The world reassembled with the abruptness of a shove. One moment I was in non-being, a formless void, and the next I was standing, the damp, putrid air of the dead park filling my lungs. The jolt of reappearance was so violent it made me gasp, stumble forward, and fall to my knees on the soaked grass. My hands sank into the soft, cold ground. I was intact. Alive. And back at the beginning.
I stayed there, on all fours, head bowed, breathing raggedly. The initial panic of the first time had been replaced by a deeper, more cerebral terror. This was real. Death was not an escape. Madness was not an option, but a possible consequence. This place, this dimension, operated under a set of cruel, unknown rules, and I was its sole player in a game designed for me to lose.
I looked up. The park stretched before me, a painting of desolation under the perpetually gray sky. The solitary swing continued its rhythmic lament, a soundtrack to my misery. Everything was as before. Impeccable in its decay. As if my desperate race and final disintegration had never happened. But they did. The phantom memory of Yuki's pain and the oppressive presence of the shadows still clung to my psyche like tar.
For a long time, I didn't move. Fear had me pinned to the ground. Every fiber of my being screamed not to go back in there. What was the point? To die again? To experience that terrifying dissolution over and over? The idea of staying here, on this threshold between the staircase and the park, seemed the safest option. Don't advance, don't retreat. Just exist.
But the memory of the empty subway station and the infinite staircase reminded me that there was no "outside" to return to. This place was now my reality. And the only visible exit, the only feature in this entire landscape besides decay, had been that staircase on the other side of the park. I couldn't stay here forever. Inaction felt like a slower, more agonizing death.
With what felt like a Herculean effort, I stood up. My body trembled, but I forced myself to think. To analyze. Last time I had acted on instinct, running blindly. It was a mistake. This was not a test of speed or strength. It was a system. And all systems have a logic, however twisted.
What was the trigger? The bench. Approaching the bench had activated the memory. And the memory, with its load of guilt, had summoned the shadows. The conclusion was simple, though perhaps naive: I had to avoid the bench. If I didn't activate the memory, the shadows wouldn't appear. I could simply cross the park and reach the exit.
I felt a little better with a plan. It was a thin layer of logic over an abyss of terror, but it was better than nothing. I took a deep breath and took the first step of my second attempt.
This time, I hugged the outer edge of the park, as far as possible from the center and the damned bench. I walked slowly, every sense on high alert. My eyes scanned every twisted tree, every patch of darkness, expecting to see the shape of one of those nightmare creatures. The only sound, apart from the swing, was my own footsteps splashing on the waterlogged ground.
The air seemed to vibrate with anticipation. I felt as if the park itself was watching me, aware of my strategy and amused by my attempt to outwit it. I passed by the muddy sandbox. Out of the corner of my eye, I could almost see the figure of my eight-year-old self, laughing. I shook my head, forcing myself to focus on the present reality, on the decay surrounding me.
I was halfway across, almost abreast of the bench, but at a safe distance on the other side of the park. My heart pounded with a mix of fear and a glimmer of hope. Maybe it would work. Maybe I could just walk around the perimeter and...
The world folded.
There was no warning. One moment I was walking on dead grass, and the next the landscape liquefied around me. Vibrant colors spilled over the gray scene, the sound of cicadas drowned out the swing's moan. I was back. And it didn't matter where I was physically in the park; the memory wasn't tied to a place. It was tied to me.
Once again, it was Yuki. I felt the fabric of her yellow dress, the sun on her skin. But this time, the experience was infinitely worse. Because this time, I was conscious. I was a prisoner within her mind, a helpless spectator of a play whose tragic end I already knew.
"Kenji-kun is so slow!" I yelled in her voice, and my own mind screamed silently. No, stop. Don't go to the bench. Get away.
But her childish legs carried her running towards the center of the park. I saw myself, my past self, chasing her. Despair overwhelmed me. I struggled against her consciousness, trying to force a change, however small. Tell her about the gift now. Give it to her before Takeru arrives!
But my thoughts were just echoes in a chamber I couldn't control. I sat on the bench. I had the same conversation. I felt her sadness, her nervousness. And then, like an actor entering the scene at the precise moment, Takeru appeared with his beetle.
NO! I screamed in the silence of my captive mind. Kenji, don't leave. Stay! Look what you're doing to her!
But the child I was got up, fascinated by the insect, and ran off. The wave of Yuki's disappointment hit me with the force of a physical blow. This time, it was worse, because I felt it coming and I couldn't do anything to stop it. I was reliving my mistake, but with the added torture of omniscience.
The scene faded. The gray returned. And the shadows were there, waiting for me.
"I know!" I yelled, my voice broken with frustration. "I already know! I'm sorry! Is that what you want to hear?"
The whispers began, indifferent to my plea. "You forgot..." "She waited..."
This time I didn't run. What for? I stood still, trembling, as the black smoke figures glided towards me. "Leave me alone!" I begged.
