On the other side, everyone was sitting in the room watching television after they had finished their food and soft drinks.
After a few moments of silence, Guanda suddenly broke the stillness:
“What do you say we play a game?
Instead of just sitting around like this all the time.”
Ben immediately agreed, and so did White, while Clark raised his eyes toward Guanda in confusion and asked:
“What game?”
Guanda picked up the empty soda bottle, then said enthusiastically:
“Come on, everyone.
Get down here and sit in a circle.”
Everyone lowered themselves to the floor and sat in a circle.
Guanda then took several blank sheets of paper from her notebook and began handing them out.
She said:
“All right, it’s simple.
Each of us writes a random word on a piece of paper, something like love, friendship, fear…
anything that comes to mind.”
She placed the papers in the center of the circle, then continued:
“After that, we spin the bottle.
Whoever the back of the bottle points to has to ask the person the front of the bottle points to a question about the word they wrote.”
Guanda continued:
“Whoever guesses the word correctly gets a point, and vice versa.
At the same time, if more than three rounds pass without any of us being able to guess what the other person wrote, they have to explain it themselves, after we try to analyze it through their personality and behavior, since we’re close friends and know each other well.”
Each of them wrote a single word on a sheet of paper, then carefully folded it and placed it in front of themselves.
Guanda picked up the empty bottle and placed it in the middle of the circle, then gave it a strong spin.
The bottle whirled rapidly across the floor, its rotation gradually slowing until it finally came to a stop.
Its front end came to rest pointing at Clark, while the back end pointed toward Ben.
Ben smiled and said:
“All right.
Since the back is pointing at me, I get to guess the word Clark wrote.”
He fell silent for a moment, studying the expressions on Clark’s face and Nerv’s eyes, as though trying to pull the answer from them before either of them could say a word.
Then, suddenly, a smile spread across his face.
“The word is…
love.”
Clark’s eyes widened.
“Love?!”
Nerv looked at Ben, then said in a teasing tone, barely hiding her smile:
“And what exactly are you implying by that?”
Ben grew flustered for a moment and quickly waved his hand.
“I don’t mean anything!
I was just guessing.”
Clark and Nerv’s eyes met for a brief moment.
Nerv quickly looked away, while Clark said calmly:
“No…
that’s not the word I wrote.”
A crooked smile appeared on Ben’s face.
“I already knew that.”
Clark looked at him in confusion.
“Really?”
Ben laughed.
“Of course not.
I was just trying to embarrass you.”
A faint smile appeared on Clark’s face, and he let out a quiet breath.
Guanda reached out and spun the bottle again.
It spun across the floor, continuing for several seconds before gradually losing speed, until its front end stopped in front of Clark once again, while its back end came to rest pointing at White.
White thought for a moment, then said:
“I think the word is…
peace?”
Clark answered immediately:
“No, that’s not it.”
Guanda spun the bottle again.
It turned for several seconds before its front end stopped in front of Clark once more.
Ben blinked in surprise and said:
“This is getting ridiculous!
The game is starting to get boring.
You have to spin the bottle with the same amount of force every time.
That one was weaker.”
Guanda shot him a brief look.
“Relax.
Next time I’ll spin it harder, but we need to finish this round first.”
The back end stopped in front of Nerv.
A faint smile formed on her lips, and Clark smiled as well, though he clenched his teeth for a brief moment, as if something inside him had suddenly pulled taut.
Just the way Nerv was looking at him was enough to make his pulse quicken.
She said softly:
“The word is…
intelligence?”
Clark sighed.
“No, that’s not it.”
Silence fell for a few moments.
Then Guanda reached toward the sheet of paper lying in front of Clark.
“Let me see.”
She picked up the paper and unfolded it, her eyes settling on the word written in the middle.
“Determinism.”
Guanda slowly lifted her head and fixed her gaze on Clark.
“Determinism?
What does that mean?”
Clark did not answer immediately.
He remained silent for a few moments, letting his eyes drift from one face to another around him before finally saying:
“Determinism…
means that some things will happen no matter how hard you try to stop them.”
Everyone exchanged puzzled looks.
Ben said:
“Come on, man.
Why are you getting philosophical on us now?
Why didn’t you just write a normal word?”
A small smile appeared on Guanda’s face, and she asked:
“Do you really believe that?”
