CHAPTER 2 - Wake Up
Mio's eyes were closed.
She was laying down.
With her eyes barely opening, she sees the usual morning sunlight filtering through her eyelashes, barely reaching her retinas.
Her vision is still blurry.
She feels tired.
She hears the familiar sound of her phone buzzing to wake her up.
She extends one arm to the side of the bed her phone usually is in to silence the alarm.
Her hand touches the ground.
It feels moist.
She keeps searching for her phone.
She doesn't find it.
Mio starts to regain consciousness.
Her vision and hearing begin to clear.
Her phone wasn't anywhere.
She was not in her bed. She was not in her room. She was not in the clubroom.
The yellowish morning sunlight quickly became the light of a dozen fluorescent lamps, and the buzzing of her alarm quickly became the low frequency hum of 120 hz, coming from the electricity powering the lamps above her.
Mio sits up, as she rubs her eyes with her left hand. She still was in her school uniform.
She readjusts her vision.
She opens her eyes.
She panics.
She finds herself sitting on a yellowish, carpeted floor, with moisture marks all over it.
The walls surrounding her were covered in a yellow, worn off wallpaper, with some old-fashioned patterns stamped on it. There weren't any windows on sight, either.
The roof was gridded, with several recessed light fittings with fluorescent lamps in them, emitting a yellowish light. Some fittings didn't have their prismatic acrylic cover, revealing the tube lamps inside.
There was no furniture, no decorations, and no other signs of life. It all looked like an empty, abandoned retail outlet.
Mio kept looking around her; she wasn't inside a typical room. She seemed to be in the middle of some sort of maze, without any doors, and only walls separating sections of the maze.
She stands up and remains on her spot, overwhelmed, confused, and terrified altogether. She looks down, and notices a thin plastic object on the floor: a pen.
She bends over to pick it up. She looks at it for several moments, in utter confusion. It didn't take her long to identify the pen: it was Ritsu's.
She had found it.
She quickly puts the pen inside the left pocket of her school uniform blazer, as she starts walking shyly across the maze, searching for any exits or any potential leads to an exit.
Despite the buzzing of the electricity, it all felt lifeless, silent… Devoid of any other presence.
-"H-Hello?"- Mio cries with a moderate volume, as if wanting to get a response, but not at the same time. –"Yui? Ritsu?"- She begins calling her friends, as if her brain was trying to comfort itself with the idea that all of this was just another prank made by Ritsu. Although deep inside, she knew that that wasn't true.
She keeps walking through the maze, but nothing changes. Everything seemed different every time, but it all remained the same: carpeted floor, fluorescent lights, old wallpaper.
Carpeted floor, fluorescent lights, old wallpaper.
Carpeted floor, fluorescent lights, old wallpaper.
Carpeted floor, fluorescent lights, old wallpaper.
The fear inside Mio's body increased by the second, like a crescendoing string ensemble setting the tone for a horror film, getting louder, and louder… And louder… And louder. Soon, to this horrible symphony of paranoia and loneliness, joined more thoughts, resounding like timpanis… Bellowing like dissonant brass instruments… Like the cries of a horrible choir. Where am I? Where are my friends? Is this a dream? Is this a nightmare? Am I dead? Does anyone know I'm here? Will I ever be found? How do I get out of here?
Mio stops walking. She puts her back against one of the decayed walls of the maze, takes both of her hands to her face, now covered in tears and sweat, and closes her eyes. Her breath is fast, near the point of hyperventilation. All she can taste is the salty combination of her tears and her sweat, pouring milliliter by milliliter into her mouth and reaching her tongue. She sits on the floor, her back still against the wall, and once sat down, she puts her head between her legs, while covering both sides of her head with her two arms.
-"Wake up… Wake up… Wake up… None of this is real. None of this is happening. It's all just a bad dream. It'll be over soon."- Mio begins to chant with a broken voice.
Wake up. The carpeted floor…
Wake up. The fluorescent lights…
Wake up. The old wallpaper…
Wake up… Wake up… Wake up… Wake up… Wake up… Wake up…! Wake up…! Wake up! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!
It was at that moment… That she felt the moist of the wall and floor trespassing her blaze and skirt from below. She opened her eyes… She was awake. It was all real. It was all happening. It wasn't just a bad dream…
And it was far from being over.
Mio, now severely panicked and hyperventilating, quickly gets up and starts running aimlessly through the maze, the walls flying past her like speeding cars. She looks everywhere she can, but everything is the same. Carpeted floor, fluorescent lights, old wallpaper. Her heart is beating faster and harder than it ever has in her life, trying to supply the rushing girl with enough blood to keep her running. The moisten, heavy air came in and out of Mio's mouth and nose, as her lungs tried to keep up with her frantic breathing, like the pistons of a combustion engine. But no matter how far Mio ran, no matter how desperate she was… It would all be the same.
Carpeted floor…
Fluorescent lights…
Old wallpaper.
Mio started feeling considerably tired. She started slowing down her pace, even though her mind was still racing, her thoughts spinning around like a twister. She felt as if her lungs were about to collapse and as if her heart was about to burst out of her chest. Her vision was starting to get blurry, and all she could hear was a deafening high pitched ringing noise. Her face was now covered in dry tears and her school uniform was sweaty. She had been running for about only 5 minutes, yet for her, it felt like an eternity running to nowhere.
