Soccer balls, ping pong balls, bowling balls, basketballs, and so on…
All sorts of “balls” came flying toward Manager Lee.
Barely dodging with a body stiff from long hours of work, Manager Lee entertained a terrible thought.
What if those balls charging at him had once been human?
Q of Emergency Support Division Team 4 had died.
And including K, who had left a record, all of Team 4, as well as Anomaly Investigation Division Team 1, were most likely dead.
If so, the outlandish notion that all the balls scattered throughout the warehouse were human corpses was probably untrue.
Instead… they were likely ‘anomalous entities.’
‘Perhaps it’s closer to the balls mimicking the humans they killed.’
Much like insects moving in a swarm.
Mere toys of humanity, the balls were crudely imitating humans.
If so, was it only the balls?
What about those cones or vests over there?
Barely dodging the bowling ball flying at him once again, Manager Lee hurried back the way he had come.
Dodging the balls’ onslaught, he replayed the words spoken by the “ball human” that had mimicked Q moments ago.
“Even though it was only about two steps, I almost fell rolling down. …Stairs stretching to dozens upon dozens of steps, with the railing gone. Despite it being a small space, it was so dark that even the entrance was hard to find.”
He was hit in the head by a ball.
Every single one of the balls attacking Manager Lee now aimed for his head.
Combining the ball human’s words with the current situation, Manager Lee exhaled a ragged breath and muttered.
“The characteristic of this space… is exaggeration of phenomena?”
Two steps increasing to dangerous dozens of steps.
The dark interior, where even the entrance couldn’t be found, expanding to the scale of dozens of logistics warehouses lined up.
The ball their friends had thrown now came in dozens of varieties, hostilely targeting heads.
He had found a slight clue.
But that didn’t mean Manager Lee was immediately safe.
Even if he escaped the warehouse right now, he wouldn’t be able to avoid a hospital stay for a while.
The reason was one thing the ball human had said.
[“And this stuffy air was quite dangerous when you think about it. There must have been all sorts of dust and bacteria teeming in it…”]
“This is why I keep telling them to give field teams ample backup.”
His respiratory system was already infected with unknown bacteria.
He belatedly covered his mouth with his sleeve, but it was likely too late.
And the same was true for the other members of Team 3.
Thud!
Rumble…
Bang!
“Give it a rest already. Whew. You at least heard the sound, right?”
The space itself was hollow above, making it a structure where gunshots echoed easily.
The other team members had likely heard that sound and recalled their orders according to their own judgment.
‘The missing persons… will have to be left to the follow-up team.’
Just as the gradually swarming balls were becoming too much to handle.
Creak…
An old locker opened, and someone called out to him.
“Mister…!”
“…!!”
Hearing that voice, Manager Lee dove toward the locker without a moment’s hesitation.
* * *
“Haa… haa….”
“….”
“….”
“Phew… as I thought, the locker was affected too. The space inside is quite spacious.”
“….”
“….”
“So, you’re sixth graders from XX Elementary School, right?”
“…! Y-yes!”
“W-we are, *hic*, that’s us…!”
At Manager Lee’s words, two elementary school boys nodded vigorously.
They must have been hiding inside this locker to avoid the situation outside.
‘Did Anomaly Investigation Division Team 1 and Emergency Support Division Team 4 both fail to think of the locker? Or… had the onslaught begun before they could even think of it?’
“Did you come to save us…?”
“Yeah. But weren’t there three missing persons? Where’s the other one?”
“…We don’t know.”
“We got separated in the middle…”
Perhaps out of guilt for not knowing whether their friend was alive or dead, the two elementary students scrunched up their faces as if they might burst into tears at any moment.
Normally hearing from his wife and daughters that he was “too blunt,” Manager Lee tried to comfort them in his own way.
“That kid might be hiding in some locker here too. So don’t worry.”
“O-okay…”
“So, when can we get out of here…?”
“First, there’s something I want to ask before that.”
Manager Lee left the elementary students with several questions.
The characteristics of the space they had noticed, whether they had witnessed Anomaly Investigation Division Team 1 or Emergency Support Division Team 4, the characteristics of the other child, and so on.
“We did see some people… but we don’t know if they were real people…”
“You’re saying there were people here from the moment you first entered?”
“Yes…”
“Hmm.”
They were likely “ball humans,” or beings similar to humans.
To be precise, they were human, yet not humans of “our Earth and world.”
Because this Deep Warehouse had appeared only three days ago, and the first ones to go missing were the elementary students before him.
Those the elementary students saw when they entered… were at least not humans of our Earth.
‘No need to overthink it.’
After all, Manager Lee’s goal now was to escape with these two elementary students.
Having largely ruled out the survival of his team members or rescuing the remaining student, there was no need to concern himself with the human-like things the students had witnessed.
“The other one was a girl, you said.”
“Huh? Yes.”
“Her characteristics?”
“Characteristics… characteristics… She was just… normal.”