Clark sighed and looked around the room, at his friends, the closed doors, the strange pictures, and even the dream he had seen only hours ago.
He remained silent for a few moments, then said:
“I don’t know…”
He lowered his eyes slightly and added:
“But I’m starting to think that some things in our lives…
were never really our choice from the beginning.”
Ben let out a long breath, then stood up and said:
“I’m done, honestly.
I’m going to sleep.
Enough of this…
that game actually made me sleepy.”
Guanda asked:
“What time is it now?”
White looked at her phone and answered:
“Two in the morning.”
Guanda yawned and rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand.
“I really want to sleep…
that’s enough for today.”
Everyone stood up afterward and began talking among themselves as they prepared to leave the room.
They filed out one after another, while Clark remained sitting on the floor for a few moments without saying a word.
His eyes fell on a sheet of paper lying beside him.
He reached down and picked it up.
There was only one word written on it:
“Determinism.”
He stared at it for a long time, turning it over in his hands as though trying to force a meaning from it that refused to reveal itself.
Then he whispered:
“I feel like everything is going to change soon…”
He rolled the paper between his fingers before placing it back where it had been and getting to his feet.
Suddenly, Nerv’s voice came from outside:
“Clark, come on!
Hurry…
don’t forget our bedtime talk.
Come on, I’m turning off the light!”
Clark smiled without answering, then said:
“I’m coming.”
He left the room and followed her.
As soon as he reached her, Nerv teased him, then reached out and abruptly turned off the light.
The room was swallowed by darkness.
Clark stood motionless for a few moments.
Strangely, he did not feel afraid.
He only smiled.
A tiny tear slipped from the corner of his eye without him knowing why, and he raised his gaze toward the darkness and whispered:
“Light…
is the meaning behind everything.”
Nerv spoke from somewhere in the darkness while Ben switched on his phone’s flashlight and swept it around the room:
“Stop doing that.”
Clark asked in confusion:
“Doing what?”
Nerv answered in a quiet voice:
“Stop being so quiet like that…
it’s making me nervous.”
Clark gave a soft laugh, but Ben interrupted them in a calm voice:
“Stop talking, all of you, or I’m getting up and beating the two of you.”
Silence settled over the room for a moment.
Then, suddenly…
Guanda emerged from beneath the bed and grabbed Ben’s hand.
“AAAH!”
Ben jumped in place and screamed in shock, while Guanda burst into laughter.
“Oh my God!
You should’ve seen your face!”
Ben stared at her in disbelief, then placed a hand over his chest.
“Guanda!
Are you trying to kill me?
Did you forget about the mysterious door that quickly?
I swear, everything after that door has left me on edge!”
Guanda burst into laughter, while Clark and Nerv could not help laughing with her.
For a few brief moments, the tension that had settled over the room faded away, and the warmth of their friendship returned, just as it had been before they entered this strange place.
The room contained three beds.
Guanda and White shared one, while Nerv lay on the second.
Ben took the third.
Clark, however, preferred to sleep on the floor.
He spread a thick blanket beneath himself, arranged a few pillows around him, then lay down and let out a contented sigh.
“This is better.”
He closed his eyes, and only a few minutes passed before everyone drifted into sleep without another word, exhaustion weighing heavily on their bodies.
The room remained quiet…
The doors remained closed.
And the rain outside showed no sign of stopping.
At three in the morning, Clark suddenly woke up.
He was breathing rapidly, several strands of hair stuck to his forehead with sweat.
He could not remember the dream in its entirety, but he remembered one thing clearly…
Something black had been slowly dragging his foot.
It was pulling him toward mysterious places he could not describe, worlds he had never seen before, and then he had awakened with a terrible thirst.
Clark sat there for a few moments, trying to steady his breathing, then carefully got to his feet so he would not wake the others.
He went downstairs in silence, switched on the kitchen light, then turned on the faucet, filled a glass with water, and drank it in one go.
He placed the glass on the table, and his eyes fell upon the laptop resting on a chair, where he had placed most of his belongings.
He suddenly remembered.
Spinoza.
He had promised himself that he would look up the man whose name had appeared in the book.
Clark sat down, opened the laptop, entered the search engine, and typed:
“Who is Spinoza?”
A list of results appeared before him.
He read the first definition:
“Baruch Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher of Jewish descent, considered one of the most prominent thinkers of the seventeenth century and one of the major figures of modern philosophy.”
