Chapter 10

~Ib~

Kasey, Mary, and I continued walking until we reached the next room. There were many doors and lots of different paintings around. One of the doors was blocked by some odd red gas... We stayed away from it. Near where we came in, there was a locked door and a painting next to it called "Fisherman."

"...There's nobody there, though," Mary said, looking at the picture.

We went inside another room near the entrance. Inside, there were three mannequin heads on separate tables of the room. Next to one of the heads was a tree key, which we pocketed. There was also a painting in the room called "Lady Without her Umbrella."

We exited the room. While searching around, we found a vase near a painting called "Tattletale." It was a painting of lips, and it reminded me of the lips back in the green room.

We continued looking around. There was another door with a painting next to it. The painting was titled "Heavenly Thread." We opened the door and went inside. The room had no color at all — even Kasey, Mary, and I were all black and white!

"What's this place...?" Mary asked. "There's no color!"

"It's so dull and boring," Kasey complained.

There was a large gap in the floor. On the other side of the room, there was a key sitting on a table, but we couldn't get it. There was also a big painting, but we obviously couldn't read what it was called. On this side of the room, there was a floating palette and brush. "It's like there's someone there..." Mary remarked.

Looking closer, I saw that there was a rainbow on the canvas. A black-and-white rainbow, but a rainbow nonetheless.

There was nothing else in the room, so we left and went to search around a bit more. We found another painting titled "Selfless Guard." I remembered it from the art gallery. There was a door next to it, but there was a password on the door. We had to put in a name of the picture it displayed. Kasey recognized it as "Marvelous Night." We put in the name. The door clicked open and we went inside.

The room was kind of like a library. There were five bookshelves. One of the books was titled "A Girl's Last Days." It read, "Once upon a time, there was a little girl. The girl went with her parents to an art gallery. But all of a sudden, the girl realized that she was lost... She searched through the dim gallery, but found neither her parents nor the exit... Scared, helpless, lonely, hungry, and thirsty, she fell and hurt herself, putting her body past the limit..." Hands trembling, I turned the page. The last page was an illustration of a collapsed girl... I shuddered and quickly put the book back.

Another book was called "Collected Works of Guartena." It contained paintings by Guartena in alphabetical order. There was an L, G, and J page. We decided to look through all of them, starting with "L."

"The Lady in Red" (6210)
"It was said that he based this on a lover he had at the time, but he has denied this claim. In truth, Guertena based it around the ? women who attempted to court him for his inheritance."

"The ? Fish" (6235)
"Despite being grayscale, this curious piece makes clever use of shading and angles to give the impression of color. The ? depiction of even the ? evokes a wide variety of emotions in people."

"Juggling" (6223)
"A work based on a juggler he saw at the circus with his grandchild. As it is extremely rare for Guertena to use real people as models, this piece is highly valuable."

Without Garry or Terra here, I couldn't read some of the words...

There was a keyhole in the wall near the bookshelves. We placed the tree key inside. Nothing seemed to happen, but now we couldn't get the tree key back. Mary frowned. I wondered if that did anything...

~Garry~

There were two more doors. One of the doors was near the entrance from which we came. It was locked, too. The doorknob was strangely cold... I backed away from it. Lastly, we checked the door that the doll was sitting next to. It wasn't locked, but I felt a bit nervous about going inside. I had to pretend otherwise, though, because I couldn't let Terra see I was nervous. I was supposed to be the "strong" one. I turned the knob and pulled the door open. We went inside.

There were seven pedestals in the room, and a large canvas hanging in the back of the room. Underneath the canvas, there was a notice. It said, "Collect the seven balls of paint... Then the room will be colored, and your bridge will be made."

"Balls of paint...?" I thought out loud. "I wonder where those are..."

"No idea," Terra replied.

We exited the room. As we passed by the room with the tree shape over it, we saw that the tree shape had somewhat grown. I tested out the knob. The door opened with ease. The room was full of books. We were not able to access a small area of the room because it was blocked by bookshelves we weren't able to move for some reason. I sighed and the two of us searched through the rest of the room.

There was a notice on the wall that said, "No checking out books."

Terra grunted. "This place has such stupid rules..."

I sighed. "Though it's unfortunate, I have a feeling we shouldn't break any of the rules..."

"Yeah, you're right," she said. "It's just... a little unfair, you know?"

I couldn't agree more.