“Not just when entering the warehouse. Tell me everything you noticed about her as a classmate before that.”
“Umm, so… should we say she was a bit cold, or that she didn’t play well with us…”
“She was bullied.”
“Bullied?”
“Hey…! If you say that…!”
“Why…! The mister told us to talk…!”
“But what if he tells the teacher!!”
“Calm down. This is a secret between us. And you two, if you could save that child, would you want to?”
“Huh? Yes! Of course…!”
“Then tell me. I’m… yeah, something like a detective. There might be something worth knowing.”
“Umm…”
The two children, exchanging glances, began to rattle off information about the girl.
In short, she was a child who listened well to her parents and teachers, but couldn’t play well with her classmates.
That was the missing girl.
Especially since she tried so hard to look good in front of the teachers that it almost seemed intentional, she was often ostracized by the other girls for it.
“So like, she carried her textbooks around even during music and art class, so the kids hated her.”
“Music and art class? What does that have to do with anything?”
“Ah, you don’t know? Music, art, and PE—even if they have textbooks, you almost never use them.”
“Uhm, what do you call that? Like, like… pretending to be all goody-goody, or something?”
“…I know what you mean. Then, when you were sent on an errand together, was she holding a book too?”
“A book? Ah, she was holding the PE textbook.”
“Even until you got separated?”
“Huh? Yes… huh? Or maybe not?”
“Then here’s the last question. What kind of errand did the three of you receive from the PE teacher? What would make him send three kids who weren’t even close?”
“Uh, so… what was it…?”
“Definitely… entering the warehouse… being offered as sacrifices… expanding the space….”
“Enough.”
Thwack.
Seeing the two students’ vision growing hazy and their speech slurring, Manager Lee quickly struck the backs of their necks.
At that, the two elementary students collapsed with a thud, unconscious.
“What a headache.”
Where did it begin?
First, this “Deep Warehouse” was not a simple anomalous space.
It wouldn’t be strange to think that several aberrations were intertwined in a more complex manner.
There were two suspects.
The missing elementary student and the PE teacher.
Even if they weren’t the direct culprits of this incident, they were undoubtedly figures adjacent to the primary cause.
And that primary cause could be a person, could be the space itself, could be a phenomenon, could be an object.
That was what an anomaly was.
“…Anyway, I can’t drag these two around.”
It would be better to leave them in this locker, which hadn’t been discovered even once.
He remembered every path that led here anyway.
If so… he had to change his objective.
He had to rendezvous with his team members.
Creak.
Clack.
Manager Lee burst straight outside.
And soon, countless balls began rolling toward him.
* * *
After a long time, I had come out to the lobby to read a book.
Or rather, perhaps it was practically the first time.
Because inside, a war was in full swing right now.
To be exact, it was something I had permitted.
Previously, the books had played war games so enjoyably that I had eventually set aside time for them all to play together.
Hmm, if I had to compare, it was like having free time during PE class in the middle of regular lessons.
So right now, three factions were waging large-scale war inside, with dozens of bookshelves as their backdrop.
The leaders of those three factions were… of course, Swampland, the Underground, and Unu the Octopus.
Library operations were… paused for the moment anyway, since the only recent visitors were those people from that so-called Management Bureau.
“Or maybe it’s a reflection of how people don’t read books these days…”
I don’t really know.
Come to think of it, I was curious about that group called the Management Bureau.
Since they had seemed acquainted with that white mother monster from before, it seemed correct to view them as people familiar with this mysterious world.
‘Grandmother… they’re probably not on the same side as her. Yeah.’
Compared to Grandmother… those three were too “human.”
Out of simple curiosity, I wanted to meet them again and ask this and that about the Management Bureau, but on the other hand, I didn’t particularly want to meet them because I had a record of breaking the rules.
Because of that incident, Recipe Book had developed something akin to trauma.
Whenever it felt a sensation like water dripping, it would attack nearby books and rampage wildly.
“Do I need to take better care of it?”
I said so and wrote in the ancient tome I always carried: “How do you fix a book’s PTSD??”
But then, a sudden knocking sound came from the library entrance. Knock, knock.
“…? A knock?”
It was the first time I’d seen such a manner; what was this?
Until now, all visitors (though it was only one team) had appeared naturally.
“Hmm…”
The knocking sound continued at regular intervals.
It seemed intent on continuing until I responded.
I glanced toward the shelves, but everyone seemed too preoccupied with the war game.
‘…Let’s go see. If they knew I was stepping out, they’d all make a fuss and it’d be tiring anyway.’
Thinking of the day I would confidently go outside the library, I could consider this a rehearsal.
So, holding the ancient tome and pen, I slowly opened the library door.
Creeeeak…
And the next moment, I was standing in the middle of dark stairs with no railing.
Behind me, the library door was gone.
“Huh…?”
And at the end of those stairs… balls? Cones?
A dark and expansive warehouse-like space stretched out.