Ch.6161. I’m Scared.

# 61. I’m Scared.

The moon I saw after a long time had grown enormously.

Maybe today was particularly close in the distance between Earth and the moon.

Or perhaps it was because I had climbed up to the top of the Tower.

As always, I couldn’t know the reason, but my excited mood improved even more with the feeling of getting closer to a friend far away.

“Ugh… spinning, spinning, the stairs are weird.”

“Mori. Wouldn’t it be better to go back now?”

“Don’t wanna.”

I want to give a gift to the poor, lonely moon that’s always alone!

But our distance was still far, and while I had a nice drone, I didn’t have a spacecraft that could reach the moon.

So, as they say, if you don’t have teeth, use your gums.

I started climbing the stairs with the thought of going to the highest place I could reach now and handing over my gift.

I get closer to the moon following the spiral staircase arranged around the circular pillar.

But something was strange.

“Uwaah.”

The closer I got to the moon, the more the stairs seemed to dance and bounce.

They say the path to meet a friend is joyful, and it seemed the stairs taking me to my friend were happy too.

“This is weird… the stairs must be alive!”

“The only weird thing right now is you, Mori?!”

Walking straight on stairs with surfaces undulating like jelly was an extremely difficult task.

Stairs, I understand you’re happy, but please calm down a bit. I can’t walk straight.

I was trying my best to walk while leaning against the wall, but maybe because I was holding bottles of alcohol in both hands, it was really hard to keep my balance.

Slip─

“Ahhh! Careful! Please be careful!”

“Oh my. Thank youuu.”

The stairs kept making me fall. Each time, the Robot caught me as I fell backward.

This is how friends help each other. I was so grateful that I thought I should service the Robot again next time.

“Ah. It feels good to be out in the open.”

“It just makes me anxious to be so exposed…”

Why do they build buildings so unnecessarily tall? After walking for quite a while, I finally reached the rooftop. I was completely out of breath.

Still, seeing the open view of the city made me feel good. Except for the moon and sky visible in a straight line, most of my view was covered with scrap metal and concrete─but I like this in its own way.

“Be careful!”

“I know, I know─”

I get closer to the moon one step at a time. The high rooftop was dark, but the countless stars revealed along with the moon became my guideposts.

Thud.

Just then, my foot caught on something.

“Looks like there’s already a guest here…”

It was the leg of someone sitting leaning against the wall next to the door coming from the staircase.

Next to this lonely person who hadn’t been discovered was a bottle of alcohol.

I wondered why this person was sleeping here like this. But right now, I had something else I needed to do first.

“Ugh, the wind hurts.”

I carefully cross over the legs and take one step at a time. The wind blew fiercely, tormenting me.

The wind blasting my face from the wide-open sky felt like it was trying to prevent me from getting closer to the moon.

“Mori, why don’t we just leave it here and go back down? It’s too cold and dangerous up here!”

The Robot was the same. I don’t understand why everyone is trying to stop me like this.

“I told you not to worry.”

I’m just going to say hello to a friend I rarely get to see and then go back down, even without all this nagging.

Unlike the moon, I have many friends─and I won’t live alone forever.

But still, just like how wanderers in ancient times used the moon to gauge their position when they didn’t have a compass, the moon and I are friends!

“Being up there alone must be lonely and cold, so drink this─”

I placed an unopened bottle of alcohol at the edge of the rooftop for my friend who would be lonely for a long, long time.

I placed it where the moonlight shone, avoiding shadowy places, and bowed my head saying to enjoy it.

“Ah, it’s cold.”

Then I turned around sharply. The air hitting my face was so sharp it could be described as cold and fierce.

Besides, no matter how used to heights I’ve become, a place without railings like this was scary.

“Phew… now you’ll go back down, right?”

The Robot sighed in relief seeing me return safely. The Robot’s face on the display was sweating profusely. It couldn’t be from heat in this cold weather… must be from tension.

No matter how drunk I am, I’m not foolish enough to invite death, so I wonder why it worried so much.

Why does a robot have the emotion of worry?

Is it really feeling emotions?

Or is it just programmed to say and act like that in dangerous situations?

There’s no way to know, but it felt good to see it worrying about me.

Actually, well, I don’t even know why I should feel lonely, so how much worse must it be for a machine?

“Don’t wanna, I want to stay here a little longer.”

“Why?!”

It’s nice that the Robot worries about me─but I didn’t want to go down yet.

The Robot loudly questioned me as I shook my head. Geez, so noisy.

“I’m too dizzy to go down!”

“What!”

When coming up, I could lean against the wall, lift my foot, and then put it down when it touched something.

But going down, I’d have to step purely by feel… I had no confidence in getting down without rolling.

The world is dancing around me so it’s hard to judge distances, and the stairs are so squishy that I feel like I’ll slip even if I step on them.

Asking it to prevent me from falling like when coming up wouldn’t work—there’s a world of difference between supporting from behind and preventing a fall.

“So I’ll stay here.”