They came closer, surrounding me. They didn't touch me, but I felt immense pressure, as if the air around me was solidifying. The weight of my guilt became a literal force, crushing me. I fell to my knees, then onto my chest. My vision compressed into a tunnel. The last sensation was of being pulverized under an unbearable load.
And then, the pull.
I was standing. On the threshold. The park was before me. The swing groaned.
Despair hit me with full force. Tears streamed from my eyes, hot and furious. I screamed, an animal sound of pure anguish and rage, a scream that the dead park seemed to swallow without a trace.
The third attempt was pure fury. There was no strategy. There was no caution. I just ran. I ran headlong into the center of the park, hoping that pure speed could get me to the other side before the system could catch me. I jumped over roots, dodged skeletal trees, my lungs burning.
It was useless. The world transformed midway through my run, and I found myself back in the yellow dress, stumbling on the summer grass. The memory replayed. Yuki's pain. My helplessness. And then death by crushing.
The fourth attempt was experimentation. Upon reappearing, I searched for a weapon. I grabbed a branch from a dead cherry tree. It crumbled into a dry, weightless powder in my hand. I tried to tear off one of the rusted chains of the swing. It didn't move, solid as if welded to the very fabric of reality. This world could not be altered. Its elements were props on a stage, and I was the only actor with the freedom to move, and to die. That time, the shadows cornered me against the twisted slide structure. I died again.
The fifth attempt was surrender. I didn't move from the threshold. I sat on the damp ground, hugged my knees, and refused to play. If I didn't go in, they couldn't catch me. If I didn't play, I couldn't lose. I stayed there, watching the park, as time passed, or didn't pass. The swing creaked. The sky didn't change.
After an eternity of stillness, the darkness in the corners of the park began to stir. The shadows formed anyway. And slowly, they glided out of the confines of the park and came towards me. Inaction was no defense either. The game was coming for me. The whispers enveloped me on the threshold, and my consciousness unraveled once more.
I reappeared. The pull now felt familiar, a welcome nausea because it was better than nothing. I no longer cried. I no longer screamed. I was empty. A hollow shell. I had broken against the walls of this level, and there was nothing left inside.
I got up for the sixth time. Or was it the seventh? I had lost count. The number no longer mattered. The only thing that mattered was the inescapable fact that I was here, and the park was there.
And then, at the bottom of that well of despair, something changed. A quiet, terrible understanding bloomed in the void. I had tried to avoid it. I had tried to reason with it. I had tried to outrun it. I had tried to ignore it. I had done everything I could not to confront it.
The goal was not to cross the park. The park was the goal. The shadows were not the monsters. They were the symptom. The disease was the memory, the truth I had buried for fifteen years. The level was not asking me to defeat it. It was asking me to understand it.
With a calm that didn't feel like my own, I began to walk. Not around the perimeter. I walked directly towards the center, towards the wooden bench under the dead cherry tree. My steps were slow, deliberate. The swing continued to groan, but it no longer sounded like a threat, but like a funeral lament.
I stood in front of the bench and waited.
The world transformed, as I knew it would. The warmth of summer, the colors, the laughter. But this time, when I found myself within Yuki's consciousness, I didn't fight. I surrendered to the experience. I let her feelings flow through me without resistance.
I felt her childish joy as she ran. I felt her genuine affection for the clumsy child I was. I felt her nervousness as she prepared her gift. And when my past self ran off, I opened the floodgates and let her disappointment wash over me. I didn't just observe it, I felt it. The sting of being forgotten. The silent conclusion that she wasn't important enough. The solitary sadness of sitting on that bench, while her friend's happy world continued without her. For the first time, I truly understood the depth of that small wound.
When the scene faded and the gray, dead world returned, I stood still. The shadows materialized around me, their smoky forms swirling in the still air. They approached. Their whispers began, but this time, I was ready.
"You forgot..." "I know," I said softly. My voice was firm. "She waited..." "I know." "You never came back..." "I know."
The shadows stopped moving. The chorus of whispers faded into an expectant silence. I looked at them, these incarnations of my guilt, and felt no terror, only a deep, exhausting sadness. They were part of me. To deny them was to deny myself.
The silence lingered. Then, slowly, one by one, the shadow figures began to dissolve. Not violently, but like smoke dissipating into the air. They vanished into the gloom of the park, leaving only silence and the occasional moan of the swing.
I was alone again. But the air felt lighter. The pressure was gone.
I looked across the park, past the bench. Where before there had been nothing but a line of skeletal trees, now there was something new. It was a stone structure, unmistakable and ominous.
A second staircase, identical to the one that had brought me here, ascended from the park floor into the impenetrable darkness above.
I had passed the level. The prize for facing my purgatory was entry into the next circle of hell. With heavy steps and a soul that felt a thousand years older, I walked across the park and headed towards it.