Marionette

Cosmos, Chapter Twenty - Kurushimeru [苦しめる]

What was intended as an afternoon reprieve from the world in order to settle back in her shell again turned into an evening where she remained confined in her new hiding place without return. She had emailed Reiko and told her the three of them could order whatever they wanted for dinner using the money stored away in the kitchen, and not to worry about her.

And so, with no complaints that Amaya could hear through the floors of the attic, that was what her siblings did.

The searching attempts that Karma had made that evening were unsuccessful, with or without Ritsu's aid.

The fixed artillery had apparently told Karma that Amaya's cellular phone's signal was located at home, in exactly the place that the couch was in the loungeroom. Amaya knew, because she could hear Karma practically seething rebukes that she couldn't be here – He'd just searched in every possible location for any sign of her, and that the house neither had an attic nor a basement.

His return later that night yielded him no sign of Amaya, either, and only worsened his mood.

Ritsu reaffirmed that her cellular phone had not shifted an inch while he'd been away, and her siblings all agreed that if Amaya was here, she certainly hadn't moved anywhere.

She could hear all of this, without even having to leave the strange egg-basket.

And so, morning eventually came, yet Amaya did not retreat from the attic to go to school.

In fact, she waited in the basket without movement, entirely conscious the whole time with no sleep gained in any shape or form. She heard her siblings leave for school at their new time of 6.30am, and a handful of hours later, she heard the door slam shut.

She slowly crept to the locked window to look down over the edge, to catch a mere glimpse of red hair pass through the branches to head out of the property.

She expected that Karma would be back sometime later, like he usually was, so she took this moment of absence to actually investigate the attic properly.

She used the flashlight of her phone to illuminate parts of the attic the small incandescent globe hanging above the table could not. She wandered around, making sure her fingers covered both lenses of her phone's cameras, revealing nothing to the large space at first.

At least, until she reached the back right corner of the house, about where the staircase stood.

The floor appeared to more or less disappear here, completely absent aside from one metal ladder firmly affixed to the inside of the wall, approximately where the wall of the staircase would be. It was an extending ladder, with its bulk lifted away from the bottom by a mere hook clip.

So, Amaya carefully unclipped it and watched its extension slide straight down to the ground below.

A noisy, metallic clang echoed for several long seconds, before all was silent.

And so, after collecting her messenger bag from the center of the room, Amaya descended with careful, measured movements.

The ladder extended down what felt like two whole floors, right down to a triangular landing room with concrete floors and reinforced steel walling. Her phone illuminated what appeared to be a steel door in the wall facing into the house.

So, after a couple of attempts, she managed to unlock it with the keys she wore around her neck.

The door opened inwards, revealing a wooden panel in front. There was a hand-groove, providing her grip enough to slide the panel aside with relative ease.