A loud noise startled Junpei awake, and his eyes snapped open. As they adjusted to the light, he realized that he didn't recognize his surroundings.
Junpei, powered by confusion, instantly shot out of bed; only to immediately have his head connect with something metal.
He rolled over and threw out his hand to steady himself, but he found himself groping at empty air.
His balance lost, and his still-fuzzy mind struggling to understand what was going on, Junpei tumbled down to the cold, grey floor.
"OOOOOOWWWCHGODDAMNIT! Gah! What the hell!?"
Junpei glared around the room, still trying to determine where he'd woken up. The fall had shaken the last cobwebs of sleep from his mind, and finally he understood where he'd fallen from.
It was a bed. A 3-level bunk bed, in fact. Junpei had fallen, apparently, from the topmost bunk. His shoulder hurt, his knee hurt, his hip hurt... His entire body hurt. He could feel a bump forming on his forehead, where he'd slammed it against the low ceiling.
He wondered if that bump was the reason he felt his vision wavering a bit, but that seemed unlikely. At first, he thought the tremor that ran through his legs was just another effect of his rude awakening, but as he looked around, he realized it was real... The whole room was shaking.
Was it an earthquake, he wondered. It didn't seem likely. It was shaking far too quickly for an earthquake. Then again, Junpei had no idea what it was, if not an earthquake. He tried to tell himself it was important. Junpei rubbed the growing bump on his head and gingerly climbed to his feet. His balance regained, he finally took his first good look around the room.
"Where... Am I...?" Junpei muttered to himself.
His pain momentarily forgotten in the face of the confusion of his circumstances, Junpei looked around the room once again. Minutes passed while Junpei struggled to get his bearings.
Then, as suddenly as they had begun, the tremors ceased.
A cold silence fell over the room.
From somewhere far away, Junpei could hear the sound of metal squeaking.
He felt his stomach tighten. There were a thousand things the sound could have been, but none of the things he could think of were good.
In an attempt to distract himself, Junpei looked around the room once more.
There was a stove that looked more antique than functional.
The 3-level bunk bed had mattresses that were so thin that they were little more than blankets.
On the other side of the room was an identical bed, and set in the wall between the beds was a slightly dirty iron door.
The first thing Junpei noticed about the door was the number roughly emblazoned across it.
On the surface of the door, in red paint, someone had written a large number "5".
"...Five? What could five mean?" Junpei thought.
Suspicious, and still utterly confused, Junpei approached the door, slowly.
Standing, at last, in front of the door, Junpei grabbed hold of the L-shaped handle. A push yielded no movement, and a pull the same result.
A few more tries cemented the truth in Junpei's mind: it wouldn't open. It didn't matter how much he pushed and shoved. The handle wouldn't budge.
Next to the door was an odd-looking device that reminded Junpei of a card reader.
It didn't take a genius to figure out that the odd-looking device was keeping the door shut.
Junpei knocked hard on the door and yelled out.
"Hey! Hello? Is anyone there!? Open the door!"
But there was no response.
Junpei threw his left fist into the door, and it was only at that moment did he realize something.
"What the hell is this..."
He wasn't really sure what else to say. On his left wrist was a bracelet of a sort he'd never seen before. In the center was a large LCD display. It looked like nothing else so much as a watch, but it clearly wasn't that. After all, it showed only a single number.
"Five... That's the same as the door..."
True, the numbers were the same, but he had no idea what that might mean. All he knew was that it was strange, and new, and he wanted it off. Junpei flipped his hand over, as if to remove a watch, but... The other side of the bracelet was solid: no buckle, no clasp, nothing.
He sighed, and flipped the thing back over. There were a number of rivets around the rim of the face. Perhaps... He pushed them, but nothing happened. On a watch, they might be dials for adjusting date or time, but on this bracelet they did nothing.
Junpei was at a loss. What was he going to do?
Growing more desperate, he began to tug at it.
"Urrrrng! Damn! Ugh! It's no good... Damn thing won't come off!"
A steel ring ran from the face, around Junpei's wrist, and back in to the face. He wouldn't be pulling the bracelet off any time in the near future.
"What the hell is the deal with this thing?!"
Frustration and desperation were beginning to mix as the reality of the situation began to dawn fully on Junpei. So much was happening, and none of it made sense. Junpei felt as though he were about to explode.
