Adam still stood beside the girl, admiring the painting she had made—her own painting—while she smiled faintly, as if proud, but quietly so.
"So, new person," she said, not looking at him at first. "I've never seen a created person appear in this world without Manori asleep. She's usually sleeping, not wandering. So... you must be new."She turned her gaze toward him with a blank, unreadable expression.
Adam wasn't listening. His eyes were glazed, lost in thought. That annoyed her.
She sighed quietly and said nothing more, falling into silence.
Adam, meanwhile, was thinking deeply to himself.There had been a monolith—or something like it—tall, dark, looming.Was it his way out? Did he need to find it to leave this strange world?
It won't be that easy, he thought. Maybe there's something else... something I haven't seen yet... Or need to do.
"So where are we?" he finally asked aloud.
The girl looked at him for a moment, then reached into a small pouch tied at her side. From it, she pulled out a torn half of a map. "Here," she said simply, handing it to him.
She moved her chair closer, spreading the map flat between them.
Adam leaned in.
The paper was crude, hand-drawn, almost childish. White staircases twisted and spiraled off the edges of a floating island, leading upward and downward through space. The island itself floated over a sea of water, with patches of gravel beneath it—almost like half-steps—revealing rooms and spaces hidden in total darkness below.
She pointed at an arrow near the edge of the map. "We're here," she said.The area was colored a pale yellow—low hills and pastures beneath a red carpet trail leading toward the center of the island. There, in rough, colorful strokes, was a carnival—a sprawling tented playground surrounded by floating buildings and tangled with strands of pipes. Beyond that: a mushroom forest, a darkened landscape with torches and ominous drawings—towers shaped like demons. Farther still: snow-covered plains. And even farther, at the top of the page, a patch of white that floated high above—sky-landscape.
The map was... well, kind of terrible. It looked like a child had drawn it with crayons. Half the details were hard to make out. The back side of the map was practically nonsense that cant be read.
Adam frowned. "-_-, well... at least it's helpful."
He looked at her. "So is there an end to this place?"
She blinked slowly. "What kind of end are you talking about? A physical end... or something else?"
"I don't know. Maybe physical."
"Well," she said, turning and pointing her thumb toward the carnival. "There are lots of doors and portals inside that place. Maybe—if you're lucky—you'll reach the end."
That was enough for Adam.
He stood upright, a sense of direction beginning to form in him. Without another word, he began walking toward the plains.
"Thank you," he said, not turning back.
She just waved goodbye, then returned to her small cabin. A moment later, she emerged with another blank canvas in her hands. She sat, dipped her brush in green, and began to paint another field of endless pasture.
There was a trail alongside a river. It was easy to see far ahead—there were no trees or bushes to block the view. Just open land... and oddities.Broken, half-functional children's swings twisted gently in the wind. Violet doors appeared and vanished randomly along the path.
Adam stepped on something. It was soft, squishy. He jumped back.
A red tentacle—fleshy and unnatural—writhed briefly beneath his foot. The grass around it had turned crimson, and near it, a strange material was forming—hard, dark red, with black streaks. It looked like meat, or bark, or some terrible fusion of both. From it, a structure shaped like a tree was beginning to emerge.
"This is disgusting..." Adam muttered.
His thoughts began to swirl. This has to be a dream... or something close to it. But isn't it strange? The people here...He clutched his head. His brain felt like it was overheating—firing off in every direction trying to make sense of anything.
Wait... a theory.Maybe the girl was asleep. That would mean this was her dream. So if she woke up in the real world... would this dream collapse?
"Ugh. I don't know..."
Suddenly, a poke on the back.
Adam spun around. A finger poked his cheek before he could react.
"What the!?"
Two strangers stood before him. One had spiraling hair that jutted outward like antennae, and giant circular eyes. The other was a boy—glasses, violet-and-blue hair, and color-burst clothing like some kind of circus punk.
"So who are you?" the boy asked.
"...Adam," he replied cautiously.
The two looked at each other, grinning with the look of kids plotting a prank.
"Hey!" the boy said. "How about we play a game?"
Adam narrowed his eyes. "What game?"
"Rock, paper, scissors!"
Why would they play this with a complete stranger? Adam wondered. Still, he raised his hand.
"Three, two, one—go!"
Scissors.
The boy had picked rock.
"Ha! You lose!" the boy said with a smirk. "Now for your punishment... the timeout room!"
"Timeout? Wha—"
In an instant, the world twisted. No warning. Adam was yanked through space, his body thrown forward, face-first into a violet-tiled floor.
The world around him spiraled—flashing neon colors vibrating in concentric patterns. Arcade tables and ancient computers surrounded him. Machines blinked to life and fizzled. The ground flickered in dotted squares of black, violet, and red. Overhead, the sky was an endless dark blue haze, like a nighttime fever dream.
Adam sat up slowly, groaning."What the heck is this place?" he whispered.
The buildings around him were boxy, identical, like liminal-space homes—familiar but eerily wrong. The kind you'd see in a dream... or in something you weren't supposed to remember.
He sighed, falling to a seated position on the strange floor.
"Hahhh... now what do I do?"