Chapter 1:
Beginning and Choice
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BY THE TIME I REALIZED IT, I was standing smack-dab in the middle of a field, wearing my stupidly lame pajamas.
The pajamas had yellow cats printed on them… No, wait, were they tanuki? Anyway, the repeating faces of this yellow mystery creature were printed close together. These were my cheaply made, blue, long-sleeved pajamas. And they were pretty awful-looking. This was definitely not a design a forward-thinking youth should consider acceptable sleepwear.
Well, I had bought them myself the other day at my neighborhood shopping mall. I chose them, of course, because they were cheap. But that wasn’t the only reason. Left at the bottom of the barrel with no one willing to take a chance on these ugly cats…or, hmm. Were they perhaps pigs? Anyway, I felt some kind of deep pity toward these animals.
But let’s put that aside for a bit. It wasn’t the time to be mulling the lame-factor of my pajamas. The real issue was why I was standing in the middle of this field. I thought I had been sleeping on my futon back at home, but I appeared to be in an open meadow.
“Where the heck is this? Is this…a dream…?”
The sun had risen quite a bit already. The meadow was encircled by groves of verdant, broad-leaved trees. The wind trailed through the branches and blew delicate waves in the prolific undergrowth.
I was left with the impression of pastoral beauty. Although this place did seem uninhabited and a bit lonely, it also felt like a garden of sorts.
At that moment, I suddenly realized my feet were uncomfortable. It appeared that the only area not covered with grass was under my feet. I wasn’t wearing any shoes, so my bare soles were cold. I wasn’t standing on dirt, either; it felt like concrete, or possibly stone. Then, as I casually dropped my gaze to get a better look, I started.
“Whoa, what the heck is this?!” I unintentionally shouted.
I was standing on top of a blood-red stone floor. Furthermore, an eerie geometric pattern had been drawn on it in a circle. The diameter of this enigmatic pattern was probably roughly 150 centimeters, and it just screamed “magic circle.” I didn’t know any other more suitable phrase.
Also, no matter how I looked at it, it wasn’t exactly evocative of magic from some dreamy, fantasy fairy tale. What was a more appropriate description for this creepy thing…? If I had to, I’d say it gave off the impression of the setting for a human sacrifice ritual by a devil-worshipping cult. All in all, it was clear at first glance that this magic circle was ominous as hell.
Rust-red lines were painted—though don’t ask me with what kind of paint—close together in an intricate pattern, as if a bunch of snakes had slithered around each other. Even more minute patterns were drawn in the minuscule blank spaces between these lines, further filling the pattern.
Even if none of these patterns had a particular meaning, drawing them must have taken a ton of time and energy. I didn’t understand any of them, but I knew the person who drew them must have been incredibly tenacious. Kind of scary. Moreover, I was the one standing in the middle of the unsettling end product. Even scarier.
To tell you the truth, at that point in time, I was getting some pretty bad vibes. That being said, I was also pretty bewildered by my entire predicament. To put it bluntly, other than the fact that I was standing in the middle of a mysterious circle in my lame pajamas, I knew zip, zero, zilch, and nada.
I did know I didn’t want to stand another second longer on that uncanny circle, so I tried to step off.
My toes hit an invisible wall. Though I’m not really sure if “wall” is the correct term for what it was. Let’s say I felt resistance, like I’d hit a thick membrane of static electricity or something. This incomprehensible force field ran along the perimeter of the circular stone, surrounding me.
Eh? Wait a sec. Did that mean…I was trapped?
Are you kidding me?!
I pressed my palms against the wall and tried to push my way through—and in the very next moment, the resistance anticlimactically vanished. I staggered a few steps forward, tottering over the stone floor until forward momentum brought me outside the circle.
All of a sudden, floral scents flooded my nostrils, the dazzling sunlight of a clear day left me dizzy, and a gentle breeze caressed my cheek. It felt like I had surfaced from deep underwater, and only now were my five senses clear.
It appeared that the invisible wall surrounding the stone circle blocked even outside stimulus. At that point, I had no idea under what principle of physics it operated, but I had no other words to explain what I had just experienced.
Needless to say, I was perplexed.
The clean air and the warmth of the sun played on my senses. The all-too-real tickle of grass rustled against my feet. All these sensations combined suggested only one possible reason for everything. Simply put…
“This isn’t a dream…”
I was terribly rattled by this unfathomable turn of events. But neither did I feel like I was in any immediate danger where I stood. At least I could say this field felt peaceful. The sky was blindingly blue. The whole area was quiet; there were no signs of any other living creatures, not even birdsong. The sun was sweet on my skin, the greenery idyllic, and the wind soothing.
If I ignored that clearly evil magic circle, I would’ve thought I’d come to enjoy a picnic.
In this relaxed state, I surveyed the surrounding trees and my eyes landed on a single troubling spot. Though trees otherwise encircled the meadow, one spot broke the line of green: a sliver of auburn rock face with a gaping hole in it. A cave.