Kanae knew that it was best for her own sanity not to question her situation. She knew that no amount of thinking would give her a clear explanation, but that hadn't stopped her from theorizing. The attic could have been some sort of virtual reality chamber. Kanae thought she'd seen something like that in a movie before.
She couldn't remember getting into a machine like that, though. Maybe she had been drugged. That would explain the way that she'd felt when she first woke up. Maybe that was the only thing that was happening. She had never been high before, but she knew that some drugs caused extreme hallucinations. Kanae hoped that the effects of whatever substance she had been given would wear off soon.
That theory was the first one she had come up with that she was able to test. If she waited long enough, and things went back to normal, then she had been drugged. It wasn't the most scientific way to figure things out, but it was better than nothing. So, she decided to sit and wait for the drugs to wear off. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before she got bored of that. Kanae had always been a patient girl, but the attic was testing her limits.
She decided to sing to herself, both to keep herself entertained and to hear the sound of a human voice. She had always enjoyed singing, but she wasn't particularly passionate about it. She had a soft, thin voice that nobody had ever considered impressive. Maybe if somebody would have complimented her on it, Kanae would've practiced singing more often.
Still, she didn't have anything else to do. She sang all of her go-to karaoke songs at least twice each, then the songs she half-remembered from the radio. Eventually, she felt a tickle in the back of her throat. She stopped because she didn't want to lose her voice if someone came to rescue her. She might have needed to tell him her personal information if she wanted to get home safely.
After she stopped singing, Kanae realized that she didn't have any other ideas to keep her entertained while she waited to be saved. If only she was more creative. She wished she was stronger as well. Then, she might have been able to break through the walls or the floorboards. If she was smarter, she would have been able to figure out what was going on. If she was braver, she might have been willing to risk more in her efforts to escape.
If she had been anyone other than Kanae Ohtori, this wouldn't have happened to her.
Kanae knew that wasn't true, but there was no one around to tell her that. It was hard to convince herself that she was still alive, much less that she deserved to be alive, without anyone around to confirm that it was true.
"This isn't my fault," Kanae whispered to herself.
She looked down at the floor. She tried to pretend that it was stained with raindrops, not the tears that were falling from her eyes. She tried to imagine that she was Cinderella, locked up while her stepsisters and stepmother desperately tried to impress the prince at the ball. Any moment now, her fairy godmother would appear and create a stunning white carriage out of a pumpkin.
But there wasn't a pumpkin in sight. She wasn't Cinderella. She didn't have stepsisters, a stepmother, or even a real prince. She had a fiancé and a mother, and she knew that they both loved and cared about her. But neither of them had come to rescue her.
"Bad things happen to good people," Kanae said.
They happen to bad people too, she thought to herself.
"They happen to everyone," she concluded, out loud. "But I'm a good person."
Was she? What gave her the right to decide that? She knew that she wasn't a bad person. She had never done anything to hurt someone else. At least, not on purpose. But she hadn't ever done anything heroic either. She had definitely been obedient, but had she ever truly been good?
As Kanae Ohtori sat with her arms wrapped around her knees, she realized something troubling. If she stayed in the attic for the rest of her natural life, the world would not be any worse or better off. Was she really that insignificant? Would her disappearance matter to anyone?
She was sure that her mother was probably worried about her. Akio might have even been worried too if he had noticed that she was gone. But both of them would surely be doing just fine without her.
She had friends, who were probably missing her, but no one she was particularly close with. Even though she was generally pleasant to be around, there were too many barriers to being Kanae's friend. She was the Chairman's daughter. She had a fiancé before she had even graduated. And now, she was trapped in an attic that was floating in outer space.
No matter how hard Kanae tried to distract herself from that fact, her mind always came back to it. No matter how hard she tried, nothing could distract her from it. She tried reflecting on the past, recounting the plot of her favorite TV show, meditating. None of it worked.
She was trapped. There was no ignoring it anymore. She had lost track of how much time had passed. Had it been minutes? Hours? She wasn't hungry or tired yet. So, it couldn't have been that long. Yet, it felt like she had been locked up in the attic for weeks.
"I'm sorry! I don't know what I did to deserve this, or if I even did anything at all, but I'm sorry. Someone, please help me. Anyone, please help me."
It was pointless, Kanae knew that. Who would come to help a bland, uninteresting girl who had never done anything that mattered in her life? The only thing she was good for was making someone more impressive in comparison to her. She was a bobblehead, destined to smile and nod on someone's desk for all of eternity. But people must have gotten bored with her because nobody even wanted her for that anymore. She had been locked in the attic to gather dust in obscurity.
"Is this…" Kanae didn't finish the thought.
Why should she have to? There was no one else around to hear it.