part1 · 008-ep8

Episode 8: A World Without Time

How much time had passed? Ren couldn't say anymore, not exactly.

Inside the dungeon, there was no sun. No morning. No night. No sky. Unlike the outside world, there was no way to see the flow of time with his own eyes.

Even so, in the beginning, he'd had his phone. Check the time. Look at the date. Just that had let him keep track of time, the same as when he'd lived outside.

For about that first week, Ren only checked his phone's screen when he needed it.

"...Three in the afternoon."

He looked at the screen.

"...So it's still today."

He would murmur things like that to himself, sometimes.

He based his sleeping and waking times on the phone's clock, too. He tried to keep his life as regular as he could. Because otherwise, he felt like he'd lose his grip on when — on what — now even was.

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But the phone had its limits.

There was nowhere to charge it. The battery that had been left at first dwindled away, bit by bit.

Eighty percent.

Sixty percent.

Forty percent.

And then—one day.

"...Ten percent."

Ren stared at the screen.

"So this is all that's left..."

He'd cut back on using the phone, too. Except to check the time and date, he tried not to touch it. He might need it as a light. It might come in handy in an emergency.

So he conserved the battery as much as he could.

Even so, time wouldn't wait for him.

A few days later.

"..."

The screen went dark.

He pressed the power button.

Nothing.

"...It's dead."

He pressed it again.

Nothing happened.

For a while, Ren just stared at the screen.

Then, slowly, he slid it into his pocket.

And with that, he'd lost his way of knowing the exact time.

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From then on, Ren started using his own body in place of a clock.

When he got sleepy, he slept. When he woke, he got up. When he was hungry, he ate. When he was tired, he rested.

At first it was chaos. He slept at different times every cycle. Ate at different times. His active hours never held steady.

But as he repeated it over and over, Ren built a rhythm of life that was his own.

Wake up.

Drink water.

Search for food.

Move through places with fewer monsters.

Fight, if he had to.

Return somewhere safe.

Eat.

Rest.

And sleep.

Ren had come to treat that whole sequence as a single cycle.

"...Another day over."

It wasn't a precise twenty-four hours. It wasn't like a day in the outside world.

Even so, to Ren, that was a "day."

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As time passed, Ren's life slowly steadied.

He learned the water sources.

He learned the safe places.

He learned the dangerous ones.

The plants he could eat grew in number, too.

He came to tell the kinds of monsters apart, little by little.

And he'd grown sensitive to the presence of monsters.

"...Here it comes."

Footsteps, from far off.

Ren stopped at once and slipped into the shadow of the rocks.

He waited a while.

A monster showed itself.

If this were when he'd first arrived here, fear would have frozen him where he stood.

Now was different.

The creature's size.

Its walking speed.

Its gait.

Its gaze.

He observed all of it.

"...This one, I can take."

He could fight it.

Ren gripped his spear.

A crude weapon he had made himself, some time ago.

The monster came toward him.

Ren didn't move.

He measured the distance.

And—

the instant the monster lunged.

he slid his body to the side.

"...!"

As it passed, he thrust the spear out.

Wham.

The monster staggered.

Ren followed up.

Once more.

And the monster fell.

"...I won."

Ren let out a ragged breath.

He was clearly different from the boy who had first come here.

Physical ability.

Reaction speed.

Endurance.

Recovery from wounds.

And more than anything, his sense for danger.

Little by little.

Truly, little by little.

Ren's body was adapting to this place.

《Survival Adaptation》.

By that power.

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At some point, Ren began to notice that the dungeon itself changed, too.

The glowing moss on the walls.

The volume of water at the springs.

The places monsters appeared.

Faint streams of light, like magic.

All of them changed at fixed intervals.

"...It changed again."

At first, he hadn't paid it any mind.

But as he went through the same changes again and again, Ren realized.

It seemed the dungeon had a cycle, a fixed rhythm.

He didn't know the exact timing.

But the same changes repeated, over and over.

Ren came to use that as his own rough measure of time.

Mark the walls.

Record the changes in the glowing moss.

Memorize the changes at the water sources.

Learn the monsters' cycles of appearance.

Little by little.

Little by little.

Ren came to understand this dungeon.

　　　　　◇

And then.

By Ren's own sense of it, around the time it felt like nearly a year had passed since he'd come here.

Of course, he had no way of knowing whether a year had really gone by.

He couldn't even check his exact birthday. His phone was dead now. He had no idea what month or day it was in the outside world.

Even so.

He had slept, time after time. Woken, time after time. Watched the same changes run through the dungeon, over and over.

His body had changed some since he'd first arrived, too.

"...Has it been about a year?"

Ren sat in the shadow of the rocks and looked at the wall.

There, countless marks he had made over all this time.

Individually, they didn't represent a precise "day."

Even so, they were a record — so he wouldn't forget how long he had survived here.

"..."

Maybe nearly a year really had passed.

Maybe it hadn't been that long yet.

Ren had no way to check.

Ren thought back to how he'd been in the beginning.

He'd known nothing.

Seeing a monster, all he could do was run.

He hadn't known what was edible.

He couldn't even find water.

Now was different.

He knew the water sources.

He knew what to eat.

He knew the monsters.

He knew the safe places.

And he was coming to understand, bit by bit, how much danger he could fight through.

"...I've changed, huh."

Ren looked at his hands.

Hands that felt just slightly bigger than when he'd arrived.

Fingers covered in scars.

Palms grown hard.

And yet the wish inside Ren hadn't changed.

"...I want to go home."

Outside.

To wherever Mizuki was.

And to the house where Dad and Mom had been.

He knew the two of them were gone.

Even so.

Going home was the only goal Ren had.

"I'm going home. No matter what."

Ren stood.

He took up his spear.

And began walking again.

To search for an exit.

To survive.

So that someday he could go home.

The Ren of that moment still didn't know.

That the long stretch of time he would spend here—

had only just begun.