Under the flickering fluorescent lights, a door with ground glass windows opened, and a pair of women’s shoes came out into the hall. A man in a suit who was walking backward came to a stop and started to turn. The elevator door closed just before he could, and the scene in that hall was cut off.
I gradually came to realize how bizarre things were. We were traveling back and forth between a limited number of floors, and yet I never saw the same thing twice. Each time the door opened, an unfamiliar hall stretched out before my eyes.
“...Hey.”
“You figure it out?” Toriko cast me a sidelong gaze and smiled. Who did she think she was, looking at me like she understood everything? When I glared back at her, Toriko blinked as if she was confused.
I felt like the pace with which the door opened and closed picked up a little. Looking at the control panel and the floor number display, I was shocked. I couldn’t read the numbers. They should have been written in familiar Arabic numerals, and yet at some point those had been swapped out for some writing system I didn’t know.
The elevator finally came to a stop after some time had passed.
When the door opened, it was pitch dark. I couldn’t see a thing.
The light flooding out of the elevator looked like a smushed quadrilateral shape cut out of the ground.
“To... Toriko, you sure this is okay?”
Toriko had her head cocked to the side. “Huh? Did I mess it up?”
“Huh?”
“It was never this dark before.”
“Whoa, whoa...”
“Weird. Wonder if it’s night on that side.”
Though I was exasperated by her less than reassuring response, I leaned out of the door.
My head shot back with incredible speed. I tottered backwards, trying to retreat, and my back struck the elevator wall.
“Close it!”
The moment I shouted that, Toriko punched the Door-Close button with her fist.
In the instant before the door shut, I heard the chilling skitter, skitter, skitter of legs, and I thought I saw claws.
Muscular fingers ending in thick, split claws with a ridge in them. It left only a momentary impression, and then the door shut out the darkness.
The silent elevator shuddered, then surged into motion again. Rising.
“What... What was that?” I finally managed to ask, tripping over my tongue a bit. “Did you see that just now, Toriko, it—”
When I turned my head to look at her, Toriko had drawn her gun and had it pointed at the door.
“Wha?!”
“Wah! Don’t startle me.”
“That’s my line! Could you not pull a gun like it’s perfectly normal?!”
“It’s not like I have it on me all the time. It’s just, I was planning to meet with you today.”
“Why would you need it to meet me?!”
“It’s okay, it’s okay. Calm down. It’s okay.” That last part was in English for some reason.
“Not okay! I mean, where did you pull that from?! Do you keep it naked inside your tote bag?!”
“Sorawo, the way you talk is funny.”
“Huh?! How?!”
“You’re in a hurry to make a witty retort... I dunno, you sound like one of those people making a fuss on Twitter.”
“...?!?!?!”
While I was left unable to speak as I was struck by a whirling mix of confusion, shame, and anger, the elevator came to a stop once more.
As we watched, the door parted to the left and right. Toriko gave a satisfied nod.
“Good. We made it this time.”
Outside the door was the roof. On the other side of a floor made of broken concrete tiles, there was a waist-height iron fence, and above it a cloudy sky.
“Let’s go.” Toriko stepped out.
“Hey, is this really okay?”
“It’s okay, maybe.”
“Ahhh, I don’t think so.”
I was super intimidated, but being left behind by Toriko was an even more frightening proposition. Steeling myself, I headed out.
Moving away from the elevator, we approached the edge of the building. The clammy wind made my hair sway.
The iron fence around the roof was rusted, and I wasn’t about to try leaning on it. Touching it slightly, just to confirm it wasn’t going to suddenly give way, I peered over the edge.
Beneath the haloed sun that cast a somewhat blurred light, a field of dull yellow grass spread out as far as the eye could see.
The vast plain was uneven, appearing to rise and fall like there were waves. Here and there, there were seemingly artificial structures. Buildings covered in ivy, massive stones scattered about haphazardly. What looked like the wire-frame of a tower for carrying electrical lines poked its head out from the other side of the dark woods. Were those train tracks cutting across the marsh? Even further away, there was a range of low mountains.
“What do you think?” Toriko said, sounding proud for some reason.
“...Well, it looks like we’re not in Jinbouchou anymore, at least.” I turned around, surveying the roof. There were no stairs. Only the elevator door.
“How do we get down?”
