You Will Return to Me

It was that bastard. That skin-crawling lunatic who had been staring at me this entire time.

It almost felt like laughter. As though the thing found itself terribly funny.

I had to run. But where to? I had no way of knowing where here even was. The air had a peculiar dryness to it, so I was at least still inside the maze — and the single biggest problem was that I couldn't pin down this "Root" thing's actual location.

That gaze — the one that had seemed to reach me from far away one moment and watch me from right beside my shoulder the next — made shaking it off physically look hopeless. How do you run from something whose whereabouts you can't even determine?

A chill brushed up from the soles of my feet. Creeping upward, little by little, like an insect crawling over bare skin. That little bastard deserved to be stomped flat. So it could read my mind, too?

Fine, then. Send me home.

Our home, it says. Ah. Then how about letting me out for a little fresh air?

Huh? It's fine?

…Ah. Of course. It's fine because I'll be coming back anyway.

"Okay, okay. I get it. I'll come back."

The moment something like an invisible hand brushed my cheek, the familiar damp, earthy smell of the front yard touched my nose. The cursed gaze was gone, too.

I was out. I had escaped the maze.

Lesson one: lose consciousness inside the maze, and the crazy stalker comes to collect you. Lesson two: butter the thing up properly, and ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it will actually let you leave.

Click. Click. I couldn't see a thing ahead of me, but I moved on feel, drifting this way and that until my leg bumped the well — and I stopped right there.

Click. I ran my hands over the leather and intestines spread across the well. Not dry yet, by the touch of them. They'd need a good day to cure, apparently.

In that case, maybe I'd rest at home until then. I couldn't see, and pushing myself would only cost me. It wasn't as if I was eager to go back into the maze anytime soon.

…Wait. Did it actually treat my eyes? Something covered the left one — the one the trap had gored earlier — and the pain had settled into no more than a dull sting. What the hell was this thing?

Going by the FAQ, the thing helps you out when you're lost, so apparently it wasn't a flatly hostile mob. Judging by its behavior alone, though, I hated it more than that minotaur-looking monster.

Stalking me through the maze. Scooping me up and carrying me off to "our home" the very instant I passed out. It was visceral, skin-deep disgust.

Anyway, the next time I entered the maze…

…and at some point, with my head still turning over the maze's layout, I must have drifted off.

Pressing the button didn't move my body.

"You'll probably have to re-enter the maze sooner or later. It did tell you to come back, after all… I don't know the exact time limit, but my guess is that if you fail to interact with it past the deadline, there'll be some kind of penalty…"

I agreed. Honestly, I'd braced myself for something far more vicious — walls that slid around and reshaped the routes, traps that teleported you bodily into different sections. It was hard enough as it was, without any of that.

I'd already died in there twice. If I hadn't come back to life after dying, an ordinary person would never have made it this far. Not without absurd, freakish luck.

Just as I was debating whether to pull out the Jaerae Diary and log the routes in real time, in case the maze grew any more complicated—

Consciousness surfaced slowly. With no eyes to open, the world was as pitch-dark as ever. I couldn't even tell how long I'd slept — there was no sun and no moon in this place's violet sky.

Somehow, it felt as though I'd been dreaming.

Click.

The instant I opened the front door and stepped into the yard, a horrible stench punched up my nose and my stomach lurched.

The reek of the soil where the half-rotted swan corpse had been buried, the dismantled monster carcass shoved into a corner, the leather and intestines spread out to dry by the well — all of it had blended into one nauseating miasma. I heaved and retched, and nothing came up.

Why? What was this, all of a sudden? It was strange. Yesterday the smell had been worse, if anything — today it was actually fainter than before.

Choking down the churn in my gut, I edged toward the well and stopped. Click. Ah — everything was bone-dry, cured through without a trace of moisture.

Click. I pressed the interaction button once more, and my hand moved on its own, twisting the leather and intestines together and braiding them into a rope strong enough to bear my weight.

Ugh…

Still dry-heaving from the stench, I somehow managed to finish the thing.

Judging by the length, a good ten meters or so. Plenty — if I thought back to the time I'd dropped down this well and died.

Click. I anchored the rope to the well and tied the other end around my body. Click. Gripping the rope, I braced both feet against the inner wall of the shaft.

Without the rope I'd leapt down it like a bungee jump; with it, my body clambered along by itself even with my eyes gone. Click.Swish. Barefoot, bracing against the wall, one slow step at a time.

Thud. How far down had I come? At last my toes touched bottom. It was very cold, and a little damp.

Click.Creeeak.

Hm? I pressed the button hoping something would respond, and my hand closed around something and pulled it sideways.

It felt like a lever. Shhhhh—! Ah. So it was a lever. Water came gushing out from somewhere.

What kind of well dispenses water when you crank a lever? Still, no complaints — I'd been about to get thirsty.

Water: solved. I climbed back out of the well and turned my body toward the direction the maze should be.

That left two problems: the light and the seed. Which meant, once again, the only option was to go back into the maze. Besides, that lunatic ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠might come hunting me down for failing to return — I figured I'd better show my face at reasonable intervals.

Fortunately it only watched, which suggested I had a day's grace before it expected anything of me. So the goal, once more: don't faint this time, and find the light in one piece.

Blind, I walked slowly, feeling along the walls. Straight at the first fork. Right at the second. And then came the third — the one where I'd gone left and a trap had come flying into my left eye. I stood a long while in front of those two branching paths, weighing them.

A trap flying at my face didn't prove that path was wrong. But in my current state, I couldn't afford to step in carelessly, either. …If only my left eye were even remotely usable. I could at least have moved while dodging this way and that.

In the end, I chose the right-hand path.

Step. Step. I walked carefully, one hand tracing the wall. Several minutes passed and nothing happened. So this really was the correct path, then — not the one the trap had come screaming down.

Just as I was measuring the distances, sketching the map out in my head—

Thud. Something hard touched the crown of my head. Click. Click. I stopped dead and spun in place, trying the interaction button in every direction — but my arms stayed planted against the wall, unmoving. Either it simply wasn't an interactable object, or…

What the hell was this?

The moment I turned around, thinking I should retreat—

Creeeak.

A faint sense of weight, as though the hard thing resting on my head had come down just a little further.

Which meant… as if the ceiling had settled onto my skull. As if it would keep descending without ever stopping. As if it would crush flat whatever happened to be beneath it.

Ha.

"Sh—"

So the path with the trap had been the right one after all.

If I could turn back time, I'd rather drop down this well and die. A death by falling would be mercy itself — compared to being slowly crushed from the skull down through the vertebrae of my neck, without even the room to bend.

Farming, schmarming — from that point on, I threw myself into nothing but clearing the maze. The pace at which I found the paths picked up sharply.

I crossed paths with minotaur-like monsters here and there, fused a pitchfork with a monster's horn into a weapon, sidestepped the traps laid out on every side… After dying and correcting my mistakes some six times over, I finally found the light.

The light resembled a plump, ripe fruit. The light looked like a delicious egg. The light was shaped like a fresh, clear eye. High overhead, held inside an enormous transparent sphere, a blinding radiance burned.

The instant that light washed over me, the shadowlike gaze that had been touching me all over vanished — and I felt a boundless satisfaction filling me up from somewhere deep inside.

The trouble started on the way home, when I bent down to pick up the fragment that had fallen from the light like a tear.