We'd been exploring near one of the Farm gates. The terrain there was nothing but rolling hills, clustered around the feet of larger mountains. The peak of one had offered a decent view of the surroundings, and we'd spotted a structure in the distance. It made for an obvious enough target for today's outing.

Actually reaching it was more of an issue. It had looked like it was only a kilometer or two away. That would have been pretty easy on flat terrain, but doing it over these hills and valleys was another story. More than once, we found a slope that was too steep for the AP-1 to traverse, and had to circle around to find another way. In other spots, the trees were just too thick to maneuver it through. What we'd intended to be a quick side trip ended up taking almost an hour and a half.

Now, though, we were finally close. There was even a narrow dirt road leading in the direction that we were traveling. Sure, it was pocked with potholes, the guardrails along the side were twisted and mangled, and the road was completely washed out in places. If I'd seen it in the surface world, I would have figured that it was closed for repairs. Here, though? We were just glad to have a mostly-flat surface without many obstructions or glitches. It snaked along the hillsides, carrying us past another hour or so worth of obstacles.

It continued up the shallow valley between two peaks.

As we crested that ridge, the space beyond came into view. There, nestled in a depression between the hills, was an entire village.

It looked pretty old-fashioned. There were telephone poles and a few electric lights scattered around, but the architecture looked like it was at least half a century old. Despite the age—and its location in the Otherside—it was well-maintained. The houses were in good shape, the trees and shrubs weren't growing wild, and the streets were cleaned. Sure, there were some cracks running through the pavement, but that was about it. If you'd stumbled upon it while hiking in the mountains, it wouldn't give you a second thought.

At least, not from the state of maintenance. As far as design went, it was a little iffier. There were about twenty-five buildings. Most of them were houses, with cute little gardens. One larger building near the center looked like some kind of business or government building. A few actual farms sat along the outskirts, with expanses of rice swaying in the breeze. Those were all normal enough

Then there were the… other structures. One was a big, squat, gray cylinder, sitting at a sharp angle like one corner had sunk into the ground. Another was a pretty plain rectangular building, but the roof was plastered with satellite dishes, radio towers, antennae, and other telecommunications equipment. On the far side of the village, sitting near the bottom of the largest hill nearby, was a walled compound that looked like a manor house. Where the house itself would have been, though, sat only a rectangular pond, overgrown with sickly green plants.

We settled in for a few minutes to look down at all of this, passing Toriko's binoculars back and forth.

"Do you see anything?" she asked.

"No gates or glitches or anything, if that's what you mean. You don't see any movement, right?"

"Nope. How creepy would it be if there were people working the fields or something, though?"

"That would probably mean that we'd wandered back into the surface world. I could deal with that."

"What if it was a whole village of people who'd decided to live in the Otherside? Like Miss Todate."

I almost asked, who's that? but with that description, she had to mean the lady who lived in the Mayoiga. Thinking about it in that context, it did sound familiar. For once I could pretend to have remembered somebody's name.

"Anyway, we've definitely got to check it out, right?"

"Right… I'm taking my gun, though."

"Oh, absolutely." I grabbed my M4 and draped the sling over my shoulder, then reassured myself that my Makarov was secure in its holster. "This definitely seems like the kind of place where the Otherside would try something."

"… do you think it's a bad sign that we can look at it and go, 'this looks like somewhere that we might get attacked,' and then we grab our guns and walk in anyway?"

"I don't know. Probably. Anyway, all set?"

We took a few seconds to secure the items that we wouldn't be taking with us on the AP-1. Then, we set off down the hill on foot.

The closest building was one of those farm houses. The huge rice paddy behind it looked like it was in about the right state of growth for the mid-summer. At least, that was what it looked like to me, somebody who had never farmed rice in my life.

The house itself was small but cozy, a sturdy wooden building that could have appeared in a period drama if not for the modern glass windows. We walked around it, peering in through every window to make sure that nothing was moving in there. Only then did we try the front door. Thankfully, it wasn't locked.

