never get another chance to enter it.”
Guanda and White fell silent for a few moments.
As for Clark, he was barely listening to them.
He stood before the remaining doors, staring at them as he tried to understand why they existed, and why each one seemed to conceal something different.
Nerv approached him and stood beside him, then asked:
“What are you thinking about?”
Clark answered quietly without taking his eyes off the doors:
“Something’s missing…”
He paused for a moment, then continued:
“There’s something here…
something that can communicate with us, but chooses to do nothing except watch us.”
Nerv’s eyes widened slightly, confusion appearing across her face.
“What do you mean?”
Clark finally turned toward her and said:
“When I touched the door, words appeared before me.
Words I had never written or read before.”
Then he lowered his voice even further:
“Remember what appeared on the door:
They were strange words: “Congratulations, you have begun your attempt to protect your world from the darkness.”
Silence fell.
Clark looked toward the remaining doors, then said:
“That isn’t a random message…
Someone knows we’re here.”
Nerv swallowed hard, her eyes remaining fixed on the closed doors.
Clark added:
“And what’s worse…
it knows something about our world, while we know nothing about it.”
“Do you think it’s peaceful?”
Clark let out a quiet laugh, then shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
He fell silent for a moment before adding, his eyes still fixed on the door:
“But as they say…
sometimes silence carries more weight than a thousand words.”
Nerv remained silent, staring at the closed door as though trying to imagine what might be waiting behind it.
Ben stood up, then looked at everyone and said:
“All right, I think that’s enough for today.
We’ve had our fill of adventure, and we should get back to our families.”
Everyone nodded in agreement and began leaving the place one by one.
Clark was the last one left.
Before leaving, he turned and looked one final time at the door leading to the corridor.
He stared at it for several seconds, then whispered:
“I have a feeling the second time…
won’t be as peaceful as the first.”
He took hold of the handle, then slammed the door shut behind him.
The friends emerged from the tunnels and headed home.
Raindrops were still falling over the city, while the traces of their footsteps remained visible on the wet ground before gradually disappearing beneath the water.
Somewhere beneath the city…
The door remained closed.