Error, Opportunity (2)
…One of the two, it said.
The woman and I both froze, our faces draining of color.
“?!”
“…Cross over? Just like that?”
The woman's voice trembled so badly it was almost unrecognizable.
There wasn't even a bridge between us and the Curator, and yet we were told to cross over. The wording was strange, somehow.
It was that word that made me conscious again of the transparent floor beneath my feet.
Crossing over meant there was a gap between us. And below that gap was still an darkness with no end in sight.
[Yes. Please, come to me.]
The Curator's words felt less like real sound and more like a signal being fed directly into our ears.
And that signal was gentler than usual—which was exactly what made it so chilling.
“Why does only one of us have to go?”
[…….]
The woman spoke up again, lodging her protest before I could.
But the Curator gave no answer.
Why we had to cross over. What process would unfold if only one of us did. We were forced to choose without knowing anything at all.
“You said this was a joint quest!”
The woman's voice echoed hollowly through the void.
Was it because she was so full of fear? Even her scream felt less like fury and more like something pitiful, worn thin.
“…….”
“…….”
The Curator stood motionless, like a doll whose spring had wound down.
It had the air of something that would not budge an inch until we made our choice.
The woman and I simply stood there, silently watching each other.
Of course she'd want to be the first to reach the Curator.
At a fork in the road, going to the side of the floor's administrator was the safer bet.
But even so… this isn't right.
“Don't go.”
“…!”
I could feel how badly she wanted to move her feet, so I hurriedly caught her attention first.
Grabbing her hand and physically holding her back might backfire, so I appealed to her with words instead.
Even then, I kept my tone rational and level, careful not to let it slide into the desperate, fear-tinged pleading that might make her suspicious.
The woman's quivering pupils turned toward me.
“The Curator is trying to confuse us.”
“…….”
When she only pressed her lips together without answering, I moved first, playing my hand quickly.
I have to stop this from turning into a fight. That's the only way we face the joint quest together.
A joint quest that pushed us toward separate paths? No matter how you looked at it, it contradicted the whole premise.
A process designed to split visitors onto different roads. And the very act of choosing might be the wrong answer itself.
To win her over, I kept my eyes wide open and met her gaze head-on.
However.
“Visitor A.”
In that instant, I knew at once. My persuasion wasn't getting through.
I could feel it in the sudden chill of her demeanor—she had drawn a firm line between us.
“You said visitors can always be replaced, didn't you? The tower already granted us the courtesy of a repechage. You really think it's going to go easy on us now?”
“…….”
Up until that moment I had done everything I could to convince her, but this time I had no rebuttal.
Because I couldn't guarantee that the woman was wrong.
Everything starts as an assumption. She and I are both still just guessing.
“Do you have any actual proof this is a deliberate attempt to mislead us, and not the quest's opening instruction?”
“…No. I don't have proof.”
I wasn't free enough to fabricate evidence just to keep her here.
Besides, she wasn't speaking out of raw emotion—she was calculating, coldly, in order to survive.
“If I break that word and end up becoming a Component… if I'm erased, then what?”
It was an utterly practical thought. From her, and from me.
We had each simply retraced the Curator's words and everything that had happened so far, and arrived at different conclusions.
On this tower, nothing can ever be certain. We walk on belief alone, leaning on possibility—nothing more.
“Every time until now, the quest location has been wherever the Curator stood. And—”
A possibility, a conviction—either one could end up being a death sentence.
But the woman had already poured her conviction into that possibility, and she laid out her logic in a sharper, clearer tone.
“If visitors can be replaced at any moment, then the replacing starts now, doesn't it?”
“…….”
“I have to survive. No matter what, I have to climb this tower.”
The words sitting on her tongue seemed ready to crumble, she was so tense.
Even so, her will was firm. She was still afraid, but her hesitation over the choice seemed to be over.
I could probably shove her aside and reach the Curator's side first if I really wanted to.
But I chose to stay where I was.
Just as she had staked herself on her possibility, I would gamble my fate on my own guess.
To see for myself the meaning of the 'sublime sacrifice' the Curator had mentioned—and of 'joining together.'
“If that's truly what you want, then go.”
“⋯⋯.”
“But I'd rather we both stay right here, and honor what the joint quest is supposed to mean.”
I knew that no amount of argument would change her mind now.
Still, I wanted to try. I didn't want either of us to meet a fate where one of us was sacrificed.
It wasn't that I wanted to cooperate happily with Visitor B, who stood in the same space yet had already split from me onto another branch of choices—
It's that the Curator knows exactly how to toy with a visitor's heart, and I can't afford to take that bait so willingly.
Given everything the Curator and the tower had done so far, I suspected they would favor the visitor who refused to swallow that bait.
Which was all the more reason I stubbornly committed to not moving.
“We're barely scraping by as it is, crawling at the Curator's feet—why do you keep digging in your heels? Aren't you scared?”
“⋯⋯.”
My relentless persuasion must have finally gotten under her skin; irritation and fear both bled into the end of her words.
She had chosen her path to survive, after all. She probably felt suffocated at being cast as the villain for it.
“I'll pray that you make it out alive too.”
With those final words, the woman blessed me—trying, perhaps, to shed a sliver of her guilt.
Though it felt less like a blessing and more like a declaration that she was leaving me behind here.
“Hah, haa—”
Steadying her ragged breath, the woman began to move, slowly.
Her foot slid forward, just barely, across the floor.
At her movement, the Curator's arm, frozen until now, finally lowered again.
And the Curator's shoulders twitched, as if about to speak.
