At this moment, there were already several people in the corridor. Takumi saw a black man with a close-cropped buzz cut; a middle-aged Asian man with glasses, a bulging belly, and an ill-fitting suit; a tall white man clearly over 1.9 m with thorn-shaped tattoos on his face; another middle-aged Asian man with a backpack, unremarkable in appearance with a gentle expression; and a young girl who looked like she was only a high schooler, wearing the same clothes as Kaguya.
"Your schoolmate?"
At first glance at that girl, Takumi felt she looked familiar, but he didn't immediately recall who she was, so he turned to Kaguya, who had followed him out, and asked.
"…"
Without a doubt, with just a single glance, Kaguya recognized the girl, and the girl also recognized her. Yet although they recognized each other, neither made any move to speak, only exchanged a brief look, avoiding being noticed by the others present as acquaintances. Even though, wearing the same school uniform, such concealment didn't mean much, avoiding being confirmed as having a familiar relationship might still have some effect. Thus, they both unhesitatingly did so.
Classmate Shijō Maki, you're actually here too?
Oba-san, you're actually in this place as well?
It seems the one behind all this has no ordinary power, daring to move against both the Shinomiya family and the Shijō family at the same time…
Though, that said, right now it doesn't look like ransom is the purpose. Oba-san, do you have any idea?
We're clearly the same age. Can you not keep calling me that? Look at the situation we're in!
Even if you say that, an oba-san is still an oba-san. That's just our family hierarchy, isn't it?
Though no words were spoken, perhaps it was a special ability of being two-dimensional, but through eye contact alone, Kaguya and the braided girl managed to exchange a surprisingly complex conversation.
Meanwhile, Takumi, after his initial puzzlement, quickly recalled the girl's identity.
This girl—this girl was none other than Shijō Maki.
In the original work with Kaguya, she was the most tragic character, spending every day in the depths of misery—not even the kind of misery from a normal love triangle. At least in a triangle everyone is tangled up with each other. She was purely the loser, forced to endure wave after wave of lovey-dovey displays, watching her best friend and the boy she secretly loved spend sweet times together. She even got embroiled in a life-and-death mess at 17, ending up in a bizarre drama of shotgun marriage.
To think that this pitiful girl, always persecuted in the original story, was also chosen to enter this rule-based horror story game. Honestly, in terms of personality, calling her a little angel in the original wouldn't be wrong. If everything I'm going through now were actually a movie, TV show, game, or novel, I'd honestly start to suspect the author was a complete psychopath. Why throw such a cute, pitiable child into a storyline like this?
All sorts of thoughts flashed through Takumi's mind, but none of it showed on his face.
At this moment, he and the other people in the corridor were all looking toward Room 205—the room next door to his and Kaguya's—where the scream had just come from, though no one knew what was happening inside.
In the long, narrow corridor, aside from Takumi and Kaguya who had just stepped out, there were already 5 people here. Four men and one woman. Excluding Maki Shijō, only the Black guy looked young, probably around 20 years old. The other three men looked to be at least in their 30s.
On the faces of the overweight executive and the Black guy, there were very obvious expressions of tension and confusion. If it wasn't an act, then most likely they, like Takumi and Kaguya, were first-timers in this death game.
By contrast, the tall white man also looked nervous, but along with that was a trace of vigilance toward the others, and a fear he couldn't hide. Why he had such a reaction, Takumi couldn't yet conclude. In short, Takumi instinctively felt the man might not be a novice player anymore—or else had already seen something terrifying that the others hadn't, which explained his clearly unusual behavior.
As for the man with the backpack, he looked rather calm, giving off the sense of a reliable veteran player. The surrounding people had also gathered around him. Except for the white man and Maki Shijō, it looked like while Takumi and Kaguya Shinomiya had still been lingering inside their room, this man had already managed to gain a certain level of trust among the group.
But precisely because of that, he instead made Takumi feel wary. After all, this place was very likely a death game under the control of supernatural forces. Who knew to what depths people's morality would sink in order to survive here?
Summing it up: two people who looked like minor extras, one who seemed like a supporting character with a small side plot, one who might be a human-side antagonist or a guy with lots of hidden secrets, and as for Maki Shijō—she belonged to the category of two-dimensional beauty hitting Takumi's personal preferences, so she wasn't within his range of sarcastic commentary.
As Takumi and Kaguya Shinomiya sized up the people before them, those who had arrived in the corridor earlier also turned their gazes toward the two of them.
In those eyes there was confusion, disappointment, indifference—and emotions that were hard to read.
The temperature in the corridor was very low, so low it felt like a chill wind was silently blowing through.
The ghastly white light shone down, and Takumi could see the faded, dust-stained New Year's ornaments still hanging beside 203—a shimenawa rope and scraps of paper streamers, once bright and festive, now dulled with age and grime, with only a few shapes still barely recognizable.
Flaking wall paint was scattered across the floor, along with shards of glass that had been smashed at some unknown time—if stepped on carelessly, they would make a sharp cracking sound.
He hadn't been able to find the stairs right away; only after carefully observing did he confirm that the stairways should be at either end of the narrow corridor. But because of the distance, he could only vaguely make out the shapes of the stairways, without being able to see the exact situation clearly.
Room 204 was positioned slightly to the right of the middle of the building. If they really encountered something in the corridor that they could not resist and had to escape, the right-side stairway should be closer. It was just that something felt a bit strange—looking from a distance, that stairway's structure seemed somewhat abnormal. Hopefully it was just his imagination.
Observation and thought together had taken only a few seconds.
And in those few seconds, the people in the corridor had naturally finished observing Takumi and Kaguya, who had walked out.
"Two students? Well, isn't this just great, two more burdens…"
The tall white man muttered in a low voice, his expression looking quite displeased.
This man seemed rather unwilling to act together with others; after whispering that, he actually turned straight around and went back into a room, locking the door behind him. Takumi noticed the room he entered was 209.
"Hello, you can just call me Tanaka-ossan. We all woke up in one of the rooms here. Did you find a printed sheet with writing on it in the room you woke up in?"
The middle-aged man with the backpack stepped forward two paces, taking the lead to introduce himself to Takumi and Kaguya. His tone was calm, his face wearing a smile, giving the impression of someone trustworthy.
Maki did not step forward to greet them, merely stood silently not far away, casting a measuring glance at Kaguya.
"Do you mean the Shirakawa Apartments Rules of Life? So each room had one copy of that?"
Takumi did not brush off Tanaka's question, because from the moment he came out he had already noticed that the black guy and the middle-aged man both held the same kind of printed sheet. Although the distance prevented him from reading the contents closely, with just a rough glance he could still see from the bold red title that these printed sheets were all exactly the same.
So then, was it that person called Kyosei, mentioned in the printed sheet, who had duplicated many copies of the thing and stuffed one into every room?
"So everyone did get one? Looks like this time we're in luck. This should be a low-difficulty Dusk-level game."
The man calling himself Tanaka smiled as he spoke, his expression relaxing somewhat.
A low-difficulty Dusk-level game?
For some reason, seeing this Tanaka with his face full of "I'm an experienced player" made Takumi suddenly imagine himself running for his life alongside this man, only for Tanaka to suddenly stop, laugh loudly, and boast, "If I were the one in charge, things would be completely different…"
"More details later. Trust me, everyone will be fine. Dusk-level games generally aren't too hard."
Of course Tanaka had no idea what Takumi was grumbling about in his mind; he only roughly exchanged a few words with Takumi and Kaguya before turning his attention back to the room from which the scream had come.