Trust

“What… what have you done, Ryota? He was supposed to help us… Do you realize you've just ruined all our chances?”

The doll screamed at me, furious at me for having thwarted its plans.

But I didn’t care. Its words and fury were as nonexistent as its facial expressions to me. I remained impassive in the face of it all, in the face of this anger and the act I had just committed. None of it could touch me, nor even make me crack the slightest smile, the slightest clench of my teeth.

“How are we supposed to get out of here now? How are we supposed to find Hayate and Atsuko? How am I supposed to… Why did you kill him?”

“It’s something you should understand, doll.” I replied dryly. “But don’t worry. There are other ways to get out of here and complete our objectives. The fact that Leo didn’t remember a thing wasn’t a problem from the start, and the solution might be on him.”

“What do you mean? Don’t tell me you knew from the start how to get out of here?” The doll said in a surprised tone.

I approached Leo’s corpse, crouched, and began to search him, lifting his body slightly to reach behind his back and pull out an object.

I wiped the blood from it on my clothes and presented it to the doll on my right with a mocking smile.

“Knowing it all? No. I just know how to seize any opportunity that comes my way if it helps me.”

The object was a security card, with some sequences of numbers on it, Leo's photo, as well as his name, surname, and date of birth.

The doll remained silent for a few seconds, then walked toward me. I held out the card to it, and it grabbed it to observe.

“How did you know about this?” It asked, examining the card intently from all angles.

“Simple. When the first shot came, the force of the impact that made him stumble back caused something to fall from the pocket of his suit vest. I was focused on him, but my peripheral vision didn’t miss it. My brain immediately knew what it could be.” I explained, still searching Leo for something else.

In the front pocket of his suit pants, I pulled out a set of keys. Then I found his phone and immediately tried to turn it on. It worked.

“And what is this for?” The doll asked, giving me the card back.

“Even if we now have a card to get out of here, we don’t know where to scan it. So I’m hoping to find something for that on his phone. He said this place was like a maze to him, so he might not remember where to go each time and might have something on his phone to help him remember.”

“How… how can you know that?”

“Because I’m not as dumb as I may look. You should know that.” I chuckled faintly.

A small sound came from the doll, as if it tried to speak but restrained itself for a second before gathering enough confidence to talk.

“Okay… you win. I’ll cooperate with you on this.” The doll said in a low voice.

I took Leo’s unmoving hand, cleaned his index finger of blood, and placed it on the screen to unlock the phone, which worked. Once done, I went into the settings and used his fingerprint once again to remove any form of locking from the device.

“Good. Now it’s free to use. We don’t need him anymore.” I whispered, putting every object into my pockets.

I stood and made my way back from where I had come, opening each door on each side as I advanced, the doll remaining by Leo’s corpse.

Only brick walls opened in front of me. I was clearly disappointed, clacking my tongue to show it. But a few meters later, relief ran through me as I opened another door and an endless gaping hole plunging in the darkness lay behind it.

“Finally found it. I was sure there were some more of those.” I murmured to myself.

I ran back to Leo’s corpse, picked his body up from the floor, and carried it on my back as the doll let out a muffled cry of surprise and followed me slowly.

I walked, increasing the distance between the doll and me, and when I arrived back at the gaping hole, I put Leo down on the floor and pushed his body into it. I watched him fall and disappear into that thick mass of darkness, without a single emotion on my face.

No sound echoed, meaning the fall hadn’t ended. But I closed the door, not having time to wait for it.

“Why this now?” The doll asked as it arrived.

“Just in case. We don’t know if anyone could find him here.”

I picked up the doll and put it on my shoulder. It showed no resistance. Then I walked toward where I had left the backpack. Once there, I put the doll inside and put on the backpack.

I pulled the phone out of my pocket and began my research on it.

My face, illuminated by the white light of the screen, broke into a smile.

“This app...’Exit’. I don’t know this one, so I suppose…” I clicked on it, and a white map representing two parallel black lines with little openings on each side appeared on the screen, with a green dot and a red dot linked together by a straight blue line. “So this is the corridor. Green must mean it’s my position and red where I have to go… the exit. A simple app for a stupid guy. How far did we have to go in stupidity with him?”

I walked, following the map on the phone, continuing along the corridor back from where I had first started. Then I passed by my cell, the door wide open, still in the same state as I had left it. But I continued – the red dot wasn’t there.

I kept going. 

A few minutes later, I arrived in front of a door no different from all the others, though this one was the one the red dot indicated on the map.

I pulled out the set of keys and tried each one of the dozen in the lock until I found the right one. Then I turned the key and the door unlocked. 

I didn’t wait any longer and opened it wide.

An empty room was offered to my sight, lit by a dim light, but at the end of it stood another door with a card scanner on it. Bingo.

