[LOBBY - 1]

The next thing Masaru’s aware of is the steady beep of a heart rate monitor.

He would be relieved to know he survived, but for him, it could go either way.

“Well, shit,” he coughs out, the feeling of water in his lungs now absent. He strains his vision, only to find a perfect white ceiling, with a perfect white fan spinning away.

The “feeling” of The Enemy is nowhere to be found. It’s comforting, but cold. The sheets aren’t quite perfect, but you can’t expect much more from a hospital.

Sitting up, he looks around the room:

The window to the side of his bed is misted over with a sterile light.

The sink, utilities, and the monitor are all perfectly sterile, each one like ideal forms of what they should be.

The door to the hallway is cracked slightly open, as if to invite him out.

Masaru takes a moment to beat down his inner suspicions before getting out of the bed.

He winces a moment before putting down his feet, but there’s no injury in his foot whatsoever: in fact his shoes are back.

“Wait, so does…” he mumbles to himself as he leans around the side of the bed to see it. He sighs upon finding his briefcase. “Guess I’m just not getting rid of you,” he jokes to the black case before he fully rests his weight on his feet.

Masaru takes his time walking out.

Just like the swamp… nothing’s wrong at the start, he says in his mind. Carefully maneuvering around the open door, he finds himself in a hospital… and it’s familiar.

“Wait,” he blurts out to himself, looking down the halls, and then up to his own room number: 359.

“So familiar,” he finishes with before heading down to what seems to be the elevator.

He hits the call button, and the sanitary doors part to a perfect elevator car.

It’s all so perfect, but it’s wrong in its perfection.

Masaru hits the button to the first floor, and in a second he’s on his way down. From the third floor, the elevator pings calmly to show the second floor on the number display.

The elevator doors open, and Masaru’s guts churn with adrenaline.

A tall mannequin in a doctor’s attire walks in, the glasses on its slope of a face holding on by some kind of mystic gravity.

The salaryman braces for movement, but the doctor simply enters the elevator, checks the lit button on the panel, and returns to a calm, professional stand.

The doors close again, Masaru ready for a knife to appear somewhere on the figure’s person.

But nothing happens.

The doors open, the doctor-thing gives him a gentle nod, and it walks out.

Masaru pokes his head out the door to watch it like some kind of walking impossibility, but he snaps himself out of it.

“Hey!” he shouts at the mannequin. “Is this some kind of joke?!”

The mannequin doctor glances back to address him with another nod, and then it disappears down a neighboring hallway.

His teeth clenched, Masaru stands in place as he attempts to process the appearance.

Masaru spits out a short, irritated tsk before finding the hallway sign pointing to the lobby.

“Getting out of this place…” he says as he picks up the pace to leave.

The lobby’s not far away, only twenty paces, but the sight stops him in his tracks.

There’s other people here.

Scattered about in various chairs in the clean white lobby sits four very different people:

Nearest to him sits a young girl, her hair covering her face as she leans over a black and orange covered sketchbook filled with pen-marked pages. Her sad gaze shifts away from him the second he sees her.

To his left is a rather plump, pale, irritated-looking man who glares right at him between bites of the bland-looking food on his tray. His pair of glasses shine with an unusual perceptiveness.

To the right next to a vending machine is hardly a person at all, but more of the clear silhouette of a person, almost like looking through air. He, she, or otherwise simply stares at the selection of the vending machine, the remainder of its face cold with indecision. The only thing it seems to have that’s still solid is one of those big old flashlights, its gray beveled plastic form pristine despite the look of its age.

At the edge of the lobby, next to the doors to the outside, sits a bored-looking man cleaning a rifle, a modern, gas-operated make unlike Valerie’s old bolt-action model. He regards Masaru with steeled, knowing eyes for a single moment, and then goes back to cleaning his rifle.

Masaru clears his throat.

“Hi,” he says with a level tone. If these are simply more tricks, then so be it. He’ll just have to find out the hard way.

The girl, about primary school age, looks up before looking back to her work.

The man shoveling food into his mouth gives a smug grunt in response.

The pale-looking fellow next to the vending machine doesn’t even acknowledge him.

The older man at the edge of the lobby, however, nods him over.

Masaru, his brow raised, steps over and presents his hand.

