"Let's run away," Satoru said.
"To where?"
"Anywhere, as long as we get away from this nest," Satoru stood up and made to look outside the sleeping area. "Saki, do you remember? The path we took here was pretty complicated."
"Yeah, maybe. My memory is a little hazy, so I'm not too sure..."
I tried to recall the sequence of turns from the queen's hall to where we were now.
"I can't. I know we went left in the very beginning, but after that the directions are all mixed up."
My sense of direction wasn't the best to begin with. It's not so bad when I can repeat the same route multiple times, but even then if I have to reverse the directions in my head, I still get confused.
Satoru crossed his arms, trying his hardest to dig out the memory of the way we took.
"There weren't many splits in the road. The most was a three-forked path. The first split, we took a left, then a right, after that...what was it?"
"There's one thing I remember. The path sloped a little downward the entire way here. "
I remember because it felt like we were being led to the underworld.
"Oh really? I see...we didn't go uphill even once?" Satoru grabbed my hand. "Then let's just keep going up. If the path starts slanting down, we'll just go back to the previous intersection and choose the other path."
"But not all paths that slope up are the right ones, right?" I brought up the obvious flaw in the plan.
"That's true, but even if it's not the path we originally took, if it goes up, it'll eventually reach the surface, right?"
Is it okay to be that careless? I was starting to have some doubts about Satoru's judgment. Would it even be possible to retrace our path in the dark? Maybe if we had a rope or something. Even Theseus had Ariadne's thread to guide him through the Minotaur's labyrinth
"Hey, can't we call the queerats and tell them we want to go outside? Because, if we get lost..."
Satoru leaned in close to me. "We can't explain to them why we want to leave, right? And we can't predict how they'll react if they find out we don't have cantus."
Listening carefully, I didn't sense any queerats nearby. It seemed like dawn was the period when their activity was lowest. But the tunnels outside were even darker than the room we were in, like they were submerged in ink. I couldn't find the courage to step out of the room.
"Hey, isn't this kind of weird?" I said.
Satoru made an impatient noise. "Nothing's strange. What's strange?"
"Why is it brighter inside the room than outside?"
He stopped suddenly, looking surprised. That's right. It was barely perceptible, but inside the room, I could see movement. But the tunnel leading from the room was pitch black.
"You're right. ...I see. There must be a source of light somewhere!"
We looked around, but didn't find anything.
Satoru was still holding on to the spear he had taken from the Ground Spiders like it was the most important thing in the world. After ascertaining my position, he started poking around the room with the spear. As he did so, a little pinprick of light glimmered on the spearhead.
"What was that?"
I walked slowly toward the depths of the room. There seemed to be weak light coming from above. I looked up and gasped.