I recovered the keys and hurried toward freedom. I pulled out the card, scanned it, and a beep echoed, followed by the sound of a lock unlocking, confirming that the door was now open.

Putting everything back into my pockets, and as I had done so many times these past hours, I opened this last door and crossed it in an instant, eyes closed, without worrying about what could be on the otherside – I was too confident for that.

I opened my eyes slowly. 

I glanced around and found myself standing in a narrow alley at night, lit only by moonlight, trash all around me and filling the place.

The door from which I had come slammed shut behind me without my intervention, with a great crash that echoed through the starless night.

I startled and turned around to look at it.

“This door… doesn’t quite look like the one I opened…” I held out my hand to the handle of the door set in a brick wall. “Just for the test…” I opened it – it wasn’t locked – only to find an empty garage behind it, with a few cars inside. An icy draft of air passed over me and escaped outside.

I closed the door and began to walk among the trash toward the street illuminated by streetlights at the end of the alley.

“Where was I before being here? It seems the door I escaped through was… connected here… but it’s not connected anymore… I don’t know, my brain is a mush for now. The most important thing is that I’m outside now… though, where? I don’t know.” I tried not to trip over the garbage and fall headfirst.

As I approached the end of the alley, I pressed myself discreetly against the wall and glanced around the street to reconnoiter the area.

On my left, on the other side of the street, was a convenience store, still open.

“This one… I came here the other day… I’m still in Japan, that means… I'm still in the neighborhoods I know. ” I sighed in relief. “I can try to go back to the hotel. My reservation is still running, since it’s taken care of until I move back to my apartment when it’s repaired”

I looked around once more and saw no one. I left the alley and started hugging the walls, moving quickly so as not to be noticed any more than necessary by anyone who might be walking down that street.

I passed a few night walkers and alcoholics, but none of them really paid me any attention.

“I’m tired…” I thought, as my walking speed slowly decreased. I continued, but much more slowly now.

I began to feel the cold of the night passing through my torn clothes, making my body shiver, my teeth chattering. It made me focus on my thoughts even more, trying not to think about the cold chilling my body.

“It had to be done, and honestly, he had done too much for me to feel the weight of killing someone. I killed someone. I never thought it would ever happen once in my life. But I will never regret it, not after everything he did. My actions were justified, no matter what people think, no matter if they call me crazy, it doesn't matter anymore. No one will ever know. Everything will be alright. This enormous weight has been lifted from my heart, his body and his very being will be forgotten in this gigantic hole.”

The sound of the backpack’s zipper opening reached my ears, and I felt the doll climbing onto my shoulder, sitting there and holding my hair so as not to fall.

“There’s some things you have to explain, doll.” I whispered, trying not to draw attention to myself, already looking strange enough with this doll perched on me.

“It’s true. Since we’re collaborating, I should tell you. What do you want me to start with?”

“Well, maybe everything you know about everything that happened since the mirror in my cell. I want to know everything.”

“Everything… I’ll try to make it quick and easy. What happened with the mirror is part of my powers. Trying to understand it would only be useless for you – it wouldn’t make any sense.”

“But why didn’t you use it to get out of this prison?”

“Because… that’s not how it works.” The doll replied, visibly annoyed by my question. “But well, the door of your cell was just opened because Leo forgot to lock it, nothing more, nothing less.”

“You’re sure about it? Even though you weren’t there at the moment he did it?”

“Yes… I am.” It paused. “Let me continue without interruption, please. The puppet you found… was somehow an ally of mine. I talked with it to ask for its help… but I didn’t think the situation would slightly degenerate with it. It was kind of strange… it kept asking me to kill it, and for a spirit that’s not what you generally ask… but this puppet helped – that’s the main thing. As for the spirit you saw… it wasn’t me… not this time… I don’t understand it myself. But those are the only explanations I can give you.”

The doll fell silent as I took time to digest the information I had received. But it was a heavy and strange silence.

“There’s more, isn’t there?” I asked.

“Since I’m at it, and with what you saw… I should tell you. There are not just ghosts or supernatural spirits in this world, as you may have witnessed behind one of those doors. There’s more… a lot more… even if you never encounter them, keep somewhere in your mind that they exist, that they could be anywhere, and that they are able to do things you can’t even imagine. But normally – and I say normally – you will never meet them.”

Its grip on my hair tightened, pulling a little harder.

“What you saw today will lead toward something I don’t know how you’ll deal with, something terrible. But remember this one thing I’m going to tell you, okay, Ryota?”

“I’m all ears.”

“Be wary. Be wary of everyone. Because the truth can easily be concealed, and things you may take for granted and be normal simply because you assumed they were, without questioning them further, are not necessarily so.”

“That’s a warning?” I replied jokingly.

“Advice. Free for you to believe me or not this time.”

“The real question is whether I should truly believe you after what you wanted me to do.”