Editing A Simple Survey:Volume2 Reaper02 (section)

===Part 3===

Due to the metal bars across the passageway, they could not continue on. Could it have been a coincidence that Matsumi and the others had come here? Were all five rooms meant to have a wall crumble to reveal five different passageways?

In the worst case, they would need to head back to the original five rooms and try to destroy the walls, floor, and ceilings of the other four. The five of them turned back and carefully investigated the passageway. The only illumination came from the emergency exit light which was beyond the metal bars.

That was why it took them so long to notice.

It was unclear if the organizers had even intended to hide it.

“Here…” said Rachel in a feeble voice as she felt along the wall overly slowly out of fear of a poisoned needle or some other trap. “Is this a door?”

The others gathered around her.

They felt along the wall too and it did indeed feel odd. It was cold like a sheet of metal. It likely was a door just as Rachel had said.

However, it had no knob.

It was nothing more than a flat metal panel.

“What kind of door is this? How do you open it?”

Kazakami was the one to voice the question all of them were thinking.

Matsumi pushed with both hands, but it would not budge.

“Could this be…?” muttered Higashikawa before crouching down.

He seemed to be feeling around for something in the darkness.

He primarily focused on the floor.

“I was right. There’s a switch here. You step on it to open the door.”

“Is this for an operating room? I think they make it open with a switch on the floor so the doctor does not dirty his hands,” commented Hiyama casually, but then she seemed to realize the weight of the words she had just said.

A great tension ran through the darkness.

The Hell Hospital had partially earned its name due to what went on in the operating rooms.

Children in perfect health had been forcibly dragged in, had their skulls opened, and had their brain operated on for a lobotomy. It was a bloody experimental ground.

Their surroundings did not give an enjoyable impression.

Whether this was the real Hell Hospital or not, the organizers of the attractions would feel the strongest attachment to and interest in this stage. Unless they were cruel enough to actually betray even that basic assumption, the organizers would have something set up here.

“What do we do?”

“I don’t want to go in there any more than you do, but there’s nowhere else to go.”

“…”

Rachel was too afraid to speak.

Matsumi slowly opened her mouth to speak in order not to provide too much of a stimulus.

“The odds are good this is some kind of trap or the next attraction. We need to be careful.”

Matsumi heard the sound of scraping metal.

Higashikawa must have pressed the button near the door.

The double doors opened inwards. In the next moment, the bright fluorescent lights of an operating room lit up. They were left momentarily blinded.

Matsumi instinctually held a hand up to her eyes and managed to maintain some of her vision by squinting.

The area inside was surprisingly large.

The lack of any special equipment may have strengthened that impression. It was about as large as a classroom. The color scheme was entirely made of a light blue and the walls were tiled. The ceiling was about 2 stories high. The walls of the upper floor were covered in glass. New doctors and others could observe the operation from there.

The operating table and a characteristic surgical light were installed in the center of the room. The surgical light was a device created from many different individual lights.

The two pieces of equipment gave off an impression of being isolated because the operating room was completely empty otherwise.

“What…?” said Higashikawa as he entered the operating room.

Matsumi and Rachel followed his lead and walked in after him side by side.

And suddenly, a series of loud musical tones played.

“…Oh, was that too loud? My bad, my bad,” said an equally loud voice.

The great noise brought them all to a stop.

The door to the operating room slammed shut behind Matsumi. Hiyama and Kazakami were still out in the passageway. Rachel frantically ran over to the door, but it would not budge no matter how much she pushed and pulled.

There was a foot button on the floor near the door, but nothing happened when Rachel tried it.

“I-It will not open!!”

They could hear someone pounding on the door from outside.

Kazakami’s voice shouted, “Hey, what happened!? Are you holding it shut!? This button just opened the door, right!?”

“…”

Matsumi silently looked around the operating room and spotted a speaker near the ceiling.

A female voice said, “I thought you would all give up, but it seems you are a surprisingly greedy bunch. That means it is time to begin the 2nd attraction. If you clear it, you will be given the key to those metal bars. If you fail, the door to the operating room will never open again.”

A high-pitched noise exploded out.

It came from the upper floor.

The glass protecting the observation space had shattered. Not much rained down, but Matsumi and Higashikawa jumped back as far as they could whether it was actually falling toward them or not. Rachel was slower to react, so Matsumi ran into her and they fell to the ground.

A woman stood in the space above.

It seemed she had broken the glass with a chair. She threw four objects about the size of landline phone receivers through the hole that was too large to call a gap.

Some landed on the surgical table and some missed and fell to the floor.

Higashikawa’s body stiffened in shock when he saw them.

Matsumi did not want to look toward them.

But before she could, the woman who had broken the glass spoke.

“Two of the handguns hold a real bullet and two hold only blanks. Two of you will participate. Each participant must choose whichever two of the handguns they want, aim the guns at each other, and pull one of their two triggers when I give the sign. It’s quite a simple attraction.”

“You’re insane!!!!!!” shouted Higashikawa without thinking.

At first glance, it seemed this was a decent reaction, but Matsumi felt the organizers would only rejoice at the outburst of impotent rage. The woman might have been purposefully provoking them, but that might also be too farfetched.

“By the way, the guns have laser pointers attached, so we will know if you try to aim away. Make sure to aim at the center of the other’s face before pulling the trigger.”

For an instant, Rachel’s gaze moved between the handgun and the woman on the upper floor.

She may have been considering taking the gun and shooting the woman.

But Matsumi doubted it would work. It was the organizers who had prepared the guns. They would have countermeasures prepared to keep them from being used against them.

