The AP-1 rolled along, filling the air with a low purr thanks to the new muffler. Tall grass brushed along either side of the vehicle and crackled as the treads crushed it to the ground. Occasionally, the sound was broken up by the soft, distant thud of a bolt landing in front of us. Toriko was throwing more of them than usual. In this mess, my eyes weren't going to be much more useful than anybody else's at spotting glitches.

It was an endless field of green. The grass would have come up to about waist height if I'd been standing. Seated on the AP-1, my point of view was only just above its level. It wasn't a great perspective. With the tops of the stalks swaying in the wind, it looked like I was floating in a choppy sea.

It did make our progress feel more satisfying. In front of us was a sea of grass. Behind us, we left a broad path flattened in our wake. If somebody were to look down from above, they'd see a long, snaking trail blazed through the field, with the AP-1 at one end, extending it further into the unknown.

"How far do you think this field goes?" Toriko asked.

It was about the third time that our conversation had turned to the topic. We had been driving through it for forty minutes or so, with no end in sight. Just like the last time that she'd asked it, I rose up in my seat, taking a better look around. Off near the horizon, some trees and buildings stood like islands above the ocean of grass. Didn't they say that you could see five kilometers or so from ground level? At this speed, another five kilometers of this would drive us mad with boredom…

"I dunno," I said, settling back into my seat. "It looks like it's pretty far."

"Think we should turn back? This tall grass makes me kind of nervous… we can't see more than a few meters in any direction."

"Toriko being scared of something, huh? That's new."

"I've been scared plenty of times!"

"Hmm…"

She wasn't wrong. I was sure that I'd seen her legitimately scared before. Her fear resistance was still off the charts. Like that time we ran from the Face Dogs—I'd frozen up in terror, and she'd been the one to keep her wits and drag me to safety. Even when the Kotoribako was performing unlicensed bird surgery on her guts, she'd been calm enough to talk about how I'd be okay after she died.

"… okay, then," I said. "Name three times."

"Three times I've been scared?"

"Right."

"Okay, but if I can, you're treating me to dinner when we get back."

"Fine, but only if I agree with your examples."

"Deal. Hmm, let's see. Well, there was the that you got that… Yama guy inside of you, and were saying weird things, and acting like you might collapse… That one was really scary. I thought I might lose you for good."

I winced. I'd expected her to need some time to think. Instead, she'd barely missed a beat before giving such a heartfelt answer. I felt a little guilty.

But not too guilty to stand my ground.

"Is that really the same as being scared, though?"

"Of course it is. I was scared that something might happen to you."

"Hmm. I dunno. I think that's more like concern for a friend."

"Whaaaa? You can't move the goalposts like that!"

"But I was talking about being scared in the traditional—"

Pkksh!

It was a sharp snapping sound, like a firecracker or a gunshot. I yanked the levers back, bringing the AP-1 to a stop as fast as possible. I didn't dare to take my eyes off the surroundings as I fumbled for my Makarov. I couldn't see anything, though. Just endless, swaying grass…

Only after a few seconds did I realize that Toriko wasn't acting quite so tense. She hadn't moved much at all, really. When I glanced over, she was squinting at the empty air, with a puzzled look on her face.

"Toriko? What's up? Did you see what made that sound?"

"Well… do you see that? Right ahead of us."

I looked forward, but once more saw nothing. There was just the same old grass. I gave it an extra pass with my right eye, but even that didn't turn up anything.

"… no?"

"There's kind of a dip in the grass. Look at the tops of it, maybe five meters ahead."

I rose a bit higher in my seat, and focused my attention more on the shifting tops of the grass stalks. It didn't take long for it to jump out at me. A short distance away from us, there was a patch where the grass dipped down to knee-height or so. That might not have stood out normally, but there was a shape to it, too. The center was lowest, and it sloped gradually up from there. The curve was pretty smooth, too. Like a giant had swiped up a bunch of grass with an ice cream scoop.

"That's kinda weird, yeah. What about it?"

"Watch."

Toriko palmed a bolt and pulled her hand back. She hesitated for a few seconds, peering at her target and lining up her shot. The bolt still went a bit wide when she threw it. So did the second one. The third was closer, and its course had a strange wobble toward the end.

The fourth, though, was right on the mark. It soared toward that depression on a normal ballistic arc, a meter or so above the top of the grass. Then, it pulled a pretty tight curve and arced back toward us, like Toriko had tugged it back with an invisible bungee cord. After about half a meter, it rebounded again, and…

Pkksh!

One moment, the bolt was there. The next, it just… vanished, with the same sharp noise. The sound was accompanied by a flash of motion, too fast to really register.

"Huh…"

"So…" Toriko looked over to me. "Is it a glitch?"

