The sewers were like a maze.
Of course there was no light. Only the flow of dirty water provided any sense of the passage of time. Even so, Enjou Tomoe was able to navigate the sewer holding in one hand a map drawn for him by Mikiya and thus arrived at this destination. The ceiling above him held a small hole. Turning off the flashlight he brought with him, Tomoe ascended up the man-made ladder leading to the surface.
After climbing a few meters, he reached the opening. Using a screw driver to wedge a gap where the manhole cover contacted the edge of the opening, he then used a spanner to make a wider opening. Once that was done, Tomoe used his own strength to push the lid open.
With a metallic scraping sound, the iron cover moved aside.
The underground parking lot was dark and prevented him from seeing his surroundings clearly.
Throwing the bag of tools up over the opening ahead of himself, Tomoe then climbed the ladder’s last few rungs while shouldering Shiki’s knife and sword.
“. . .”
Tomoe looked around the dark parking garage.
He had an unsettling feeling.
Even though he had come as an infiltrator, he felt as if he was already being watched. He could not determine the color of the walls nor the size of the space which they encompassed. The darkness obscured everything but the sound of steam, leaving the size of the structure a mystery.
“Steam?”
Tomoe then felt a drowsiness overtake him.
Tomoe knew this darkness, the smell of this place.
No, it wasn’t just that he knew the feeling, rather that even now he could feel it.
“I’ve. . .come home. . .?”
His body shook.
The sound of something drawing near reverberated inside of his brain.
Subconsciously, Tomoe Enjou looked around his surroundings.
There was no light in the dark room.
It was hot.
An iron pan emanated a magma like heat that glowed in the darkness.
The walls were lined with large glass jars.
Across the floor ran long thin tubes.
There was no one, only the sound of steam and bubbling water. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . He had always felt this.
Wordlessly, Tomoe stepped forward.
His body was heavy, as if he was reaching his limit.
The iron plate in the middle of the room glowed red hot.
Periodically, water dripped on to the iron plate and evaporated into steam that rose to the ceiling before disappearing.
The ceiling was layered with pipes that ran along its surface. The pipes sucked up the steam and distributed them to the glass jars that ran along the walls.
“. . .ha. . . ha. . .”
With feeble steps, Tomoe drew near the glass jars.
The numerous glass jars were just large enough to fit objects about the size of a human head.
Indistinct bundles were enclosed inside, floating in a formalin like substance.
No matter how one considered the matter, these must be human heads.
Beneath each jar extended one of the tubes that reached the floor before running back up to the ceiling. Intuitively, Tomoe thought that each tube must run to the individual rooms of the apartment complex.
“Is this some kind of cheap horror novel?”
Laughing to himself, Tomoe walked along the walls.
One has to think logically. There is no way that people could live day to day endlessly repeating yesterday over and over. Such a cycle would cross over into the territory of the absurd. They had repeated each day with only small variations, but by and large adhered to the same spiral day in and day out.
For that reason, no one could be killed. Their thoughts, encompassed inside of their brains, lived on regardless of any death. Every night their bodies simply died in a different place, even as they passed their days in the same manner in an endless cycle.
It was Hell on earth.
Die. Live. Die. Live.
The closed loop encompassed only those two truths.
Yet human existence actually did adhere to those two truths. No one could escape those realities. They closed everyone off in a prison.
They woke up every morning as if coming to from a nightmare of dying the night prior.
Enjou Tomoe saw the reality of this nightmare every night.
“I see, so that was how it was.”
As he murmured this, Tome extended a hand to touch one of the jars.
He heard a soundless voice.
A consciousness that should not have been present communicated a single word to him.
“Help me,” the jar said.
Tomoe laughed.
…After all, it was all he could do.
Help how? With returning to human form?
Or only with breaking free from this endless cycle?
Either way was an impossible order.
“The only thing I can do is kill.”
That is why he laughed. He could only muster a sad, frustrated, comic laughter.
“That is how I was. I just wanted to help. I was always that way. But even if I wanted to help, I never knew how. . . That’s right, I never understood how. There was no way to help in the first place. The definition of ‘help’ kept changing. The phenomenon was unavoidable from the start.”
