Chapter 13
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Translator: 8uhl
Chapter: 13
Chapter Title: Making Things Symmetrical
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A book that kills you when you read it?
The name alone was incredibly suspicious.
I couldn't even begin to imagine how bizarre it would be.
I immediately pulled up the message.
[Book That Kills You When Read]
【A book with a red cover. You die if you read it.】
*What the hell kind of item is this?*
It was even more baffling than the 'Jin Dayeon's Prize' I'd gotten earlier.
"This is, apparently, a book that kills you when you read it."
"Is that so?"
Dayeon looked at the book with interest.
She seemed curious about what would happen if she, someone who couldn't die, read it.
"Why, want to give it a read?"
When I held the book out through the hole, Dayeon crossed her arms in an X to refuse.
"It doesn't matter to me, but if I were to die, you wouldn't be able to escape."
"I suppose so."
In truth, it didn't really matter to me either.
Because even if reading this book killed me, I would just return to my last save point.
There was no way Dayeon could know that.
Still, I decided to keep my ability to regress a secret.
*No good would come from revealing it.*
It could even be used as a weakness against me.
Without another word, I took the book back.
"So, do you have any idea how to escape?"
Dayeon asked, leaning back in her chair.
It was less sitting and more lying down.
She didn't show the slightest hint of wanting to escape.
"What do you think it is?"
"Well, maybe the fact that the archive is split in two is the crucial clue? Or not."
Still, perhaps her promise to help me escape wasn't just empty words, as she said something plausible.
"A clue..."
I carefully recalled the situation.
Two archives, divided by a glass wall.
One side was tidy, the other was a mess.
And a note with an abstract meaning.
[Look at each other.]
What could all this mean?
The answer came quickly.
"It's symmetry."
"Symmetry?"
Dayeon tilted her head.
It was a silent request for an explanation.
I wondered if I really had to, but it seemed like she wouldn't help if I didn't tell her.
"It means we have to make the two archives identical."
The puzzles in Tsukuru games often follow a similar pattern.
This is due to the limitations of the quarter-view perspective and graphics.
So I'd seen puzzles similar to this one in other horror Tsukuru games before.
Like in *The Witch's House*.
Or in games like *Mad Father*.
I carefully observed the secret archives.
The glass wall blocked off the center of the archive.
The furniture in the room also had a similar layout.
It was just that my side was excessively messy.
The mess obscured the similarities, making them impossible to spot without careful observation.
"So this is what it was."
If that was the case, the solution became clear.
Making my messy side of the archive look like Dayeon's clean side.
Symmetrically, at that.
"Come over to this side. Let's clean it together."
I gestured to Dayeon, who had become one with her chair.
My side of the archive was a complete disaster.
Just cleaning it would take ages.
At least with two people, we could finish it quickly.
Dayeon sluggishly got up.
"This is a pain. How long will it take?"
"How should I know? It depends on how much you help."
Dayeon reached the door to the secret archives.
But she didn't cross over to my side.
"What are you doing? Come on."
"The door is locked."
"...What?"
In disbelief, I ran to the door.
-*Jiggle, jiggle*
It was the same on this side. I hadn't locked it, but the door wouldn't open.
"I guess it locked automatically when we came in."
From the moment we carelessly set foot in here, the entrance was sealed.
We were trapped with no way out.
It was clearly one of those setups where the door only opens after you solve the puzzle.
*Wait, it only opens if I solve the puzzle?*
Dayeon slowly made her way back to the chair. She stared at me intently, then spoke softly.
"Good luck. Call me when you're done."
"..."
I couldn't just blame her; I had no grounds to.
After all, it was pure luck that I ended up in this messy archive.
Barely suppressing my boiling anger, I started to tidy up the archive.
"Are you done yet?"
"No."
"Are you done?"
"...No."
Dayeon sat in her chair, swinging her legs.
She could have just watched quietly, but she kept talking to me.
"You should rest if you're tired."
"There's no time to rest. I'm getting out of here fast."
"Do you hate this school that much?"
"You think I'd like it? If I stay here any longer, I feel like I'll go crazy like you."
I gathered the scattered books and stacked them neatly. Dayeon had come up to the glass wall at some point.
"What are you doing?"
"Just bored. Thought I'd watch."
"You're distracting. Go back."
"Don't want to."
Dayeon was not someone you could reason with.
Talking more would just be a waste of breath.
I tried my best to ignore her and continued cleaning.
"What's the first thing you want to do when you escape this school?"
"I don't know. Hole up in my room and sleep as much as I want. Why do you ask?"
"I see. I'll keep that in mind. By the way, aren't you going to ask me?"
"...Give me a break."
She completely ignored my question and maintained her shameless attitude.
It was obvious she'd keep pestering me if I ignored her, so I reluctantly asked.
"What do you want to do when you escape school?"
Although I forced myself to ask, I was a little curious myself.
Especially since she'd been stuck in this school for ten years, unable to even die.
I was genuinely curious what her answer would be.
Dayeon brought a finger to her lips and closed one eye.
"It's a secret."
"Oh, for crying out loud..."
I was so dumbfounded I couldn't even speak.
I really wanted to crack her head open and see what was inside.
"I'm almost done cleaning, so get ready to match the symmetry."
"Okay."
Cleaning the archive took longer than I thought.
Thanks to Dayeon's interruptions, it dragged on unintentionally.
I needed to solve this puzzle quickly, now more than ever.
"Take a look at what items are on your side."
