Moon
"We need to head toward where that moon is shining."
First, I spoke to the woman standing between me and the pillar of light.
"Make me a path. You saw how you froze the area earlier. Can you freeze things so the ice reaches all the way to my footing?"
"Why... would you ask that?"
I pointed at the beam of moonlight striking down from the moon onto the water's surface.
"Doesn't it strike you as odd that the moonlight falls in a perfectly straight line onto a single spot? It's not blocked by clouds, and there's no structure nearby cutting off the light either."
"I... suppose that's true."
"Judging by this floor's number, the M stands for Moon, you see... Ah."
Maybe she'll understand if I say it in English.
"Moon... I see."
Huh. She understood. Is it because she's not some ancient yokai but one still living in the present? A little trendy, even.
"Anyway, that's why I want to try walking on that moonlight. Can you make an ice path for me?"
At that, the woman's face flushed red and she drew her body in even tighter.
"It is possible, but..."
The white hands beneath the water swarmed out and clawed furiously at the stone platform the woman stood on.
Little by little, ever so slowly, the stone was shaved away and vanished beneath the surface, the footing shrinking smaller and smaller.
"Hurry! If the platform disappears before we make it, those hands will drag you under!"
The woman clenched her fists and spoke.
"You must never... never look at me... Do you understand...?"
When the woman squeezed her eyes shut and spread the nine tails wrapped around her body wide behind her back, her snow-white naked form was laid bare to the air.
Naturally, I did not close my eyes.
The tails reaching out into empty space all came crashing down toward the water at once.
A vicious cold blasted out, chill enough to feel even from a distance, freezing the surrounding air.
Crack, craaack—
A thick road of ice stretched out from her platform all the way to mine.
The pale arms reaching up through the water were trapped inside the ice and frozen solid.
I stepped out at once, carefully adjusting my stride as I set foot onto the ice road.
Bang! Bang!
Hands that hadn't been caught, out beyond the edge of the ice road, hammered down with their fists, trying to smash through it.
Watching ice fragments spray in every direction, I picked up the pace a little more.
My foot touched down on the woman's stone platform at the end of the ice road.
Hmm... standing still is about all two people can manage on here.
Scrape, crunch!
If those things don't stop shaving the platform away, it'll get even narrower than this.
We need to get out of here before that happens.
"Can you make one on that side now too?"
"Eek..!"
Whether it was my grabbing her shoulder or my voice sounding right beside her, the woman, who'd been shielding herself with her arms and eyes shut, flinched hard in shock.
She cautiously opened her eyes, looking utterly terrified, and peered up at me.
No, wait—if she's a danger-level-5 entity, she should be far stronger than me. Honestly, if she took me head-on with that freezing power, I'm confident I'd be an ice cube in one second.
"Foolish one. We must be going."
"A voice really did come from the clothes... I thought I'd misheard..."
Ah-ha. She wasn't scared of me—she was scared of Selapis. Well, that's fair enough, then.
Whether because I'm weak or what, I can't sense Selapis's presence at all in garment form.
Though standing before the main body, I certainly felt it plenty.
"I-I'll open the path right away."
Trembling, the woman raised her tails once more and brought them crashing down toward the moonlit water.
Crunch!
A thick ice road stretched out from the narrow platform where the two of us stood, all the way to the pillar of moonlight.
The white hands around us latched onto the ice and began breaking it apart.
"Let's move, fast!"
I stepped out onto the ice road first.
Thud!
Behind me, I heard her footsteps follow.
Ignoring the sound of shattering ice as best I could, I advanced toward the moonlight spilling down ahead.
The water touched by the moonlight was held back as if the light had pushed it away, blocked by a round glass wall—water poured in everywhere except inside it.
I felt my arm, extended into the pillar of light, grow weightless, as if floating of its own accord.
When I stretched out a leg, it floated up into the air without needing to step on anything.
"I was right after all..!"
The moment I entrusted my whole body to the pillar of light, I began to rise, ever so slowly.
And as if my direction had been fixed upward, I couldn't move in any direction but up.
"Hurry, come over!"
Just as the woman, too, reached the moonlight and tried to stretch out her legs—
Crack!
The white hands finally smashed through the ice, and through the fissures they shot out, snatching the woman's leg and clinging on.
"Ugh!"
"No..!"
I reached out with my free hand, but my arm fell just short.
"N-no.. glub.."
The woman's body, surrounded by countless white hands, was being dragged down beneath the surface.
"Then..!"
Instead of my empty hand, I thrust the left one—the one holding the flashlight—out past the boundary of the moonlight.
"Selapis!"
The flashlight unraveled and became a long tentacle; one end lashed itself around my wrist, and the other flew to the woman and coiled around her hand.
In that same instant, my rising body began to sink again bit by bit, and the movement that had been fixed upward opened up in other directions as well.
Whoosh!
The woman's body was yanked up out of the water and flew toward the pillar of light.
"Ngh!"
