The Third Floor Experiments
The Rose Pavilion consists of five floors in total. The first floor holds the dining hall, meeting rooms, lobby, warehouse, and other multi-purpose spaces. The second floor contains the student dormitories. Nothing is officially known about the third, fourth, and fifth floors. That was only natural. As stated in the rulebook, student access was strictly prohibited beyond the second floor. Still, rumor had it that the upper floors were filled with laboratories. Of course, rumors were only rumors; they couldn’t be trusted until seen with one’s own eyes.
Together with Terin, I climbed to the third floor and began observing the surroundings. The corridor was identical to the one on the second floor. After confirming that, I noticed something strange.
“So this is the third floor~”
I left Terin to her excited wandering and approached the candlestick. The holder reeked of oil and was littered with debris, as though it hadn’t been cleaned in years.
“Why would there be a candlestick here…?”
“Huh, you’re right.”
The primary light source used throughout the Rose Pavilion was lanterns—specifically, magical lanterns. Those crafted with magic stones produced no oily smell, lasted a long time, and gave off a fairly bright light. There was essentially no reason to use candles anywhere. It was possible someone had simply left old ones uncleaned, but the strong scent of oil suggested they had been lit quite recently. What possible need could there be for candles on the third floor, where no students were allowed? For now, it remained a mystery.
“Speaking of which, this corridor… feels pretty gloomy, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
Perhaps the heating had been off for a long time. Even though it was still early spring, the hallway was freezing. Where were the others? With that thought, I opened the first closed door.
“Eek?!”
“Hm?”
Feeling something in the way, I craned my neck to peek inside and saw Ophelia rubbing her nose. It looked like she had collided with the door when I opened it.
“…Ophelia? Are you all right?”
“Ugh, what is this even…”
Her pink hair was a complete mess, but Ophelia didn’t seem to notice. She looked at me and narrowed her eyes.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“Sorry. I didn’t know anyone was in here.”
“Is my nose broken?”
Ophelia pulled a hand mirror from her pocket and inspected her nose from every angle before letting out a sigh of relief.
“But why are you here alone, Ophelia?”
At Terin’s question, Ophelia lifted her head with a faintly flustered expression. She quickly tucked the mirror away and avoided our eyes.
“Huh?”
“Y-you don’t need to know.”
“Come on, tell us. Hmm?”
Terin had already crouched beside her and was poking Ophelia’s side.
“Hng, hyaang—!”
The sound that escaped her could have come straight from an erotic comic. Terin stared at her with an odd look.
“…That reaction was, um. Something.”
“M-my sides are sensitive, okay!”
Ophelia’s face flushed scarlet as she snapped. Terin pressed her palms together in apology and bowed her head.
“Sorry!”
“…Haa, apology accepted.”
With that, Ophelia brushed past me where I still held the door and fled outside as if escaping.
What on earth had been inside that room to make her run like that? And where had Ariel gone? She and Ophelia were practically inseparable. The questions piled up, but Ophelia had already vanished from sight; there was no catching her now.
“For now… shall we take a look inside?”
“Let’s.”
The first room—the one Ophelia had been in—was filled with dolls. Teddy bears, chick plushies, rabbit dolls, and every kind of animal, alongside human-shaped figures.
“They’re so cute…!”
Terin’s eyes sparkled as she hugged the dolls tightly. I couldn’t help smiling. A lovely girl embracing dolls—what better way to describe it? If you isolated that single space, it looked like something out of a fairy tale.
“But why a room full of dolls?”
“Who knows… Maybe a child once lived here?”
“A child?”
Even calling someone a child in the Rose Pavilion meant a student, and the youngest would still be at least fifteen. There was no way a fifteen-year-old would amass dolls in such mountainous piles. Besides, students weren’t even permitted on the third floor.
“They did say the third floor used to be a laboratory. Maybe it belonged to the child of the mage who conducted the experiments?”
“I doubt a child would live so close to a laboratory…”
Pairing the words “laboratory” and “young child” only summoned darker thoughts. Remembering the countless comics I’d read in my previous life, I frowned.
Glancing around, I spotted a bookshelf nestled among the dolls. Though small, it was packed tightly with books. I pulled out one without a cover and opened it. The pages were covered in what looked like handwritten notes.