"I didn't see anything, but maybe it's hidden by the grass?"

I gave the area ahead of us another look. This time, I focused right on the spot where the bolt had vanished. I still didn't see anything, at least at first.

Just as I was ready to give up, the slightest glint caught my attention.

I was afraid of losing sight of it again, so I didn't even take my eyes off of it as I slipped down from my seat and took a few cautious steps closer. Slowly, it resolved into something more. My normal didn't see a thing out of the ordinary. In the right side of my vision, though, was a tiny orb of silvery light, barely even bright enough for me to make it out. It was about the size of a marble, hanging at a fixed spot in the air like it was nailed there. It probably wasn't a coincidence that it was hovering above the center of that depression in the grass.

"Think I might have found it… Can I have a bolt?"

I still didn't dare to look away, but the rustle of movement told me that Toriko was approaching. When I felt the cold metal of a bolt slip into my hand, I lined it up and gave it a throw.

Thanks to being a bit closer than she'd been, and probably helped in no small part by actually being able to see my target, my first throw succeeded. The bolt passed maybe twenty centimeters under the orb. It changed directions as it approached, angling its trajectory upward. Past a point, it started obeying the laws of physics again and arced through the rest of its path. Thanks to the extra boost, it landed a bit farther away than it otherwise would have.

"So what is it?"

"I'm not sure. A glitch, I guess? It's just… a really tiny one."

Toriko chucked another bolt. It seemed that she'd zeroed in on the target, because this time she wasn't far off. Hers was even closer than mine had been. Just like with mine, the bolt's trajectory changed as it approached the spot in the air. It flew past the orb on the left side. It swung back around, gaining momentum as it did. Finally, it shot back in our direction on the right side of the orb. The bolt smacked into the ground nearby, tumbling into the grass.

"I… think I get it," she said. "It's like gravity, right?"

"What about the ones that disappeared?"

Rather than explain, she tried another couple of tosses. The second one was right on the money, within centimeters of that orb. I didn't even see its trajectory shift or anything. It simply flew straight toward the target, and…

Pkksh!

Toriko gave a satisfied nod. "That's where you see the thing, right?"

"You got it."

"So it's like… a little black hole, I guess? It pulls things in, and then messes them up when they're too close."

"Huh…"

She tossed another few bolts in its direction. One swerved off to land somewhere to our right. Another seemed to wobble in the air around the orb, orbiting it a few times before coming too close and vanishing like the others. A third was a bit too far off, its course only lightly altered before it fell to the ground.

"This is kinda fun," she said.

"Give me a few."

"Sure, sure."

We stood there together, taking turns as we pitched bolts toward the little singularity one by one. Now and then, one of us would get a particularly cool result, and we'd take a moment to discuss it. The rest of the time, we had a meandering conversation.

"Do you think the people who made the bolts ever could have guessed that they'd be used for this?"

"Not hardly. … do people even make bolts anymore?"

"Where else would they come from?"

"Some kind of bolt-making machine."

"Oh. Yeah, it's probably a machine thing, huh?" Toriko paused for another toss, looking a bit disappointed when her bolt went wide.

"Uh-huh. We're pretty lucky that your first bolt found it, too. I can still barely see it."

"It would've been a real disaster if we drove right into that, huh?"

"Totally."

"Like… pwoosh."

"Nice going, then."

"Hehe~. You can praise me more, if you want."

I didn't. "Why don't we feel it, though? If it has enough gravity to pull the bolts upward… shouldn't it be pulling on us too? At least a little."

"Is it even gravity? Look how the top of the grass is cut. It's like it only pulls on things within a really specific distance or something. Gravity wouldn't do that, I think..."

"Hmm. Now that you mention it…"

I gave up on my bolt-tossing endeavors for the moment and turned my eye back on the orb. I was still a couple of meters from the edge of the area that it seemed to be affecting. Before I dared to approach it, I plucked a long piece of grass from the ground, then held it in front of me. Better to find the boundary with that than my own body.

Toriko stopped her own bolt-throwing to watch the proceedings. Even with my makeshift gravity detector, I crept along, stopping every few steps to shoot a nervous glance toward the stalk of grass in my hand. When I found the edge, though, it was pretty hard to miss. The grass immediately went taut, tugged straight toward the orb. A few more centimeters was all it took for the force to rip it out of my hand. The grass was long enough that I could see it sort of spiral around the point for a split second before vanishing. Kind of a fwip noise this time.

It seemed like that was as close as I could get. I leaned in until my face was mere centimeters from that invisible barrier, peering at the spot in the air. This close up, the silvery glow was harder to miss. I could see a bit of detail inside it, too.

"Anything interesting?" Toriko asked.

"Maybe… there's something else there, at least."

