Yume Nikki Chapter 4

Like that, you keep walking.

In the rain, you must look like a child whose parents went to pick her up after school on a winter day, happily skipping down the pavement with her hands held between each of their own. 

Maybe rain isn't such an unpleasant thing for you.

But, instead of your parents walking at your side, there's no one. Completely alone, you keep walking in this empty darkness, as if trying to push aside the continuously falling rain.

In the growing puddles fed by the rain, the quarrelling couple has almost dissolved, but even though they are losing their shape and melting into the mud, they keep on fighting and hating each other. That's okay, though; the sound made by the splatter of raindrops against your umbrella protects you. The couple's quarrel never reached you in the first place. Besides the falling rain, it's awfully quiet around you.

You continue to walk　leisurely, until coming to a halt before what seems to be a stairwell.
The awfully tall and narrow entrance protrudes unnaturally from the ground. From there, the stairs go down, connecting to a place you don't know. Bored of your aimless wandering, you head straight into it, probably expecting something.

Though you close the umbrella, you can hear the rain continue to fall behind you with a soft pitter-patter. You begin climbing down the stairs, as if drawn inside by an unseen force.

You shake the water out of your wet braids, and you continue your descent down the staircase that has become wet and slippery. It's dark, and you can't see a thing. You don't know what awaits you at the end of the stairs.

You go down, down, down. In the distance, you can just about make out the tiniest of lights. You head towards it, and the light grows and grows, until you've reached the exit.

You are welcomed by a forest, so dense that it looks like a sea of trees.
Even though you climbed down a staircase, you're clearly outside. It makes no sense, but you don't seem affected by the bizarreness of it. You glance around you with curiosity.

Greenery surrounds you, endlessly, hiding what may lay beyond. The trees block your view, but they look lifeless. There's no clear path among the maze of trees, but suddenly, you drop your umbrella upon seeing something that, even to you, looks jarringly out of place.

In front of you stands a vending machine.

Like a bug drawn to the light, you approach it. It looks like a brand new, but otherwise perfectly mundane vending machine. There's coffee, tea and juice lined up, but nothing that particularly stands out. You press your face close to the gla.s.s, like a kid in front of a candy shop, to get a better look at the selection.

You look for some change in your pocket, and when your search yields nothing but lint, you shake your head with a disappointed sigh.
Perhaps this is intended to be the equivalent of a game's hero picking up a potion to reinvigorate his senses and quench his thirst. But since that option is blocked for you, you can only raise your hand to your dry throat and hope to moisten it by gulping.

Though regrettable, you ultimately have no choice but to give up and step back from the machine. The ground beneath your feet is uneven and rough, but somehow it proves no problem for you at all as you continue walking.

After checking every nook and crack between the tress, you finally see one big enough for your small body to go through.
Once you manage to reach the other side, a path is revealed to you.

It's an asphalt road, but it doesn't look transited. There are cracks running through it, and plants sprouting from them. Without any car pa.s.sing through, it resembles the decaying corpse of a ma.s.sive beast.

You step onto the asphalt and look around.

This straight road cuts through the ocean of trees, seemingly endless. As ever, there's no way of telling where it leads, or where it began. But it only feels natural to go down the road, so you do just that.

Your walking steps resound on the asphalt.

The road is long, the end out of sight, like a highway without any car to be seen.
Walking through it is not easy.

You walk and walk, on and on. The asphalt sprawls boundlessly beneath your feet, unchanging, and you grow sick and tired of walking. You're coming to realize that you will never get anywhere like this. This highway is a closed s.p.a.ce.

And then you notice--
On one edge of the road, just in the corner of your vision, there's something weird.
It stands there, almost like it's floating, calling no attention to itself and easily blending into its surroundings. It's no wonder you didn't see it at first. Actually, how long has it been there?

The white lines drawn across the road have an almost hypnotic effect when you look at them. It's known to be the cause behind some instances of drivers falling asleep at the wheel, even. And by walking for so long and keeping your eyes fixed on the ground, you lost your awareness in the same fashion.

But now that you've noticed the thing, you can't ignore it any more. Something about it fills you with a sense of unease.
No matter how you look at it, you can't make sense of it. It's a perplexing being. You thought it looked human at first, but the impression only lasted a split-second. It's about as tall as you, and could be mistaken for someone covering their body with a raincoat. With the dim hope you might meet someone else after all, you begin to approach it, until you're close enough to make out what it is.

It's not human. If anything, it looks like a jellyfish.
A jellyfish the size of a human being.

Through its skin that's translucent like a plastic bag, you can clearly see the blood flowing inside its internal organs, with that almost-human shape. It's almost enough to make you sick. The large intestine, the small intestine, and all the other organs hang in front of you, floating in blood. And the thing just stands there, not even acknowledging your presence, if it even can.

Scared and more than a little queasy, you step away from it, and then turn around, running back in the direction from which you came.

The road seems to stretch on infinitely before you. Somewhere in the distance, a bell rings, like for the memorial service at a funeral. As if hinting to your own end as a b.l.o.o.d.y corpse at a side of the road. It sounds only once. For sympathy.

And you're running away again, hands covering your ears.