One of the books we found was titled "Theories of the World." It read, "More valuable than sharing existence is making fantasies into reality."

"I'm not sure what that means..." I said.

"Me neither," Terra said, shrugging.

We came across a small book that said, "Conquer the Unknown and Know No Fear."

There was a painting in the room called "Enlightenment." It depicted a close-up of an eye staring to the left. I recognized it from the gallery.

Another book was titled "The Essentials of Color." I skimmed through it. It described the uses of color...

"Hm?" I mumbled. A green sphere object appeared next to me and Terra.

"What's that?" Tera asked, peering at it.

I gently poked at it. "It's soft, but I feel I could break it..."

"Maybe this is a ball of paint?" Terra wondered.

Suddenly, the object vanished. We went back to the pedestal room. Sure enough, the green ball of paint was there, floating above one of the pedestals.

"I guess we're supposed to collect all of them," I said.

Terra smiled. "Then we'd better start looking."

We found a yellow ball of paint near the area where we had first entered. It vanished as well. When we walked back up, the doll wasn't there anymore. We looked around until we saw it. It was now sitting next to the tree room. As usual, it had a new message next to it. It said, "Hey, what're you two doing? I wanna play too..."

Deciding to ignore the doll, we continued searching around. We went into the red gas room. There was a violet ball of paint there. Terra said, "I'll get it this time. Stay here."

I wanted to argue and tell her to stay behind instead, but I could tell there was no convincing her. I sighed and nodded. She quickly ran to the ball of paint, and once it vanished, she hurried back to me. We rushed out of the room and healed her rose. Then together, we set out to find more balls of paint.

~Ib~

The three of us went back to the room with the mannequin heads. I felt like we needed to do something with one of them. I shared this thought with Kasey and Mary. Kasey looked at each of the heads carefully before she finally settled on the one in the middle. "Let's try this one," she said.

"Wait... What are you gonna do?" Mary asked.

Kasey paused for a moment. "Take it off the table, I guess."

"Huh? Take it off? What if it breaks?" Mary said. "And it's so heavy..."

"We're taking it off," Kasey said firmly. She didn't say it in a mean way, but... I was a bit surprised. She seemed so confident in her choice.

"O-Okay," Mary stammered. "If you're that sure, then I won't stop you..."

We pushed it off the table. It didn't break, but it had a red substance (tears?) running down its face. The weight of it caused cracks in the floor where it landed. A red gas came out of the cracks. It looked very similar to the gas that was blocking one of the doors outside.

Without touching the other mannequin heads, we left the room. While we were walking around, Kasey suddenly said, "Hey, look! The painting changed!" She pointed to the "Fisherman" painting.

We walked over to get a better look. The fisherman was in the painting now, unlike last time. "That's weird..." Kasey murmured. "I wonder why it changed...?"

~Garry~

"Hey, Garry," Terra called. She was standing in front of the "Fishing Hook" painting, studying it intently.

"Yes?" I walked over to her. Then I saw why she looked so intrigued. The painting changed. Instead of just blue, the fishing hook was actually there. And it was coming out of the painting...!

Suddenly remembering the umbrella I found earlier, I pulled it out and put it on the hook. The hook, along with the umbrella, went into the painting and disappeared out of sight.

"That was... weird," Terra said.

We looked at some of the other paintings again. When we looked at "Juggling," a voice suddenly came out of the painting and started talking to us. It said, "What year was I born?"

"Dammit... I can't remember," Terra muttered. She looked at me. "Can you?"

I thought back. I did recall reading the year one time... What was it? It started with a 6... and then... a 2? Then another 2, I was pretty sure... And lastly a... I paused, trying to remember. It was... a 3. Yes, that was it! 6223!

I said the number out loud, speaking to both Tera and the painting.

"C-o-r-r-e-c-t!" the painting declared.

A blue ball of paint appeared next to us. Then it vanished, like all the others had. Terra and I thanked the painting and moved on.

~Ib~

When we looked at the "Fisherman" painting again, Mary exclaimed, "...Hey, look... He caught something!"

The fisherman had caught an... umbrella? He tossed the umbrella onto the floor through the panting. We took it. I got an idea. What if we gave the umbrella to the lady in the painting? Kasey and Mary agreed with my idea and we went back to the mannequin head room.

Kasey held the umbrella in front of the painting. The lady took it and it started raining in the picture. Then, all of a sudden, it began to rain in the room, too!