“Kenji,” the man says, lifting his gaze from the rifle just long enough to communicate that he’s not getting up. “New here?”

Masaru takes a moment, suppresses the desire to produce a business card, and sighs before taking a seat next to him. “I… suppose I am.” He looks around at the perfect lobby occupied by such dismal characters. “And just… what is here?”

Kenji reaches up from his cleaning cloth to scratch his stubble. “The hospital.”

The answer hangs like an over-ripe fruit, waiting to plop uselessly onto the ground.

Masaru’s gaze glides over to the man again. “Well, yeah. It’s the hospital, but what is happening to us?”

Kenji smirks as the eating man lifts his head up from his finished tray. “The waiting room before eternity. No doubt about it,” he calls from across the room as he looks down a hall to wave someone down. “Name’s Sato. Don’t listen to that grump. This is where you want to be,” he says just as someone else enters the room.

Masaru flinches as he sees who Sato was flagging down.

A pristine mannequin wearing nurse attire, toting a cold appearance and an eye-catching figure, wheels in a cart filled with trays of food.

Sato laughs as the nurse delivers him one, two, and then three trays of the stuff before noticing Masaru, and carting a tray over to him.

“See, what’d I tell you?” Sato says as Masaru, struggling to know where to look, averts his gaze from it as he accepts the tray of chicken, rice, and vegetables alongside a glass of some kind of soft drink. Near him, the nurse has no breath, and from the slight moment their hands touched, he can feel the cold flex of something akin to silicone: industrial, soulless, but comforting.

The nurse-thing gives a soft nod, and turns to offer one to Kenji, who just shakes his head.

With another courteous nod, the nurse completes its rounds and then disappears down the hall.

“And get me a back massage when you’ve put that up!” Sato shouts down the hall at the nurse before turning back to Masaru. “Nothing left to do but enjoy the ride out,” he says with a winner’s grin before starting on his next tray.

Kenji shakes his head and looks over to the stunned Masaru. “They’ll take care of anything you need, but they’re not your friends,” he says. “They’re here to help you… give up.”

Masaru’s eyes flash at the thought. “Give… up?” he asks, still looking over the perfectly fine-looking food. It doesn’t smell bad, either.

“Yeah,” Kenji says. “You either waste away here in the hospital and wait for them to come get you… or you take the doors,” he says, nodding over to the hospital exit next to him.

Masaru places his tray aside to the seat next to him as he gets up. “Well, okay? So we can just… go?”

His mouth full, Sato pushes out a scoff as Kenji gives a slow, quiet sigh.

Masaru steps up to the pair of black doors, but just as he gets within a meter of them, he feels it.

Freezing in place, Masaru looks back to the others.

Everyone but the vending machine person glances at him with acknowledgement.

Sato’s look is smug: “Not so simple, is it, new guy?”

The girl’s eyes are sad, like finding another isolated soul coming to terms.

Kenji’s face is interested, irritated, but behind the gaze Masaru can finally see a glimpse of sympathy.

The salaryman steps back from the door.

“Stupid. It’s all so tiresome,” he says before retaking his seat, and trying out some of the chicken.

Kenji nods. “It’s back to the start of your loop,” he explains. “One for each mark.”

“And that’s where The Enemy is,” Masaru says.

“Enemy?” Sato barks after swallowing down his latest bite, “it’s just there to remind you that you’re hopeless. No need to screw around with defying fate.”

Kenji glances up to Sato. “Fate? You call this fate?”

“What else could it be?” Sato responds as the nurse thing from before reappears to knead his shoulders. Sato expels relief as he wriggles into his comfy chair. “Folks like me, we know when God’s said his peace. No going back, no need to bother about it. Just accept that you’re a human and enjoy yourself.”

The two men watch Sato relish every second of the false nurse’s treatment.

“He won’t be here much longer,” Kenji says, “but wasting away like the Old Man won’t help either. Staying here at all will destroy you.” He turns to the black doors leading out. “The only way out is through. It has to be.”

Masaru eats some of the vegetables on his plate before taking a sip of the soft drink. It’s filling food, but the kind of meal that reminds him of better dishes he’s had. It’s just “good enough”.

“Okay, so we go in there, and we fight The Enemy,” Masaru says. “Based on your… marks?”