Rather than slipping and hurting myself or damaging the Robot, I thought it would be better to spend time here even if it’s a bit cold.

I’ll talk with a friend I haven’t seen in a long time… and while I’m at it, I’ll ask why this person similar to me is here.

“Why are you here like this─”

Where did you leave your family and friends to be alone here?

“Were you alone? Or did you come late like me?”

There was no answer from the person sitting on the floor. Because their mouth was frozen just like their body.

“Hmm… maybe you’re the owner of the notebook I found in the Snowfield─”

Their clothes, and the fact that they were lonely here alone.

I felt a sense of kinship in many ways.

“Why did you drink alcohol here? Did you come to give alcohol to a friend like me?”

If not that─did you come up here because it was too hard, because you wanted to let everything go?

The alcohol bottle rolling next to the frozen person bothered me. The bottle was completely empty.

Did they freeze solid while sleeping drunk?

With no baggage except the alcohol bottle, they somehow looked like someone who had lost the meaning or will to live.

“…”

I stare at the person who maintains silence even when spoken to.

But staring is just a trigger to fall deep into thought.

“What thoughts did they have when they came here─at the end?”

No matter how drunk you are, pain is still pain, and death is scary. Just like how I felt pain from the cold wind and got scared of the ledge without railings and turned back.

It might have been less scary than putting a gun barrel in your mouth while sober, or standing on a chair and hanging yourself with a rope tied to the ceiling.

But still─it probably wasn’t a very comfortable end.

“I… don’t want to end up like this.”

Even after a long time, this world still feels strange to me.

Why are there so many corpses in this Ark that was supposedly built for humans?

I can understand knives being necessary, but why did they need to make weapons like guns or fighter jets? Who was fighting whom?

If they were going to build a place called Paradise, couldn’t they have made the entire Ark a paradise from the beginning?

My questions keep growing, but the information I can access is so limited.

And the rare truths I do learn are always just gloomy.

“You know. If this Ark is on the sea… it wouldn’t be eternal either, right?”

Just as the seemingly eternal era of humanity eventually ended.

This Ark, which was supposedly built to escape the apocalypse, will also meet its end someday.

Whether a massive wave engulfs it, or a terrifying hurricane sweeps through.

Or perhaps the durability of the Ark itself reaches its limit, breaking down from unseen places, and finally sinking underwater.

All of these things might only happen hundreds of years later, but it wouldn’t be strange if they happened tomorrow.

“Sigh…”

Death.

Unavoidable for any living being, but fearsome precisely because it’s unavoidable.

Like a future with no visible answer, it feels like a figure in a black robe is always holding a scythe to my neck.

Thinking about this only brings suffering, and there’s no proper solution, so I try to ignore it as much as possible.

But walking unsteadily on unstable ground, these negative thoughts suddenly visit me.

Well, the thoughts I’m having now aren’t just negative thoughts, but rather more realistic ones.

“If I go to Paradise… can I really live happily?”

The humans of old built Paradise to escape from the reality heading toward apocalypse.

However, it was quite ironic that Paradise, built to escape reality, was ultimately connected to the earth where humans are born, grow, and are buried.

It was as if the devil was whispering that there’s no way to completely escape what you fear.

“Mori. Let’s go down now.”

“…”

I curled up my body.

My body was warm from the alcohol, but the world was terribly cold. And it’s not even snowing right now.

This cold would get colder the higher you go.

And when you face despair after all your struggles, there are fewer and fewer places to escape to.

I could feel with my whole body that the end was approaching.

I’m afraid an unwanted ending might be waiting for me.

But there was nothing I, just an ordinary human, could do.

All I could do was turn a blind eye, just as humans have always done.

“Mmm… I want to drink a little more.”

“What?!”

Thinking that drinking a bit more alcohol might help me escape these cold thoughts, I opened the cap of another bottle I had brought.

The moment I opened the cap, a sound louder than I’d ever heard before burst from the Robot.

But my head was already full of painful and complicated thoughts, with no empty space for the Robot’s voice to enter.

One sip. Two sips.

“────!”

With each thick liquid going down my throat, my vision blurred. I couldn’t hear sounds well either, and I stopped feeling the cold.

With the sensation of my five senses disappearing one by one, the thought suddenly came that I might die like the person next to me.

But with the happy feeling of the bad thoughts that had bitten my head with sharp teeth going away somewhere.

With the thought of “oh well,” I took another sip of alcohol─────

“Huh.”

───And then. When I closed my eyes and opened them again, it was morning.

I was in a dark space, having become close friends with the floor, and several thick blankets were piled on top of me, crushing me.

What’s going on? I slightly raised my head like a snail and looked around.

“Did you sleep well, Mori?”

And my eyes met directly with the Robot who had been waiting for me to wake up.

The Robot was making an expression I had never seen before.

Like the red alert window that appears when you die in a game, the display was dyed red, and its face was even redder.

“Mori. You need to get up.”

“…”

With a stiffer tone than usual and such a scary expression, I pretended not to see or hear anything and hid my head under the blankets covering me.

I’m scared…!