Clark raised an eyebrow in surprise.
“What does this have to do with the book…
and the Absent God?”
He began searching further, moving through several results discussing Spinoza’s life and philosophy.
A few minutes later, his eyes settled on an article titled:
“Pantheism in Spinoza’s Philosophy.”
He opened it and began to read.
Spinoza believed that the entire universe was founded upon a single eternal and infinite substance, and that nature, along with all its manifestations and laws, was not separate from that substance.
His philosophy was also associated with the idea of an impersonal God, a God who did not interact with human beings in the way traditional religions imagined, nor intervene in the world according to personal desires.
Clark stopped reading.
He looked at the screen again, then remembered the words that had appeared beneath the title of the book:
“Spinoza’s God is similar in that it is impersonal, yet differs in that it exists apart from nature.”
He remained silent for a few moments.
“So…
the Absent God is similar to Spinoza’s God, but it is not part of nature.
It transcends it.”
He leaned back in his chair and continued staring at the screen.
There was one thing he could not ignore.
If the book knew about Spinoza’s philosophy…
then who had written it?
A shadow quietly moved from behind the chair, unnoticed by Clark.
Then, suddenly, a voice came from behind him:
“Boo!”
Clark flinched slightly and spun around.
It was Nerv.
She burst out laughing.
“Haha!
I scared you!”
Clark smiled and said:
“That was a good one.
I didn’t see you come down, and I didn’t even hear your footsteps.”
Nerv smiled and waved a hand in front of him playfully.
“My feet are small and quick…
I can disappear anywhere.”
Clark laughed softly, then Nerv looked at him and asked:
“What kept you awake this late?”
Clark quickly closed the laptop and said:
“Nothing.
I was a little thirsty, and then I saw the laptop, so I decided to browse the internet for a while.”
Nerv’s curiosity grew, and she began to play with a strand of her hair as she asked:
“What were you looking for?”
Clark glanced at the glass of water for a moment, then answered:
“Nothing important…
I was just browsing randomly.”
Nerv narrowed her eyes slightly.
“Randomly?”
Clark nodded.
“Yeah.”
Nerv stared at him for a few moments, as though his answer had not completely convinced her, but she did not press him any further.
Clark stood up, opened the refrigerator, and took out a cold bottle of water.
He poured a glass before turning toward Nerv.
“Would you like a glass of cold water?”
Nerv nodded.
“Yes, please.
I’m thirsty…
that’s why I came down here in the first place.”
Clark placed the glass of water in front of her, then sat down in one of the chairs.
Nerv sat beside him, cradling the glass between her hands.
She took a small sip, then said quietly:
“I had a strange dream…
and it was a bad one.”
Clark looked at her with interest.
Nerv continued:
“I don’t want to tell you about it.
I’m afraid it might come true.”
She paused for a moment, then said:
“But it had something to do with Mario…
I don’t know how or why, even though I wasn’t thinking about him at all.”
Clark’s expression changed immediately.
He stood up quickly, picked up the laptop, and moved it somewhere out of the way, so no one would accidentally sit on it.
He remembered Mario’s words.
A sudden unease seized him.
He quickly pulled out his phone and looked at the screen.
No calls.
No messages.
Nothing from Mario.
His anxiety deepened, especially when he remembered that Mario had told them before leaving that he was going to the sewer system beneath the city that night.
Clark looked at Nerv and said:
“Keep going…
I’ll be back in just a moment.”
He put the water bottle back in the refrigerator, then returned and sat down in the chair.
He remained silent for a few moments, as though trying to put his thoughts in order, then said:
“I want to tell you something…
I can’t stand the idea of keeping it from you.”
Nerv’s expression changed, and her gaze settled on him with greater seriousness.
“What is it?”
Clark sighed, then said:
“Mario went to the sewer system beneath the city.”
Silence fell.
Nerv looked at him without saying a word.
Clark continued:
“He told us himself that he was going there tonight…
and the problem is, he hasn’t contacted us since.”
Nerv’s eyes widened slightly.
“Do you think something happened to him?”
Clark did not answer immediately.
He looked toward the staircase leading up to the room where the others were sleeping, then said quietly:
“I don’t know…
but after everything we’ve seen here, I can’t dismiss it as a coincidence.”