Children aged 7–10. Placed in this room to promote mental and physical stability. As expected, the children appear to like the dolls. However, some children did not care for them. Those children were moved to other rooms. The children who liked the dolls gradually began to assimilate with them. Could this, too, be one of the Rose Pavilion’s magical properties?
Assimilate with the dolls…? I didn’t fully understand what that meant. Still, the use of the word “case” suggested that experiments on children had indeed taken place on this floor.
I finished reading the page and turned to the next, but everything after that had been completely blacked out. It must have been tedious to paint over every line like that—why not simply tear the pages out? Sighing at the endless questions, I walked over to Terin, who had fallen asleep among the dolls.
“Terin. Terin.”
“…Mmmnya.”
“Terin.”
Even beautiful girls snored the same way, I thought, shaking her gently. She opened her eyes in a daze.
“…Huk. How long was I out?”
“Not even five minutes. Were you tired?”
“Huh? Y-yeah.”
Terin nodded and casually took my hand.
…This girl was far too comfortable with physical contact.
“Doesn’t seem like there’s anything particularly noteworthy in this room.”
The journal was certainly odd, but one page alone revealed almost nothing. Even if I told her, Terin probably wouldn’t be much help. When I said as much, she nodded and gazed down at the human-shaped dolls.
“I’ll come visit again. See you later, friends.”
“…”
Terin let go of my hand and waved vaguely with a blank expression. At seventeen, did people normally call dolls their friends? In my previous life I had been a man and never owned any, so I couldn’t say. In this life I hadn’t seen any either. If anything, dolls were even more expensive here than they had been on Earth.
“So, where to next?”
“Let’s look for the other girls first. There seem to be several rooms.”
At first glance, the third floor’s layout was remarkably similar to the second. Like the floor below, it contained a total of eight rooms.
…Now that I thought about it, that was rather strange. The rulebook clearly stated that the Rose Pavilion only accepted seven residents. Yet there were eight rooms available for students. The structure seemed to anticipate an eighth person. Of course, it was possible the Pavilion hadn’t always been limited to seven. Still, the fact that its layout contradicted the rulebook felt wrong.
“Knock knock— Is anyone there~?”
Terin stood before the next door and rapped politely. No sound came from inside. She glanced at me nervously, apparently afraid to enter first. I took her place, grasped the handle, and opened the door with care.
Creeeeak— The rusty hinges groaned as the door swung wide. The interior was so dark I couldn’t see even an inch ahead. I lit the lantern I had brought and held it forward.
“Gasp—”
A sharp intake of breath came from behind me. My own heart hammered violently. Thump. Thump. The beats echoed through my body.
“…Are these the real thing?”
“I… I don’t know…”
I glanced at Terin’s deathly pale face, then looked back at the scene inside. The room was filled with organs suspended in culture fluid. I couldn’t tell whether they were human or animal, but the sight was undeniably grotesque. Was this another laboratory? I stepped inside carefully and began searching for a journal as before.
“A-Aina…”
“You can wait outside.”
“U-uh, I’ll wait out here.”
Leaving the visibly terrified Terin behind, I scanned the room and soon located the bookshelf. I pulled out another coverless journal and opened it.
CASE NO:H
SUBJECT:[REDACTED]
Most of the [REDACTED] died. Their corpses vanish quickly, so stasis magic was applied to preserve them inside the tanks. The culture fluid mixed with ground magic stones should maintain the stasis. I am gradually losing strength. My age is advanced, and the side effects of that experiment were far too severe. I can only hope my successor completes the research.
“…Hmm.”
Case H. At this point I finally understood what the third floor truly was. It was one enormous laboratory. This room marked the end point of those experiments. So what exactly had they been trying to do? And why show these things to us? Honestly, it felt completely out of nowhere. Or perhaps… were the events happening now connected to these experiments?
There were still too few clues. I would need to check the remaining rooms.
“Aina… are you still in there?”
“Ah, I’m done. Let’s move to the next room.”
“Okay…”
Noticing that Terin’s face had grown even paler while she waited outside, I set the journal down and stepped out.