Chapter 12
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 12
Chapter Title: Hollow Man 3
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Ibi nearly bit her tongue at that moment. What kind of nonsense was this? She hadn't been in here for even half a day, tops.
"I know it's hard to believe, but it's the truth. Simply put, if you moved from a room marked 1 or 2 days to one marked 3 or 4, then two real days truly passed in between."
Ibi stared blankly, absorbing his words. Did that mean seven months had gone by in the real world without her? If she couldn't get out... even more endless time would drag on?
What about her friends? School? What would happen to her life?
"...Exactly September 2nd. You were last spotted near your house, then vanished without a trace. The police took note that the owner of the café where you worked disappeared too, but they haven't turned up much. Now that time has passed, it's fading from the public's interest..."
"Don't talk about it like... like it's all over and done with! The person you're talking to right now is me, the one it happened to!"
"Sorry. But it's too late. If you'd called one more time before all the doors locked, maybe we could've saved you. Not anymore."
He was still spouting cryptic nonsense. But this time, an explanation followed right away.
"While you were out of contact those few days, I did some thinking. Mulling over the info you gave me. And I started to piece together the layout inside."
"Layout?"
The man let out a scoffing chuckle.
"Infinite space? Sounds absurd."
"Then what is it? Every room has four doors. Pick one, and four more appear. It just keeps going... Are you seriously saying I was wandering in circles the whole time? Does that even make sense?"
"That was the trap, wasn't it? At first glance, it looks like four choices. But each room had one door blocked off."
Ibi felt her throat tighten. She was starting to grasp what he meant.
"The rooms you call 'square rooms'—there are four of them total. Marked 1-2 days, 3-4 days, 5-6 days, 7-8 days. Right? The first digit didn't mean anything. If they blocked specific doors in each... they could guide anyone lost straight where they want."
"Explain it in more detail."
"Think of it like this: The whole structure where you are is one big square... and those four rooms sit at the corners. The corridors connecting them form the sides of that square."
Ibi's eyelashes trembled faintly.
"Wait. What about the triangular rooms? Where do they fit in?"
"This is pure guesswork now, but with four doors per room, there must be corridors leading inward too. Maybe those triangular rooms cluster together in the center of the big square."
The shapes he described began to form in her mind.
"That would mean the door where the Guest appears in each room is always fixed. Those doors the Guest blocks are actually the ways out to the outside of the square. In other words, instead of avoiding the door the Guest comes from... if you'd changed your thinking and gone through it, you could've escaped... Well, that's just my theory."
Ibi slowly approached the nearest door and ran her hand over its surface. It was the western door, the one she'd confirmed locked just moments ago.
"So you're saying it's too late to escape now..."
"Yeah. The locked doors now are the paths the Guests take to enter. All exits from the square are sealed. In other words... every escape route is blocked."
Ibi shook her head.
"No."
"If not, I'd love to be wrong. Only you inside can prove it."
Ibi gripped the handle and twisted again. No use. The door stayed locked.
Heat rushed to her eyes, stinging her nose.
"Save me."
A single tear trickled down her cheek to the corner of her mouth.
"You promised. You said you'd save me. Not now? I trusted you. I believed... How can you betray me like this?"
"Sorry."
His voice sounded not just low, but cold and heartless.
"I want to save everything I can reach with my own hands. Truly. But even I can't do the impossible. Sometimes you have to abandon one thing to gain another. We have to accept that."
"You keep spewing bullshit..."
"Like I said long ago, everything has rules. Every single thing in the world. Invisible laws we can't ignore. I'm lucky—I got a glimpse of those laws... but I can't defy them. No one can, not even those who enforce them."
Her patience snapped. Her faith too. Ibi screamed out all her resentment, nearly a shriek.
"You promised!"
"I did. And I'll keep it. But I also said no holds barred."
Whatever he said fell on deaf ears. Ibi screamed until her throat burned.
"Right, I said I'd save you. But it doesn't have to be the you I'm talking to right now, does it? Don't worry. My past self will save your past self. Hell, maybe I already have."
Even so, his voice stayed brazen. She couldn't even comprehend what he meant anymore.
"In a way, this might be for the best. Could you really go back to everyday life after this like nothing happened? Who knows... From that angle, you could say I'm showing mercy right now."
"What bullshit are you—!"
"We'll talk face-to-face soon. Of course, neither you nor I will remember this conversation then. Or more precisely, it never happened at all."
No matter how she screamed or raged, he just kept reciting his lines.
"Look closely in the mirror. What it reflects isn't the present. The past is something that can change."
With that, the call ended. No—the battery died completely, and the phone powered off.
"You bastard! Come back! You promised! You said you'd let me out! I'll kill you! Get back here, you fucker!"
She sobbed and cursed for what felt like ages, but the dead smartphone gave no response. Exhausted even for anger, Ibi clutched it and broke into heaving sobs. The black screen showed only her reflection.
She looked so haggard, she didn't want to believe it was her.
Did I look like I'd been here months?
"......"
She couldn't recall how long she'd collapsed there. It felt like her soul had already left her body, floating aimlessly on its own.
Her hazy gaze swept over the four doors. She staggered to her feet, picked one, and went through. The northern door. This was the 5-6 room, so north should lead to 7-8.
Sure enough, a square room appeared. She tugged the northern door. Locked. She entered the eastern one next.
1-2 room. Eastern door locked. She kept going to the 3-4 room. Southern one locked.
This time, north again. She prayed it wouldn't be, but a triangular room emerged without fail.
"Ha, haha..."
Nothing was funny anymore, yet laughter spilled out. She'd wandered here for seven months doing pointless nonsense, while that absent man had figured out the truth.
She was so pathetic, the laughs kept coming. Still, her feet moved. His final words echoed in her head.
'Look closely in the mirror.'
She knew each triangular room had one mirror. But she'd avoided looking, dodging their gaze on purpose. The first time she'd seen one, the figure moving inside wasn't her. It was someone else who looked like her.
After that, sometimes her face didn't reflect at all, or it did but acted differently from the real her. No wonder she didn't want to look.
But did these mirrors hold some secret?
'What it reflects isn't the present.'
What did that mean? Strictly speaking, a mirror's reflection wasn't the present anyway. Light reflects to form the image. There's a tiny delay as it travels between her and the mirror.
But that's a fraction of a second—so brief it's not even worth calling a delay. Hardly enough to say it wasn't the present.
Of course, that's not what he meant. The next instant, seeing her reflection draw close, she realized.
"Agh!"
Ibi recoiled in shock. But the reflection approached. It pressed a hand to the mirror's surface. For a split second, her eyes widened.
"Mom?"
The woman in the mirror resembled her but aged. Mistaking her for her mother wasn't unreasonable.
But no. The woman looked even older than when her mother had died. Wrinkles creased her face, gray streaked her forehead beneath the hairline. And crucially, the mole by her mouth wasn't her mother's.
It was Ibi's.
"...Me?"
An aged Ibi stared back from the mirror. On the verge of shattering the glass and stepping through.
Her face twisted in a grotesque expression between laugh and cry. Just standing there.