“There’s a weird smell,” Torii murmured suddenly in a quiet voice. That whisper was so nonchalant that one would think she was speaking to herself, and it surprised me. Now that she pointed it out, there really was a weird smell.
It smells burnt. I think I remember this smell... This is the smell of a machine that’s short-circuited; the smell of burnt circuits and sparks.
Standing up, I look around, but my field is of vision is terrible due to the piles of snacks all over the place. Where is it? I wondered. Where’s that burnt smell coming from?
“W-what happened?” Utena asked absent-mindedly. She probably didn’t hear Torii because, for some reason, she is treating the girl as if she doesn’t exist— or if she did, she’s ignoring her.
“Over there.” Carelessly, Torii also stood up. And, violently enough to surprise me, she thrust her hand through the mountain of snacks in front of us, causing it to crumble. Having widened our field of vision, she stretched her back. Torii is the tallest of us: tall enough that, if she fixed her posture, she’d be out of my normal field of vision. She seemed to be mumbling something that I couldn’t hear.
“What’s up? Should Utena stand too?” Blinking with surprise, Utena was munching on a biscuit topped high with whipped cream. She seemed well bred even now, finishing whatever was in her hands.
The heavy bass sounds that had been reverberating for a while now got stronger. It sounds like we’re being shelled, I thought. I’ve got a bad feeling about this. Wiping off a bit of cold sweat, I took Utena’s hand in mine.
“For now, let’s move to a place where it’ll be easier to react to anything,” I suggested. “If something happened here, all these snacks would get in the way and we wouldn’t be able to run.”
“Y-yeah.” Utena nodded. It seems that she was bothered by the fact that her hands were a bit sticky because of all the snacks, because her fingers kept squirming around.
Her body temperature is strangely high, I noted. Is something wrong?
“Come on, tell Utena what’s going on...” she complained. “Ah, there really is a strange smell.”
Too busy to reply to Utena, I kept leading her around by the hand. We left the circle of snacks surrounding us through the part where Torii had crumbled the pile.
“Something’s burning,” Torii said. Looking enviously at our joined hands, she pointed hesitatingly in one direction.
Following her finger, I looked over. There was something shining through the dim space. Apparently there was a hole in the roof, and through it came light from the sunset, red like blood. Something was burning in that spot, lit up like a spotlight in twilight colors.
It was a TV. A common TV, just like the ones that surrounded me while I was wandering into this alternate dimension. It was dented and broken. Its surroundings were burning, probably because something got hit by a spark from the circuits. There was a sweet smell coming from all the snacks littering the surroundings, too.
Why didn’t I realize this immediately?
“A-a fire? What should we do? Umm, do we have an extinguisher?” Because Utena said something surprisingly pragmatic, I got shocked out of my dazed state. Coming to with a gasp, I regained a portion of my senses. “There would be one if this was a normal amusement park...” I said. “But we don’t have a way to put out this fire, and if worst comes to worst this thing could explode. It’s dangerous here, let’s leave.”
“But Yuudai-kun told us to stay here,” Utena protested. I tried pulling on her hand, but she resisted. She’s small, so if I really wanted to I could pull her along by force...but what to do...?
The TV isn’t really burning that intensely. I kind of feel like it’ll eventually burn itself out on its own. That being said, fire is dangerous. Our town is pretty old-fashioned, and a lot of houses are still made out of wood, so a fire would do serious damage: the fear of fire has been beaten into us from early on.
“If we don’t put out this fire, it’ll trouble whoever is taking care of this place. Aah, but this place is that alternate dimension thing, isn’t it? Hmm... Maybe we really should give up and leave, like Hitomi says?” Utena is always talking. It’s like she talks instead of thinking, and in that sense she’s a person with no hidden side. She expresses everything she thinks.
Personally, I couldn’t do that— it’s too scary. To a normal person, that’s something that only our town’s princess can do, because she’s in a position to get away with anything.
“That TV looks like it fell through the ceiling.” Making a conjecture from the situation, I come upon an unpleasant premonition: “This might not be the only one. There might be TVs falling, one after another. We’ll die if we get hit with one directly, and it would be hard to dodge here because our field of view is bad. For now, let’s go outside.”
“Yeah. I understand, because Utena is clever. But why are the TVs falling?” Utena asked the question no one has an answer to. It’s difficult to even theorize the cause and effect of things that happen in this mysterious dimension. It makes me want to abandon thought.
“For now, let’s just lea—” Growing impatient, I somewhat forcibly cut off Utena’s questions, temporarily letting go of her hand to give her a push on the back. We head towards the exit, and Torii follows a bit behind us.
“Let’s hurry,” I announced. Just as we sped up, it happened:
As I had expected, the TVs fell one after the other, breaking through the ceiling. Luckily, they weren’t on a course to hit us, and instead crashed into the mountain of snacks. The sweets scattered, becoming powder and dispersing into the air, making the pervasive sweet smell even stronger.
With a start, Utena took the lead and ran towards the exit without saying anything.
The colors of the sunset shone haphazardly through the holes in the ceiling. The sounds of explosions reverberated off of the walls and ceiling, forming a strange echo. Aahh, I lamented, it doesn’t seem like we’re allowed to take it easy any more.