"A chair and a shelf... a desk, a flowerpot, a painting, etc. Anyway, there's a ton of stuff."
The situation was similar on my side.
The room's layout roughly matched the other side.
"We can just match them one by one. How about starting with the books?"
Dayeon chattered on without lifting a finger.
Normally I would have been furious, but I had gotten used to it, so I just let it slide.
After checking the bookshelf in Dayeon's archive,
I arranged the books in the same order.
Likewise, I placed the vase on the desk and hung the painting just like the one on the other side.
The archive was starting to look roughly similar. But then, a difference emerged.
[You have acquired a Rose Bouquet.]
This very rose bouquet.
The vase in Dayeon's archive had only a single rose in it.
On the other hand, there was a large bouquet of roses in my archive.
*Does this mean I'm supposed to split it in half?*
I counted the number of roses in the bouquet. Just as I thought, there were 19.
Combined with the one on the other side, that makes 20. A perfect number.
Careful not to get pricked by the thorns, I divided the bouquet into one of 10 and one of 9.
[You have acquired a 10-Rose Bouquet.]
[You have acquired a 9-Rose Bouquet.]
Then, I placed the 10 roses into the empty vase on the desk.
Now, the remaining bouquet was for Dayeon.
"Here, take this."
"What's this?"
"What do you think it is? It's a bouquet."
I passed the bouquet through the hole.
Dayeon then stared blankly at the rose bouquet I offered her.
"Is this... a proposal?"
"What kind of nonsense are you spouting now—"
"Isn't it a bit too soon? How long has it been since we met?"
"No, I mean—"
Before I could finish, Dayeon took the bouquet.
"Still, I'll accept it, considering the thought you put into it."
"...Stop joking and put it in the vase."
"Okay. Our memories shouldn't be allowed to wither."
"..."
Dayeon trotted over and placed the bouquet in the vase.
With that, the vase now held 10 roses, including the one that was originally there.
*Okay, the vase is done.*
I scanned the room carefully, looking for anything else that was off.
Looking closely, I saw the desk arrangement was misaligned. I carefully moved it, making sure not to drop the vase.
"It looks like everything's done, at least on the surface."
I glanced back and forth between the two archives.
The book arrangement, the desk position, the shelves, the vase, and so on.
They were roughly identical.
But the door remained locked.
"What's the problem?"
I asked Dayeon.
But Dayeon was staring so intently at the bouquet that she didn't notice me looking at her.
"Is there something on the flowers? Why are you staring like that?"
"I don't know. They're pretty."
Dayeon brought the bouquet to her nose and took a sniff.
"...As I thought, I can't smell anything."
"Then why did you smell them?"
"It's fascinating. It's been a long time since I've seen flowers like this."
Dayeon brought up an unexpected topic.
Her expression was as impassive as usual, but her tone had somehow softened.
"For ten years, I've only ever seen flowers like these in paintings."
"...Is that so."
"Thank you for letting me experience this."
Her tone immediately returned to normal.
She may have lost her emotions, but it seemed they weren't completely gone, as some of her feelings came through.
"Anyway, I asked if you know why the door isn't opening."
"Well, it's because they're not symmetrical."
"I know that much. I mean the exact spot. The location."
"You don't mean you didn't know?"
Dayeon put a hand to her mouth and widened her eyes.
She was trying to act surprised, but perhaps because she lacked emotion, she looked like a dead doll.
"...So where is it?"
I swallowed my pride and asked.
Dayeon nonchalantly tapped the wall.
"The wall?"
"That's all the hint you get. Look carefully."
I silently scanned the wall. The only thing there was a picture frame hanging right in the center.
"Are you talking about this?"
"Don't ask me. You have to think for yourself."
It was huge, about the size of a person's torso.
The frame held a painting that looked like one I'd seen in the art room.
It was a landscape. A red sunset was falling behind a vast meadow.
*A vast meadow?*
I had a nagging feeling. I immediately checked the painting in my archive.
The red sunset was the same, but in a corner of the vast meadow, a single tree stood alone.
"Found it."
"Took you a while. You seem to have tunnel vision. You need to broaden your perspective."
"Shut up."
The difference between the paintings in the two archives.
It was the presence of a single tree.
"The problem is how to make these two the same."
For one, drawing a tree on the meadow painting was next to impossible.
I had no brush, let alone paints or colored pencils to add color to the painting.
The reverse was also true. Even if I wanted to erase the tree, I had no eraser.
*Is there another way?*
A way to make the two paintings identical.
I was pondering that very method.
"Do you really need to make the paintings the same?"
"Of course. They have to be symmetrical."
Hearing this, Dayeon tilted her head 45 degrees.
"To make the two rooms symmetrical, do the paintings absolutely have to be identical?"
"Well..."
The retort died on my tongue.
*Wait a minute.*
Strictly speaking, the essence of this archive wasn't the painting, but the entire room.
The painting was just a means to create the archive's symmetry.
In that case, I just had to change that means to fit the situation.
"Get it now?"
"...Sort of."
I took the painting out of the frame and held it up.
I carefully flipped it over, making sure not to drop it.
"If the paintings are preventing symmetry, then just get rid of them. A paradigm shift, you could say."
"You could have told me that earlier."
"It's no fun if I tell you from the start."
I turned the painting over to its back. And then, something new appeared.
"...It's a mirror."
The back of the painting reflected my face perfectly.
At the same time, the solution to this puzzle began to reveal itself.
*So that's how it was.*