The red door closed behind Hiragi with a soundless finality.
The world shifted.
There was no sky, only a dull, heavy gray, like an overcast sheet of dead static. Buildings lined the street—rows upon rows of identical, brutalist concrete blocks with no windows, no balconies, no signs. Just blank surfaces. Every door was red. Every wall breathed silence.
And the people.
They walked stiffly, all of them wearing identical masks—white porcelain with empty black eyes and no mouth. Men, women, children, all dressed the same in gray coats, like shadows molded into human shapes.
Hiragi stood still, the only figure without a mask. He didn't feel wind. He didn't hear birds or footsteps. Just silence. An oppressive, all-consuming silence.
"Welcome, outsider," said a voice that didn't come from anywhere in particular.
A figure stepped from the crowd—taller than the others, wearing a red mask instead of white. His voice echoed, mechanical, like it wasn't made with lungs.
"This is the First Spiral. Here, identity is not yours. Here, you wear the face you're given."
Hiragi narrowed his eyes. "Where am I really?"
"You are in yourself," the figure replied, "But also in the spiral. Same thing."
Then the crowd parted. A child stepped forward. She wore no mask.
Hiragi's breath caught.
"Hiragi... is that you?" she asked. Her voice was fragile, trembling. Her face—young, maybe ten or eleven—was unmistakably his. A younger version of himself.
But it wasn't a hallucination. She blinked. She cried. She reached for him.
"They said I would disappear if you stayed too long."
"I don't understand—"
"You're not the first Hiragi that came here," she whispered.
Suddenly, everyone in the crowd turned to face him in unison. A sound echoed, something like metal grinding against bone.
They raised their hands. In each palm, a mirror.
And in each mirror, Hiragi saw himself, but not as he was.
In one, he was smiling with a family he didn't know.
In another, he was older, bloodied, with red eyes and a monstrous grin.
In yet another, he wasn't human at all—his face a void.
One must stay, the masked figure said. And the others must spiral down.
The buildings began to melt. The sky cracked like glass.
The girl—young Hiragi—began to scream.
And then the ground opened.
Hands grabbed his legs. Cold, wet hands.
Something was dragging him downward—into the concrete, into the spiral below.
As his body sank, he reached for the girl. Their fingers touched.
"I won't forget who I am."
"That's what the last one said."
Darkness.
And the Second Spiral awaited.