chapter02 · 034-ep34

Episode 34: "The Middle-Layer Trap"

Let me tell you about the longest thirty seconds of my forty-two years.

Hina-chan said "Someone called my name" as we were finishing our break. As we went on, everyone began reporting the same thing. Each heard a different name being called. Yagarasu-kun heard an old partner's voice, apparently, and Maru-kun heard his late master's.

The second barrier wasn't a gate somewhere in the tunnels. It had begun long before we realized it.

2:10 p.m. The descending Grand Corridor.

The "sweet smell" grew stronger the farther we went. Like the smell under the covers just before you fall asleep. An area of mental interference. According to our preliminary interviews, three of the five S-ranks had met "someone from their memories" here.

Before entering, I added two steps to our procedure.

"Shorten roll call from every thirty seconds to every fifteen. And keep one hand on the pack of the person ahead or behind you at all times. —Where words don't work as well, increase the words and the contact. That's all."

【His countermeasures are 'check in often' and 'hold hands' lol】

【If you're laughing, look at the screen. The strongest people alive are holding hands with dead-serious faces】

The corridor was quiet. No enemies. No traps. Just that sweetness.

Every fifteen seconds, six voices said "Forward." They were all there through the twelfth roll call.

The thirteenth.

I heard only five voices.

"—Hina-chan."

Instead of an answer, I heard Kokoro-chan cry out. In the middle of the formation, Hina-chan had stopped. Her eyes were open. She was breathing. But her gaze was fixed on a bright place somewhere far away from here.

Yagarasu-kun shook her shoulder. No response.

"Additional note." Mio-san's voice was uncharacteristically hard. "This matches our advance information. The area draws intruders individually into their 'memories.' Forced awakening from outside is not recommended. Three members of a previous Agency investigation team suffered the same condition. All three are still dreaming with their eyes open. That is all."

"...So she has to find her way out from the inside."

"Yes."

I gripped the microphone, took a breath—and stopped.

My voice wouldn't reach the place where she was.

Take words away from a man whose only skill is teaching and see how small he becomes. With the microphone in my hand, I was just one powerless middle-aged man.

"...As chief commander, I'm declaring the operation suspended. Begin retreat procedure."

【What?】

【He's calling it off after getting this far!?】

【↑ Remember the three lines on the paper: 'The moment even one person can no longer put their next step into words.' He won't bend his own rules】

Retreat isn't running for home.

Maru-kun planted his shield, and a circle formed. Hina-chan and Kokoro-chan were at its center. Mio-san redrew the plan for turning back while Yagarasu-kun ran to confirm the route markings. The procedure we'd polished every day for nine days ran without a hitch.

All I could do was wait beside the circle.

Thirty seconds. The longest thirty seconds of my forty-two years.

◇

Amaha Hina was at the examination hall.

The mock combat zone where she'd failed for the fourth time. Examinee number seventeen was pinned to her chest. An examiner stood in front of her. She failed to dodge a thrust she should have dodged and tumbled out of bounds. Her instructor's sigh. "Everything's wrong." Through the waiting-room door, her mother's voice: "If nothing blooms by the time you graduate high school—" Her peers laughing without bothering to hide it.

Four years of "days she wasn't good enough" played back in order, painstakingly.

Then she heard her own voice.

"Hey. Come back."

She turned. There stood herself in E-rank gear, with the eyes she'd had after four straight losses.

"Let's stop trying so hard, okay? It's easy being somewhere no one expects anything from you."

Her throat tightened. Her breathing grew shallow. From the edges of her vision, the color slowly drained from the bright classroom, from the six-mat room—

And then.

A voice played in her head.

"When something unexpected happens, step back first. Count your breaths. —Only then are you allowed to move in."

No one had spoken. It had played on its own inside her head: the voice she'd heard a thousand times in the hallway at night, ten thousand times in the tunnels.

Hina stepped back half a pace.

Count her breaths. One. Two. ...On the eighth, her toes gripped the floor all by themselves. As though making a fist inside her shoes.