Matsumi looked up at the upper floor.

This woman claimed to be a fulltime employee of Attraction Land.

But Matsumi had never had a proper conversation with those fulltime employees. It was unknown what the woman’s purpose was in throwing her into this situation. It was unclear if the woman even viewed Matsumi as on the same side as her.

The woman then clearly met Matsumi’s gaze.

And she smiled.

Then she announced, “The two who will take part in this attraction are the following: Matsuuumiii Shiraaaauoooooo!! Raacheeeeellll Skyyyyyydaaaaaaance!!”

“Ee!!”

Rachel let out a voice like a hiccup as her entire body stiffened.

Matsumi silently gritted her teeth. If the explosions had opened a different path, would a less cruel fate have awaited them? However, thinking on possibilities that may never have existed would not help.

“A catfight like this can only be seen tonight!! The feigned innocence of these girls is likely to come crumbling down, so I hope you’re prepared to be disillusioned, boy!! Now, let us begin. Both of you must choose two of these handguns!!”

“No!” frantically shouted Higashikawa to stop the designated girls.

He may have forgotten the simple fact that a raised voice would wear at people’s nerves in an extreme situation regardless of the intent behind it. Or perhaps he had not forgotten and was doing it purposefully.

“They’ll do anything to enjoy this. They’ll never keep their promise. They probably all have a real bullet inside so they can laugh at the idiots who honestly take the challenge!”

“No, no.”

An odd change suddenly came over the voice of the woman on the upper floor.

It grew quieter.

It grew eerily sincere.

“We strictly adhere to the rules and results of the attractions. It does not matter if that leads to a sickening happy ending where you all survive.”

Before Matsumi and the others could think on it or analyze it, the woman’s voice reverted to the same as before.

“But whether you believe me or not, the attraction is beginning! If you use up all your time, you will all be killed!”

“Shit…” cursed Higashikawa despite having escaped the attraction himself.

Was he cursing his inability to stop his allies from killing each other or was he cursing his own relief over having escaped?

“If you have not made your preparations within 10 minutes, you will be killed. Tah dah!! I have a beer case full of Molotov cocktails prepared. …Hm? You can’t see them from down there? Well, I’ll be tossing a ton of them down there, so I doubt you will be able to escape. The door won’t be opening either.”

“Shit!!”

Higashikawa was the first one to act.

Matsumi followed suit and approached the four handguns scattered near the operating table in the center. Rachel sat on the floor with her face absolutely pale and remained perfectly motionless.

“We have to check,” muttered Matsumi more to herself than anyone else. And then she shouted out because that encouragement had immediately failed. “We have to find some way to tell which ones have a real bullet and which ones have a blank! If we know how to tell, we will automatically know if the rules are fair and how to safely clear this attraction!!”

All of the handguns were revolvers.

“If we can determine which handguns have blanks, we can clear this attraction with no one dying.”

Matsumi picked up one of the handguns and tried to remove the cartridges, but the cylinder would not open like she had seen in movies.

At first she assumed she simply did not know how to do it, but Higashikawa shook his head after he tried with a different gun.

“It’s no good. They’ve been altered so the cylinder won’t open.”

“We can’t check the cartridges, so we can’t tell which ones are real bullets and which ones are blanks!”

They were revolvers, so the cylinder was made to hold six shots in a circular pattern. If the bullet aligned with the barrel was viewed as 12 o’clock, the bullets at 2 o’clock and 10 o’clock could be glimpsed by staring into the holes on the cylinder.

However…

“Dammit, they all look the same.”

If they could not check, they could not choose between the four guns.

If they simply chose at random, the odds of no one dying were almost nonexistent. If either of them chose the gun with a real bullet, it was over. And it was possible one of them would end up with both options holding a real bullet.

Given the different patterns, the odds of someone dying were 3/4.

That was three times as high as in Russian roulette.

“Just under seven minutes to go!”

“…”

They could not tell which were real bullets and which were blanks just by looking in from outside.

The odds were too poor to simply choose at random.

There had to be a way.

There had to be some other way of telling apart the four handguns.

“…Wait.”

“What?”

“Do you have something like an eraser? And something like a ruler!!”

“How is that going to help? All of the guns are the same model, so measuring their length won’t-…”

“Just do it!! I’m not measuring their length!!” shouted Matsumi as she looked over at the operating table in the center of the room. More accurately, she looked at the four legs supporting it. She grabbed one of those square rods and pulled hard.

It was affixed to the table with a screw, so it would not budge.

Matsumi looked to Higashikawa and said, “Help me tear this leg off!!”

“Why? What are you going to use it for?”

“We have a chance if we use it! Hurry!!”

Higashikawa did not hold back any longer.

He circled around to where Matsumi was and held the operating table in place so it would not move. When they worked together, the square rod seemed to slowly bend. But it was actually the screw holding it in place beginning to break.

A high pitched snapping sound rang out.

It had bent a bit, but the leg had come off. The operating table fell over diagonally, but Matsumi did not care.

She took off the leather shoe of her school uniform and placed it on the floor.

She then carefully placed the center of the operating table leg on top.

It was a seesaw.

Or…

“…Scales?”

“Real bullets and blanks don’t weigh the same, right? The heavier gun should be the one with a real bullet inside. We can tell them apart by weighing them!!”

“How much time is left!?” shouted Higashikawa toward the upper floor.

The organizer woman replied, “Just under three minutes.”

“We can make it,” muttered Higashikawa under his breath. His voice then grew louder. “We can make it. We can clear this attraction without anyone dying!!”