As she weakly walks through the maze and doubles in the cornered walls, she notices a darker zone. She tries to readjust her eyes, and she sees it. She's now standing in front of what seems to be an extremely dark hallway. While the entire maze was always being illuminated by the yellowish lamps, this hallway was completely devoid of any source of light. At the end of the hallway, Mio sees what appears to be a flickering light, irradiating a colder light than the one emitted by the fluorescent lamps of the maze.
Mio doesn't know what to think anymore; she just wants to go home. She just wants to get out of there. So, hesitantly, she starts walking down the dark hallway, slowly recovering from her mad dash. Her steps are constant, as she was determined to know where this passage leaded to. She instinctively puts both her arms over her chest, as a natural reflex to protect her body. As she ventures deeper into the hallway, that seemed to stretch the more she walked, Mio fixes her eyes on the distant flickering lamp. She didn't focus on anything else. All she wanted to do was to reach it.
Slowly, the electric buzzing of the lamp and the flickering noises begin to get louder, as the light coming from it begins to occupy a larger portion on Mio's vision. As she gets closer, she starts to notice other details in the walls, different structures, and a completely different layout of the maze.
When she finally exits the hallway, she finds herself standing in front of a loosen light fixture, hanging from a few cables attached to a concrete ceiling. And then… She sees it. The maze had changed completely. Now, there were no more carpeted floors, nor moist yellow walls. Everything seemed to be made of concrete. There were thick columns, apparently constructed to hold the weight of the large concrete slab that comprised the ceiling. There were also some metal, semi-rusted pipelines running along the upper part of the walls. There was a constant dripping noise that mixed with the electric buzzing of the lamps, that now emitted a light with a whiteish/blueish hue. The floor had some puddles, byproduct of the moisture of the place, and quite possibly of some leaking pipes. It all looked like some sort of underground parking lot, or a storage facility.
Mio walked slowly and cautiously, avoiding to make any loud noises, and also walking around the puddles. Maybe she was thinking that, if she stepped on one of them, she'd end up sinking into a bottomless dark ocean.
As she kept navigating through the newly arranged corridors, she stumbled across the first individual object she's seen since she arrived in this place: a metal bottle on the floor. Its exterior was grey, and a little shiny, with a few scratches. She stared at it with distrust for a few seconds. Then, she couldn't resist the urge, and leaned over to pick it up. When she held the bottle in her hand, she could feel its weight, and hear its liquid contents. The bottle was full. She unscrewed the black plastic cap holding the water inside. She tries to take a look inside the bottle, but the lighting of the place couldn't reveal any more details. She could only distinguish a shimmering, colorless liquid, crashing against the metal walls of the bottle, and producing a faint splashing sound.
Mio was feeling tired, but mostly thirsty. She lost a lot of her energy during her panic attack, and she was starting to feel hungry and dehydrated. But there was still the lingering doubt: were the contents of the bottle truly water? Was it going to quench her thirst or cause any negative effects on her already precarious health? Well… There was only one way to find out.
She raises her right hand, the one she was holding the water bottle with, and takes the hole of the bottle to her mouth, but making it barely touch her dry lips. She opens her mouth just enough to let a thin flow of the contents of the bottle slide inside her mouth. The water moistens her dry tongue and throat. Mio felt as if the surfaces inside her mouth came back to life. It was like watering a garden during a drought.
Mio noticed something strange about the water; it had a taste. She flinched a little bit. "This shouldn't taste to nothing.", she thought. The strangest thing was that… It wasn't even a normal flavor. When we think of flavored water, we usually think of familiar tastes like lemon, strawberry, cucumber… Well, this liquid tasted like… Almonds. It was a weird sensation, because while it didn't taste bad, and was actually quite sweet, you wouldn't expect to taste a seed in liquid form.
But decided to replenish herself with whatever weird substance was in that bottle, Mio ignored all her thoughts and finally opened her mouth wider. She drank the almond flavored water, and in a matter of seconds, she had finished half the bottle. Almost immediately, Mio started to feel how her tiredness, hunger and thirst disappeared all at once. She felt exactly how she felt after having a slice of one of the various cakes Mugi brought to the clubroom.
The clubroom…
Her friends…
"Will I ever see them again?" Mio thought as she got hit with the realization that she was still in this weird place.
But her thoughts were interrupted abruptly when, suddenly, she hears a metallic sound behind her. It sounded like the cocking of a weapon… Like when somebody reloads a gun.
Mio starts feeling the sensation of panic once again, only that this time, the muscles in her legs wouldn't allow her to run like she did before. She was frozen. Paralyzed. She was so nervous that she didn't even dared to blink.
She started breathing heavily once again.
Mio starts to turn around, as slowly as she could as to not trigger an unwanted response from whatever was behind her. She could only see the scenery turn around with her head, as she tried to use her peripheral vision to try and make out who was behind her.
When she finally faces her back… Her eyes widen in shock… In horror.
Mio loses grip of the water bottle she was holding; as it hit the concrete floor, it produced a loud metallic hit that reverberated throughout the facility, and its contents spilled all over the floor she was standing on, spattering her maroon shoes. Everything was happening seemingly in slow motion.
At the same time, three red laser dots appear on her chest…