Her vision steadied.

—She could see it.

The start of the examiner's step into his thrust. His heel left the floor too soon, his upper body moved first, and his eyeline wavered.

(...I know that habit.)

It was her. Her for four years, before Sensei helped her fix it.

This world was made of her memories. That meant this examiner couldn't be stronger than she'd been on that day.

"...That habit of mine..."

She adjusted her grip on her sword.

"Sensei already helped me fix it."

Half a step to the left and forward.

The world shattered like glass.

◇

Kokoro-chan caught Hina-chan as her knees gave way.

Pulse, breathing, pupils. During the quick check, Hina-chan blinked dazedly, then found me outside the circle. She looked half laughing, half crying.

"Sensei... Um, I..."

"Yeah."

"Your voice played in my head. It told me to step back. To count my breaths. ...You weren't there, Sensei, but you were."

I tried to say something. Failed.

For twenty years I'd collected words that would keep people from dying. Those words had done their work where I couldn't reach, and brought this girl home.

【Hey】

【Is this what 'education' means?】

【Sensei's voice saved her in a place he couldn't reach. That's the proof right there】

"I can say my next step! Forward!"

"I'm glad. But we're continuing the retreat."

"Huh!?"

"We spent nine days practicing a clean escape. We'd be fools not to use it for real. —Escape cleanly, and you bring information home. Bring information home, and you can try as many times as you need. Certain people taught me that through five retreats of their own."

I thought I saw Maru-kun smile a little behind his shield.

◇

Back in the hall at the exit from the first barrier, we held a report meeting.

Hina-chan's report was a treasure trove. The area builds a world out of memories. It replays your "softest wound." And because its material is the victim's own memory, it can't show them anything they don't know.

"Additional note," Mio-san said. "I propose a countermeasure. Change roll call from 'Forward' to a running account of what each person sees. Walk while putting it into words. ...Sensei's method. The moment you put something frightening into words, it becomes something you can observe."

"Adopted. —Let's go. Today's second 'We're off.'"

4:00 p.m. We entered again.

Six people's running descriptions murmured through the sweet corridor. It hardly looked like an operation to clear an unexplored labyrinth. But it worked.

Halfway through, Mio-san's steps faltered once.

"Mio-san. Put what you see into words."

"............Additional note. I am currently seeing a hallucination. The scene is from a night two years ago. I am packing my things and leaving the room. There is no farewell note. ...I couldn't write one."

Her voice was level; only the ends of the sentences trembled.

"Keep going. Describe it in detail."

"Yes. ...In the hallucination, I stop in front of the door. But in reality, I did not stop. Therefore this image isn't even a memory. It's a fabrication made by my regrets. —A fabrication isn't worth stopping for. That is all."

Her voice no longer shook when she finished.

Beside her, Kokoro-chan said nothing, but tightened the hand touching Mio-san's pack just a little.

4:50 p.m. All of us passed the second barrier.

【They went from retreat to re-entry in less than three hours】

【Update on 'The basics are incredible' just dropped】

【This week's second worldwide trend: 'Education Stays Inside People'】

◇

Beyond the barrier was a great descending staircase.

Yagarasu-kun came back from scouting ahead, saying half as much as usual.

"Sensei. Big hall at the bottom of the stairs. There's something in it—probably the middle-layer boss. And..."

He paused, choosing his words for once.

"Its roar... sounded like two roars on top of each other."

"Additional note. The hypothetical specimen in the records is a two-headed dragon. Each head thinks independently. Rei and Maru are suited to the front line, but—" Mio-san paused. "There is no observed record of the two of them serving on the front line at the same time. That is all."

Rei-kun and Maru-kun nodded together and stepped half a pace forward together.

Their steps landed in exactly the same place.

They looked at each other and both stepped back half a pace, each giving way to the other.

—A commander who could dismiss what I'd just seen would probably be a happier man.

In the corner of my notebook, I wrote:

【Rei and Maru. 'Giving way to each other.' Observe closely.】