"Still talking about that… all this game, game nonsense…"
The somewhat fat, middle-aged man who looked like a corporate executive frowned when he heard Tanaka's words, his expression growing more and more sullen.
He seemed to be in a very bad mood. Earlier, when he saw Takumi and Kaguya come out, he had already looked at them with disappointment. Yet now, after hesitating for a moment, he carefully stepped forward, came right up to Takumi, and forced out a smile that still counted as somewhat friendly.
"Hello, are you Japanese too? I'm Yamamoto Hiroshi, an executive of the xx Group. So, do you know what's going on here? Is this some kind of reality show?"
Although Hiroshi's words tried to sound steady, the faint tremor in his tone made it clear that this man more or less already understood the situation before them was no so-called "reality show." He just wasn't willing to admit it yet, still trying to fool himself with such talk.
"I don't know, though I really do hope it's a reality show. Did you all just suddenly wake up in some room too? By the way, I just heard a scream—does anyone know what happened there?"
Takumi gave a slight shake of his head, trying to appear as ordinary as possible, putting on the timid tone of someone asking.
So far, no incomprehensible monsters had come rampaging out to slaughter everyone.
Barring some extreme situation—like some severe mental pollution right from the start that had already driven them all insane and blinded them to danger—Takumi provisionally judged that they should still be within a safe period.
It was like in a horror game or horror movie, when the story has just begun: the main cast appears, happily heading off on a vacation, everything around them looking perfectly normal, until the protagonist—or some extra—courts death by opening a door that should never be opened or doing something that should never be done, and then everything spirals out of control. Before that, by convention, there is a "safe period" to gradually draw the audience in.
After all, according to that rule sheet, from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m., this place called Shirakawa Apartments was supposed to be largely safe—so long as you didn't go looking for trouble, you wouldn't encounter danger here.
So now, the best approach was still to make himself look weak, to push himself to the margins as much as possible. Maybe that way he could better gather information and grasp the situation, while also avoiding becoming the background character who triggers a flag and gets taken out first.
Thinking this, Takumi acted the part of a timid, inexperienced young man. And behind him, Shinomiya Kaguya—who had at first been cold as ice—also let her expression and body language shift slightly, giving off the impression of a girl likewise gripped by fear and unwilling to talk to others. She played the role even better than Takumi.
She didn't even need to speak to pull off such acting; Takumi thought it was a bit of a waste this girl wasn't in theater. Still, thanks to that performance, Hiroshi, who had realized the two of them weren't exactly reliable, only forced out a few lines of encouragement like "We should all be fine," before shifting his attention back to Room 205.
And it was at that moment that everyone in the corridor heard stumbling footsteps coming from inside that room.
[Bang!]
The door of 205 was violently shoved open.
A young girl with dyed blond hair, wearing a tank top and shorts, with a heart tattoo on her arm, ran out of the room, fell to the ground, eyes wide with terror, and shouted in a garbled scream: "A d-dead body! A dead body!"
Her shrill voice was piercingly loud. Even when she had been inside the room before, her screams had been enough for the whole floor to hear. Now that she had come out into the corridor, Takumi had no doubt her voice carried through the entire floor.
Hmm, judging by appearance—if her looks were scored out of 100, she'd get at most 60, no more. By comparison, Shinomiya Kaguya scored 95, while Shijō Maki scored 96, probably because the latter seemed more approachable and thus more pleasing to the eye.
Anyway, she didn't look like she came out of any anime, manga, or movie—probably just an original background character?
Normally, wouldn't a noisy background character like this end up being the first cause of a total party wipe? Feels a bit dangerous—maybe I should just retreat back to my room?
As Takumi had this faint thought of chickening out, Hiroshi and the crew-cut black guy, who were closer, had already stepped forward to help the woman up. She trembled uncontrollably, clearly terrified by whatever she had seen.
"Hey, hey, are you alright? You said there's a corpse in the room?"
Supporting the woman, cold sweat appeared on Hiroshi's face as he nervously glanced at the open doorway of 205.
Was there really a dead body hidden inside that room? Damn it, why the hell had he been dragged to this cursed place? What in the world was going on here?!
Hiroshi's agitation was now plain on his face, while Takumi, who had already stepped back a pace, preparing to retreat into his room at any time, noticed Kaguya beside him tilting her head slightly, ears angled toward the right side of the corridor, as though she had caught some sound.
At the same time, Shijō Maki, who had kept silent in the distance, and the kind-looking middle-aged man with the backpack also reacted subtly. The former, like Shinomiya Kaguya, tilted her head, clearly hearing something, while the man's movement was far more hidden—just a faint shift of his pupils. If Takumi hadn't been keeping a special eye on him, pegging him right from the start as the "veteran player" type out of an infinite loop story, he never would have noticed.
From the right-side stairway—was someone coming from upstairs or downstairs?
Takumi had no special hearing ability, so he could only guess the situation from the others' reactions.
The air seemed to grow colder.
For some reason, a faint stinging sensation spread through his left hand.
Lowering his head, Takumi looked at his left hand—the strange black wristwatch he had kept on in his rush to investigate the situation.
Just now, it felt as though something inside the watch had pricked him with a needle, leaving a faint sting.
What was going on?
The blond-haired woman who had been helped up was still muttering, "There's a dead body in the room, under the bed." Because she wore only a tank top, both arms were bare, and goosebumps now covered her skin.
Shijō Maki, standing closer to the right stairway, hesitated briefly before taking steps toward Shinomiya Kaguya.
The kind-faced middle-aged man with the backpack had already turned his full attention to the right stairway entrance, making no attempt to hide his guarded stance.
"Oh, god, what's with this lady? She reeks so bad, just like my ex-girlfriend's dirty dreads after half a year without washing—dump 'em in a sink and they'd hatch a whole nest of aliens. What the hell is this place?"
The black guy muttered then, his speech bizarre—mixing Japanese with English. Even though this strange place gave everyone present the ability to understand all spoken languages and read any written ones (or at least any recognizable text), his odd way of talking still left everyone slightly uncomfortable.
"Take her to my room. My 210 is larger and undamaged, she can rest there for now. Is anyone willing to go with me to check the room she ran from? We're all trapped here, we need to figure out what's going on."
Tanaka spoke as he turned, walking a few steps to open the door of his room.
Up to that moment, nothing in the corridor had seemed especially strange.
But Takumi could already tell—Tanaka had said to bring the panicked woman into his room, yet in truth he was only using those words to return to his own doorway. Takumi saw that Tanaka's room was 210, the one closest to the right stairway, and therefore the room nearest the sound of approaching footsteps.
Was he going there to confirm immediately what was coming?
As Takumi wondered, he saw Tanaka at the doorway facing the stairwell, one hand in his pocket, pausing just briefly before slipping inside and shutting the door behind him.
"Hey, what's that about? You tell us to bring her in and then slam the door shut—what the hell do you mean by that?"
"What?"
Hiroshi, supporting the woman, shouted in dissatisfaction, while the black guy also wore a confused expression.
Watching this scene, Takumi felt the chill around him deepen further.
He still heard no footsteps from the stairway, only inferred it from the reactions of the three who had noticed something.
Who was it? A man or a woman? What did they look like? What kind of thing was it…?
Of all that, he knew absolutely nothing.
But in that instant, seeing the decisive reaction of Tanaka, that suspected veteran player, Takumi already felt the thought rising from his heart—this is bad.
And immediately he determined what he had to do right now: go back into his room.