"Where am I!? And why the hell am I here!? Why! Why!? What the hell happened to me!?" Junpei cried out, but there was none to hear him.
It was at that moment that he noticed the window. The window was round, rimmed in riveted brass, like a window from an early 20th century ship.
"What...? Wait... Am I in a ship?"
Junpei walked slowly toward the window. He could see nothing beyond it but thick, impenetrable darkness. Junpei squinted, trying to see something...anything...
It was at that moment-
"What the-!? ...You gotta be kidding me! Wh-What the hell is going on here?!"
A crack split the glass of the window, and for a moment Junpei stared at it. Then the window burst, and water began to pour into the room.
"WHAT THE HELL! GODDAMN IT!" Junpei yelled, and spun around.
His feet slipping on the water already coming through the window, he ran for
the door.
"Hey! Anyone! Is anyone there!? C'mon, if you're there, say something!"
There was no reply.
As Junpei screamed, and pounded on the door, the water began to rise. It was now ankle-deep on the floor, and rising quickly toward his knees. Things were not looking good for Junpei. Not good at all. He needed to find a way out, and fast.
Junpei ran a hand across his forehead, brushing the sweat out of his eyes, and looked around the room. His eyes first landed on the bulletin board that hung above the sink. Above it was an odd looking card. Junpei took it and immediately examined it. It was a rectangular card with two distinctive halves, one with blue shapes, and the other with red shapes, and a line beneath them that ended with an arrow pointing to the right. He had no possible idea what this could signify, so he hurriedly shoved the small piece of paper into his pocket.
Even though he was under a time limit, Junpei knew he had to take things slow and think things through. Rushing would get him nowhere. Despite that, there was a part of his brain that screamed "GET OUT OF THERE!" as loudly as it could. His heart rate was at an all time high, he had never experienced such danger before. He paused for a moment, and steeled himself. He wasn't about to let his own mind be a room he had to escape as well.
Something in the corner of the room caught his eye, something he had not noticed before. Carefully he ran across the slick floor over to it. It was a mirror, with a piece of tape holding a red key up in the center. Junpei grabbed the key and shoved it into his pocket. He intended to leave immediately, but... Something stopped him. His reflection stared back at him from the mirror, but he had scarcely recognized himself.
"What's up with my face..."
His confusion was well-justified. His face was drawn and pale, and the dark circles under his eyes made him look as though he was nearly dead.
"Man... What the hell happened to me? How did I end up here...?"
Even as he said it, something in his mind opened, and a memory bobbed to the surface. It was the last thing Junpei remembered before waking up in the strange room.
It was past midnight when he came home. Junpei shuffled up the stairs, and opened the door to apartment 201. Inside was his apartment. A small, one-bedroom affair, that ran him about $630 a month. He moved into it when he entered college, and so far he'd been there for 3 years and 7 months.
He stepped inside and turned on the lights. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling blinked and flickered slowly to life, as if waking from a deep slumber. Their cold light illuminated the landscape he'd come home to so many times before... Everything was as he'd left it. The magazines piled up in the corner. The text books collecting dust. The CD cases covering the floor. The jeans and t-shirt he'd worn the day before, then tossed onto the floor.
There was one thing that didn't belong, however. There was a breeze. Breaths of cold night air wafted into his apartment, carrying the smells of autumn with them. The white curtain framing his window swayed gently in the wind. Huh. That's weird... Did I leave that open... Junpei walked toward the window, trying to remember if he'd closed it or not before he left.
One of the panes was hanging open. He stuck his head out, and looked around. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Junpei shrugged. He must have just left it open earlier.
He closed the window. Then it happened.
Junpei turned, and found himself face to mask with a man dressed all in black. The man wore a deep hood, and a bulky gas mask-his face was entirely hidden. Junpei tried to scream, but all he could manage was a strangled croak. He tried to step toward the man, but his legs could no longer support his weight. Junpei collapsed to the floor, a crumpled heap of limbs, like a discarded puppet.
Too late, he noticed the white smoke that was quickly filling his apartment. A small object, shaped distressingly like a grenade, sat on the floor in front of his face, hissing. The white smoke poured out of it at an incredible rate. The smoke had grown so thick that the details of Junpei's apartment began to fade into the white haze. He could feel his mind begin to fade as well, a white haze that was not the smoke creeping into the edges of his vision.
