Distorted World: Studio Apartment (7)

Five front doors stood before me.

The one Error had guided me toward was the door in the middle — the same door that, until moments ago, some unidentified thing I could only assume was a Distortion Entity had been pounding on with savage, relentless force.

I wondered if I might have misheard. Just to be sure, I asked Error.

"The middle one? You're sure?"

The same answer, three times over. So Error hadn't misspoken.

"So what you're saying is… the space beyond the middle door — the one that was making all that noise until just now — is the only one with nobody in it, and the other four doors all have bad friends waiting behind them?"

The viewers were split.

Viewers who trusted Error. Viewers who didn't. And viewers who had gone so far as to float a conspiracy theory that Error had just been replaced by yet another Distortion Entity.

My opinion?

I was on the trusting side, obviously. I had already decided to set my doubts aside. For now, I was going to put my full faith in Error.

Thump. Thump.

I started toward the front door in the center, my footsteps light, carrying none of the weight of indecision.

"It's fine. Thinking it over wouldn't change anything anyway. And like I said before, I already made up my mind to trust Error, so I'm setting the doubts aside this time too. I'm just going to believe the directions and follow them."

By the time I finished speaking, I had arrived in front of the middle door.

I didn't stop to plant my feet and take a deep breath the way I had before, steeling myself. I had said it more than once already: I had decided to trust Error. I had done all the bracing I needed on the walk over.

I pressed the unlock button on the digital lock without hesitation.

Beep-beep-beep— the lock released.

Creeeeak—

I opened the front door.

A long corridor unfurled ahead of me, and from both sides came the shrieks.

"SKREEEEEEE!"

"SKREEEEEEEEK!!!"

"Whoa. That startled me."

The last chatter was right. Floor-to-ceiling glass partitions had been installed along both sides, after all.

The glass walls stretched the full length of the corridor — four of them in total. The corridors themselves numbered five. The one I was standing in was the center corridor, with two more running along the left and two along the right, each clearly connected to one of the other front doors.

And in every corridor except the center one…

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD—!!!

A humanoid abomination whose entire body was made of rope had been stationed in each one. The moment they spotted me they started hammering the glass with savage force, but fortunately not even a hairline crack appeared.

"Jeez. Error was right — every other path had a Distortion Entity in it."

Good thing I had trusted. If I had opened any of the other doors, I would have been in ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠serious trouble.

The corridor was fairly well lit — bright enough that the Distortion Entities beyond the glass were perfectly, vividly visible.

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD—!!!

I stood there for a moment, staring hard at one of them. For the record, all four looked identical.

"Yeah. They do look pretty scary."

I meant it, though. It wasn't as if I had no sense of fear at all.

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD—!!!

I pulled my gaze off the Distortion Entity and started walking, offering my thanks to Error for the help.

"Thanks, Error. You saved me again."

I tilted my head at one viewer's message. What was that supposed to mean, out of nowhere.

"What do you mean, how did you know. I told you. I said it sounded like it was coming from the middle door."

"Isn't that just because I said it was the middle one?"

While the viewers were turning it over, a message from Error appeared.

They had packed the fake sound with the power of Distortion. I understood what that meant immediately.

"Ah. So it was a Distortion Phenomenon that made anyone who heard it — no matter who, no matter where — perceive the sound as coming from the middle door."

I nodded, the look on my face saying I had it figured out.

I snuck a glance at the viewer count. I had wondered if people would get spooked by what had just happened and leave in droves… but far from dropping, the numbers had actually gone up.

A fair number of viewers didn't seem frightened at all. Their complacency was understandable enough. The sound had been distorted, that was all — nobody had actually been hurt.

I walked the corridor for twenty minutes.

The front door at the far end was clearly visible, and not far away. To the eye it looked incredibly close. And yet no matter how long I walked, I couldn't reach it.

Still, there was no need to get anxious. According to Error, I would get there if I just walked another ten minutes. The catch was that I absolutely could not stop walking. The instant I did, the path I had already covered would reset, and I would have to start over from the beginning.

"SKREEEEEEE!!!"

"SKREEEEEEE!!!"

THUDTHUDTHUDTHUDTHUD—!!!

The Distortion Entities — the rope monsters — followed me relentlessly down their own corridors, walking alongside me and pounding on the glass the entire way.

As I walked, Error explained.

The creatures had been trapped in their corridors from the moment they were born. Not every Distortion Entity was incapable of moving to other spaces — it was simply that these particular rope monsters had been bound by a restriction the instant they came into existence.

The four corridors to either side were spaces called Isolation Dimensions. There were only two ways to escape them: someone on the outside opened the door for you, or you figured out the password yourself and got out on your own.

In other words, it wasn't that they were too weak to smash the glass and the doors.

I walked on, browsing the chat, and at last I reached the front door at the far end. Apparently it was all right to stop walking here.

There was no digital lock on this door. Just a handle, sitting there by itself. For the record, the four corridors on either side didn't have a front door on this end at all.

I opened the front door, and another studio apartment unfolded beyond it. A relatively ordinary one.

Error immediately pointed me toward the next path.

I didn't need to go looking for a weapon. I swung the corner of the smartphone I was already holding and smashed it into the mirror with everything I had.

The glass shattered far too easily, bursting apart with a crash.

And then, before I went through, I glanced at the chat to check the reactions…

"Huh?"

Every other viewer's messages had vanished. It was the same phenomenon I had already experienced once before.

"Error, was this you?"

"Why did you interfere with the stream again? I told you not to."

Ugh. The sentences were so long they were a pain to read.

Let's see, so…

Interfered because the other kids probably shouldn't see what's over there?

Meaning the space beyond the broken mirror?

"What's on the other side of this?"

"…"

Well. Seeing it for myself would be better than hearing it explained.

I committed myself to the shattered mirror without hesitation.

The space I came through into was a studio apartment in which everything seemed to be made of holograms. And there, on the mattress, a woman who likewise looked like a hologram was sprawled out spread-eagle.

A woman wearing the exact same clothes as the doll and the corpse I had seen earlier. And her identity was none other than—

Me.