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The glass door, smeared with white fingerprints.

More or less useless locks, one on top and one below.

A lengthy handle standing upright with the words “Pull” next to it.

Looking up, there’s a groove shaped like some sort of metal door visible. It must be a security door or perhaps a fire door.

The girl gives it a quick glance and, against the advice to go through, pushes the door open and steps inside.

*Thud.*

Is there really no mechanism to control the speed at which the door closes?

Was it built in an era before such devices were invented, or is it that they skimped on it, or maybe it was installed but broke down?

In any case, the door closes with a clang, producing quite the racket.

The noise is so loud that it flits through my mind that living on the first floor must be quite the ordeal, making me think that if this continues, even such thick glass doors would shatter in no time.

Disinterested, the girl moves on past the glass door.

Passing by a group of rusty, filthy mailboxes, she steps through a short passage, finding herself before the elevator in the center. And to either side, two pairs of houses.

Two on the left, two on the right.

Four houses per floor…

**”Out of Order”**

She considers using the elevator, but the large letters stuck on the door read “Out of Order.”

The girl thinks for a moment, then presses the elevator button, hoping against hope, but no matter how many times she presses, not a peep escapes.

Glancing up at the light panel, she only sees a menacingly black screen.

The space where numbers should be displayed is completely vacant.

*sigh*

How annoying—

The girl breathes out in frustration and, feeling she has no other choice, turns her body towards the stairs and stretches her legs toward them. Grabbing the hard rubber-coated handrail, she starts to ascend, and contrary to her dislike for climbing stairs, her movements are light, her feet swift in passing through the floors.

Second floor, third floor, fourth floor, sixth floor.

Upon reaching the eleventh floor, she finds something.

A silver key.

Aluminum? Steel?

A poorly crafted key made of some unknown metal.

The girl instinctively realizes that this key could be used anywhere.

Could it work in any of the houses on the eleventh floor?

Surely.

However, it’s not usable in every house.

Because it can’t be used in a house that already has someone inside.

Only in the empty houses.

The girl figures out the rules of the key and after a moment of contemplation, ascends another floor.

Twelfth floor, thirteenth floor.

And upon reaching the fourteenth floor—

She suddenly stops.

An ominous feeling washes over her.

She halts just as she’s about to step onto the fourteenth floor, gazing up through the narrow gap in the stairs.

What she sees is a woman dressed in black clothing.

Dressed in a Gothic Lolita-style dress.

A figure clad entirely in black frills, with long black hair cascading down, holding a black parasol even indoors, cast in shadow.

She stands quietly on the landing above the girl.

Still.

Absolutely motionless…

The girl, too, remains completely still.

Holding her breath, she waits a long time for the woman above to vanish.

…

…

…

How much time has passed?

The woman above disappears.

Did she go up?

The ominous feeling washes away, and her heart begins to thump.

The girl steps onto the fourteenth floor, looking toward the spot where the woman had been, but there’s no one there.

No one, and nothing at all.

That woman must have gone up.

The girl contemplates whether to climb the stairs when she suddenly senses another presence from below.

Glancing over, she sees a man coming up.

He looks like a punk, wearing a thoroughly irritated expression, just as the girl had earlier.

The girl ponders for a moment.

And when the man reaches the twelfth floor, she inserts the key into the second door on her left.

The crumpled sneaker next to the door seems to suggest that the house has an owner, but the key goes in without resistance and turns.

With that, the girl enters the house and locks the door tightly.

Then, she listens carefully at the door, hearing the sound of the man climbing the stairs above.

In that moment, she realizes their choices have diverged.

The girl, choosing to hide in the safe zone.

The man, taking the risk of climbing higher.

Who was right?

Of course, even as the girl wonders this, she secretly believes her choice was the right one.

As she hopes lightly that the man ascending won’t encounter the ominous woman, she sits at the desk inside the room.

The desk set right beneath the window.

On her left is a bookshelf, and on her right sits a bulky monitor that looks decades old.

She powers up the decrepit computer, gazing at the monitor.

With a rattling sound, the computer boots up.

Its awful resolution displays a home screen.

Large icons appear, along with a DOS prompt that kicks off immediately.

Suddenly, white text appears on the pitch-black DOS screen alongside the desktop.

**”Oh little girl, the fearful forest, the fearful forest. Dense trees and endlessly stretching ground, the smell of beasts and fetid odors, the stench of rotten grass and fruit. The noisy buzzing of insects brushing your ears, the sound of hidden crickets softly weeping, wicked beasts yet to open their eyes, claw marks etched in bark, sunken earth and deep footprints. The stench of muck. Have you felt all this with your five senses?”**

**”The fear of the forest is known to all, yet you, captivated by blooming flowers and crimson fruits, strayed from the path—how can one endure such foolishness?”**

**”With not even a white pebble dropped, you cannot retrace your steps, and with no crumbs scattered, you cannot beg the help of the mountain creatures and birds that fed on those morsels. You may think the sun is eternal, but the celestial bodies are heartless, and the sun will vanish beyond the mountains, bringing darkness to the woods as the time for beasts begins.”**

**”How will you bear such folly?”**

The white text shifts in form.

Sometimes it’s in Russian, sometimes English, sometimes Korean, sometimes Japanese…

The inconsistency seems random.

But within them, there’s one common thread.

They are all languages the girl can read.

**”In circular forms, there is no up or down.

Those above must come down, while those below must ascend. This is indeed a reasonable principle.

Just as one on the earth must dig to reach the core, so too must one from beyond the earth move forward to get to the core. The person who stands on their head must rise to achieve the core.”**

**”We live with direction. But for that direction to exist, an environment must be established. We treat the shackles of gravity as a landmark, and make ‘direction’ a concept from that common ground. We say that going against gravity is ‘upward,’ while following it is ‘downward.’

If the environment changes, so too does the direction.

Our perception is that tenuous.”**

**”Did perception give birth to concept? Or did concept give birth to perception?

Do you consider that going downward is blasphemy, while going upward is divine?

How can different meanings be attached to the same destination?

It must follow that if the destination is the same, the value must be the same.”**

**”Humanity has long regarded the upward direction as divine.

Yet, in strict terms, it is akin to defying the laws.

Gravity is an unassailable law, the nature of the sphere we inhabit.

To oppose it is to rebel against heaven, and thus should be seen as blasphemy. Yet, people continue to hold the notion of climbing upward as sacred, unhesitating to label those above as ‘gods.'”**

**”Humans create laws, uphold them, and live alongside them while yearning for transcendent beings.

This is more a pursuit of advancement than rebellion.

Even in times when civilization was not yet developed, we wished for transcendence.”**

The graphics on the screen begin to distort.

Green and red squares start to fill the screen, twisting the icons into meaningless forms. The DOS window is no exception, intermittently colored and becoming an unsightly mess as if eaten through by rats.

**”The girl resurrected in the warmth of spring.”

“The witch, shaped in the warmth of the gentle flames, emerging into the world.”

“You caught a glimpse of the opportunity amidst the winter’s biting winds instead of losing warmth into nothingness.”**

**”Was the bright red apple of the refreshing spring season so enticing?”**

 

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