Editing A Simple Survey:Volume2 Reaper03 (section)

===Part 5===

Higashikawa ran back to where they had found Hiyama collapsed on the floor.

She had still not gotten up. Rachel had stayed by her side without running away.

“…There has to be something here.” Higashikawa walked right next to Hiyama and looked all around. “Something. Something that will help us reverse this situation!! She didn’t carry her here after attacking. She was attacked here, so it has to be something visible here. There has to be some logical reason the organizer attacked Hiyama here. Some rule!!”

But he did not find any revolutionary information.

Due to Kazakami’s rampage, the hallway’s wallpaper was torn up, the glass supposedly protected by the metal bars was broken, and the unlit fluorescent lights were broken. Several sharp fragments were scattered on the ground, so it was a dangerous place to be lying in.

But that was all.

Higashikawa could see nothing that hinted at a special rule. He started to panic. Sweat poured from his forehead. Some overwhelming rule was supposed to have shown itself. If he could not find something like that here, they would continue to be toyed with while not knowing the rules. He had no proof of it, but that was the future that appeared in his mind.

The sweat pouring from his body only irritated him further.

He used his sleeve to wipe the sweat from his brow, but then he frowned.

Something had caught his attention.

“Where’s the wind?”

He focused on a single point.

He focused on the window that had been protected by the metal bars.

“The glass was broken, so at least some wind should be coming in. So why is it so stuffy in here?”

It may have simply been windless night.

Despite the season, it may have simply been a hot, calm night.

But…

He grabbed at the bars over the window and focused outside once more. Higashikawa should have been seeing the scenery from the deep darkness of the hallway about ten stories up.

And yet…

“What the hell?” said Higashikawa in confusion.

There was no change. Despite the night scenery spreading out in front of him, the air outside the window and inside the window was exactly the same. The temperature, the humidity, the freshness, the lack of wind, and everything else were exactly the same. It was as if there was no distinction between outside and inside. It was as if it was all one giant mass.

And more than that…

“…”

Higashikawa looked down.

The scene he saw there would have sent a chill down the spine of anyone who was afraid of heights.

He saw something sparkling there.

“Glass shards?”

They were likely from when Kazakami had broken the window with his wooden stick. For some reason, they were unnaturally floating partway up the 10 story height. No, it was more than that. They threw off the sense of distance in the scenery. Those countless glass shards looked completely out of place in the otherwise perfect scenery.

Could it be?

Could it be…?

“There isn’t any night scenery or ocean outside,” muttered Higashikawa blankly. “We aren’t actually 10 stories up.”

He had lost a major assumption.

Higashikawa converted the truth before his eyes into words.

“We were only made to think we are!!”

Most likely, all of the windows were covered with a semispherical wall. By adding some trick art onto the inside, they had all been led to think they were 10 stories up and that they could see the night scenery out the window.

If it was daytime or the hallway was fully lit by the fluorescent lights, they may have noticed it right away. But the slight oddities of that scenery were hard to notice with so little light.

That was also why the emergency staircases and elevators were blocked off with metal bars. That helped hide that they were not actually 10 stories up.

That was the rule. That was why Hiyama had been attacked. And in that case…

“I’ve got it.”

Higashikawa entered a random hospital room and disassembled a floor lamp into a wooden stick like Matsumi and Kazakami had. When Rachel saw Higashikawa enter the hallway with the weapon, she let out a small shriek.

But he was not planning to use it on a human being.

Higashikawa stuck the wooden stick through a gap in the bars and pushed it in.

As expected, it struck something hard that should not have been in that night scenery.

But it did not stop there.

The wooden stick dug in as if it had pierced through a cardboard box. When he pulled it out, a thumb-sized hole had opened in the trick art of the night scenery. Bright light poured in through the hole.

There was something beyond it.

There was a space there.

The organizers were hiding some secret there.

“Dammit, dammit!! If only we could do something about these bars!!”

Higashikawa let go of the wooden stick and grabbed the bars with both hands without worrying about possible traps. He poured his full weight into shaking them back and forth. He knew there was no way that would move metal bars that were welded into place, but he had to try.

And then something truly bizarre happened.

With a snapping sound, all of the metal bars broke away from the window frame.

“Wha-…?”

Higashikawa fell on his ass, but then he realized he did not even have time to ask questions.

He was falling out the window.

His shoulders forcefully struck the semispherical outer wall that was covered in trick art.

With the sound of ripping cardboard, Higashikawa rolled beyond that wall.

After being in the dark for so long, the bright lights burned his eyes.

“Kh… Where am I…?”

He looked around to find a tidy-looking bar. One wall was covered with a giant monitor, but it seemed to be used for decorative lighting. The area also contained a counter and a few round tables. A laptop computer was prepared in front of each and every chair. They all displayed a map of the Hell Hospital that Higashikawa and the others had been in with a few strange dots on it. As expected, it showed no information on any floors besides the one they had been on. It had not been an actual hospital.

And…

His eyes met with someone else’s.

She was a college-aged girl with large headphones over her ears.