I too was flung toward the water by the recoil of the pull.
Right in front of me—the grasping hands of countless white palms.
Crrrack—
Thud!
If the ice floor hadn't come skating back across the surface from behind and slammed into me, I would have been dragged under for sure.
"We made it.."
"Quickly, this way..!"
I turned back toward the pillar of light, approached, and gave myself over to it again.
My body began to bob upward.
"This is the right way, isn't it..?"
Riding the moonlight toward the moon above, the two of us floated up together.
"The moon looks strange.."
I looked up where the woman pointed.
"N-not that one—the other one!"
"That's only because you're in the middle of it.."
Since her fully exposed body was blocking the moon, I clasped her hands and nudged her gently to the side.
The moment our hands joined, my rising body began sinking again, little by little.
"The moon is..?"
A straight crack ran right down the center of the round moon.
"Two half-moons... or something like it?"
"Um... your hand..."
Blushing, the woman pulled at our joined hands, trying to free them.
And then—
Screeeech—
With a sound that sent chills down the spine even from a distance, the crack split wide open, revealing rows upon rows of teeth and the inside of a mouth.
Squeeze—
"Eek..!"
I gripped our joined hands tighter, squeezing with all my strength.
Moon... or Mouth? Or maybe both?
So there was never any way to escape this place alone.
Whether you froze your way across, walked on the water, or flew—reach this pillar of light and you'd be carried straight up to become that thing's dinner.
Considering that, before our hands were joined by Selapis's tentacle, I couldn't move in any direction but up—even with a rocket or some thruster, only upward movement would have been possible.
If it really is a Mouth, then being eaten by that thing would mean the exit—but that much I could have managed alone.
It was a place one person could never escape from. Back then, when I saw it, it was a 9.
Now there are two of us—so if there's an emergency exit...
Something reachable only by two or more...
A direction other than up.
If the M really does stand for Moon...
Now that that thing has changed into what it is, the only thing that could still be called a moon is the one reflected on the water's surface. Which means it's hiding down there below.
"Let's go down, just like this."
Given that our bodies sink slowly down the pillar of light whenever we're touching or connected, the guess that it's not up but down below that leads somewhere is more than reasonable.
Grind—
"Over there..!"
The moon, which I'd assumed was fixed in the sky, began slowly descending toward us.
Its speed...
"It's faster than we're descending..!"
Wondering if it only came down while we were touching, I let go of her hand for a moment to see if we'd rise—but the great mouth spread across the sky only kept drawing closer.
"Selapis! Grab those arms or something!"
Whoosh!
The tentacle wound around my arm lashed out at the white hands surging up from the water—
Swish!
"Huh!?"
—and passed straight through them, like grasping at a mirage.
"They can't be caught unless it's a body!?"
No, wait—remember how they smashed the ice road and the stone platform just fine.
"So they can't be caught unless those hands grab you directly!"
The moon descending from above drew closer and closer. It was already more than three times the size of my body.
As if to say it was nearly upon us, a horrific stench rose from the approaching maw.
At this rate, we'll be torn apart and devoured before we even reach the water...
It only froze things once they touched the surface—that's how we were supposed to escape...
But what if we just touch the surface?
Does it have to be our bodies that touch it?
"Selapis! This person—no, this fox—no, whatever—take one of your arms over there and stretch it straight down to the water!"
"Ohh... I see. Understood."
Splash!
Selapis's tentacle, wound around my arm, coiled tightly around one of the woman's arms.
"Hiiiiek!"
"Can you freeze all the way to the surface with that?"
"I-I'll try..!"
The woman gathered her tails in with the tentacles; the cold energy traveled up along them, freezing them solid one after another—
Crack! Craaack!
—and the water where the tentacle touched froze solid on the spot.
"Now pull us in!"
Crunch!
In an instant the tentacle wriggled, shook off the thin layer of ice, bent, and contracted—and the woman, and my body clinging to her, were yanked rapidly toward the water.
"We have to go inward!"
Crrrack!
As if it had heard me, a broad plate of ice surged up from beneath the surface.
Using the ice plate as a foothold, we launched ourselves toward the underside of the pillar of light.
The woman and I plummeted fiercely down along the light.
Splash! Roooar!
"Right above us..!"
Surrounded by water that the pillar of light kept at bay, the enormous mouth filling the sky above charged straight down at the surface, gulping water in great swallows.
"We have to go down faster!"
The speed from our leap was fading, slowing bit by bit back into a gentle descent.
"Do that freezing pull thing again!!"
Splash!
"Foolish one. Send the cold out fast."
"Understood..!"
The tentacle shot out against the round wall of water; the moment it froze, it pulled, and our bodies surged forward.
Gurgle... crunch!
Right behind us came the sound of the mouth opening and closing, and the pressure of it closing washed over us.
Crunch! Snap!
Just as it nearly caught us—
Flash—
"Ugh!"
Everything went white before my eyes, and the sensation of my body moving forward vanished.