I Will Hold Your Hand Gently

Chapter 27: The White Room

I slowly opened my eyes and realized I was standing in the middle of a white square room. There were no windows and no doors. It was as if the room existed in isolation, cut off from everything else. Confusion washed over me as I struggled to make sense of my surroundings. How had I come to be here? I racked my brain, but no memory surfaced to explain my presence in this strange place. It was unlike anything I had ever experienced, and I couldn't shake the unsettling feeling that I had stepped into a realm that did not belong to the novel or my world.

I paced towards the wall, my footsteps echoing faintly in the silent room. I reached out and pressed my palm against the smooth surface, searching for any sign of a hidden passage or door. My fingers traced along the edges, feeling for seams or mechanisms that might reveal an escape route. However, as I meticulously explored every inch of the wall, it became clear that nothing was concealed beneath its pure white walls. No latch, no button, no secret panel awaited my discovery. It was just an unyielding expanse of white, leaving me with a sinking realization that there was no way out of this confinement.

The thought crossed my mind—had I died and was this the afterlife? The idea pierced my heart with a sharp ache. I hadn't even done anything for Zwei, and now it seemed I was gone from the world. A quiet sigh escaped me, heavy with a mix of regret and uncertainty.

"Who are you?" a sudden question pierced the stillness from a small voice emerging through the empty air like a whisper from the beyond.

Startled, I spun around, searching for the source of the voice. A young girl dressed in ragged clothing held her arm to the side while looking at me with her icy blue eyes through her messy dirty long forest-green hair. She felt like someone both near and far, present yet cease to exist at the same time. The silence that followed seemed to amplify the stillness of the room. 

Uncertainty gripped me as I stood there silently, questioning whether I should answer the young girl. She remained perfectly still after she posed that question to me. Her gaze bore into mine, unwavering and intense. The icy blue of her eyes seemed to widen, drawing me in deeper with every passing moment, as though they could engulf me if I tried to look away. I resolved to respond, but as I opened my mouth, no sound came out. My lips could form words, but that was all I could do. The young girl repeated her question, her voice echoing through the back of my mind like a haunting melody.

"Who are you?" Her words reverberated, pulsing through my thoughts with intensity.

I struggled to respond, my mind blank. How could I answer when I didn't even know myself? It was as if I had wandered into a labyrinth shrouded in an impenetrable fog, each step heavier than the last as though sinking into quicksand. The young girl stares at me with her uncanny icy-blue eyes. She reached out to me and touched my arm as she asked me again, "Who are you?"

In that next instant, I jolt awake from my dream gasping for air. Sweat pours down from my body as though I was sleeping through the hot summer air. 

I cover my face with my hand, "A dream...?"

I couldn't place who that young girl was, but her resemblance to me was uncanny. A sharp pang shot through my head as I strained to recall her image. Silently wincing from the pain, I struggled to grasp her features. The memory seemed crystal clear just moments ago, yet now her face blurred into smoke within my mind. Questions flooded my thoughts—why did remembering her cause me a headache? Why did her image slip and disappear like air? But there was no one around to give me answers to the unsettling questions.

There was no use dwelling on unanswered questions anymore. Right now, my priority should be figuring out my current location. It struck me that my mask was missing from my face. Memories flooded back: being thrown into jail with Lucia, receiving a chilling warning about someone targeting her, encountering Espers who viciously attacked officers, my mask breaking in the frantic struggle to escape them, and saving a person named Hunter, whom I believe was Lucia's brother