"Consider this a privilege. You have been chosen." A rasping voice wormed its way out of the gas mask. It was cold and harsh, and distorted in some way Junpei couldn't put his finger on.
"You are going to participate in a game. The [Nonary Game]. It is a game...where you will put your life on the line."
That was the last thing Junpei remembered. The white smoke overpowered him, the masked man faded from his vision, and he felt his consciousness fall away into the white mist.
"That's right! That guy with the gas mask! That son of a bitch must have taken me here!"
As to who the man was, or might have been, Junpei had no idea. Indeed, he wasn't even sure that his assailant had been a man. The voice had been cold and mechanical-likely passed through a voice-changer-and the body had been covered in a thick cloak.
Who was the man in the mask? "You have been chosen." Junpei remembered that much, but... What it might mean... That was beyond him.
Junpei had no idea where he was, or why he was there. There was only one thing from his memory that seemed important...
"You are going to participate in a game. The [Nonary Game]. It is a game...where you will put your life on the line."
"The Nonary Game, huh... What the hell is a Nonary Game!? Goddamnit!" With a yell, Junpei drove his fist into the mirror.
A splash of water against Junpei's leg reminded him that time wasn't on his side. He quickly overturned everything in the room in a desperate attempt of finding some sort of clue. His efforts rewarded him with a screwdriver, a blue key, another card like he found on the bulletin board, and a picture of a ship.
He firstly examined the picture frame and saw it was screwed in. Using his newfound screwdriver he made quick work of it and was left with just the picture. The ship in it resembled an old cruise liner from a long time ago. He flipped it around, and saw more shapes like the ones on the cards, only now they were paired with numbers.
Junpei now moved to the one object he left untouched earlier. A blue suitcase that laid upon the bottom bunk. On the side was a row of numbers and a keyhole. He stuck in the blue key and twisted. Nothing. He needed both the combination and the key to open this thing.
Reaching into his pocket, he retrieved the cards from earlier. Blue one one half, red on the other, and vice versa for the other. Perhaps the line below was indicating one begins left, then works to the right? He continued with this train of thought, and decoded the cards with the picture. His solution was 0263. After entering the combination in he twisted the key once more, and the briefcase was unlocked.
The briefcase had two indentations for objects to be put inside, but only one was filled. It was a file of some sort, and as Junpei looked through it he found a number of blue plastic cards inside. The file also contained instructions.
"Compute a [digital root] with the following steps: First, add all the numbers in question to one another. If you end up with something greater than a single-digit number, add the digits to one another. (For instance, if you have a double-digit number, add the number in the [tens place] to the number in the [ones place].) Keep adding digits in this manner until you have a single digit answer. That final single digit is your [digital root]. EX: The [digital root] of (678) would be... 6 + 7 + 8 = 21 ? 2 + 1 = [3] Therefore, the [digital root] of (678) is [3]. EX: The [digital root] of (1234) would be... 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 = 10 ? 1 + 0 = [1] Therefore, the [digital root] of (1234) is [1]."
At first Junpei was confused at how this could help him, but perhaps he was meant to find the digital root of a number with these cards?
He went to the last area of the room. A closet-like object with a curtain covering its contents. He flung open the curtain and found a red briefcase sitting inside. Assuming it was like the previous one, all he need do is decode the red portion of the paper with the picture and use the red key. Junpei repeated himself and turned the key, hearing a small click that he knew it meant it was now unlocked. Red cards laid on the interior, exactly like the blue ones from the other case.
The water was now at Junpei's shin, but he believed his work here was done. He waded over to the exit door with the keycard and splayed his plastic cards out like a fan.
"Digital root... The digital root of five?" Junpei thought to himself. His watch read five, and so did his door. He ran a quick mental calculation on what would give him the digital root of five with the instructions he read from the file.
"1, 6, 7. One plus six is seven, and seven plus seven is fourteen, four plus one is five! The digital root of five is 167!"
Junpei ran the three cards through the machine and pulled the lever. The door creaked with the sound of metal on metal, and slowly opened.
AN:Inspiration came to right this story because of how great I think 999's story is, and how it could work in written form. As it is a visual novel a large amount of text already exists, so by just using the transcript that's already there saves a lot of work, but there's several parts I wanted to add that didn't wind up happening or didn't have a text alternative, like the room escapes. Forewarn that things may deviate a little bit.