This was not the organizer woman they had been confronting before.

However…

(If she’s here, she must be one of the organizers!!)

Higashikawa picked up his wooden stick from the floor and held it tightly in his hands. He smelled a slight scent of vanilla. She had clearly been relaxing at leisure while watching their suffering.

And then a loud voice came from behind him.

“Hey, listen to this. While I was wrapping the wire on, the entire set of bars came off! …Wait, what the hell is this!?”

It was Kazakami and Matsumi.

Perhaps due to their weapons, they did not hesitate to head through the “hole” that Higashikawa had found. And then they spotted the organizer just as he had.

Belligerence ran through their eyes.

Higashikawa felt he had just seen the moment when pent up anger ripped away the façade of justice.

Fear ran through the eyes of the headphone-wearing organizer woman.

She frantically looked over to the room’s exit.

But she did not make it in time.

Matsumi threw her wooden stick at her back. An odd cry of pain leaked from the headphone-wearing woman’s mouth. She somehow managed not to trip, but Kazakami had already run up to her.

He grabbed the headphone-wearing woman’s hair and forcefully pulled her to the floor.

Kazakami swung his wooden stick down on her upper body. He did not hold back and clearly swung it as hard as he could. Matsumi did not stop him. She picked back up the wooden stick she had thrown and headed toward the headphone-wearing woman as well.

It was enough violence to make Higashikawa want to turn his back.

But he also felt it was unavoidable.

[[Image:Survey_v02_342.jpg|thumb]]

This was one of the organizers who enjoyed toying with human lives and forcing these attractions on people. Anyone would want to get back at someone like that.

“''Kozue!!''”

Another door opened.

This time it was the organizer woman who had escaped through the metal bars of the emergency staircase.

''This woman who had showy hair and looked like a cabaret club girl'' was the one Higashikawa and the others had faced up until now. However, she looked so confused that Higashikawa almost questioned whether she really was the same person.

“Wait! We can explain!! Please save Kozue!!”

“…”

The cabaret club girl frantically tried to approach, but Higashikawa held up his wooden stick to hold her back. She gritted her teeth, but stayed where she was. Meanwhile, Higashikawa could hear a sound similar to a thick blanket being beaten.

At first glance, their reversal had been a success.

But Higashikawa felt that something was seriously off about the situation.

He felt something leading up to this did not add up.

(I know.)

Suddenly, it came to him.

(They easily gave us four handguns during the operating room attraction. The organizers must have plenty of weapons. So why? Why aren’t they using those overwhelming weapons to hold us back? Even a single handgun would turn this entire situation around.)

It had been the same when Hiyama was attacked.

Why had the woman used a fire extinguisher? The organizers could freely use bombs and guns, so they should have been able to kill Hiyama much more easily and certainly.

(Something isn’t right. This is odd. It was also strange how fragile the bars over the window were. And if they had simply made the semicircular wall outside the window out of concrete, we couldn’t have done anything even if we caught on to the trick. And Kazakami said the same thing happened with the other bars. It’s almost as if…)

Suddenly, Higashikawa noticed a corkboard on one wall.

An A4 piece of paper pinned to it said the following:

''Player 1:

''Higashikawa Mamoru.

''Hiyama Tomoko.

''Kazakami Shinzou.

''Matsumi Shirauo.

''Rachel Skydance.

That required no explanation. It was a list of the participants in the attraction. Photos of their faces could be seen near the printout.

But that was not the issue.

Next to it was a list of other names.

At first, he thought it was a list of the organizer’s names.

However…

''Player 2:

''Anzai Kyousuke.

''Harumi Quartervalley.

''Hasegawa Hotaru.

''Kusaka Kozue.

''Yakushiji Aisu.

“Player…2?” muttered Higashikawa before feeling an unpleasant sweat.

He finally realized something.

He caught on to a certain malice.

He learned of the cruelty of the true organizers who controlled the entire attraction.

“No. Wait, Kazakami! Matsumi!! Don’t kill her!!”

“What!? What are you saying? We’re done for if we don’t turn this around! And you have no right to tell me what to do!!”

It was partially Higashikawa’s fault this had happened. He had prevented the five of them from fighting amongst themselves by turning all of their hatred toward the organizers. He had guided Kazakami’s violent nature in that direction.

But the true organizers may have expected even that.

“You have to stop!!”

“Why!?”

“She is not one of the real organizers! She’s from a different group of players taking part in this attraction!!”

“What?”

Kazakami and Matsumi both turned toward Higashikawa.

The girl named Kozue who had been pummeled again and again by those wooden sticks was lying on the ground and only faintly breathing.

Could she still be saved?

Higashikawa did not know, but he had to at least ensure she was not injured any further.

After all…

“The real organizers planned for us to escape like this! They let us escape so we would turn our anger on the first people we met. There was no other way for us to get past the bars on the windows or hallways. We thought the Hell Hospital was the stage, but a larger stage had been built around that. We’re all trapped inside while split up into different groups!! They want us to kill innocent people without even being told to!!”

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