Tomoe searched as he apologized.
It had to be here. If not, then something was off.
. . .The mage named Araya had not gathered the consciousnesses of those who were killed in this apartment.
He had collected the minds of people who had been killed to have them repeat the last day of their lives over and over.
Which is why the cause of Tomoe Enjou repeating his last night endlessly must be here. The reality that occurred since half a year ago.
It was a limitless discovery.
But that alone was not all he wanted.
“Haha. . .”
He touched the jar affectionately.
As if looking into a mirror, he beheld his own thoughts.
There were two tubes. One ran toward the ceiling. The other had been cut.
As if abandoned, the jar had been cut loose from the confines of the apartment’s everyday routine.
There was a clanking sound.
The elbow of his left arm that had been wounded yesterday.
The sound of his arm falling to the floor.
The dripping of blood as it fell from his elbow to the floor.
The section of his arm that had fallen to the floor revealed not only blood and flesh, but metal gears as well.
Clank clank clank clank
That night I had heard the sound of something unfamiliar approaching.
As I was struck, I heard my name called. I came to understand my name was Tomoe Enjou over the sound of metal gears turning. I did not want to keep dying every night over and over again. Repeating the same harmony of killing my own mother and then fleeing the scene like a puppet.
That is who I am.
“Hehe. . .Hahahaha.”
Absent-mindedly, Tomoe doubled over and started to laugh.
“Hehehe…hahahahahahaha!”
The parking lot echoed with mad laughter.
I laughed with self-ridicule.
I had known. He had known this whole time that he was a fake, but now he was finally aware that he was manufactured.
My mind was completely empty, devoid of anything.
Even so.
Even though he was empty, he could not stop laughing.
“Hehehehe. . .Hahahaha.”
It really was a strange conversation.
If I could laugh at this situation, then why would I even just once prevent my family’s tragic end?
How many tens, hundreds of times did I let the same tragedy unfold, only to then kill my mother and escape by myself? I am beyond redemption.
Perhaps the reason I was so powerless to change their fate was that I was not the real Tomoe Enjou. I was a fabricated Tomoe. As a fake, I could only act as Souren Araya willed me to.
A fake. . .He must have forgotten about me by now since he was so sure that there was nothing I could do.
“He’s wrong. . .”
I starting walking as I murmured this.
Clang clang
The sound of gears churning as I heard the voices of those gathered here calling for help. Agonized cries from those who could not forgive their tormenter. With their eyes shut, they were perpetually turned away from reality.
No, rather. . .
Tomoe approached the iron plate and pressed the severed stump of his left arm against the burning hot surface.
“—!!!”
Pure anguish.
The sound of simmering flesh.
The blood ceased to flow from the wound as the flesh of his arm was cauterized.
Tomoe laughed as he withdrew his arm from the iron plate.
Perhaps he had already turned crazy by then.
His breath ragged, Tomoe searched for an elevator. There was one in the corner of the room. Tomoe pushed the button to call the elevator from where it was stopped at the first floor.
Holding Shiki’s knife and katana, Tomoe rode the elevator.
Tomoe looked back only once.
The underground lot quietly echoed with the sound of boiling water.
The lot was like a shrine of souls who lived a dreamlike cycle without knowing that their physical bodies had already died.
Tomoe remembered.
The days that stayed the same throughout an eternity and the eternity that never ended.
Which was the spiral? This apartment complex was strange, though there was no doubt that this space did indeed house an eternity. Within its walls, the dead were revived and made to live out the same routine every morning.
However, within that cycle there was not one misalignment.
If there was one small place where the cycle did not perfectly replicate itself, it was an iteration in which Tomoe neither killed his mother nor was killed by his mother.
However that was an impossible conversation. Even a dislocated cycle did not pass through the same revolution twice. If the dead did not face the same situation day in and day out, then the everyday would cease to repeat itself.
Even so, Tomoe finally remembered.
Ah, yes, I am glad that this spiral is paradoxical.
This request and its answer should not exist.
Feeling that his end was near, Tomoe pushed the button to bring the elevator to the tenth floor.
Originally Posted by ProtoformX
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