Ch.6565. Mold.

65.

“I wonder if the sun is up outside right now. Or is it the moon?”

I keep going around and around this uphill path where nothing exists, just repeating the cycle of sleeping and waking. I lost my sense of time in this darkness long ago.

“I feel like I’ve climbed quite far, but how much further do I need to go…?”

“……..”

My voice echoes lonely through the vast space. In this place without any light, Robot and Puppy had activated power-saving mode to conserve what little battery they had, leaving me feeling alone for the first time in a while.

Screech—

That’s when it happened. Something fell with the sound of rusty metal breaking loose from above my head. A large object appeared in my vision and disappeared in an instant.

Thud! A loud noise rings out as the object crashes down. The ground vibrates with a rumbling sound, and I put my hands on my head and duck down.

“Phew….”

Everything is wearing down and collapsing. This world, civilization, and me too.

“Lately I’ve been feeling less confident. Even though I’m clearly taking another step forward today and I can feel myself getting closer to the destination I’ve been longing for.”

It goes without saying, but having confidence in what I’m doing is extremely important.

No matter how right something might be, if you don’t believe in it yourself, it breeds hesitation.

But… lately I’ve started to doubt whether what I’m doing—heading toward Paradise—is truly the right thing.

“It’s like the path I thought I was choosing to follow on my own turns out to be a path someone else laid out for me, or maybe it feels like I’m being pushed along by something invisible…”

In the past, I had certainty. The certainty that even in this cold, difficult world, if I persevered and kept moving forward, I would reach a city with living people.

But this world was colder and more hopeless than I had imagined. Once hope shatters, it becomes sharp fragments, and I can no longer foolishly believe that what I want will really come in the future.

…The thought has started to visit me occasionally that even when I reach the end, I might not accomplish anything I want.

Why is that? I clearly confirmed through the drone that there are people living in the same time as me, people who couldn’t possibly say what they’re saying without directly watching my videos. So why do these possibilities keep coming to mind?

If this is intuition, I just hope my intuition is dull.

“I believe and will continue to believe that you are at the end of the path I’m taking.”

So please, don’t betray me.

My voice trembled as I spoke of belief.

[I’m starting to miss the sun]

[Being in such a dark place is making me depressed too.]

A blue window appears in the darkness. I wonder what time period of video the person sending this message is watching. Yesterday? Just now? A few hours ago?

No matter when it is, I have no way of knowing unless the message comes exactly as it is, and it doesn’t really matter anyway. After all, I’m spending repetitive days just like this circular, repeating path.

“I know what you mean. I’m starting to want to see sunlight too. Being in such a dark place makes mold grow. On food, on walls… and in the heart.”

We call the mold that grows in our hearts by names like depression or despair. Newly sprouted mold is small and not so deadly, but the scary thing about mold is that it’s hard to notice, and if left alone, it rapidly multiplies and ruins everything.

I wonder how stained my insides are right now.

“But unlike me, you’re only experiencing this darkness through videos, right? It’s enough that I’m the one with mold growing on me, so if you’re feeling down, turn off the video and go outside… get some sunlight, exercise a bit.”

Having someone who empathizes with your pain is incredibly grateful. Without even these small messages, I might have gone crazy already. Though I can’t hear their responses, I continue talking, imagining what they might say back.

“—Ms. Mori.”

“Ah. Thank you.”

The steering wheel had turned without me noticing. If Robot hadn’t quickly alerted me, it could have been dangerous. When I turned around to thank him, I saw that Robot had already activated power-saving mode, his screen gone completely black.

“I thought I was going the right way… I’ve heard somewhere that when you can’t see well, your other senses become more sensitive, but that doesn’t seem to be entirely true.”

I thought I was focusing properly since driving was the only thing to concentrate on, but my eyes had been wavering without me realizing it. My consciousness was like a broken light bulb.

“To be honest, it’s just dark here but not that cold, there are no corpses, and while it’s narrow, there’s comfortable space to sleep, so it’s better than other places—why am I feeling this way?”

A sense of fading self. Is it because the path I’ve traveled has been swallowed by darkness, and I can’t see anything when I look down? Now I can barely recall what the city below looked like.

I remember distinctive features like the artificial sun and the church-like building, but my memory of the city’s overall view and other buildings has become blurry. Even the buildings I actually entered.

A city devoured by darkness, no longer observable, with no means to observe it and no people left.

The only reason we can say that city exists, that it’s below the Tower, is because memories of the city remain.

But what would happen if I disappeared? What would happen if I and the people who watched my videos vanished?

We’ve already lost knowledge of the world outside the Ark. We don’t know how the people there lived or what they looked like when they went to sleep. Surely traces of civilization like buildings remain there too, but we can only recall nostalgic names, meaning their actual existence has vanished from the world.

The extinction of existence. All life and the world interact. They influence each other while being dependent on each other. Even if humans disappeared from this world, the Earth would continue on, but like an invisible jewel that has no value, a star without anyone to observe it has no meaning. At least the world as we know it would completely disappear.

In the past, there were many people and many who would remember, but now how many people are left to remember this world… to remember me?

I suppose that’s what I was afraid of. I was scared that my existence would vanish from the world along with everything I’ve seen and experienced.

I’m definitely climbing upward. Just as the city I passed through was consumed by the past, I’m moving toward an invisible future while forgetting the past.

But why do I feel like I’m not heading toward the future, but rather that a predetermined future is approaching me?

“Ugh, being in a dark place without turning on any lights must have let mold invade my brain too.”

I shook my head vigorously from side to side. But unlike usual, the gloomy, heavy thoughts wouldn’t go away.

“Still, looking on the bright side, I’m still alive.”

As long as I’m breathing, any painful situation will eventually end.

Before I knew it, the end of the darkness was approaching. I gathered my wits and turned my wrist.

“Ugh, so bright……..”

When I emerged from the dark place without a single window, brightness found me before joy did.

The ironic part was that it wasn’t the sun that was up, but the moon.

I’d kept the headlights off to save fuel, and once I got used to the darkness, I could distinguish between the road and what wasn’t the road, which led to this situation.

“And… it’s extremely cold. Brr, I guess that’s natural since I’ve climbed so high.”

My breath was visible and my body was shivering. The only advantage of being inside the Tower was that there was no wind, so it wasn’t cold, but now even that advantage had turned into a disadvantage.

Even though it’s natural to get colder as you climb higher, it’s this cold despite wearing all my clothes.

I’d only been out of Alexander for a few seconds to get some fresh air, but I was already desperately wanting to go back inside.

“But… I made it up safely!”

I looked up at the moon, which I’d decided to befriend, and raised both arms high.

It was cold, but better than going around and around in the Tower where only darkness existed.

With a soft thud, I jumped into the accumulated snow while shouting “Yahoo!” at the top of my lungs.

“Ahaha, cold!”

It was so cold my teeth chattered even though I was already cold just standing still, but strangely, it was enjoyable. Laughter flowed naturally from the sensation of being alive, something that was hard to feel inside the Tower.

“Light! Hurray!”

“Woof!”

I wasn’t the only one who had been waiting to escape from the Tower.

The two robots, who had no choice but to go into power-saving mode because they didn’t know when they could get out of the Tower and had almost no light to charge with, cheered similarly to me.

All the buildings visible around us were unfinished, and we had no idea where to go next.

But for now, I decided to enjoy this moment of joy.