Anne's Diary (2)
The sound of waves crashes in the distance—shwaaaa. Gentle ripples follow the quiet breeze. The fox slowly lifts her heavy eyelids, breathing in the salty tang of the sea that brushes the tip of her nose. Warm air caresses her cheek.
“······.”
What fills her vision is nothing but an endless, boundless ocean. It had become an all-too-familiar nightmare.
The setting was always the same: a prison built upon the sea.
“Haa…”
A sigh slips out, heavy with exhaustion. The girl with the crimson hair lets the strands whip around her face for a moment before she leans back against the rusted iron bars and slides to the floor. The old metal groans beneath her weight.
Creak.
Regardless, the fox draws her knees to her chest. The water laps at her ankles. Because of it, her lower body had to stay submerged in the sea. Of course, since it was a dream, her clothes never actually got wet—but every time, the girl wore a complicated look in her eyes. It was a kind of lingering sense of loss.
It’s too… quiet.
Once she became aware it was a dream, the urge to wake up always crept in. Because this was a brutally lonely world. The warmth of that alien sunlight might have been nothing more than deception.
-Irene.
-You can no longer stay by your master’s side… and you must not.
-So this is goodbye.
-Please, live on.
As always, the voice she longed for most came to her in the loneliest moments. The fox chewed on the faint memory, shaking off the last traces of bitterness. It was a kind of dark adaptation. Waves drowning in silence. Once again, the fox waited quietly—to wake from this nightmare, to fill the sickening void of loss.
It seemed she had dozed off for a little while. Maybe the aftereffects of the sleep magic still lingered. Her consciousness had simply cut off.
Irene comes to with a pounding headache.
“······.”
What she sees is an unfamiliar ceiling. A prison thick with flowing darkness. Whether her eyes were open or closed, the fact that she was still behind bars was truly regrettable. Cold air rises from the hard floor. Her shoulders tremble with chills. She hadn’t noticed it through the extreme tension, but her body had already grown ice-cold.
The fox swallows the groan trying to escape her lips. If I’d known it would be like this, maybe staying in the dream would’ve been better. It had been warm there, with a breeze and everything. Such pointless thoughts flicker through her mind.
While she sat there in utter helplessness, killing time—
“Hey… Fox big sis!”
“······?”
“Over here! This way!”
Someone was calling her. At the sudden voice, she looked around and spotted a small hole in the wall. It must have been the person locked in the cell right next to hers. A hand was waving through the tightly spaced bars.
“Are you finally awake?”
A girl with a youthful face. At most, she looked fifteen. When their eyes met, she broke into a bright smile.
“You were unconscious for so long, I was really worried! I’m so glad you woke up!”
“You’re…”
It was the same girl who had warned her earlier to pretend to be asleep. The fox stared at her in a daze.
“Nice to meet you! It’s been forever since someone new moved into the cell next door!”
The girl smiled as if genuinely delighted. Then, dropping the cheerful air for a moment, she suddenly reached her hand through the bars.
“My name is Anne! Let’s take good care of each other since we’re both test subjects.”
“Test… test subjects…?”
“Yep!”
The girl nodded vigorously. Faced with such a surreal scene, the fox once again found herself at a loss for words.
She had been kidnapped by an unknown group. At first, her mind had been so chaotic that everything went black, but little by little, Irene was able to gather information. All thanks to the voice calling out from the neighboring cell.
“Big sis! Do you have any more questions?”
The girl named Anne. The bright, cheerful child chattered away without pause. Most of it was explanations about the facility, as if she were worried about the new test subject who had just arrived. Sometimes she even answered the fox’s questions.
“Hehe… but there’s still so much I don’t know.”
Of course, her answers weren’t exactly clear. That was only natural—after all, the girl herself was also trapped behind bars. She scratched her cheek awkwardly.
“Just things I’ve picked up here and there.”
“Picked up…?”
“Stuff I overheard, or experienced myself… things you learn when you’ve been locked up for a long time.”
“How long have you been here?”
“About seven months?”
It wasn’t anything too deep, but it was enough to grasp the situation. The fox organized the complicated thoughts in her head. To summarize:
Baob—the largest dark magic organization on the continent. That was the identity of the people who had kidnapped Irene. The main building was a facility they had prepared for their dark magic research. And the prison where the fox was currently held was where they kept the materials to be used in their experiments. It was nothing short of a den of evil.
Slave traders… and now cultists.
A bitter laugh escaped her. She had barely escaped becoming a slave, and now she was about to be turned into a monster. It felt like she was being toyed with by fate.
The fox sat there, quietly biting her lip.
“Just in case… it’s better to obediently follow along with the experiments.”
“Why?”
“······There’s a devil here.”
From what she had heard, escape was nearly impossible. Every single person managing this place was a dark mage. Especially the head researcher—he was a being who had reached the pinnacle. With a single gesture, countless test subjects were torn apart. Everyone who had tried to resist before had met the same end, she was told.
Anne called the head researcher “the devil.”
“The devil kills test subjects for fun.”
If the experiment didn’t go as planned, he killed them. Even if it wasn’t an experiment, he killed them. If they acted arrogant, he killed them. If their eyes met, he killed them. If he was in a bad mood, he killed them. He killed them while enjoying their screams.
“That’s why I told you to bow down… If you hold your breath and stay quiet, he usually just passes by without touching you.”
It seemed the director was more interested in massacre than research. His faith in the gods was nothing but an excuse for slaughter. At his core, he was a bloodthirsty monster. Not even a single ray of hope could be seen.
“······.”