[Some have lost their way on the border between sublime sacrifice and hypocrisy, you know.]
“S-sorry, what?”
It was the same words we'd heard when we first stood at attention in the Boundary.
As the frigid air settled over the space, the woman let out a shrill cry of panic.
[That time, it was a mistake.]
The distance between an ominous premonition and reality had never been long.
[This time, it is intentional.]
“AAAAAGH…!!”
Invisible cracks spidered across the transparent floor beneath the woman's feet.
Then a hole opened, as if a single tile had been removed, and through the gap a vivid darkness peered out.
The sharp scream did not last long.
The woman's foot dropped away, sucked downward, and her scream—torn like ripping fabric—faded far into the dark.
She fell….
The instant the darkness swallowed her, the hole in the floor sealed itself back into a transparent pane.
My mind went blank. Speechless, I stared down at the spot where she had been standing.
Visitor B
Boundary Quest
FAILED
While my mind was still struggling to process what had happened, the Curator stamped its seal on the woman's ending.
I had guessed that choosing the fork in the road might itself be the wrong answer.
But the quest hadn't even started yet—and to think they would really eliminate her so pointlessly.
“How the hell does THIS count as a failure?!”
The fury that had been coiling inside me lashed up my throat.
As my shout rang through the Boundary, the Curator shrugged its shoulders as if it understood nothing at all.
Even that sly up-and-down movement of its shoulders had become insufferable by now.
[You anticipated this too, didn't you, Visitor A? Ah—though I suppose it was a guess, not a prediction.]
“I don't care which of those words it is. Either way, if you're granting a second chance, you should give us the chance to try anything!”
It was less a rational protest than a lashing out at a reality I couldn't accept.
Of course, this was a place where anyone could vanish at any moment. Even so, I hadn't wanted a life to disappear this meaninglessly.
[That visitor disregarded a god's prophecy.]
“…A god's prophecy?”
[Would an omnipotent god wish mere mortals to have greater power?]
“!! Ah—the Greek and Roman gods.”
[The god wished only for the sacrifice a human could make. For nothing but beautiful goodwill.]
In that instant, a line from the old Prometheus quest echoed in my ears as if it had just been spoken.
'There will be a sublime sacrifice in the outcome.'
The 'sacrifice' the god had prophesied, and the Curator had repeated.
[Visitor B hesitated between sacrifice and human greed, and failed the quest by the narrowest of margins.]
[She did deliberate over sacrifice until the very end, at least.]
[She was eliminated within seconds of the threshold, so she was granted one final chance.]
“…….”
[Even a hypocrisy that was skin-deep could have been maintained, if she'd wished. But she couldn't even keep up the pretense.]
What a joke. This from the one who mocked my own petty hypocrisy.
Even if you called it strategic—if she had chosen to stay with me, could the woman have avoided being erased?
I exhaled roughly and glared at the Curator.
“Was it so wrong of her to choose the path that kept her alive?”
[…….]
“You're the one who mocked my worthless goodwill.”
[Did I?]
“Everyone here is just struggling to climb this tower, to see their wish granted. And for that, she's supposed to be condemned as a bad person?”
She hadn't even sprinted for the Curator while shoving me aside.
She hadn't done anything vicious—no breaking my legs, no pushing me down.
[She discarded the chance she had been given. I merely administered the conditions for quest success.]
“That action had nothing to do with the Boundary quest.”
[She failed to uphold the god's counsel—the 'sublime sacrifice'—twice.]
Repeated words, repeated logic, like a video rewound and played again.
No other interpretation was permitted.
Back in Oz's museum, it worked because it was interpretation of art.
But now we were debating laws the tower itself had set—and arguing against those was pointless.
[That is why she was eliminated. I hold no other feelings about it.]
“I'm sure you don't.”
My strength drained out of me, and my body sagged.
I had pleaded her case as eloquently as I could for a woman I'd only just met, but nothing changed.
Truthfully, I'd known it would end this way—just as my last attempt to win her over had failed.
But I tried, at least.
[By the way, Visitor A.]
[Defending and pitying someone who abandoned you to survive alone. Doesn't that make you angry with her?]
At the Curator's question, I shook my head immediately.
The woman had only made a choice in order to live.
No doubt she'd had in mind a path where she survived and I was the one eliminated.
“I'm too worn out to be disgusted with everyone on all sides.”
[…….]
“And it seems like getting angry at one person is quite enough.”
Though whether 'person' was even the right word—whether the target was even human—was ambiguous.
It was a torso with human arms grafted on. I didn't know whether to call it one being or one person.
Still, needling it with polite sarcasm felt like a small act of revenge.
Strange how it has no face, and yet I can tell perfectly well when its temper turns.
I knew the torso disliked it every time I mocked it with honorifics.
So I deliberately smothered my hotter emotions down further, and needled it all the more.
[Understood.]
[Visitors who radiate such overt disgust are rare, so I shall receive it with interest.]
Did the flow of air shift ever so slightly, or was that my imagination?
Before long, I knew instinctively—the quest had begun in earnest.
[Then, following the start of the quest, I shall summon Visitor C from another dimension.]
Snap—!
The Curator struck its thumb against its middle finger, producing a sharp crack.
And then the darkness that had been visible beyond the transparent floor and ceiling slowly began to turn to light.
“?!!”
My vision went white, as if I had stepped into a field of snow.
It was so blindingly white that the Curator in front of me vanished from sight.
[Please—do your best.]
The Curator's voice receded, distant and faint, just like that woman's scream.
…Am I falling downward too, just like she did?