I leaned in a little closer. There was a lot of detail inside of it, actually. Or rather, not inside—beyond. It wasn't an orb. It was more like a… hole. A hole in the air. A hole that led somewhere. Somewhere blue.

"… Sorawo?"

It wasn't just blue, either, no more than the earth was just a rock. It was an endless expanse of blue, varied and complex, with scale and scope and texture. Kilometers of blue. Light-years of blue? An entire universe of blue, all through that little hole. It was way more than I could possibly wrap my head around.

But I wanted to. It was something so much bigger than me. Grander. It was beautiful, not out of any mortal aesthetic sense, but because something so vast even existed…

"Sorawo! You can hear me, can't you…?"

I was plunging into it now, an experience like skydiving into the center of a galaxy. What had looked like mere specks of light actually contained more complexity than I'd seen in my entire life so far. Saying that the hole was the size of a marble was an oversimplification. I was only seeing an extension of something massive, like a fish trying to understand a single toe dipped in the water. If I could just—

"SORAWO."

Toriko's hand slapped on my shoulder. I jolted out of my trance. As I returned to a more normal state of mind, I discovered a few things. The glitch once again looked like no more than a little silvery orb with hints of blue inside. It was a lot closer, though. I'd leaned pretty far into its domain, and as a result, my bangs were being tugged toward it by some unseen force. The same force tugged on my glasses, threatening to rip them off at any moment.

Out of pure reflex, I reached up to grab my glasses.

That was a mistake. The motion made my hand pass within maybe twenty centimeters of the orb. That close up, its force was on a whole different level. It was like somebody trying to yank my arm off. I lurched forward, and only Toriko's grip on my shoulder kept me upright. I definitely lost some ground, though, leaving me even closer to the orb. Close enough to hear a low hum coming from it, and feel the breeze of air being sucked inside.

"I…" My voice was distorted by the strange phenomena happening around me. I'd just have to hope that Toriko could hear it. "I think I'm okay, but…"

I tried to pull back, but no luck. My feet were dug into the ground, and that was only just enough to prevent me from being sucked face-first into the thing. My balance was so precarious that any attempt to move away was a potential disaster.

"Okay." Toriko was trying to sound calm, but there was an anxious quaver to her voice. "Just hold still, and I'll get you out, okay?"

She grabbed my other shoulder, and gave me a firm tug backward. No luck. Her fingers dug painfully into my skin, but she only managed to pull me a few centimeters out before the gravity reasserted its grip and I bounced back into position.

"You're really jammed in there, huh?"

"Seems like it…"

The reality of my situation was starting to really sink in. What if she couldn't get me out? I couldn't keep this up forever. Within an hour, tops, I'd be too exhausted from resisting. … didn't they say that falling into a black hole was supposed to be one of the worst ways to die? Your body stretched out like spaghetti and you spent an eternity like that, or something. Assuming that was what this thing even was. I really didn't want to find out by testing it with my face.

As I dazedly considered my impending demise, Toriko kept tugging on me. She tried a few different approaches, but none of them got anywhere.

Finally, she wrapped her arms around my waist. She leaned backward, grunting with effort and putting not only her strength, but the full weight of her body into the equation. Very, very slowly, she dragged me away from the orb, like somebody being pulled out of quicksand. The further I got from the center, though, the weaker its grip was.

After several centimeters, we passed some tipping point. The balance shifted. Toriko was winning now. Toriko was winning, and she was tugging me just as strongly as before.

That equilibrium snapped. Toriko fell backward, swinging me up and over her body. I yelped as the world blurred around me. I flew through probably the first-ever accidental German suplex, and landed on Toriko's mostly-soft body with a heavy thud.

I laid there for a moment, staring up at the sky. My face ached from being used to drag my whole body around. My ears too, from having the earpieces of my glasses pulled against them for so long. It was still definitely a lot better than being turned into human spaghetti.

"Sorawo…?" Toriko's slightly muffled voice came from below me.

"Yeah?"

"Your butt's on my face."

"Oh. Sorry."

I rolled off of her and flopped down to lay on the ground. After that experience, I was in no rush to go anywhere. Toriko seemed to share the sentiment, since she scooted up to lay next to me.

After a few more seconds of stunned silence, she spoke up.

"That," Toriko said, "is number two."

"Number two?"

"For my list of times that I got scared from Otherside stuff."

With everything else that had happened, I'd 100% forgotten about our silly argument. "… sure."

"And number three's that time I accidentally smacked you into the interstitial space."

You can't make all your times ones where you were scared that something might happen to me. It's what I wanted to say, at least. There was still an anxious shaky quality to her voice, though, and when I glanced over, I found her peering at me with barely-veiled concern.

I sighed. "Yeah, sure. That's three. Dinner's on me tonight."