In this hopeless situation, Irene kept her face expressionless, but she couldn’t hide the tremor in her pupils. A crushing sense of helplessness weighed down on her shoulders. Her head throbbed as if it would split open. As she pressed a hand to her forehead—
Suddenly, the hand that had been sticking out between the bars offered her something.
“Big sis, take this.”
“······What is it?”
“A blanket!”
The girl handed over a single tattered rag. It was worn and torn, looking utterly wretched, but she insisted it was a blanket. Her eyes curved into a gentle smile.
“You’ve been shivering for a while now. It’s all ragged so it probably won’t be very warm, but still—cover yourself with it.”
“You’re lending it to me…?”
“I run hot, so I don’t need it!”
“······Thank you.”
“Heehee.”
Anne reacted with pure joy. It might have been a bit rude to think so, but the fox believed the girl wasn’t quite right in the head. Had being turned into a test subject at such a young age driven her mad?
How can she be so cheerful in a place like this…
Pushing the thought aside, she draped the blanket over herself. The scrap of cloth handed over by those dirty hands felt somewhat stiff as it wrapped around her shoulders. Even so, she was still cold.
How much time had passed? By her own estimate, it felt like about three days. During the few days she spent in the dark mages’ lair, the fox experienced scenes straight out of hell.
The things visible beyond the iron bars—
-Ugh, kuhk, urgh, keok…!
-N-no…! No!! S-stop it!!!
-P-please spare me…! P-please, I beg you…!!
-GYAAAAAAAAAA!!!
-Something’s growing in my stomach!! It’s eating through my belly!!
Screams rang out without pause. The frequent howls of agony made her imagine what was happening at the end of that corridor. Occasionally, screams that didn’t even sound human were mixed in. Whether they belonged to something that was never human, or to something that had become inhuman, she couldn’t tell.
-GYAAH! AAAAAA!! STOOOOP!!!
Low, scraping shrieks. Many test subjects were taken to the laboratory, but very few returned to their cells. In the past three days, forty-seven had left and only two had come back. Even they couldn’t walk properly. One of them even had a grotesquely mutated body part.
-Krrk! Kiiiiik!!
The face twisted like a spider’s was horrifying. Although Irene was locked in the cell farthest from the laboratory, the raw noises still reached her ears, however faintly. She had to fight back the urge to vomit several times from the rising nausea.
“······.”
The fox was still alive. The dark mages hadn’t touched her. More accurately, they couldn’t. Because the devil had personally declared that he would handle her himself in one week.
-I’ll experiment on this one personally.
-A fox beastkin… what a truly fantastic offering.
The devil had spoken with sticky, greedy eyes. In the end, the other cultists could only lick their lips and withdraw. Her life had been narrowed down to one week. Now, all Irene could do was quietly wait for time to pass. There was no hope in sight.
At first she had considered fighting back, but after facing the head researcher, her thoughts changed. The devil’s level was truly overwhelming. At the very least, he was at professor level—the same as those who taught at Galimar Academy. With a single incantation, every test subject in the facility could be massacred.
“······.”
In the end, she had no choice but to let her spirit break. The fox remained silent. As she sat quietly with her back against the wall—
“Big sis.”
“······.”
“Do you know about this? It’s really amazing.”
“······?”
Anne peeked over from the other side of the bars. Perhaps worried about the fox’s pale complexion, the girl was trying to shift her attention elsewhere.
“They say time here flows differently from time outside.”
“What does that mean…?”
“Exactly what it sounds like.”
The girl gave a light shrug.
“One time the devil got really drunk. He was walking up and down the corridor bragging about it… He said this place is some kind of special land. That the corpse of a dragon is buried here or something… I don’t really remember the exact details. I only remember him saying the time axis around here is twisted.”
“He said one week here is only one day outside.”
“One week… is one day?”
“It’s been three days since you arrived, but outside, not even a few hours have passed yet, right?”
“······.”
The fox stared at her with blank eyes. Anne scratched her cheek awkwardly as she continued explaining.
“Of course, believe it or not. Honestly, it sounds way too absurd. I’ve never heard of any region like that. If it were land outside the empire’s territory, maybe, but…”
“······.”
“I’m sure the devil was just drunk and talking nonsense.”
Anne grumbled quietly. The girl furrowed her brow for a moment, but eventually broke into a bright smile. It was a transparent, pure smile.
“Still, when I think like this, I can hold on to just a little bit of hope.”
“Hope…?”
“Yes, hope.”
If only a few hours have passed outside, someone must be desperately searching for you, right? Isn’t it okay to hope for a little miracle?
“Who knows! Maybe a prince on a white horse will show up and rescue us.”
“······.”
“Wasn’t there someone like that around you?”
“······I don’t know.”
The fox gently averted her eyes. Even as she answered indifferently, one face immediately flashed through her mind. Golden-blond hair and narrow, slit-like eyes. Why was she thinking of that person right now? Irene unconsciously bit her lip.
…It would be stupid to expect anything from him.
After all, he had only ever seen her as a toy. He would probably just shrug off her disappearance without much thought. He would simply find a new toy. The fox gave herself a firm suggestion. Don’t put your faith in anyone. Just like she always had.
I’m just… supposed to be alone like this.
The fox repeated the painful monologue to herself.
But—
“You have to be safe.”
The fox didn’t know. She didn’t know that forces powerful enough to destroy an entire nation had already begun to move in order to find her.
White eyes glinted in the darkness.
“If you’re not safe… I don’t know what I might do.”
Pure white banners fluttered. A shadowy organization brimming with murderous intent was cutting across the night sky. All to reclaim the fox.