CHAPTER 0: WHITE ROOM

I still remember that room. In the beginning, that cell was small. The walls were so close to my face that I could sense the very spiritual essence that confined me. There was nothing. Except for the faint, lingering stillness.

I remember outstretching a hand, sick of the impounding barrier. The confines were suffocating. They made me feel sick; trapped in a tiny cage like a songbird.

I tried to feel the cool, porcelain walls, luminescent and radiating a thick ivory.

Yet, whenever my fingertips came close to brushing the light carpets surrounding me, the barriers would retreat backwards. When I pushed, they pulled. I never even got to touch the tank that ensnared me.

I still remember feeling taken aback—albeit the fuzzy consciousness. My mind felt… incomplete. It was as if I were floating in a pool of blinding light, drifting aloft in an ever-expanding prison cell.

Days, years, maybe even centuries passed. I had lost sense of time. The once obscure, miniscule room had grown marginally, to overreaching lengths.

My prison was no longer a single, smoldering cell. No, it had expanded far further into the abyss. But, I was still stuck there. I had simply been moved from a bowl to a pond. After all, no matter how big, a fish is still restricted to where the water sways.

Even great whales could never escape the ocean.

Fish never truly have freedom. They are limited to where the water reaches. I was that metaphorical fish.

Even if I squinted my half-awoken eyes in the murky depths, I couldn’t see the corners of the prison. It had stretched on so far. So, so far. And it were my hands that had done the deed. In my eternal sentence, I had pushed the walls away.

At least I had my sense of direction before. Now, all my senses were gone. I had spent all of time perpetually alone.

Once finite—now infinite.

Nothing was clear. At some point, my memory also began to degrade. It was like hanging onto intertwined threads of identity. I was Rena Shinohara.

But… What else?

I think I was… a highschooler?

No. I was twenty.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

…

Was I?

No…

…What…?

I think I went to a private school?

But… I also remember living for a game…?

I still remember contemplating for ages in a state of comatose, a sleep of unrepentant delirium.

Who… am I?

… …

Me? My? I?

I

Me.

Mine.

…

Where am I? It’s so cold.

…

Yet, at the end, a mental coin flip was all it took.

Huff…

Me? Why, I’m Rena Shinohara, a twenty year old high school dropout, living in her mum’s basement.

I drifted for a marginally longer period afterwards. Each cycle was identical—a melancholic flight through nothingness, without even a hint of distinction.

It was like that for such a long time.

For so long.

Then, something… something alien happened. Something unique, unprecedented.

A strange, wired hand materialised out of the light, like a warped, untextured lump of reality. It was armoured in these alien runes. I tried to tilt my head in confusion, but my eroded muscles refused to act. I was simply a corpse withered by age, a relic of a bygone era.

Something so strange and illegal had never penetrated this prison of mine yet. The metaphoric hand just seemed to protrude further inwards, as I felt its firm fingers restrained my attempted elope, griping me.

Wh-what?

It grasped my arm, and carelessly ripped me out of the White Room.

I lost consciousness afterwards.

Yeesh, only being able to talk to yourself after a bajillion years to whatever seriously messes with mental thought processing. Is that why I’m way too mentally expressive?

When I opened my eyes, I was in some other sort of room. It was similar to the previous one. But different—most notably, I could feel the endings. I could see the corners. The white walls. The white ceiling. The… white floor. The glossy walls were cold to the touch but left a lingering flame of warmth.

My body also felt more alive. I could move more and was no longer rusted.

I flexed my hands instinctively, testing out my reawakened muscles.

My senses shot up. I could see clearly, and my mind was in its prime.

…Uh, maybe not too prime?

Cause, a moment or two after, I failed to notice a trapdoor or something open underneath me. And of course, I fell down.

Damn. Talk about negligence.

Not very self-aware, wouldn’t you say so?

Eh, at least it was a soft landing.