𝐖𝐇𝐄𝐑𝐄'𝐒 𝐌𝐘 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄? (𝗵. 𝗮𝗸𝗶) ✓

24

Hanasaki sat there, the sweat lukewarm on her face, suddenly hyper-aware of the scratch of the carpet beneath her palm. She was expecting an impact, the sudden lurching force of the headboard into her nose, turning it and the rest of her face into a bloody, bony pulp. Yet she didn't flinch. Death right in her line of sight, the last thing she'd see before her eyes were pushed into the back of her skull and her vision plunged into murky grey-brown, yet she didn't flinch.

The bed had stopped as instantly as if the floor had suddenly been righted and everything was back to normal. If that was true, however, Hanasaki wouldn't be stuck against the wall by a force as oppressive as gravity.

Before she could consider how it happened, she almost laughed at what a stupid way to die it was. They were trapped in a hotel by some omnipresent, apparently omnipotent Devil, the god of the eighth floor, and her fate would've been 'crushed by bed'. Definitely would've looked interesting on a headstone, she mused.

She sat there for hours, days, feeling the fabric on her shoulders constrict around her arms like they were suddenly two sizes too small. Years passed as she turned her head to the side, noticing that Kobeni's trembling form beside her was frozen solid, her terror-stricken expression as immaculately still as if it were carved from marble. In fact, everything and everyone in the room, including the room itself, was perfectly motionless. Everyone but her.

Five seconds are almost up, Hanasaki. I'd get a move on if I were you.

Hanasaki was back in her body again. She was sick of watching the pale girl in the suit below stare into nothingness while the rest of her team had become statue versions of themselves, somewhere between lifelike and lifeless.

She crawled to the side, her shoe dragging across the final stretch of floor just as the bed came crashing down.

Some dull blow struck her foot, and she barely registered this clawing pain on her heel before the skin went numb. She glanced behind her, realising that she had been too slow, her foot now stuck behind the bed's wooden leg. It wasn't broken, she thought as she tried to tug it free. Not broken, but bruised most definitely.

It was only when it felt like her ankle would dislocate from its joint that her foot flopped onto the carpet, useless, the slow crushing pressure of the bed's weight having rid it of any sensation. The bed itself now thudded squarely onto the wall now there was no obstacle between the two, a small crack appearing on the white plaster behind its frame.

Hanasaki had forgotten that the world was animate once more, the yells of her colleagues muffled by the rhythmic pounding of blood in her ears. She scrambled to her feet, then slipped, her knees burning through her trousers as they slammed into the wall. No, not the wall — what used to be the wall, but was now the floor, smooth white instead of beige carpet. The room was still tilting, almost at the end of a full ninety degree rotation. She tried to stand up once more, but her foot was still as limp and unfeeling as if it were someone else's, an organ donation stitched onto her ankle before the nerve endings could connect.

The only reason she realised the floor had stopped turning was the low rumble that resonated through her bones, the snore of a leviathan after it momentarily tossed in its sleep. Everything was still once more. Her palms hurt from hitting the floor — she could just about see the redness fringing the back of her hands — but she used them to heave herself up a final time anyway. She rose slowly, testing the stability of her legs, finding there was still a doubtful wobble in the one that had the injured foot. She was starting to feel things again, though, the sharp but painless prickle of pins and needles stinging the dead flesh. It would have to do.

She stumbled forward with about as much grace as a drunkard, neatly dodging the now-vertical bed. Power, Arai and Kobeni had all disappeared, having made their escape while she'd been trying to regain her ability to walk. What worried her was that they were not in the doorway, and the only thing beyond it was the corridor. The corridor, which now shot downwards instead of sideways. The corridor, which, if Hanasaki's guess was correct, led directly into the yawning maw of the Eternity Devil.