Kenji nods and pulls up the sleeve of his shirt. Starting from his left wrist and traveling down to his elbow are a series of black dots, each no more than a small coin in diameter. He has seven in total, but two of them are hollowed out, only the rings of them remaining.

“Oh, you have the tattoo as well,” Masaru says, before flinching, and finally reaching to his own wrist to pull back his shirt cuff.

Three. Three full black dots line down from his wrist to his elbow.

“How…” he sighs as he rubs his thumb over them. “What do they mean!?”

Kenji shrugs. “All I know is that, when I went through those doors, I went to seven places. Now, because I got through those challenges, they don’t return. My loop is only five now.”

Masaru stares at the three dots on his arm like a death sentence.

“So… we have to beat each challenge… and then a dot goes away.”

“That’s right, the mark’s still there, you can see, but you don’t have to fight that particular form of the bastard again.”

A renewed spark erupts in the salaryman’s eyes as someone else enters the lobby from the elevator hallway. “Unlimited tries,” Masaru says with a fascinated tone.

Kenji gives a snide grin. “Yeah, I guess you could say that.”

Masaru nods. “…And she… she had a fourth one to fight,” he says, just as that certain someone steps up.

He looks up to see Valerie, her clothing and body once again fresh, but the look in her eyes just a little duller.

“I see you’ve met the… staff,” she says.

Masaru gets up to his feet. “You! Are you okay?”

Her expression is unmoving. “Same as last time, but different,” she says with a sigh as she flicks her thumb over the bolt of her rifle.

“What?” Kenji asks simply.

She shakes her head. “The Swamp. The Stranger set traps on the cabin this time.”

Kenji goes back to his weapon: the interior bolt impeccably clean, “Seems to change a little each time. I don’t know what to tell you. Each time I go through the loop I see something new. It feels…” He stops himself with a sigh. “Anyway, I guess you two have met.”

Masaru looks over to Valerie, visions of her dead body lying on the top of the tourist office floor flashing through his mind. “Yeah, kind of. Miss Beaumont and I met in some kind of field area first, and got killed by The Enemy as some knight.”

She nods. “This guy got me killed on half my loops,” she says with a slim glance over his way.

Far from the unsure and trembling form of Masaru in the swamp, he feels back to his constantly irritated self. “What? I gave you my card. What’s my name?” he asks with a sharp gaze.

Kenji hides a smirk as the dull-faced woman reaches into her pants pocket and empties it out to show that nothing’s there.

“What?” Masaru blurts.

“Don’t you get it, son?” Kenji says, “no one can take anything that’s yours with them. You get it all back when you hit your next challenge.”

“Thanks for the introduction,” Valerie says, “But I can’t be bothered with that right now… I’m going back in.”

Masaru keeps pace with her. “Fine, then I’m going, too.”

She glances to him and looks him over. “Okay, whatever.”

“Already?” Kenji asks, his brow furrowing. “You’re going to burn yourself out.”

“No,” she says, already in front of the doors. “I have to keep going. I’m not going to get carted off like Aki, or…” she gives a quick look over to the figure at the vending machine, still staring at the selection. “I’m going, okay?” Valerie adds, clutching her magatama necklace that Masaru’s noticed only now.

Kenji glances over. “It’s stupid, but… if you two share a lot of the same loops, then I suppose it couldn’t hurt.”

Masaru nods before turning back to Valerie. “That’s right. We’re going through them together.”

“Until my number four,” she notes coldly. “Then I’ll be alone again.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll support each other as long as we can.”

Sato laughs as Masaru finishes his answer. “No use trying, salary boy. You can’t even touch, so you won’t be getting whatever you’re after!” he chuckles out before taking a huge gulp of his sugary drink.

“What?” Masaru asks. “The hell are you talking about?”

Valerie peers at Sato out of the corner of her eye with the intensity of a cobra before turning back to the door. “Bye,” is all she says before reaching for the handles, and opening them into perfect, icy blackness.

Masaru’s body riles from the chill as he steps in behind her.

“We’ll figure this out,” Masaru snips. “I’m not dying here.”

Valerie nods, if only to acknowledge what he thinks he knows, and the two enter the darkness.

“Good luck,” Kenji says just before the doors slam shut behind them. “You’ll need it.”

The wall-mounted clock reads out the time: 8:17 PM.