"Huh? Huh?!" Mary said. "It started raining in the room!"

The title of the painting was now changed to "Lady With Her Umbrella." I smiled. The three of us left the room.

~Garry~

We just needed three more balls of paint... but where were they? They were a lot harder to find than I originally thought...

We headed into the red gas room again. There was water dripping from cracks in the ceiling. It dripped directly into the vase, which was now filled with water.

"Now we can pull the cord...!" Terra said.

Together, we ran to the cord, wincing as petals fell off our roses. We stopped by the vase, replenished both of our roses, and went over to the cord. We tugged on it. The red gas suddenly faded from the room.

"Ah... That strange gas is gone," I said.

"That was kind of pointless," Terra said. "I mean, there isn't anything else in the room, anyway..."

"Oh well. Better safe than sorry, right?"

"Yeah, I guess."

We exited the room and walked around aimlessly until we heard a sound coming from the tree shape over the door. The tree suddenly had apples on it. We went inside and discovered that the bookshelves that were blocking a portion of the room were now gone. In that area of the room, there was a pink ball of paint, a few more bookshelves, and a painting of an ear called "Strained Ear." Once the ball of paint vanished, we searched through the books.

A book we found was called "Collected Works of Guartena." It contained paintings by Guartena in alphabetical order. There was an S, H, and M page. We looked through them all, starting with "S."

"Serpent's Spirit" (6248)
"Beginning with this piece, Guartena began his focus on abstract art. But at the time, cubism was more popular, leaving Guartena's various abstract works largely ignored."

"The Hanged Man" (6219)
"Guartena painted this as a page filler while working for a magazine. Once this illustration became renowned, it sold for a limited time as an actual tarot card using the picture. Presently, it is nearly impossible for one to find the tarot card."

"Mary" (?)
"The last work of Guartena's life. While the girl appears almost lifelike, naturally, she is not based on a real person."

Terra visibly tensed up. My fingers gripped on the book. I turned the page. There was a familiar painting on the other side of the page...

It was... Mary.

"W-Why...?" The book slipped from my hands and clattered onto the floor. "It can't be... that's..."

"Mary!" Tera shouted. "I knew it! I knew we couldn't trust that —"

"She doesn't exist?" I blurted, interrupting Terra before she could finish her sentence. I preferred not to hear whatever foul thing she was about to say... "What does that mean...?!"

"She's with Kasey and Ib right now!" Terra screeched. "Do you realize that?! My sisters are walking around with a painting!"

"We have to get to them!" I exclaimed. My gaze flickered to the "Strained Ear" painting. The ear was moving, as if it was... listening to what we were saying. It couldn't... hear us, could it?

I didn't want Terra to worry more than she already was, so I ignored the ear and didn't mention it to her. We rushed out of the room. Right away, I noticed that the doll was no longer sitting next to the door. Where was it...? After looking around a bit more, we found it next to the door with the cold handle. The message next to it read, "I picked up something good... I'm making it my treasure!"

I peered at the doll. "Oh? Its stomach looks bigger somehow..."

"You've got to be kidding me," Terra groaned. "Don't tell me we have to search it!"

"Well..."

"I don't even want to touch that thing!"

"I can do it, if that's what you prefer," I offered.

Terra sighed. "That'd be nice of you, Garry, but... I can't let you do that."

"It's fine," I assured her. "Honestly, I'm okay with it." Maybe I wasn't so okay with it... but I didn't tell Terra that.

She didn't look convinced, but she said, "Okay... If you insist..."

I tore the doll's stomach open, trying to do it carefully. A red ball of paint came out of its stomach. I picked it up, and as usual, it vanished. Then the doll squeaked some unintelligible things and ran into the room next to it.

"That d-didn't sound good..." Terra stuttered. She reached for the doorknob. "The door's... unlocked..."

I swallowed. "...Perhaps we should... check it out...?" I couldn't keep the question out of my voice.

"R-Really?" she stammered. "Um... okay..."

She grabbed my hand and held it tight as walked into the room.

I'd never seen something so horrid in my life. There were dolls... everywhere. Small dolls, large dolls... All with the same disturbing red eyes. One of the dolls looked strangely familiar, despite the fact that they all basically looked the same. That particular doll was wearing a pink dress. Terra and I inspected it. It had a torn-open stomach... It was the doll that had been following us! A message appeared on the wall.

"Welcome to our home..."