“Over here.”
When I followed Toriko, there was a ladder at a break in the fence.
“Huh...? We’re going down this?”
“Are you afraid of heights, by any chance?”
“Well, no, but...”
I was fine with looking over the edge of the roof, but if I had to climb down the side of the building using a rusty ladder, that was another matter.
“It’ll be fine. I mean, I’ve never fallen,” Toriko said rather irresponsibly. I glared at her.
“I’m gradually starting to see how you operate, Toriko.”
“What do you mean, how I operate?”
“You think you can just worry about trouble after it happens, don’t you?”
“It may not seem like it, but I’m thinking about all sorts of things.”
“Oh, you are...?”
While I was hesitating to say more, Toriko stepped onto the ladder.
“I’ll go on ahead. If I’m down below, you won’t have to worry so much about falling.”
“Because you’ll catch me?”
“Hmm, you’re more optimistic than I expected. I only meant I could at least cushion your fall.”
“...No thanks. If I come falling down, get out of the way.”
The creaking ladder was scary, but I somehow managed to get down to the ground without falling and turning Toriko into a pancake, or having her dodge out of the way and getting turned into one myself.
While clenching and unclenching my tense, tired fingers, I looked around the area.
There was black dirt exposed in the area around the building, a narrow footpath stretching out into the tall grass.
I’d noticed this while descending the ladder, but this building was both similar and dissimilar to the one we’d initially entered.
For a start, it had no walls. Just pillars, and the floors and ceilings of each level. It was a hollowed-out ruin, with only the skeletal frame remaining. There weren’t any stairs, or even a shaft for the elevator.
Okay, so where did we come from, then? There was no floor on the first floor, just the bare earth.
Toriko walked over towards a drum that had been left by one of the pillars. When I followed her and peeked inside, the inside of the drum was scorched black. There were a bunch of concrete blocks piled up haphazardly nearby, perhaps having been used in place of chairs.
“Did you light a fire here?”
“Before, yeah.”
There was a rusty brown shovel leaning against the opposite side of the pillar. Toriko took the shovel in hand, thrusting it into the ground in the corner of the mountain of concrete blocks.
She dug in two, three times, quickly finding whatever it was she was after. Crouching down, she pulled something wrapped in a white vinyl bag out of the ground.
“Here.”
“Huh, what’s this?” Presented with some unknown object, I hesitated. Toriko wasn’t pulling back the package, though, so I reluctantly took it, unwrapping the bag.
“...” I stared down at the thing I had unwittingly accepted.
“It’s a gun.”
“Th-That’s obvious, just looking at it.”
A Makarov. Was that what she’d called it? It was the same kind as Toriko was carrying. The bag also contained a cardboard box filled with bullets.
“...Why are you giving this to me?”
“I promised last time, didn’t I? I think you’ll need a weapon.”
It’s scary, I don’t know how to use it, I can’t shoot, I don’t need it... There were a whole bunch of counterarguments that popped into my head. And yet, not one of them left my lips.
That was because the thing I’d seen in the elevator was seared into my memory. Some clawed thing, skittering towards me from deep inside that dark floor. I didn’t know what it really was, but if that thing came at us again...
“...I’ll take it.”
“Mm-hm.” Toriko nodded, then filled in the hole quickly.
From there, she taught me how to load bullets, and how to disengage the safety. Based on what she was telling me, it wasn’t all that difficult, though I had no confidence I’d hit anything if I fired.
“Do you want to test it?”
“No, that’s fine. It’s scary.”
“If you suddenly try to shoot when you’re in a situation where you need to, you’re going to fail.”
“I said it’s fine.”
I reengaged the safety, and after some hesitation, I stuffed it in my bag.
“Sorry, I wish I had a holster or something for you, but this gun’s just a thing I picked up.”
“Where?”
“This side. They’re just lying around occasionally. Maybe the military came through here. I’ve never seen them, though.”
I’d considered the possibility that other people had come into this world, but the military?
If so, wasn’t it possible we’d suddenly get shot?
While I was feeling less and less sure about all this, Toriko reshouldered her tote bag. “Okay, let’s go,” she said cheerily.
“Y-Yeah.”
We walked away from the building and into the grass. Our destination: the place I’d met Toriko.
Our goal: Kunekune hunting.