Inside, it looked about like we would have expected from the exterior. The floor was heavily worn tatami. A pair of old leather boots stood in the entryway, and the front room beyond held nothing but an ancient-looking metal box fan, which was plugged in and running. It all felt like the place could be inhabited, and we might find the resident napping in the next room or something. That vibe was enough for us to get our pistols ready before we proceeded.

Next was a living room area, with a few rolled up futons along the wall, a low table, and some cushions. There was a tray laying on the floor, with a few shattered cups and smaller containers scattered around it, like somebody had dropped a whole tea set.

Then came a kitchen. The old-fashioned fridge was unplugged, and its door was hanging open. Inside, every horizontal surface was covered in colorful mugs, like the kind of thing you'd buy in a gift shop. They were all decorated with faded pictures, or had textured filigree on the handle, or shaped like an animal, or something. We debated taking a few to try to sell to DSR, but decided to hold out for something that wasn't so fragile and bulky.

The rest of the small house didn't turn up much of interest. One by one, we explored the other buildings.

That larger one near the center turned out to be a pub. The place was in such good condition that I barely would have batted an eye if a bartender had walked out and asked for our orders. The only thing missing was the drinks—when we tried the taps, the fluid that came out was viscous and sweet-smelling, like syrup or something.

One house looked normal from the outside. Inside, though, it was a single big square room, completely white, with strangely uniform lighting. The only feature was a lone Daruma standing in the middle of the room. Instead of filling in the eyes, somebody had covered them up with a single horizontal swipe of black paint. The paint wasn't even dry yet. We decided to leave that one alone.

The antenna-covered building that I'd seen from afar turned out to be filled with radios, TVs, and other equipment for receiving telecommunications. Completely filled, actually—a solid wall of floor-to-ceiling electronics prevented us from taking a single step inside. None of the ones that we could see were turned on, but a low, staticky hum came from within. Another building best left untouched, we decided.

One house had its inner walls decorated with hundreds of ukiyo-e prints, all of which depicted animals that we couldn't name—long headless mammals that crawled on six human hands, lobster-like creatures that were depicted clinging to the heads of something like buffalo, birds with whiplike appendages instead of legs and wings, and many, many more. We grabbed a couple of the prints in the front room, but didn't want to press our luck by going further inside.

Near the center of the town was a well. We spent several minutes hauling the rope up with no sign of a bucket below. Nothing was visible in the darkness down there, and if we shouted into it, no echo came back. Another mystery best left unexplored.

We spent about an hour and a half exploring the empty buildings. That wasn't even enough time to check half of them, but we didn't have much choice. It was getting late in the afternoon, so we'd need to start heading back toward our exit gate soon.

The last building we checked out was that slanted cylindrical one. Despite its strange shape and construction, the door into it—the single feature on the exterior—was perfectly level with the ground. Within, it was an expansive office. An office for a single person, like a lawyer or an executive might work out of. The desk held a still-steaming cup of coffee and an open book, like the occupant had just stepped out for a moment. Along the back wall were windows, which showed a rocky brown landscape outside, devoid of life.

There weren't any windows on the outside of the building. We decided not to take our chances by stepping inside. After inspecting the office from afar, we closed the door.

We didn't leave the building, though. That cylinder was tilted at a sharp enough angle that its side made a steep, but climbable, slope. It took us a few tries to get started, but once we did, we managed to clamber up without too much hassle. The upper curve, where the sides of the cylinder met the top, was just rounded enough to make for a comfortable seat.

More importantly, it was also one of the highest points in the village. Only a few of the mountainside farmhouses were higher. From that vantage point, we could see everything, and it actually looked pretty inviting. The hillsides formed a scenic green backdrop to everything, and the old houses gave everything a rustic feel. The stranger buildings, like the one covered in antennas, weren't quite visible from this angle. It could have been on a postcard or something.

Toriko seemed to agree.

"It's pretty, isn't it?"

"Well, it's no Mayoiga, but…"

"It's not that different though, is it? I mean, it isn't as fancy, but nothing we found here seems all that dangerous, and most of the houses seem to be in pretty good shape."

"They don't come pre-stocked with food and clothes, though. That place seemed seriously convenient."

