Was it naturally formed or man-made? The inside was dark, so I couldn’t make out its interior. An empty, black, gaping hole. A hole…that a person…could pass through.
At that thought, some kind of switch flipped and a strange buzzing gradually filled my head.
A hole…a person…could pass through.
Must…pass through…
Who must pass through? I-I must…?
I surrendered to this sudden, intense impulse. It was a relentless need, an obsessive desire. I wanted to enter that hole. For some reason, I could think of nothing else but doing so.
I began to walk toward the cave entrance. As I did, an unidentifiable irritation burned through me: Run. I clumsily tried to suppress this new compulsion, but my pace quickened.
Ten more meters till I reached the entrance.
I want to enter already.
Five meters.
Hurry up. Come on.
Two meters. My impatient feet stumbled. Four more steps. Three steps. Two steps. One step. Then—
In my haste, I slammed my pinky toe on the cave entrance.
“Owww! Urrrgghhhh!”
I let out a scream that cut the air before I began crying like a puppy. I collapsed on the ground in total agony. I hadn’t injured myself on the corner of a dresser—I’d been done in by the edge of a cave.
In my excited state, my field of vision had narrowed. On top of that, the cave entrance was only wide enough to fit one person. Of course I stubbed my toe on it. Moreover, I was barefoot, and I’d smacked into it with all that momentum. Ow. Ow. Ow! No more weird compulsions, only tears now.
After moaning on the floor for a time, I slowly stood up, trembling. Yeah, full-on trembling, just like a newborn fawn. Timidly, I checked my pinky toe. I thought I would die from the pain, but it didn’t seem like any bones were broken.
Now then. At this point, I realized something interesting. Even though just a moment before I had wanted nothing more than to enter the cave, driven by that indescribably intense urge, that same want had for some reason completely vanished the second I injured my pinky toe.
Strange. But at the time, it really had felt like entering the cave would be the greatest achievement of my entire life.
Yikes, what a sad life. I’m glad I came to my senses.
With my sanity retrieved, I peeked through the cave entrance. A light shone through from the other side. Huh. This wasn’t a cave. It was a tunnel. I could probably pass through it. It would take a bit to reach the exit, but I didn’t think it was too far.
I took a few steps back from the entrance to get a better look at the auburn rock face the cave was carved into. Aside from the tunnel, there were no other features. That meant this vertical rock face was actually a cliff. It was tall enough that you would probably faint if you tried to climb it all the way up. It easily exceeded ten meters.
On closer inspection, the auburn cliff appeared to encircle the entire area, just like the trees. In other words, I was—for some absurd reason—in the center of a basin surrounded by a cliff that was topographically isolated from the outside world. Okay, I had no way to know if I was completely isolated. At the very least there was that tunnel, which I suspected acted as a passageway connecting the basin to the outside.
The basin looked to be several times larger than Tokyo Dome. I wondered exactly how many times. Hmm…I couldn’t be sure. Rather, once I thought about it more, I realized I had never been to Tokyo Dome. So, yeah, I wouldn’t know. Why did you even use Tokyo Dome as a reference, past me?
Anyway.
To sum: This was a perfectly circular basin, several times larger than Tokyo Dome, surrounded by an auburn cliff. There appeared to be a small tunnel on the cliff connecting it to the outside, and a lonely, barefooted male in lame pajamas standing at its entrance. There were no other living creatures. The entire area was covered with a tranquil green, and the air felt delicious. The sky was clear and lovely.
This was the entirety of the extremely useful information I’d gathered from my investigation. In the end, I still hadn’t identified the reason why I was there, the cause, or any countermeasures…but I knew I had two choices.
One was, of course, to go through the tunnel and make it out on the other side. The other was to return to the magic circle and investigate the basin once more. The latter had a better chance of helping me understand my current situation. Also, because the inside of the tunnel was so dark that I couldn’t make it out, it was unsettling. However, if we were going to talk unsettling, that magic circle was in a class all of its own. In fact, visually speaking, it broke the definition of unsettling.
In short, both options were bad.
What should I do…?
I only hesitated for a second. For the time being, I decided to return to the field with the magic circle.
I didn’t make this choice for any particularly deep reason. What did you expect? This wasn’t a major fork in the road. The difference between the two options was as short as the distance from your eyes to your nose. The question was just which option I investigated first and which I postponed for later. Simply that. Just the order of events.
Or that was what it was supposed to be.
I turned on my heels and idly returned to the magic circle.
✦ ✦ ✦
In the unfolding story, I will encounter countless critical crossroads that will alter fate. They will always appear suddenly and without warning. However, now that I look back on everything, the most important moment, the junction of fate…would have to be this one: the decision to not enter the tunnel and head back to the magic circle.
Merely that. I had no grand reason; I gave it no thought. And yet, it terrifies me to think that everything that occurs in the following pages began with this one decision.
The Wheel of Fate let out a grand creak before beginning to reverse.