Toriko nodded and pulled her legs up, bracing her feet on the sloped surface in front of her as she looked out over the landscape. "Hey, Sorawo? Have you thought much about what you're going to do after university?"

It was a question I'd never put much thought into. Before I met Toriko, I'd barely had any plans more long-term than 'don't die.' Even now, it was murky. My life had changed so much over the past year that predicting the future seemed pretty pointless.

"I guess the normal answer would be 'get a job in my field,' huh? But that's weird to think about. Maybe by then, Kozakura will be willing to let us become full-time Otherside explorers."

"I wonder how that would work. I think we'd run out of stuff to explore nearby after a few years."

"You think?"

"If we did it almost every day like a job, sure. Maybe we could find enough if we took weeks-long trips like Abarato…"

I wrinkled my nose, remembering the way the man had smelled. "We'd have to find a way to handle hygiene way better than he did."

"Anyway! The point is… we could save a lot on housing if we moved into a place over here, couldn't we?"

"Free electricity in most of them, too," I said dryly. "I don't know if you can trust the plumbing and sanitation, though…"

"We're getting pretty handy. We could fix it up if there's problems."

"What if the problem is that there just isn't any water?"

"We could collect rain or something. Todate seems to do okay for herself, right?"

"I don't think that Mayoiga is exactly a normal house, even by Otherside standards."

"We'd make it work."

Toriko sounded confident, but also the slightest bit pouty. I could see that this was another of those occasions where she was having fun and would get sad if I didn't play along.

"So!" She straightened her posture and swept a hand toward the vista in front of us, like she was showing off a prize on a game show or something. "Pick a house! Any house."

"To live in?"

"To live in. Both of us, together."

She's really stubborn about this one, huh…?

I felt like if I got visibly flustered or annoyed, she'd only grow more insistent. I mean, I was flustered. How could I not be, when Toriko was teasingly inviting me to move in with her? I had to soldier on, though. Such was the price of spending so much time with a mischievous blonde.

"Um… well, none of the ones that aren't houses, obviously. Most of the houses that had actual furniture seemed safe enough, but all of the farmhouses are pretty small. One of the bigger ones, then. Some of the ones on the other end of the village seem like they'd have pretty good views."

"We haven't checked those out, though. Maybe they're full of monsters."

"You're the one who's hand-waving everything with 'we can just fix it up if there's no water.' So if there's monsters, we'll deal with that too."

"Fiiiine." Despite her apparent annoyance, she was grinning. "I'd want some newer furniture, too. If we're outfitting a whole house, we'd need to make a run to IKEA or somewhere."

"How are you going to get it all to the house in the first place?"

"We'd be making lots of trips back to the gate anyway, right? We'll have to clear a road, just for the AP-1. Maybe we can extend that dirt road all the way to the gate."

"When you put it like that, it would be a pretty funny move. This whole dimension apparently exists to scare humans, but then we just set up shop and say, 'actually, we're building a road here, so we can haul in our new coffee table.'"

"We kinda already did that. We've built that shed, and made roads, and worked on the building with the Jinbouchou gate…"

"Still, though… it's kind of crazy when you think about it like that. We're probably the first humans to see this. Something made this whole village just for us, basically. Even with old-fashioned houses like this, if you were going to pay somebody to build it in the surface world, it would cost a fortune, right?"

"Maybe we've been misreading the Otherside all along. Maybe it wants to interest us in some real estate, and the monsters are a secondary thing."

"Or maybe… if what it really wants is to scare us until we're insane enough to understand whatever message it's trying to send, things like this are the bait to keep us coming back for more."

Toriko went silent with a soft hum of consideration. I could tell that I'd ruined her fun by pointing out the problems with playing house in the Otherside. For once, I felt a little guilty about it. After all, it wasn't like she'd actually been planning to take up residence over here.

At least, I was pretty sure.

I threw her a bone regardless. "… we'd need beds too. That would be a pretty big load to haul on the AP-1."

"Huh?" She shot me a confused look. "Just one bed."

This was what I got for humoring her.